Guild Wars 2

Hello!

I’d like to suggest a feature that might make the game much more enjoyable for many players, and help support ANet in many ways.

Guild specific VOIP (voice over ip) in GW2!

How it could function:

Guilds could purchase an in game Guild VOIP with gems. Guild members could donate gems they buy off the gem store or the currency exchange to fund the Guild VIOP.

A new tab added to the guild panel for this new Guild specific VOIP would be cool. Perhaps, with the ability to make channels, mute and ban players from the VOIP.
A monthly gem price cold vary depending on how big the guild is.

What I would suggest is:
There could be multiple subscriptions available i.e 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 Guild VoiP spots.
This way guilds can decide just how much VoiP room is needed. Even full guilds usually don’t have all 500 members on at once.
Of course it’s up to ANet to decide just how much it’s worth in gems.

Why is this a good idea?

Increased gem demand will raise the price of gems in the currency exchange. This makes it more appealing for players who want to buy gold with real money to do so via gems, rather than some website.

If this new VIOP feature is of standard quality to third party hosting (i.e easy to use, good sound quality, etc…) it might raise the gem price in the currency exchange to a point where it just won’t be profitable for the illegal gold farmers to continue doing what they do.
Players would rather not risk a ban buying gold from a farming website and would instead be more interested in buying gold from ANet via gems.

Many casual players do not use VoiP such as Ventrilo or Mumble because it’s not always convenient to run another application outside of Guild Wars 2. Keep in mind an in-game VOIP would fund the game we all love as well.

Communities will become stronger, dungeons will become easier to run with guildies, and perhaps the new guild events will benefit from this new feature?

People will argue that Mumble is free to use, HOWEVER! Mumble needs to be hosted by one person, keeping their machine on at all times, and not being in control while they’re afk. Not to mention the DDOS’ing mumble hosts get from time to time. Which is why many people still use Ventrilo.

In conclusion, this would at least partially achieve 3 things:

1. Raise the gem demand, also raising the gem value making it more appealing to buy gems with real money for the purpose of exchanging the gems for in-game gold.

2. Strengthen guilds, making dungeons & events more fun as a guild.

3. It could potentially drive away gold farmers.

I apologize if this was already suggested by someone else and I missed it.
Thank you very much for reading!

GET CRIT!!!!!!!

I second this motion.

Good idea, also we would get a ingame VoIP

I really like this idea. The game becomes so much more fun overall when there are people from the guild to talk to while playing.

Lol…I paid for both a 25 vent channel and a 50 slot mumble channel for the year and only get a few people every night in chat. First game where I had this problem, also our server has a 1025 slot mumble for WvW and server wide use and nobody joins in.

I’d pick in game party finding over VOIP any day of the week. That is a missing feature for the game that should be standard. You are more likely to be getting mails and PMs from gold sellers from account information taken from 3rd party group finding sites than ingame guild chat.

FilthyRat.4652:

Lol…I paid for both a 25 vent channel and a 50 slot mumble channel for the year and only get a few people every night in chat. First game where I had this problem, also our server has a 1025 slot mumble for WvW and server wide use and nobody joins in.

That’s exactly what I mean though!
Many casual players simply don’t feel like taking the extra steps like installing a third party VoIP, so they don’t use vent.
Perhaps if Guild VoIP was available in-game, casual players would be more inclined to use it.
The game would become smoother for hardcore players as well, because it will be easier to communicate with casual players during FoTM, WvW, SPvP.

Thanks for the reply!

Faux Play.6104:

I’d pick in game party finding over VOIP any day of the week. That is a missing feature for the game that should be standard. You are more likely to be getting mails and PMs from gold sellers from account information taken from 3rd party group finding sites than ingame guild chat.

ANet is already aware of the LFG problem and it’s high on their list of things to rework.
Arenanet: LFG system is high on our list of things to rework.
I’m not sure why you’re bringing LFG problems to this thread. It belongs in the LFG suggestion threads. I never said this should be prioritized over LFG.

Thanks for the reply though!

VoIP isn’t needed. I type faster, and with a greater ability to communicate than most people in the game can actually speak anyway.

If you want it, Ventrillo, Teamspeak… the option is already there.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

VoIP isn’t needed. I type faster, and with a greater ability to communicate than most people in the game can actually speak anyway.

If you want it, Ventrillo, Teamspeak… the option is already there.

Hah xD

Umm…Idk how I feel about this. Voice in game? Awsome option. Have it cost gems? Maybe-So long as its not subscription based.

DDO is a Free To Play game, and has one hell of a voice chat system in game and it costs you nothing to use. The game requires you to pay at some point, but you pay for content at higher levles. You never feel obligated to pay for voice chat. Which I think is wrong.

Voice chat should be in the game, and not cost anything. I say that for a reason. Anet does not need to “entice” us anymore with that gemshop. With Gems being converted to gold-Truely, I am sure anet makes thousands a day if not more. They have probably well over paid the original investment, and doing well. Otherwise this game would have stoped with monthly content.

Voice chat should be a given for an mmo. It makes the community feel richer, and kinder. In ddo, I have never had someone trakittenalk me in voicechat-but I feel that voice makes the tension and enviorment diffrent. People can speak there minds easier then type it at times.

So yea for Voice Chat-Neigh for a sub fee. I fit was like 100 Gems To use Voice chat for the rest of your account’s life. Im gung hoe-But no more! And defently dont require me to keep a sub fee going for it. That’s just turning gw2 into a wow clone. WIth a new type of Sub Fee.

frostflare.6390:

Umm…Idk how I feel about this. Voice in game? Awsome option. Have it cost gems? Maybe-So long as its not subscription based.

DDO is a Free To Play game, and has one hell of a voice chat system in game and it costs you nothing to use. The game requires you to pay at some point, but you pay for content at higher levles. You never feel obligated to pay for voice chat. Which I think is wrong.

Voice chat should be in the game, and not cost anything. I say that for a reason. Anet does not need to “entice” us anymore with that gemshop. With Gems being converted to gold-Truely, I am sure anet makes thousands a day if not more. They have probably well over paid the original investment, and doing well. Otherwise this game would have stoped with monthly content.

Voice chat should be a given for an mmo. It makes the community feel richer, and kinder. In ddo, I have never had someone trakittenalk me in voicechat-but I feel that voice makes the tension and enviorment diffrent. People can speak there minds easier then type it at times.

So yea for Voice Chat-Neigh for a sub fee. I fit was like 100 Gems To use Voice chat for the rest of your account’s life. Im gung hoe-But no more! And defently dont require me to keep a sub fee going for it. That’s just turning gw2 into a wow clone. WIth a new type of Sub Fee.

It’s still not something people need to experience the game content, so it’s not like wow at all. Many people play without using VOIP at all. Also if it’s a gem fee, you could just pay for it by buying the gems using your in-game gold.

It would require additional servers and maintenance, that’s pretty expensive for a “one time purchase no sub fees” game. VoIP Sub fees would support ANet which in turn will bring us more free content as well.

We still see gold farmers in GW2. The reason behind it is that some players still buy from them. The goal is to make those players more interested in buying gems instead.

We’re not paying a sub fee to play. Asking for new features aren’t necessary to play the game, or came with the purchase, for free is kind of strange… Especially when it’s something that requires regular maintenance and additional servers.

Thanks for the reply!

http://www.teamspeak.us/

That exists, and does exactly what you want. Adding it in to the game would do absolutely nothing to stop gold farmers. At all. The gem/gold rate will never rise that high as long as there are people like myself and others, who understand that $10 a day is a pack of smokes, or some gems, and have no problem giving that $10 daily to A-net.

Instead, making VoIP built in to the game, and require gems to use would simply make for more people turning to botting to make enough gold to not have to spend money on their VoIP. Wierd, huh?

Like I said previously, many people don’t wanna bother using another application for VoIP.
The problem is that players still buy gold from the gold farmers. If there’s a gem fee on the VOIP, the in-game gem demand will go up, and fast. Because VoIP is VERY convenient for casual players who don’t feel like downloading TS, Vent, Or Mumble.

In a game that doesn’t require sub fees to play, casual players are in the majority.

Also, if players want gems, and not gold, it’s smarter to buy from ANet and always will be.
People wouldn’t buy gold from gold farmers, to buy gems, it’s less profitable.

Ok, the average guild has what, 40 people using TS3 at once? That’s $161.16 a year, or $13.43 a month.

In gems, that’s 12,892 a year, or 1074 a month. If you make a PvP paid tournament out of guildies, you get 120 gems per round… 9 rounds a month, and you never have to buy gems to pay for your built in VoIP.

So, you could remove the PvP reward, and punish PvPers to make your VoIP actually expensive enough to drive up gem prices… Or you could increase the price to higher than a third party piece of software and nobody would buy it.

Again, though, driving up the gem/gold rate will never stop gold sellers. If you make a huge demand on gems, and thus 100 gems exchanges for 6 gold, gold sellers will simply turn gems in to more gold.

See, how gold sellers get a large amount of their gold is through buying gems with the saved credit card data on the accounts they’ve stolen, and the credit card data that stupid people give them expecting to actually get the gold they paid for.

Driving the gem price up simply makes it so that gold sellers have more gold to sell. You’re not going to solve the gold seller problem, ever, through anything. If it was possible, it would have been done a long time ago.

Those are all good points (+1!), and I agree that it’s impossible to get rid of gold sellers completely. This would just be a step towards it. Hence why I said “partially” solve the problem.

The price would need to be decided by ANet, since they need to make profit as well.
Even if the price is higher than third party VoIP, I believe guilds will still purchase it, because guild members would be able to contribute gems as well.
So it will no longer be up to one person to pay the full price, and it would not always require players to spend real cash.

Majority of the guilds don’t do SPvP that much(yet), though I do see how it could potentially be a “problem” for ANet.

I’m not trying to say this idea is perfect, I’m fully aware that it isn’t.
I just think that something like this could help with the current gold farming issues, even if just a little.

I believe that in-game Guild VoIP would definitely make the game more enjoyable for many people.
Guild dungeons/events/wvw/spvp would be more organized as it would be available to more players in the game.

It shouldn’t be free.
If ANet spends the server/maintenance resources on this for free, it would leave less resources available for content improvements/updates.

Thanks for the replies!

While the majority of guilds don’t do sPvP, match manipulation was a huge problem in GW1. I don’t know if you ever played, but there was this thing called RR, which stands for Red Resign.

The randomly appointed Red team would quit the match, just far enough in to fool the game, so that people could rapidly get rewards for winning matches. The quitting team would simply queue again, and hope to get Blue.

This is already possible right now, and you don’t actually have to do the PvP part. You and your guildies get together, and join an empty hotjoin server, fill up both sides. Then you give each other everything for your PvP daily without contest, because you’re working together. Once you’ve got your daily, and your tickets to enter tournaments, you set up the tournament with only your guildies. One of the teams beats all the other teams.

A process taking about 45 minutes for 120 gems. Repeat as necessary to pay for your stuff. There’s no way A-net could fix this without removing the rewards from legitimate PvP players.

I’m really good at finding exploits. VoIP is good, and it would be great if it could be added to the game. However, there is no way A-net could add it in, charge gems for it, and have people not find a way to cheat to get it.

I do recall. I did play guild wars 1 quite a lot(45 HoM).
Wasn’t aware that this problem is still present…

Perhaps if everyone had to use tournament tickets to participate, and the tickets were more expensive it, players wouldn’t be so inclined to throw them away like that…

I definitely see the problem now.
Honestly, I think if the reward is gems, it should cost actual gems to participate as well… Remove the free tickets? So the amount of gems spent on the cheat tickets would equal to the VoIP payment. Though, I have not done enough Spvp so I won’t really say this is my opinion, more of a thought.
What do you think?

Thanks again!

Tournament tickets are needed, but tournament tickets are rewarded from dailies.

If you remove the free tickets, I’d do the same thing, only in empty hotjoin servers over and over again. Farm glory, buy chests, and make the tickets in the mystic forge. If you made tickets cost gems, and removed all other ways to get them, you’d be forcing PvP players to PvE for gold, or pay cash, to play in tournaments, and that’s no good.

The way to do it would be to simply have a subscription fee in cash, not gems, and purchased from the GW2 shop; https://www.guildwars2.com/en/shop/ and hope nobody thought you were giving people with money an unfair advantage.

Would you say the tournament way is actually faster than, for example, farming CoF path 1 and just buying gems?
You could make around 5-10g an hour doing that.
We need to consider what’s more convenient as well.
If the gem price shoots up, it might be more convenient to do the tournaments… But then if the daily tickets were removed, farming for them would probably take longer than doing pve content/buying gems again.

If ANet sells VoIP for cash, I would personally rather pay for that than vent or ts, since all I really have time to play is GW2, and my guildies would all have access to the VoIP without downloading any apps.

For all of u giving dollar ammounts with ventrilo and Teamspeak why dont u try Raidcall. You get 1,000 slots which is more than what you need and its free. Ive tried both Ventrilo and Teamspeak and I think everyones voice on Raidcall is much clearer.

Stupid Idea.

They could also Reduce Gem prices.

10 Euro for XXX Virtual currency which takes them to add only a click is far to much.

Im 100% sure they would get rid off gold sellers by cutting gem price by 60-70%.

There would be no reason for goldsellers to exist if there would be let’s say 3euro price for 800 gems.

Current price for 10/20g in gold stores are around now like 6-7$?

Putting 800 gems for 3 Euros/4.5$ would make things unappeling for goldsellers and they would stop selling cause they would make near to no profit.

Also this would give Anet much more $ income.

But as far as I noticed companies are hell greedy. They think that Raising Price trough the roof will give em more $ then putting it more then a bit down allowing more ppl to buy from them.

:> lower the price and be happy of no gold sellers :>

Most ingame VoIP services in my experience sound and run bad. Plus you have to go by their rules or get kicked out. Anet needs to stay out of VoIP service and stick with what they know best the game. Most large guilds have there own VoIP server were they have full control over it, can setup the server to fit there needs and set their own rules the guild I’m in now runs a 50 slot vent server were we have 25 to 30 players on each night in vent. It is not required to get on vent but I dose gain you a rank in the guild if you do some type of VoIP service is a must for any online MMO. For me I hate to type so I’m not very good at it plus if I’m in the heat of battle the last thing I want to do is read the chat screen or have to type something to communicate. If you haven’t used a VoIP server to play in GW2 or any MMO then now is the time to get over your mic shyness and give it a try. I guarantee you will say to yourself " why didn’t I get on to this years ago"

Mrowqa.3861:

Stupid Idea.

They could also Reduce Gem prices.

10 Euro for XXX Virtual currency which takes them to add only a click is far to much.

Im 100% sure they would get rid off gold sellers by cutting gem price by 60-70%.

There would be no reason for goldsellers to exist if there would be let’s say 3euro price for 800 gems.

Current price for 10/20g in gold stores are around now like 6-7$?

Putting 800 gems for 3 Euros/4.5$ would make things unappeling for goldsellers and they would stop selling cause they would make near to no profit.

Also this would give Anet much more $ income.

But as far as I noticed companies are hell greedy. They think that Raising Price trough the roof will give em more $ then putting it more then a bit down allowing more ppl to buy from them.

:> lower the price and be happy of no gold sellers :>

As Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025 mentioned earlier, gold sellers use the gems to make more gold by using stolen accounts that have credit card info on them.
So it wouldn’t solve the problem.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Most ingame VoIP services in my experience sound and run bad. Plus you have to go by their rules or get kicked out.

That is true, which is why I mentioned that it would need to be of standard quality to third party hosting.

The reason why I believe in-game guild VoIP would be better than third party VoIP, is because every guild member would have access to it, meaning there will be more than 30-50 members using it in a 500 member guild like Get Crit[CRIT].

The game would become much smoother if most(instead of few) players were able to use VoIP for communication without having to download anything else for it. Or at least have the ability to listen to tips from more experienced players in dungeons, wvw, fotm, spvp.

I agree in principle, having a in game VoIP service would lower the barrier to entry and most likely lead to more people using it. The problem is of course that ANet is not a VoIP company, with everything that entails.

It is an awesome idea, if it was actually possible to implement. The problem is implementation, and finance. I don’t see many investors willing to front A-net the kind of money it would need to start up VoIP services that could compete with what’s already available today. I also don’t see players being willing to pay cash for the service during the “break-in” time as they work out sound quality, interface issues, etc… that always arise when adding new services to an existing live game.

From the business end, it’s just not possible to do right now, or likely any time in the foreseeable future.

Gray.9502:

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Most ingame VoIP services in my experience sound and run bad. Plus you have to go by their rules or get kicked out.

That is true, which is why I mentioned that it would need to be of standard quality to third party hosting.

The reason why I believe in-game guild VoIP would be better than third party VoIP, is because every guild member would have access to it, meaning there will be more than 30-50 members using it in a 500 member guild like Get Crit[CRIT].

The game would become much smoother if most(instead of few) players were able to use VoIP for communication without having to download anything else for it. Or at least have the ability to listen to tips from more experienced players in dungeons, wvw, fotm, spvp.

Our vent server is open to anyone in the guild that wants to use it and we have the means to increase it if we run out of slots. No matter who runs the VoIP server wether it be the game company or a third party app by a guild you will not convince all to use it. So I still say guilds running there own servers is the best way. Also if the game company were to offer a VoIP server for a monthly fee how many players would use it, yes it is easer to play the game with VoIP instead of text chat but this will turn into just one more gold sink in a game full of gold sinks its better for a guild to offer this service for free there is always someone in a large guild that will step up and pay for a server I have done this in the past for guilds or the guild could divided the cost up between some of the top guild officers. How ever it’s done a guild needs to run its own VoIP server.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Our vent server is open to anyone in the guild that wants to use it and we have the means to increase it if we run out of slots. No matter who runs the VoIP server wether it be the game company or a third party app by a guild you will not convince all to use it. So I still say guilds running there own servers is the best way. Also if the game company were to offer a VoIP server for a monthly fee how many players would use it, yes it is easer to play the game with VoIP instead of text chat but this will turn into just one more gold sink in a game full of gold sinks its better for a guild to offer this service for free there is always someone in a large guild that will step up and pay for a server I have done this in the past for guilds or the guild could divided the cost up between some of the top guild officers. How ever it’s done a guild needs to run its own VoIP server.

It’s really not about running out of slots on vent… It’s more about people not downloading vent ts mumble etc.
It’s much easier to convince people to use VoIP when they don’t have to download anything.
Some people have issues running another application outside gw2 for reasons like cpu limitations, connectivity issues(multiple ports) etc.
Some just don’t trust third party VoIP.
There’s many reasons why some people prefer not using third party VoIP, these are just a few of them.
The payment could work the same way it does for vent. It could be just one person paying for VoIP, or a few. It would remain free for most members that way(just like vent).

Thank you for the replies!

3rd party clients do VOIP cheaper and better than game manufacturers can. Let Anet focus on the game which is still lacking features that are standard among other games in its class.

As for lack of numbers in the VOIP servers, if you don’t make it worth peoples while to use it they won’t. How many people close out guild chat because they don’t want to listen to it? I personally see very little use for it unless you are into high end PVP.

Higher FoTM, WVW, harder dungeons, perhaps the new guild events.
All of those would become easier with better communication.

And again, I’m not suggesting that in-game voip should be prioritized over other features. It’s just something I’d like to see in GW2 in the future.

It’s pretty clear that if in-game voip is ever a feature in GW2, it wouldn’t arrive any time soon.

It’s up to the players to make suggestions, up to ANet to decide and prioritize.