Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

On the editing topic I’ve seen a few things listed.

Assuming everything has a cost:
Some questions with sample answers:
Q: what kind of thing would you be ok with static placement?

The building structure (Gardens, pools, arena, doors, windows, Asura portals, maybe even pictures on the walls and furniture).

JonPeters.5630:

Q: What kind of things do you think work fine with grid placement?

Harvesting nodes maybe?

JonPeters.5630:

Q: What stuff would you want to have free placement?

Statues that reflect guild achivements, GvG trophies and other trophies, NPCs, guild members info banners or statues or whatever we use for that, different bundles.

Proposal Overview

Empty Guild Map of different theme

Goal of Proposal

Give guild a way to progress at their own pace.

Guild Objectives/activities

Proposal Functionality
Create a new guild research to unlock a plot of land (map). Which opens up a whole new series of guild tree research specifically for that map.

These ideas would had more depth to taking part of a guild. You’re actually seeing your hard work show up on the map. It also gives another form of activity for the guild to do, and work together as one entity towards a common goal.

As for what could be built/upgraded on this map. I think a lot of ideas have been thrown around.

I love the idea of airship guilds, especially if they could hover close to each other and allow members from different guilds to chat with each other with /say. How feaseable would that be?

Besides, a feature like that seems to be massively marketable, especially if it’s expanded beyond guilds. Think of FFXII’s airship travelling services to access to new locations and to floating continents.

Instanced/openworld/megaservers

I would not have too many adjustments to open world servers when it comes to guildhalls it would be a good idea to have a split between pvp and pve when it comes to creating an instanced guildhall.

I would imagine a guildhall accesable in the open world trough interaction with a npc and have the npc open a portal or something.
~The npc or warp/portal to the guildhall, could have a animation according to the level of the guildhall.~
Level 1: Slow clap
Level 20: Fireworks candyfarting rainbows and doves everywhere while a band starts playing the cantha anthom. “bragging rights”

Thus creating an instanced “open world” pvp and pve map.

PvE guildhall
-Upgradable/buildable, home/guildhall represented in an open world server based instanced map.
-This instanced map has neighboring guilds that can interact on the maptrough events invitations.
-The guildhall on this map gives acces to the guilds instanced pvp map and open world megaservers.

PvP instanced “battle” map.
-Open world pvp associated with the guildhall and server.
-Guildhall representation on the pvp map.
-Upgrades done to the guildhall in the pve instanced map are represented in the pvp map trough defense and beautification upgrades. (bragging rights)
-This guildhall representation gives access to the pve guildhall.
-The guilds on this map can interact trough, forging an alliance and doing events (Chooce a daily alliance event: capture the yellow/red/blue keep)

Maybe the instanced maps can be the same, only the pve one has rainbows and unicorns (that can kill you if you attack) and the pvp one has fire and ice falling from the sky.(that just kills you)

As far as pros and cons for instance or not.

Instance:
Peace and quiet.

Open world:
War and rage.. whahahahahahaahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.. but seriously.. War and rage…mostly rage..

Hi guys, I noticed you are talking alot about the customization and building in the progressive part of guild halls.

What if, Guilds could unlock, certain skins for guild halls. These skins would be for example: WvW skin (look like one of the keeps) Dry Top Skin (looks like a broken airship in the desert. Ascalonian Skin looks like the catacombs.

Unlocking these *skins for guild halls could be done by member activities in certain regions and count towards the overall progress of the Skin Unlock. Guilds could unlock multitudes of skins ect.

Just a thought, after initial build of the guild hall you could start off standard and then unlock these skins to add more customization. It would also help encourage guilds to try out things like WvW, New content/Old content ect.

If you do not go with instanced and decide to do an open world guild hall the skin could be on the inside of the guild hall like the main room of it. You could get drops to deco according to that theme in the regions that you unlock the skin from for added benefit.

If you instance the guild halls, you could change the entire guild hall look.

I’ve skimmed a lot of what has been said in here so I’ll probably repeat ideas that some people have already have said.

Guild halls themselves are kinda plain, similiarly to the guild upgrades, you simply start and upgrade and wait for it to be done and eventually you are fully maxed out. I would see the same staleness appear if we got guild halls.

I think some some activity would be needed to keep things interesting. I think someone had mentioned something about owning land or something for their guild halls. Allowing guilds to own some areas (it would simply be small things like a mountain or something and then say there is an entrance/instance portal thingy to enter the mountain which would be your guild hall. Along the lines of the Whisper orders secret base.

But there was the issue about forever keeping the land. I’d suggest that this is where you allow GvG to fight over the land. Guild A is bored of X and wants to move to Y, they challenge Guild B for their land.

This would allow pvp competitive guilds to have some activity. I’m sure you could possibly think of some other activity instead of purely GvG, like having some PvE activity where they have to do better than the other or something.

I’m sure someone would be thinking, then what about the smaller guilds, wouldn’t all the lands be taken and there would be no space for them? This is where I would suggest having guild halls in cities which are neutral and any guild can start from there. It’s only outside of cities/towns where guild can claim areas for guild halls against one another.

There would be some rules in place, like a guild that loses their fight against another cannot challenge the same guild for that location for a week or so.

But there are some other issues like how would gvg fights be arranged and decided, when will it happen, what about if one guild doesn’t have the players that day, etc. haven’t really thought it all the way through. Just throwing out random ideas that probably aren’t feasible.

JonPeters.5630:

Benefit of instanced that we could get in an open world system: Guild Halls are air ships that attach to places in the world improving that area for a while, but move around and have many attachment points. Access to the ship itself is controlled, but you still are in the open world.
Benefit of open world that we could get in an instanced system: Guild Halls are still halls but have functionality that lets guild create temporary content that attach to open world maps.

:o Jon quoted my idea. Sweet. (Yes, I understand how unrealistic it is, but I still think it would be super awesome.)

What do people see as the benefits of instanced?
1.) Endless real estate.
2.) Easily coordinated zone theme.
3.) Private and personal feel for each guild.
4.) Added option for Guild Zone specific content.

What do you see as the benefits of open world?
1.) Adds needed depth to Tyria by making it feel more alive.
2.) Makes the world even more dynamic by watching GHs rise and fall.
3.) Gives guilds more substance and accolades.
4.) Makes Guild Zone content available for casual players passing through, adding more content for people in general.

How could we get the benefits of instanced guild halls in a system of open world guild halls?
1.) Adding districts gives us a bit of middle ground to work on here. Technically, they are instances of the zone but that is what we have now anyway. This would simply allow the player to choose what instance they are loading into for the specific Guild Hall accessible map they are loading into.

2.) Make the zone that is selected limited to certain GH themes and design options. This keeps each zone consistent and won’t break immersion.

3.) Make GH access levels allowing Members/Friends of members/custom/all players to actual enter the GH. This could have a Local Guild chat channel added as well.

4.) Just like Guild bounties, the zone missions could spawn in the zone or be activated by the Guild’s leadership.

How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?

I think on most of these the answer is named player selected districts. However, the guild should have the ability to limit access to their zone. In that case the benefits will be diminished on both sides.

How much area does the water in this game cover in the playable portions of the map? How viable would it be to get rid of the water(Bubbles is thirsty and drinks it all) and add Guild Halls to those portions of the map?

JonPeters.5630:

I wanted to dig into the instanced vs non-instanced debate a bit. Here are 4 questions I’ll pose:

• What do people see as the benefits of instanced?
• What do you see as the benefits of open world guild halls?
• How could we get the benefits of instanced guild halls in a system of open world guild halls?
• How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?

Jon

*Benefits of instances:
-Privacy, GH can be larger, more potential upgrades, less laggy

*Benefits of open world:
-can be seen by many players, can influence map GH is on

*Benefits from instances applied to the open world:
-Idea- allow guilds to claim already existing structures throughout the world as well as said guild’s Server Borderland (camps towers keeps) and section of EB (including SM). The GH itself will be an instance of the camp/tower/keep/fortress/random structure/etc. Each week at a certain time (about WvW reset time) all maps will be “reset” to allow for different GHs to be pasted into their open world location. Example: say Guild A and Guild B have both claimed Fort Mariner in LA. Currently Guild A’s version of Fort Mariner is what is being shown in LA. At the new time, all maps will be evacuated for updating and Guild B’s version will be Fort Mariner for the week (it would appear as Fort Mariner owned by Guild B on the map). For the WvW stuff, it would only be a certain servers GH that would be replacing their structures (Guild A Hills, Guild C Cliffside etc). SM would be unique in that it would choose from 1 of the 3 servers battling (Green maybe?) The downside to this idea is that creativity would be severely limited for GHs, but several areas could be upgraded to include various merchants, mercenaries to protect the hall and some furniture. Another downside is that not every guild will have its hall previewed very often (popular area/requirements that bar their hall/etc)

*Benefits from open world applied to instances:
-dynamic events in GH instance, NPC for visiting GHs (might have to have a ranking system/search feature or something since a list could get impossibly long to navigate)

also on an unrelated note. Can we hang up the random rare objects that are currently used for collecting, but arent equipment (specific example of WvW commander spoon) in the GH? it would be awesome to have a wall of spoons or something like that

JonPeters.5630:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

JonPeters.5630:

Benefit of instanced that we could get in an open world system: Guild Halls are air ships that attach to places in the world improving that area for a while, but move around and have many attachment points. Access to the ship itself is controlled, but you still are in the open world.
Benefit of open world that we could get in an instanced system: Guild Halls are still halls but have functionality that lets guild create temporary content that attach to open world maps.

:o Jon quoted my idea. Sweet. (Yes, I understand how unrealistic it is, but I still think it would be super awesome.)

Which of these do you think is unrealistic and why?

Well, when comparing it to other ideas around here, it doesn’t sound terribly unlike anything else that would be required to do. But I just think that, 1) having a map zone per guild airship and having other players passing through the map, as well as 2) regulating who would be able to access the guild and who wouldn’t on the open world server, would both be difficult to manage.

Iason Evan.3806:

How much area does the water in this game cover in the playable portions of the map? How viable would it be to get rid of the water(Bubbles is thirsty and drinks it all) and add Guild Halls to those portions of the map?

The underwater area are just amazing looking. Please don’t do this.

JonPeters.5630:

On the editing topic I’ve seen a few things listed.

• NPCs
• fixed placement
• grid placement
• free form placement
• upgrading placed things

Assuming everything has a cost:
Some questions with sample answers:

Q: what kind of thing would you be ok with static placement?
A: NPCs and crafting stations should be in static locations in a given room.

Q: What kind of things do you think work fine with grid placement?
A:Pie in the sky, actual rooms and exterior elements (parapets, etc). This might not be possible if you do an amazing internal/external jumping puzzle (pleeeeeease), but saying “let’s put stairs leading to a viewing tower on the left!” would be super cool. If your instance has an exterior you can reach, any external elements like catapults, a town fair, a hedge maze – all “socketed” similar to, say, Wildstar.

Q: What stuff would you want to have free placement?
A: General furniture. Tables, chairs, wall banners, statues. Things that are solely cosmetic.

JonPeters.5630:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

JonPeters.5630:

Benefit of instanced that we could get in an open world system: Guild Halls are air ships that attach to places in the world improving that area for a while, but move around and have many attachment points. Access to the ship itself is controlled, but you still are in the open world.
Benefit of open world that we could get in an instanced system: Guild Halls are still halls but have functionality that lets guild create temporary content that attach to open world maps.

:o Jon quoted my idea. Sweet. (Yes, I understand how unrealistic it is, but I still think it would be super awesome.)

Which of these do you think is unrealistic and why?

I just want to say that I’m a huge fan of the idea of A) floating guild halls, tethering, and C) temporarily improving the areas you are tethered to. Like everyone else, I have no idea how this would play out as far as megaservering goes, but the idea that where a guild chooses to tether could add benefits to area maps is pretty awesome.

I am imagining actual tether ropes you can slide down to reach high points on said map, maybe even points difficult or impossible to otherwise reach. The guild attaching (and whoever they invite) gets the bonus of reaching an unusual NPC or shortcutting a jumping puzzle, the map gets the benefit of … a speed buff, maybe, or a coin buff to represent trading with the guild.

The Guild Hub should be an airbase composed of several layers. The Hub will float across the world map and cast a large shadow as it passes overhead. Each weekend there is a GvG contest to determine the leaders of the Hub for the rest of the week. Guilds can opt out of the contests and still engage in the variety of events, but their rewards will not match those within the contest. The GvG contests will be decided by a new currency called prestige which is earned over the course of the contest. The boost described below adds a modifier to prestige gain.

Below are the layers of the Hub.

Bottom Layer:
Site of engineering sectors, waste processing plants, foundries and additional machinery necessary for keeping the Hub airborne. Guilds which are lowest in the rankings, not size or strength, are assigned quests and events on this level to repair machinery, test prototypes across the world map and prevent sabotage. If they perform their jobs well, they get a sizable boost in the next week’s contest. If they perform poorly, they do not receive a boost. In rare cases where these guilds do not perform any of their duties, the Hub may be forced to land in a random zone (though malfunctions may cause a landing regardless). This layer has the highest potential boost.
In the case of a Hub landing, all guilds are switched to the lower level maintenance and defense of the Hub. This allows all guilds a chance at an extra boost.

Middle Layer:
Site of trade district and marketplaces. Mid-ranking guilds are assigned quests and events here which involve making deliveries across the world map, gathering materials and tracking down thieves/stowaways. Since this is the main floor for trade and commerce, it is the most susceptible to infiltration and attack from the outside. It is the guilds’ task to defend it. Again, a job well done grants a boost while a poor job does not. If bandits/infiltrators successfully steal enough from this layer, the Hub will be forced to land at a city to access the banks and, as a result of the shoddy security, many merchants will close shop.
All guilds can attempt to recover the stolen gold and goods for an extra boost in the event of the failure of mid-ranking guilds. Return of these items will reopen the shops as well.

Upper Layer:
The location of all guild halls and site of arenas, mini-games and all festivals/events. The highest ranking guilds are assigned quests and events here which involve the defense of guild halls, diplomatic visits to respective towns across the world map (think players appeasing local NPC’s), and participating in larger-scale events such as a ghost attack on the Black Citadel. Guilds at this level can construct outposts in zones or cities which influence the areas. The outposts would have categories like war, trade or social. Each affecting the zones differently. The potential boost for next week’s contest is the lowest on this level, but the other rewards (gold, karma etc.) are substantially greater. Again performing poorly leads to no boost while performing well leads to a boost for next week’s contest. If these guilds unsuccessfully appease NPC’s around the world or fail to defend a major outpost/city, public opinion of these guilds drops.
If public opinion drops far enough, members of lower ranked guilds can act in the place of the highest ranked and be granted the same gold/karma rewards.

At any point, guilds can challenge others in direct combat with a select number representatives from each. Victory grants a prestige during the contest and a boost for the following if the contest has already concluded that week. Guilds can also take their own guild airship into a zone and lay a claim to a section of it. Successful defense grants prestige or a boost while guilds who deny their claim can challenge them. If the challenge manages to remove the guild’s claim, the challengers receive the prestige/boost.
No guilds, regardless of rank, have to accept challenges or be forced to lay claims across the map.

The goal is to encourage each guild to perform its tasks and promote an equal chance for all guilds be capable of becoming the highest ranked. This is why boosts are greater to the lower ranked. I want the highest ranking guilds to feel they have earned it through their effort, not their size or gear. That said, after they attain the highest ranks, NPC’s should be saluting them, merchants should give discounts, there should be posters with the guild’s name on them around the Hub etc. They should feel like they won and that everyone else knows it.

A Guild Hall for me is…

• A Place where the whole Guild (and the guildies only) can meet and hang out. Non-guildies can be invited for limited time or if in a party only.
• A Place that u can choose look at (similar to what Island u chose in GW1). Be it a mist Island, an airship, an underwater location, a Deep Cave undernieth the Surface of tyria……. The places can be many.
• A Place that u can upgrade (like buying vendors, bank, crafting stations etc) perhaps with Guild Merits or influence Points.
• A Place where u’r home instance upgrades can be found (Those u have bought/unlocked are visible to u only).
• A Place that u can reach with a “Guild Hall Portal Stone” Similar to the home instance portal stone… could be a TP-item och something u could buy for Guild Commendations. If u dont have this item, the port in LA could be used (or an asura gate).
• A Place where the rangers can see what pets they have collected in a menangerie (Spelling?)/park or similar area. Only those pets that u have collected are visible to u.

Another Guild wish;

• Make all guildies visible on the map (toggable). They could be yellow dots (to differ from u’r own that are green and u’r partys that are blue). This should be able to see even if u’r guildies are not in the same party (or any party for that matter) as u. Makes it easy to find guildies and see what ppl are up to.

krosis.7598:

JonPeters.5630:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

JonPeters.5630:

Benefit of instanced that we could get in an open world system: Guild Halls are air ships that attach to places in the world improving that area for a while, but move around and have many attachment points. Access to the ship itself is controlled, but you still are in the open world.
Benefit of open world that we could get in an instanced system: Guild Halls are still halls but have functionality that lets guild create temporary content that attach to open world maps.

:o Jon quoted my idea. Sweet. (Yes, I understand how unrealistic it is, but I still think it would be super awesome.)

Which of these do you think is unrealistic and why?

I just want to say that I’m a huge fan of the idea of A) floating guild halls, tethering, and C) temporarily improving the areas you are tethered to. Like everyone else, I have no idea how this would play out as far as megaservering goes, but the idea that where a guild chooses to tether could add benefits to area maps is pretty awesome.

I am imagining actual tether ropes you can slide down to reach high points on said map, maybe even points difficult or impossible to otherwise reach. The guild attaching (and whoever they invite) gets the bonus of reaching an unusual NPC or shortcutting a jumping puzzle, the map gets the benefit of … a speed buff, maybe, or a coin buff to represent trading with the guild.

I like the idea too, little worried about size (how do we make the airship big enough it would need to be larger than the glory of tyria). Maybe the Asura could develop new anti-gravity tech allowing construction of floating fortress type Airships too? The Humans could rediscover the magic behind the Wizards tower and construct similar stone versions? Charr could have a steampunk coal version, Norn a massive hotair ballon type. etc.

As for jumping down, how about parachutes or drop pods, you load into the map at a height and impact without fall damage / with some directional control. (would need to be examined to prevent JP skipping, or access to locked areas.

I see one unlikely but really cool possibility, which is having your actual guild airships participate in downing a dragon.

Conski Deshan.2057:

I like the idea too, little worried about size (how do we make the airship big enough it would need to be larger than the glory of tyria).

Well, this I can see easily doable if we just make it many floors. Sacrifice width for depth, would probably be easier to implement that way.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Maybe the Asura could develop new anti-gravity tech allowing construction of floating fortress type Airships too? The Humans could rediscover the magic behind the Wizards tower and construct similar stone versions? Charr could have a steampunk coal version, Norn a massive hotair ballon type. etc.

I do really like the idea of being able to pick a cultural “style” to your base, customization like this is something I meant to put in my original post, but I think I forgot. Racial flavor is a very good thing here, because of how the game is designed, but I would like to see a few other versions as well, for the more “communal race” guilds, or just to suit other preferences.

Conski Deshan.2057:

As for jumping down, how about parachutes or drop pods, you load into the map at a height and impact without fall damage / with some directional control. (would need to be examined to prevent JP skipping, or access to locked areas.

My original idea was just to have some way to “drop” to the ground. A drop pod/ship would be just fine, maybe something like the helicopters that are in Arah. Really, I don’t approve of being able to guide where you land, as I think it would introduce a lot of “cheats” which I just don’t want. I’d rather just have a static “landing zone” area where you can embark/disembark the Guild Ship.

Auck.3076:

To continue…

Highest Ranked:

The highest ranked guild will have their physical hall prominently displayed with lights or something of the sort. They can participate in any events across the Hub and receive the highest rewards for their participation. The highest rank, when in a group of 2-X, can influence any city or zone they enter. They do not require an outpost or claim. Each member is given a guild cloak which shows everyone they are the highest ranked (these are taken if they do not win again).

I think the competitive nature of some of the guild hall suggestions would fit in with WvW or PvP. Not so much in PvE, or rather, I don’t want it in PvE. We already lost out on the camaraderie that came with being on a server that was all on the same side with the introduction of mega servers. Don’t add more competition into the PvE maps.

Devata.6589:

JerryMain.4371:

Devata.6589:

krosis.7598:

Along the lines of “make it physical”, I would LOVE to see a physical representation for when a guild is busy “building” a guild element, whether a literal house portion or working their way to a Guild Bank. Workers milling about, scaffolding, each in the right “area” of the guild housing to show what’s being worked on, without having to dive into a menu.

How about making it so that part if it needs to be done by guild-members? So you see guild-members running around building things?

Make it like some event in the guild halls, with a progress bar.
And like the hearts make have multiple ways to complete it:
– Bring resources
– Defend workers form x
– etc.

Thats basically like the WvW keep upgrade works (btw what to defend the workers against here?) I was more thinking in the way siege building works in WvW.

I guess that really depends on where the guild halls would be placed, but it’s Tyria or the Mists neither are safe places.

First off, I’m against open world guild halls. I think guild halls should be an instanced (and possibly visible to the outside world) objects, that can be upgraded either over time or through achievements/purchases.

There are some issues with open world Guild halls that people seem to not mention:

• Maps have a finite cap which can make it a hindrance to get everyone on the same map during a guild meeting. I don’t want to be spamming “join X on map Y” just to attend a guild meet-up in a guild hall.
• In an open world guild hall, you are susceptible to trolls/spam from other players. I think it’s a bad idea to allow people the ability to interfere with guild occasions.
• Maps can change, that would mean that guild halls if they used an open world map, could potentially have bugs with each major update to events/maps etc. The less you have to look out for the less bugs you can introduce.

That being said, we can make instanced ‘guild halls’ by creating a structure that is located at an edge of a map, that cannot be entered by non-guilded players. That structure’s outside look would change as the guild hall is upgraded. Think you buy a guild hall that is on Frostgorge map (say in a hill-side currently innaccessible). It shows initially just as a big ol house, as you upgrade it, it turns to look like a tower, then it becomes a castle in final look. Visible to all from the outside, but not accessible (potential problem with this approach is limited space).

In any case I just wanted to bring up the problems I don’t see discussed much with open world guild halls.

I’m playing devils advocate and list some thoughts about why airships would be a bad idea (actually I like the idea, but I see some problems):

• no open world events around the airships (unless your ship is docked somewhere in a open world zone) —> non-guild players would have little interaction with the airships. (?!)
• difficult to show off your “guild hall” since the airships will probably be only visible when docked (?!).
• no wide open areas but tight spaces (which would be bad when thinking about GW2’s current camera-problems).
• little nature surroundings but mostly techy stuff – little room for non-hall like areas like clearings. (and I’m not talking about flying Sylvari tree ships).
• race specific Sylvari and airships don’t go well together. Not every race is tech-themed. Ground Halls on the other hand can have a huge variety of looks.

JonPeters.5630:

The point of this question is to first generate wild ideas before discussing details of those designs and figuring out what problems/edge cases those details create that must be solved.

Jon

So…blue sky concepts

Benefit of Instanced
*Unique maps
- The base guild hall will be a small plot of land in the mists or a small airship.
- Let us build on the plot using materials. Materials would be created in the Mystic Forge using Mists Essence, Dungeon Tokens, a common material, a rare material. The Tier of of Mist essence would determine how large the addition is, the dungeon tokens would determine the appearance, the rare material would determine the land type (sea/grass/desert/rock/etc), the tier of the common material would determine scale (Tier 1 would be a few rocks, Tier 6 would be a mountain)
- Build out the map until it’s half the size of a WvW map.
*New dynamic events/guild missions
- If you’re in the mists then maybe you need to defend it from mist warriors
- Search the mists for building materials
- Randomly crash into/pass by another mist land. For a week you have the option to explore a small zone/mini dungeon. Perhaps these are duplicate instances of other guild maps. Or non duplicates for GvG.
*Farming
- Allow guilds to “capture” monsters and release them into the map. For X days you can farm those mobs.
- Allow guilds to summon world bosses to their map using the system developed for Teq/Wurm/Karka. Expand the system for all world bosses. (Sometimes its fun to challenge a world boss with 10 of your guildies instead of a zerg that completely neuters the challenge.)

Benefit of Open World
*Armaments
- Build a weapon of mass destruction as an unlock. Ammo would be a separate consumable to build (similar to banners/buffs).
- Drop a target banner on a mob and the guild hall unleashes righteous fury on the area. If it’s a land based hall this might look like an ICBM assault. If it’s an airship then it might be more of a C130 gunship strike. Useful for curb stomping Teq or Jormag. Less useful but no less amusing to use it on hordes of mobs.
*Dynamic Events
- Allow the guild hall to suppress or enhance dynamic events. Suppression might stop a dynamic event from spawning for a couple minutes or prevent mobs from getting near a spot. Enhancing an event might involve the guild hall adding a sort of cover fire to help out in group events (maybe it’s late and nobody is around to help with a group event so you solo it with help from the guild hall)
- If you have an airship it can drop you right in the middle of an event in the same map it’s in.
- New dynamic events. Use your airship to lead the fight in Orr, clearing out large swathes of risen that would then take longer to respawn. (Hit them where it hurts. Hard.)
*Map improvements
- Spend resources to “improve” the map similar to what I mentioned for instance content
- Maybe add some bulwarks to a defense point.
- Create some resource nodes.
- Clean up war torn areas (Remove the tower of nightmares in Kessex. Salvage it for materials to use in repairing the towns.)

JonPeters.5630:

The point of this question is to first generate wild ideas before discussing details of those designs and figuring out what problems/edge cases those details create that must be solved.

Jon

Benefits of Instanced in Open World
*Airships
- Sky Map
- Flying systems, personal gliders, air combat
*Mists
- Custom one way portals to specific locations (build a portal in your guild hall that takes you directly to a specific point.) Unlocks as a feature but used as a consumable.
- Can exist in the same area as WvW providing bonuses for that guild.
- Train NPC shock troops for WvW. (Similar to mercenaries but don’t change sides)
*Permanent changes
- If a guild hall stays in operation in a map then let it make permanent changes to the map. A lot of dynamic events that don’t get player participation flip flop back and forth between mobs and npcs winning. A permanent change could be a 25% buff to the npcs in those events.
- The cleansing of Orr, pushing back the Branded/Icebrood, preventing/reversing the encroachment of the Mordrem.
- These are long term changes that happen gradually over years, not months. Things that have a noticeable and not insignificant impact on the world.
*New zones
- If we can build out maps in the mists for the guild hall, let us transfer the map from the mists to the open world.
- This would be a MASSIVE undertaking.
- A lengthy group event chain. Build up power, defend from mist warriors/elementals, something new that really does not like you ripping a whole in the fabric of the universe. The risks would be the destruction of your guild hall, but the rewards would be equally huge.
- It would require a simultaneous effort of large groups of people in several areas. Similar to Triple Trouble except in multiple maps and more people.
- Once in the world the guild ceases to have control over the map but gains a permanent buff when repping in that map.

Benefits of Open World in Instanced
(This depends a lot on lore)
- Assign a coordinate in the open world for your instanced guild hall. Any time you complete a guild mission that area in the open world gets a buff. Increased karma/xp/mf in that area. Buff leaves when you leave the area.
- Paired guild missions – new missions that have a simultaneous component in the guild hall and in the open world.
- Guilds can create raids on specific targets in the open world. Raids would be configured and started in the guild hall. The guild goes through the portal to begin the raid.

I think I might be mixing up some sections. The distinction feels very blurry.

JonPeters.5630:

I wanted to dig into the instanced vs non-instanced debate a bit.
~

• What do people see as the benefits of instanced?

Personally I don’t see any from a game-play perspective but I think the most hearth reason for instanced guild-halls is to prevent technical difficulty that come with open world guild-halls. It would be an easy solution to solve space issues, privacy (blocking out map-chat), max number player per map, mega-server issues, ghost-towns and would because of that speed up development time a lot meaning a faster release of guild-halls.

• What do you see as the benefits of open world guild halls?

-Immersion, you would walk to your guild-hall or at least see it in the open world in stead of loading to it and never really see it in the game itself.

-With guild-halls in the open world you also give guilds more a place in the game. Now they are this separate entity but with guild-halls in the open world you would visually see “Guilds are a part of this game”.

-Guild-halls would be much more a representation of the guild. When in an instance it might still be personalized to the guild but it’s not really representing the guild because representing to who? Nobody sees it (except if you invite people).

-Prestige, Because people see it it would be more reason and more rewarding for guilds to make the best looking guild-hall out there.

-Because of the above it would also be more of an incentive and a goal for guild and to keep working on. Sure it’s nice to have a guild-hall in an instance but if nobody sees it why bother much when you have all the convenience stuff unlock.

• How could we get the benefits of instanced guild halls in a system of open world guild halls?

I think for many of the problems that come with open world guild-halls (and so are a benefit for instanced guild-halls because you don’t have those problem) there are solutions. Most have already been given in this thread. I will use some of them with the examples I gave as benefits of instanced.

- Space issues: Saving space on the world map and then dynamically creating new maps when needed. Sky-maps for air-ship guild-halls that represent the sky over Tyria, technically those maps might be able to be much bigger because there is less in them (I don’t know what is technically limiting map space.) and there could be multiple instances of those sky-maps. A guild-hall would then be in an instance just as a player is not in an instance of a map.

- Privacy: Being able to block map-chat in the guild-hall. (Same for keeping normal chat inside)

- Max number player per map: Here the question is if number of players are a problem and if they are why? Without that information I would not be able to come up with an easy solution. However technically I would think it’s possible that different ‘servers / objects / threads’ would handle the information about players. In that way number of players would not have to be a problem for a map.

- Mega-server issues: Sky maps would not have this issue, you would simply also load into the instance of the map where your guild-hall is. Because you fly and the guild-hall changes instance once in a while (because a map gets to empty or it spawns in a new instance when guild-members get online) you would still be able to come across all different guild-halls of all different guilds.

For ground-maps this would be a little more of a problem but it would be possible to also load a player in based on the instance where his guild-hall is. However because this would be much less likely to change you would always see the same guild-halls (of other guilds) and not come across all the guild-halls. So it would be more like a guild-hall neighborhood instance then an real open world idea.
So the sky-maps would give a better idea of real open world guild-halls.

- Ghost-towns In sky-maps your space-ship guild-hall simply despawns whenever there is no guild-member online and spawns again as soon as a members of the guild logs in again.
For ground maps, you would lose your plot (not the guild-hall) if a guild go’s inactive.

Speed: I guess open-world maps will always take some extra work while I do think the sky-maps would not have to take extreme much more work then building a normal instance. The extra would would be to send some information from the sky-map to the normal map and the other way around.

• How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?

Well I did try to find things that where pretty unique to open-world guild-halls so I would almost say, not. However there have been suggestions to have guild-halls in instances but sometimes spawn them in the open world. This would get back much of those benefits because in that case your guild-hall might be in the open-world.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

(3/4) Fairly simple; you splice the two together. Let there be an exterior Hall Grounds, and an interior Hall Chambers. The Grounds can be public areas for people to visit in, but the interior is instanced and only available via permissions granted. There, now you have both open world and instanced world and can plan accordingly.

I did think of this before but then dismissed it again because if you would build your guild-hall that means you could have garden, your hole guild-hall could be a garden.
So people walking / flying by can look in your guild-hall.
But then it would be strange that you never see any people in it. And even if Anet would design the guild-hall this would also force them to basically build a closed structure to prevent this. It would basically be like a WvW keep but as soon as you walk into the door you get in an instance. That means no interaction both ways. You can’t see people standing on the wall in the keep.

Devata.6589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

(3/4) Fairly simple; you splice the two together. Let there be an exterior Hall Grounds, and an interior Hall Chambers. The Grounds can be public areas for people to visit in, but the interior is instanced and only available via permissions granted. There, now you have both open world and instanced world and can plan accordingly.

I did think of this before but then dismissed it again because if you would build your guild-hall that means you could have garden, your whole guild-hall could be a garden.
So people walking / flying by can look in your guild-hall.

. . . flying by? What? We have flight now?

But you have misunderstood my intent. Have you played Morrowind? For the sake of discussion let me paint the picture of what I mean. There is, in that game, places like fortresses which have an interior ‘cell/instance’ and an exterior which is on the world map. The exterior can be climbed, walked on, and at least one of them has a courtyard where guards mill about. The interior is where most of the merchants and such are.

So that’s more what I was envisioning; there’s a guild hall outside which can be visited with permissions (for instance: Guild > Guild Hall > Allow Access > Exterior > All) but the inside is only available to members (Guild > Guild Hall > Allow Access > Interior > Members). Or in some cases, only officers . . . why stop at letting the permissions be half-done?

But then it would be strange that you never see any people in it.

If it’s like my experiences in WvW, you never see people in it either, said people are usually busy training around capturing paper towers or trying to ninja the keeps.

JonPeters.5630:

Torsailr.8456:

Hi Chris,
I have a bit of a tangential question.

How feasible would it be for Anet to develop an editor for players to develop their own guild hall layouts? Is it beyond the scope of things you want to consider?

What you expect to be able to edit?

I would expect to be able to build the guild-hall with predefined building block. Just like if you would walk over the outer wall of Stone Mist the hole wall is based on basically 4 (out of my head) different blocks.

Place such blocks on top / behind (whatever) each other. Building would be much like placing siege in WvW but it would be needed to see a preview (partly transparent) before placing and move that around a little, preferably with the help of a (3D) grind for easy alignment. (imagine placing two arrow cards in WvW next to each other with the wheels perfectly against each other. The current system makes that nearly impossible, the additions I gave here should make that possible.. And of course it should also be able to break down a block again.

Those blocks or models could be anything, from a wall to a plant to a door to a chair to a visual guild-calendar, to a portal, to a water-bucket and so on and so on.

So in that way you would be able to edit the space you have to build your own guild-hall.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m playing devils advocate and list some thoughts about why airships would be a bad idea (actually I like the idea, but I see some problems):

• no open world events around the airships (unless your ship is docked somewhere in a open world zone) —> non-guild players would have little interaction with the airships. (?!)
• difficult to show off your “guild hall” since the airships will probably be only visible when docked (?!).
• no wide open areas but tight spaces (which would be bad when thinking about GW2’s current camera-problems).
• little nature surroundings but mostly techy stuff – little room for non-hall like areas like clearings. (and I’m not talking about flying Sylvari tree ships).
• race specific Sylvari and airships don’t go well together. Not every race is tech-themed. Ground Halls on the other hand can have a huge variety of looks.

1 & 2. You’re correct. Unless they make a sky map for airships to be in it would be difficult to have events around it or to see it well if you aren’t in the guild. But non airships have similar issues with how much of it can be seen by non guildies.

3. Look at the zephyr sanctum. Inside might be a bit cramped, but there’s room for wide open stuff.

4. You could have small gardens on the airship.

5. I have to disagree. Magic obscures a multitude of sins. In the pale tree there is a dandelion puff elevator that floats on currents. A tree ship could be grown on similar principles. Scientifically accurate and logical? Not really. Magically plausible? Sure! Maybe there are some trees that make lighter than air wood or some tamed air elementals help hold it up, or the dream becomes strong enough to alter reality and hold it in the air?

Conski Deshan.2057:

Maybe the Asura could develop new anti-gravity tech allowing construction of floating fortress type Airships too?

Don’t the Asuran cities, or at least parts of it, already float? Golems seem held together by “magnetic” fields. Somehow I don’t think anti-grav tech is “new”.

JonPeters.5630:

I wanted to dig into the instanced vs non-instanced debate a bit. Here are 4 questions I’ll pose:

• What do people see as the benefits of instanced?
• What do you see as the benefits of open world guild halls?
• How could we get the benefits of instanced guild halls in a system of open world guild halls?
• How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?
  Jon

What do people see as the benefits of instanced?

• Avoids map being overcrowded.
• Gives the guild some private space
• Easier customization

What do you see as the benefits of open world guild halls?

• Advertising
• Bragging rights
• Inter-guild meeting place.

How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?

Creating a special category for guild halls. Common guild hall could be instanced only with a standard entering point (or menu). A special guild-halls would need to be rented (and could be theme-able), having a position on a world map and be limited in numbers. The open-world part would be like a plaza where anyone can enter, having a entrance to the instanced part of the guild hall in it.

Vigil keep for Example on how special guild halls could work:

Vigil Keep

• It is in the open-world
• It has a open-world plaza
• It has a instanced area (that only the members of the vigil would be able to enter.)

For common guild halls the best examples are our home instance.

That way big guilds would have a place to advertise and brag.
And smaller guilds would still have a place to hangout.

Torsailr.8456:

Torsailr.8456:

Hi Chris,
I have a bit of a tangential question.

How feasible would it be for Anet to develop an editor for players to develop their own guild hall layouts? Is it beyond the scope of things you want to consider?

What you expect to be able to edit?

I believe that PSO2 has a good customization system for personal housing and guild/team housing. The furniture could be crafted (with the most basic items costing around 10-20g to craft).

JonPeters.5630:

On the editing topic I’ve seen a few things listed.
Assuming everything has a cost:
Some questions with sample answers:
Q: what kind of thing would you be ok with static placement?
A: a giant stone carving of Colin.
Q: What kind of things do you think work fine with grid placement?
A: A theatre where my guild can roleplay how angry we are with the guild hall system in game.
Q: What stuff would you want to have free placement?
A: Statue of Chris Whiteside

Jon

Static
Layouts should be relatively static. They should only change if there’s a system for add on rooms and that would literally just adding the room and not changing the rest of the guild hall.
- alcoves
- fireplaces
- dais
- windows
- doors
- crafting tables
- buff banners

grid
Anything fixed would probably work better with a grid placement.

free
- Decorative banners
- statues
- “art work”
- chairs
- couches
- NPCs

Iason Evan.3806:

• No fixed or grid placement. They are terrible when compared to the freedom that free placement offers you.

No requirement to use a grid but the grid as option I would think is good. Just to lint up things better.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We will have a CDI phase on GvG.

Chris

My body is ready.gif

Art work

I think any guild hall would have some sort of decorative art work on display. It would be nice if we could create our own artwork through the crafting system.

For example, take a screen shot of Tyria, then go to a crafting station (tailor/leather) to create a banner. Have new crafting components for Banner Face, Banner Cloth, Banner Support. The Banner support represents the hanging rod and the Banner Cloth represents the material it’s being made of. The Banner Face would open up a sub menu to browse the gw2 screenshot folder. Click craft, give banner to the guild leader to hang on one of the guild hall walls.

Jeweler or Artificer could create statues/busts of NPCs. Buy a recipe for the NPC, then craft it like any other bought recipe. They could also do display pedestals and vases.

Armor/weapon smith could create display racks or armor mannequins with specific looks.

Chef could create paintings. Not sure Chef is the right one but they make dyes…dyes – pigments – paint – paintings…maybe a stretch there. Paintings could also use screen shots.

If screen shots open up the possibility of too much abuse then maybe we could have a selection of Anet’s official GW2 wallpapers and screen shots.

I could see paintings/banners being traded on the TP. If someone captures that “perfect shot” I could see it being a desired item.

Making a side note here: I would like to see some story wrapped around the introduction of guild halls.

Perhaps the guilds of Tyria have been publicly urged by the biconics, (I like to call them “Lion’s Dawn”), and some world leaders to officially join the cause of fighting the dragons. Maybe some deals are cut with the BLTC and other groups to start supplying materials and land (or floating land, whatever), to kickstart the creation of a bunch of new guild-owned fortresses for the war.

If GvG also comes in, it could be that the guilds are just testing themselves in friendly competition, while fighting over public favor for a specific region. (It could be a great excuse to throw in an audience cheering during the matches.) This would a perfect opportunity to involve the Zaishen.

Unlike the old Guild Wars themselves, this isn’t a free-for-all to literally own and dominate territory, but an amicably competitive unification of disparate forces to a large scale cause, like with the orders and nations before them.

Because I did feel most of the negatives for instances would be more of technical difficulty I did read up all the post.

The valid pro’s (from a game perspective, not technically) for instanced guild-halls that I came across where the following.

Instanced halls would keep the open world from being cluttered with them.

While it would not have to be true for the sky-maps if we would have ground maps those maps with guild-halls would likely indeed be cluttered with them.

- Allows for much larger structures, I can’t imaging vigil keep/claw island sized structures being placed everywhere in the open world.

Just true, Open world guild-halls would be limited. Even while airships could be massive they will be limited while instanced would not really have to be limited in sice.

Your guild could control permissions on the map.
Easily coordinated zone theme.

Yes, but then again, you could set permissions for you plot / guildhall so I do not know how that would change a lot.

- Allow guilds to summon world bosses to their map using the system developed for Teq/Wurm/Karka. Expand the system for all world bosses.

While I think this would also be hard to instanced guild-halls the unlimited size (mentioned before) would possible allow for this sort of things.

- Map theme.
Yeah you could pick a instance in a theme and so everything (how far you look) would be in that theme. Open world would not allow that but would allow your guild-hall to still be build in any theme you like.

If anybody feels like I ‘ignored’ his positive for instanced guild-halls (of none technical reason) just react on this post. Maybe I read over it or else I can explain why I did not see it as a positive for instanced guild-hall.

Q: what kind of thing would you be ok with static placement?
A: Doors, windows, flooring, roofing, etc. Have the basic shape of the structure static.

Q: What kind of things do you think work fine with grid placement?
A: Paintings, statues, furniture, etc.

Q: What stuff would you want to have free placement?
A: All NPCs.

With all that said I REALLY wish the way The Sims 4 housing is done would be the way GW2 would make Guild Hall/ Guild Housing done. I know developing that would take longer but I’m willing to wait for some time to get an epic feature. Especially if they announce the reason it’s going to take a long time is because that is the direction they are going.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

(3/4) Fairly simple; you splice the two together. Let there be an exterior Hall Grounds, and an interior Hall Chambers. The Grounds can be public areas for people to visit in, but the interior is instanced and only available via permissions granted. There, now you have both open world and instanced world and can plan accordingly.

I did think of this before but then dismissed it again because if you would build your guild-hall that means you could have garden, your whole guild-hall could be a garden.
So people walking / flying by can look in your guild-hall.

. . . flying by? What? We have flight now?

But you have misunderstood my intent. Have you played Morrowind? For the sake of discussion let me paint the picture of what I mean. There is, in that game, places like fortresses which have an interior ‘cell/instance’ and an exterior which is on the world map. The exterior can be climbed, walked on, and at least one of them has a courtyard where guards mill about. The interior is where most of the merchants and such are.

So that’s more what I was envisioning; there’s a guild hall outside which can be visited with permissions (for instance: Guild > Guild Hall > Allow Access > Exterior > All) but the inside is only available to members (Guild > Guild Hall > Allow Access > Interior > Members). Or in some cases, only officers . . . why stop at letting the permissions be half-done?

But then it would be strange that you never see any people in it.

If it’s like my experiences in WvW, you never see people in it either, said people are usually busy training around capturing paper towers or trying to ninja the keeps.

. . . flying by? What? We have flight now?

You have not followed the whole thread? One of the popular suggestions was guild-halls as air-ships. And those would then be placed in sky-maps high above Tyria.

You would see Tyria below you (representation of the map) and the information (model and location air-ship_ from a sky-map are being send to normal maps so on the ground so you would see guild-ships high high really high in the sky.

(not that you could jump of and land on the map or anything like that)

In that case it would make sense your air-ship would be able to fly in that sky-map.

—

So the inside of your guild-hall would be instanced and the outside would not

But then what is ‘inside’. If I build it my self I would be able to not build any walls so basically do not have an inside.

In WvW I see people inside castle (on the walls) and in keeps all the time. And thats with a wall blocking half of my view what would not have to be the case if I would build a guild-hall myself. Or maybe with glass walls.

Q: what kind of thing would you be ok with static placement?
A: To prevent disastrous errors of building, doors and walls. Let rooms be a static size/structure or be fixed to always line up in a fashion which will work.

Q: What kind of things do you think work fine with grid placement?
A: Large furniture such as tables, or statues, equipment.

Q: What stuff would you want to have free placement?
A: NPCs, smaller furnishings/decorations such as chairs, pedestals, crates, et cetera.

Might as well:

From something relatively basic…

… to a larger structure

… or something with a little more effort

Or to heck with it, go the full nines

Devata.6589:

You would see Tyria below you (representation of the map) and the information (model and location air-ship_ from a sky-map are being send to normal maps so on the ground so you would see guild-ships high high really high in the sky.

(not that you could jump of and land on the map or anything like that)

In that case it would make sense your air-ship would be able to fly in that sky-map.

I see this as being much less feasible than having a guild airship “parked” in the sky on a map. It’s much easier to have an airship be a part of a map than to constantly pull an update an “image” of the map — especially going two ways (both having the guild hall pull the image of the zone, and then having the zone pull the image of the guild hall).

Could a tax for guild hall upkeep in gold offset the tax on the market place? I know when I first started playing I was quite turned off by the high tax at the market place.

Maybe have crafted items allowed in the Guild Hall… Heck make the entire thing something that needs to be crafted by the guild members. Like crafted bricks or something that are then donated to the guild hall production efforts.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m playing devils advocate and list some thoughts about why airships would be a bad idea (actually I like the idea, but I see some problems):

• no open world events around the airships (unless your ship is docked somewhere in a open world zone) —> non-guild players would have little interaction with the airships. (?!)
• difficult to show off your “guild hall” since the airships will probably be only visible when docked (?!).
• no wide open areas but tight spaces (which would be bad when thinking about GW2’s current camera-problems).
• little nature surroundings but mostly techy stuff – little room for non-hall like areas like clearings. (and I’m not talking about flying Sylvari tree ships).
• race specific Sylvari and airships don’t go well together. Not every race is tech-themed. Ground Halls on the other hand can have a huge variety of looks.

Let my try to tackle your reservations.

• no open world events around the airships (unless your ship is docked somewhere in a open world zone).

Why not. If I’m correct the PS ends with a events where you attack a dragon from a zeppelin (that is an air-ship) and if we would have PvP / WvW air-maps guilds might fight each other. It would require new type of open world events (in the air) but it would be possible.

-non-guild players would have little interaction with the airships. True, they would only see them high above them in the sky. Maybe that gets them to join a guild and be part of it. You are playing Guild Wars so..

- * difficult to show off your “guild hall” since the airships will probably be only visible when docked (?!).

No, you are in a sky-map I would think you would be able to fly your air-ship so fly by other guild-halls (air-ships) meaning you see many many air-hips / guild-halls. In addition people on the ground maps would be able to see the bottom of your air-ship. That would be less interesting but you could give it a nice shape and have the guild-emblem there. (on the bottom of you basic guild-hall every guild starts with).

- no wide open areas but tight spaces (which would be bad when thinking about GW2’s current camera-problems).

Air-ships could be pretty huge. Much bigger then guild-halls on the ground (if open world). You have a lot of space in the air you see. And because you are very very high up what people on the ground would see is still small.

• little nature surroundings but mostly techy stuff – little room for non-hall like areas like clearings. (and I’m not talking about flying Sylvari tree ships).

You are already gave your own answer. It would be very possible to have nature. The castle in Kessex Hills in on a huge rock with grass on it. There could be tree’s and mobs and whatever you place there. Make it indeed more Sylvari style.

• race specific Sylvari and airships don’t go well together. Not every race is tech-themed. Ground Halls on the other hand can have a huge variety of looks.

Like I said before you can build it exactly the way you want. No race is really linked to airships. And in Caledon forest there are floating rocks so that might fit after-all. Also we did came across a group of people who did use airships. Story-wise you could easily say that the races from Tyria did look at that and decided they would also start building air-ships..

Devata.6589:

You have not followed the whole thread? One of the popular suggestions was guild-halls as air-ships. And those would then be placed in sky-maps high above Tyria.

Oh, I have. I think it’s a terrible idea. Okay, to be fair it’s not entirely terrible, but some of the implications are . . . questionable, in my mind.

You would see Tyria below you (representation of the map) and the information (model and location air-ship_ from a sky-map are being send to normal maps so on the ground so you would see guild-ships high high really high in the sky.

Sort of like this. One of my big oppositions to mounts any time it comes up (and if anyone decides to start talking about mounts off this, I will find you) is how it could negatively affect performance. I think a couple hundred guild ships parked over Cursed Shore would be just the sort of negative impact on performance I’d be scared of.

So the inside of your guild-hall would be instanced and the outside would not

But then what is ‘inside’. If I build it my self I would be able to not build any walls so basically do not have an inside.

And exhibit A on how the players will break any idea within four hours no matter how you intend it to be. (No, that’s not necessarily a shot at you – I think a ‘glade’ type guild hall might be interesting, but it would sorta kinda break the idea of a guild hall as . . . well . . . a hall.)

As for exhibit B . . . airships so far have been largely lighter-than-air craft when larger than a fishing boat in size, and have had a relatively sparse size even on the Glory of Tyria from the end of the game. I can’t imagine guild ships would be that much bigger . . .

And before someone brings up the Breachmaker, remember the interior was largely there as part of a mechanism to keep it running. And there’s no idea exactly how it was designed in the first place. With highly limited mobility, from the implications of its design and only two uses.

Devata.6589:

Why not. If I’m correct the PS ends with a events where you attack a dragon from a zeppelin (that is an air-ship) and if we would have PvP / WvW air-maps guilds might fight each other. It would require new type of open world events (in the air) but it would be possible.

For clarification, the dragon fight takes place in a dungeon, and it is a heavily scripted encounter. It would be a far cry from an air battle between two guild ships.

Though, I could see ship battles taking an interesting turn. Have a navigator piloting, turret operators, add in a repair minigame… It could be kind of like Puzzle Pirates where everyone contributes to the fight, and the success or failure of one person can mean the success or failure of the whole fight.

Devata.6589:

. And in Caledon forest there are floating rocks so that might fit after-all. Also we did came across a group of people who did use airships. Story-wise you could easily say that the races from Tyria did look at that and decided they would also start building air-ships..

Interestingly, Caledon Forest / Magus Stones seems to be the only place in Tyria I’ve seen actual floating stones. It’s like Pandora, only without all the blue-skinned natives. Instead we get asura.

Somewhere, something went terribly wrong.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sort of like this. One of my big oppositions to mounts any time it comes up (and if anyone decides to start talking about mounts off this, I will find you) is how it could negatively affect performance. I think a couple hundred guild ships parked over Cursed Shore would be just the sort of negative impact on performance I’d be scared of.

From my personal suggestion (and others that have fallen in line), it wouldn’t be “hundreds of ships”. It would be one ship per map instance. Maybe expand it to be two or three. But definitely not free-open, anyone-can-go-there. That would DEFINITELY be a performance bottleneck. It would be heavily regulated by instances, specifically to prevent this type of issue.

But I don’t think a few statically docked (yes, they would not be player-controlled) airships per map would be absolutely fine without causing any extra stress.