Guild Wars 2

DragonWhimsy.6489:

“Well the sky-map idea was similar to the mist but it would be more ‘open word’ because you are there together with all the other guild halls and see them all.”

I personally am not sure I would want to see them honestly. It sounds immersion breaking and I even tend to avoid Lion’s Arch and use Divinity’s Reach instead so as to avoid player types I would rather not encounter. Why would I want to see those types near the community I enjoy being with?

I understand that in certain games that’s an awesome idea. Sandbox games that are about that kind of thing. But GW2 isn’t a sandbox.

However, there’s certainly room for compromise. In SWTOR’s new housing a person can choose to make their stronghold public or not public. Which would seem to make everyone happy.

I have a feeling you think it would mean those ships would be flying over pretty close. The idea however was that the sky-map would be a separate instance but send some information to the maps so if you where in the map you could see the guild-hall airships very very high in the sky, not something you ‘encounter’ like it bing in your face.

This should not be very intrusive to the maps itself. And I don’t know if it would be immersion breaking because the lore already has the story with the Zephyr Sanctum.

While there have been some talk about the ability for an airship to also dock in those maps. That would of course do what you would not want.

Or maybe I do not understand how you mean it would be something you would try to not encounter.

I personally loathe the idea of airhsips or a ‘sky map’

I would love if I could have a nice sturdy norn lodge in the mountains.

I’m saying that if I’m in my guild hall with my guildies, I don’t want to see other guild halls or interact with those communities unless we choose to. I don’t want to see how they’ve customized their guild hall, I don’t want to hear them in my chat window, I don’t want them intruding on our community in any way, shape, or form.

Unless we choose to. If it’s some kind of toggle then it’s fine.

Also, I’m against all guild halls being an airship in general. That seems very limiting. Though I’m all for an airship theme if it’s one among a number of themes a guild could choose from.

just an idea that came to my mind: “expeditions-category”

GW2’s world is huge and has tons of content already, but how do you bring people from your guild together as easy as possible without losing yourself in too much organisation? What about this:

• An adventurer npc in your guild hall launches “expeditions” every fifteen minutes. He just spawns a portal to a random event-location in Tyria. This might be a bigger event chain, a meta-event chain but also a jumping puzzle (talking to an npc next to the final chest the next half hour = complete, debuff which hinders the use of portals, etc.
• Events in the game are dynamic, so the timing should be right… alternatively there should be some “mission” for you that can also be completed when no event is running (e.g. decimate the grawl population in that area and kill 2 of their leaders (champions/veterans).
• doing these missions (you go through the current portal and kill stuff (either event-stuff or non-event stuff if no event is running) will yield guild-currency you can spend personally as well as another currency you can spend for the guild for upgrades.

This could be a “PvE expeditions” category.
Possible upgrades:

• you start with portals to smaller events / lower level areas
• as you progress you unlock a bigger variety of destinations
• as you progress you unlock buffs which are active for the guild in the destination-areas (like +200% magicfind, enemies hit harder but drop more gold, hardmode scaling (a second portal next to the normal portal which is red)
• as you progress you unlock headhunter missions, a new personal collection which adds named bosses (events spawn named bosses (champions with names) when a guild is around, those named bosses could also be killed by non-guildies alike).

This is stuff for small guilds as well as big guilds. If guilds are huge (300+ players) there could also be an unlock to add a second, third,… portal to the adventurer, so that population spreads better.

… to unlock higher level event-portals sooner, people can find rare portal drops by doing these events. Example: A guy finds a blueprint at the Lyssa event, so the guild-adventurer adds the Lyssa event to the portal-collection. This portal may be active randomly in one of the every-15-min-portals and completing the Lyssa event chain when going through the guild-portal may wield new cosmetic rewards as well.

About Open world vs. Instanced GH: what if we sort of combine both? Guild claims some structure in the open world, unused by events, PS and NPCs and it becomes entry point for instanced Guild Hall. Non-guild players can see some basic decorations, like tag and icon, and props tied to upgrades.
Players of the guild that owns the building can enter it’s instanced version. Instanced version is “bigger on the inside” and has interior tied to location, i.e. asura lab or sylvari leaf house for building in Maguuman, human tavern or house for building in Kryta, etc.
Pros:

• GH has Open World noticeable representation.
• GH are spread around the world.

Cons:

• Limited amount of buildings in each area (can be solved by adding more houses, or zone part specifically for houses) .
• Guild members can’t see the exterior without leaving GH.

As a member of a very small guild (around 2-3 active players) and with no real interest to join a massive guild, it would be nice to see this accessible in some way. Guild missions are out of our reach and that is something that we are fine with, but this would be interesting to at least have access to. And I dont expect a massive palace since we are such a small guild, but maybe a tiny mud-hole to call home ^^

Here’s a concept of semi-openworld guild halls. Sorry if something has already been mentioned, haven’t read the entire thread.

Guild buildings placement:

• A new map is created. It is called something along the lines of Mist Halls.
• It resembles EoTM – islands floating in the mists.
• The map can be visited by anyone, even players without guilds. Those will be zoned into a random shard or asked into which type of shard they want to visit (good for recruiting).
• Representing players will be zoned into the shard with the outer buildings of their guild.
• There are 7 slightly differently themed islands, which are separated from each other but still connected by numerous bridges and patches of earth.
• When guild halls are built, their preferred region / basic architectural style is chosen; further on it below.
• The central island is smaller and serves as a hub, providing access to various NPCs as well as space for guild advertisement NPCs which can be separately purchased if desired.
• The other 6 islands are filled with guild buildings, each containing buildings of a certain regional/racial style only – for more visual appeal and better immersion.
• Each island serves as a hexagonal grid.
• When guild buildings are built or upgraded/downgraded, the building takes a form of 1, 3 or 7 hexagonal tiles, which are small, medium and large size, respectively.
  • This is a compromise between automatic grid management and player customization.
  • Players can still build buildings of their favourite shapes, leaving the “extra” areas for lawns, gardens, forests, lakes.
• Each week, a voting is activated in the guild panel. Guild members can choose between something like:
  • “Shift to (another) shard of large type.”
  • “Shift to (another) shard of medium type.”
  • “Shift to (another) shard of small type.”
  • “Shift to (another) shard of mixed type.”
  • “Stay in current shard.” = default if the user doesn’t vote.
• If the guild decides to shift to another skitten the weekly reset their building is put into the sorting algorithm and shifted to another shard with other guilds (instead of the guilds which decided to move too or with new guilds in a new map).
• The racial/regional style parameter is preserved, the specific island or location within the island grid is not.
• The sorting algorithm respects the chosen size type as much as possible. This way, guild members have the freedom to decide if they want to be neighbours with small cosy/medium/large hardcore megaguilds. Once they’re satisfied with their neighbours, they can stay where they are and they won’t be moved.
• Some restrictions can be put by the system on the voting choices so that the size distribution is fair enough for all sides.
• Player groups can be restricted from voting based on the settings set by the guild leaders.
• An “alliance vote” allows guilds to be placed next to each other on the next reset if the players from both guilds vote for it (and there’s enough space).
• This should provide both stability, freshness and competition between guilds in best case scenario. In best case scenario, guilds which happen to like each other can stay next to each other until of them decides to move.

Guild buildings customization:

• The outer buildings are placed in the shards of Mist Halls on their respective regionally/racially themed grid islands.
• The outer buildings have the size of 1, 3, 7 tiles and can be upgraded/downgraded.
• Can be customized within these tiles (e.g. have a lot of grass and a small building on the whole 7 tiles).
• Can be freely rotated within these tiles.
• Concept 1: Islands are regionally themed, and guilds choose a regional attunement. The regional attunement of the building can be changed by reattuning at a partial cost later. Players can choose between Ascalon, Kryta, Maguuma Jungle, Maguuma Wastes, Shiverpeak Mountains themes.
  • This way, the terrain will have a definite visual theme.
  • However, this will not ensure that players keep their architectural style appropriate for the region (e.g. a norn lodge in a desert), which can break immersion for neighbours.
  • This can partially be solved by adding regional restrictions to racial stylistics in a way that makes things like norn lodges look appropriate in a desert.
• Concept 2: Buildings are racially themed, and the island terrain is neutral. The theme can be changed by rebuilding at a partial cost later. You can choose between human, asuran, charr, sylvari, norn basic stylistics, which all can be further customized by non racial specific elements.
  • This way, norn lodges will always stay next to other norn lodges.
  • This way, players are very limited in their choices in terms of RP (e.g. a group of asuran masochists living next to norn citadels).
• Concept 3: Buildings can have any racial theme, all islands are neutral, and only the terrain belonging to the guild has regional stylistics.
  • This way, players have a lot of freedom in terms of thematizing their area.
  • This way, players have very little control over the areas they wish to be next to.
  • This way, it’s very easy for players to make it look like a mess and break immersion.
• All further decorations are universal.
• The outer guild buildings can be accessed by anyone in the map shard, unless the guild decided to build a fence and then toggle the gates closed for non-guildies.
• The inner buildings are instances which can have territories tied or not tied to the outer building structure (underground halls, dungeons, magically compressed Tardis rooms etc.).
  • These can theoretically be extended to very large territories capable of receiving hundreds of people without the risk of capping the Mist Halls instance.
  • These are entered through portal doors in the outer buildings.
  • The inner buildings should be accessible even if the map with the outer building is capped.
  • Non-guildies can or cannot be pulled into this instance based on the settings of the hall put by guild leaders.
• Both inner and outer buildings can be upgraded to provide commodity NPCs to everyone and/or guildies, such as bank, TP, guild bank, crafting stations and so on.

I guess this can become a nightmare in terms of keeping the instances up, but it’s still a concept

Donari.5237:

Zoso.8279:

…instanced maps that are linked to WvW. …

Cutting your text for space, not because it’s a bad read.

My issue with this would be queues. If the only way to “walk up to” the GH entrance is via WvW, then either pure PvE’rs end up getting only a UI button click for entry, or everyone in the world tries to enter WvW just to get to the hall and suddenly the maps are clogged.

So it could be interesting for the WvW land claimers to have a bonus GH entry, with extendable permissions, but the same functionality needs to be available to those who don’t step into the borderlands.

EotM having guild asura portal could help with the queues. Since EotM is multi-server WvW when you conquer a keep the asura portal teleports you to your own guild hall (if your server is in blue/red/green that has fort captured). In WvW the portal takes you to the guild who claimed the keep/tower/camp (this might even help WvW with prioritizing defending if they add a bit more customization to keeps/towers/camps) (Maybe an alert message can be sent to the guild hall of the guild claiming a tower for example so they know and can rally and send guildies to WvW but message is only seen if your inside the guild hall and their is an option to turn it off/on) . In GW1 when you were in PvE the only way to get to your guild was through the UI and it wasn’t much of an issue but I understand what you mean about “walking up” to the guild hall. Maybe a way to “walk up” to the guild hall would be if their was a portal in HotM or the asura portal hubs around Tyria.

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

As far as I understand, influence is a “measure” of the activity of the members of the guilds and merits reward your achievments done collectively as a guild.

Also, as others suggested earlier, we’ll need new guild challenges and event that need to be done as a guild.

Just copy GW1, but, also implement the 8v8 GvG’s

VodCom.6924:

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

As far as I understand, influence is a “measure” of the activity of the members of the guilds and merits reward your achievments done collectively as a guild.

Also, as others suggested earlier, we’ll need new guild challenges and event that need to be done as a guild.

the true problem imho is that “influence” serves a purpose that is normally fulfilled by “money”; therefore “influence” should be recalibrated to be proportional and reflect the amount of efforts invested in a certain area of the game.
I really think we have way too many currencies…

Imo the Guild Hall design in GW1 was perfect. A seperate instance mapped to from the Guild panel and also functions as a GvG map. Then you can buy upgrades from the Guild Lord – these would be bank, tp, merchant, repair, crafting, MF etc.

These could have an associated Gold, influence and merit score attributed to them. Even small guilds can get those, and provided the costs arent over the top everyone should be able to max out their guild halls.

Grevender.9235:

VodCom.6924:

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

As far as I understand, influence is a “measure” of the activity of the members of the guilds and merits reward your achievments done collectively as a guild.

Also, as others suggested earlier, we’ll need new guild challenges and event that need to be done as a guild.

the true problem imho is that “influence” serves a purpose that is normally fulfilled by “money”; therefore “influence” should be recalibrated to be proportional and reflect the amount of efforts invested in a certain area of the game.
I really think we have way too many currencies…

The problem with influence is that it is literally gold, you can buy as much of it as you want for gold meaning anything you put behind just influence will be unlocked immediately and not by the active guilds, by the whales and TPer’s.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Grevender.9235:

VodCom.6924:

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

As far as I understand, influence is a “measure” of the activity of the members of the guilds and merits reward your achievments done collectively as a guild.

Also, as others suggested earlier, we’ll need new guild challenges and event that need to be done as a guild.

the true problem imho is that “influence” serves a purpose that is normally fulfilled by “money”; therefore “influence” should be recalibrated to be proportional and reflect the amount of efforts invested in a certain area of the game.
I really think we have way too many currencies…

The problem with influence is that it is literally gold, you can buy as much of it as you want for gold meaning anything you put behind just influence will be unlocked immediately and not by the active guilds, by the whales and TPer’s.

Proposed change :
Replace influence with a guild funding pool: a common pool of gold that every member can contribute to. Nobody can withdraw money from this pool and it can only be spent for guild upgrades/consumables etc… What provided influence now adds gold to the pool.

This frees up influence for some other use. What kind of use exactly ? I don’t know.

Greetings to all!
1 I am sorry for my English is not my native language, so I translate Google Translate.
<A Short description of the proposal that is being put forward>
a) GuildHall (GH) – it is a separate area on the map where 3W guild can capture, and then build your castle. Attack on such a lock can only be at a specific time and day of the week, the time and day of the week appoints the leader of the guild.
b) GH – gives extra bonuses for the guild, as an example of the ability to create a guild tag commander and pump buff.
a) GH – built around a captured castle. Construction stepwise wall behind the wall, the walls are constructed depending on the terrain, the direction and the number of walls not limitirovano.Opredelyaet design GH guild leader – GH respectively, each will be unique. For the construction of the walls needed resources.
d) the resources produced in the capture of the castles on the 3W
<What problem are you trying to solve with your proposal>
1 Increased interest guilds in WvWvW component
2 Increase motivation and competition between guilds

These separate areas may be venue for GvG guild losing deprived of resources for the construction of knee her his GuildHall

Donari.5237:

For those suggesting “defend the guild hall events,” what happens if the guild fails the event? What rewards come from succeeding and how are those balanced against other game play modes? How is it kept from being a mob-wave farm fest while still feeling rewarding to use? What makes it special to guilds as opposed to just finding events in the world to do? Would the guild have the choice to just never trigger such a thing?

I’m not dissing the idea, as it certainly could be fun to have an option for action and adventure surrounding the hall, just wondering about these factors.

My suggestion on this is an added guild mission that goes along with halls, with the same rules as current missions have. I wouldn’t include drops if waves of enemies were part of it. Just the chest on success, once a week.

Fail states are much the same as current missions have as well or we could expand on what failure states are if we wanted to address that later on.

Donari.5237:

I think Lanfear’s question is what happens if the guild you are repping swaps alliances and no longer is in the alliance that made the hall — how do you handle man-hour investment in an alliance hall if for reasons fair or foul you need to go separate ways?

Yes, this is precisely what I was asking. I know in GW1, my guild was in several different alliances over the multitude of years that I played. Sometimes alliances just don’t work out for a variety of reasons and guilds go their separate ways.

What happens in such a case, when the guilds split, to all the effort that was put into these ‘shared’ halls. The man hours, the funds, etc. When they join another alliance that has it’s own shared hall already, do they now have their hall, the old shared hall, and then the shared hall for the new alliance as well? This could get cumbersome. Do they lose the old shared hall instead and thus all the effort put into it? That could really tick some people off. Or do shared halls simply no longer exist if the alliance does not exist? Could this not be a double edged sword – ie, as much deterant as incentive to build such an item?

Surely if/when alliances are introduced have them similar to GW1 again where any member of an alliance can access another’s Guild Hall.

Alternatively set the upgrade status of the Alliance Hall to that of the net Guild Halls. I.e if two guilds are in an alliance and guild 1 has upgrades x,y&z on their guild hall and guild 2 has upgrades a,b&c on theirs then the alliance hall has upgrades x,y,z,a,b&c. This would allow smaller guilds access to the things bigger guilds do earlier while their own hall is still developing at a slower rate. Skins would require a separate suggestion – maybe a vote open over a certain time period or something

Proposal Overview
Guild Housing as “Mini-Cities”

Goal of Proposal
Making Guild Housing functional and useful not just decorative

Proposal Functionality
Guild housing should include (or have the option to build) ALL “city services” – (merchants, master crafters, class trainers, crafting stations, repair, trading post, etc.) In addition, guild housing should include a waypoint so that players can instantly teleport to it from anywhere, with only a single loading screen.

These services should be inside a small, quickly accessible area, to encourage use and easy access, and to make them a privilege, otherwise guild housing is no better than any other city, and will go unused.

Highest level guilds should potentially even be able to build mystic forges or “rare” city services – (minigames, dungeon vendors, etc)

Associated Risks
Guilded Players could/would spend less time in cities, which could leave some of them feeling empty, particularly for new players. A potential way around this would be to allow housing for the larger/largest guilds to actually exist in the world as a real object and offer “public zones” that non-members could freely enter/leave. This could have the bolt-on effect of allowing “passive recruitment”.

Proposal Overview
Guild Housing “Content”

Goal of Proposal
Making Guild Housing more than just a “status symbol”

Proposal Functionality
Create a “Guild Story” sort of like the Living World story content where a guild has a storyline that they play through together. Make a Guild instance more than just a place for players to visit and decorate – make them feel like their Guild is part of the world, having an impact.

The sky’s the limit – Guild vs Guild PvP battles? (Putting the “wars” back in Guild Wars…)

PvE Guild Storylines culminating in a large “world boss” style event that takes 20-50 players working together and has a grand epic feel?

Just make sure whatever it is can be repeated (weekly? monthly?) so that new Guild recruits have the ability to experience this content even if they join a long-running guild.

Associated Risks
Time and money, mostly – depending on how complex this gets it could involve a lot of art and animation assets, but even a short (1-3) chapter story could still be fun, and give players the feeling that their guild house was more than just a “virtual conference room”.

Devata.6589:

And yes I am aware I said instance. This is purely because I am a fan of instance over open world (-:

But why?

That is a much more important question. It’s Anet who talks about a living and breeding world. Open world guild-halls (and housing) that people can build them-self will be able to do that. Even more so then dynamic events and the living world.

An instance makes is less interesting and more put away, in addition it’s out of the game in a way, or better said it’s out of the game-world.

I very strongly urge you to actually go try Archeage, which has open world housing as a primary feature.
tldr; it can be an absolute nightmare, and in practice the only real benefit is “oh look, I can see some random guy’s house/some random guy can see my house”, and “haha I ganked you on your farm” (in Archeage’s case, it’s an open world pvp game).
Unless Anet can guarantee a plot per player, it’s going to cause some pretty ugly situations and some very jaded players. And they’d likely have to do so without introducing vast expanses of open space, or cluttering the normal maps’ skies with airships that people have to render, if they want it to look any kind of reasonable.
When you’ve spent a week looking for a plot, any plot, to build on to no avail, or when your beautiful house gets neighbors that block out your nice view or build something that aesthetically looks like trash to you and clashes with your house, you get a lot less enthusiastic about the “open world” part of housing.

Instanced housing/guild halls that can have some sort of interaction with outside forces (gvg being a popular one, but it could include other things like the ability to make the hall open to the public and having events within) would, I feel, be far more conductive to community interaction while circumventing the real estate issues entirely.

I’ll say it again for anyone on the side of “open world housing”. Go try Archeage and see what Open World Housing is actually like in practice. I’m not saying it’s entirely bad, but a reality check on what it actually entails in practice is always a good thing.

Arewn.2368:

Devata.6589:

And yes I am aware I said instance. This is purely because I am a fan of instance over open world (-:

But why?

That is a much more important question. It’s Anet who talks about a living and breeding world. Open world guild-halls (and housing) that people can build them-self will be able to do that. Even more so then dynamic events and the living world.

An instance makes is less interesting and more put away, in addition it’s out of the game in a way, or better said it’s out of the game-world.

I very strongly urge you to actually go try Archeage, which has open world housing as a primary feature.
tldr; it can be an absolute nightmare, and in practice the only real benefit is “oh look, I can see some random guy’s house/some random guy can see my house”, and “haha I ganked you on your farm” (in Archeage’s case, it’s an open world pvp game).
Unless Anet can guarantee a plot per player, it’s going to cause some pretty ugly situations and some very jaded players. And they’d likely have to do so without introducing vast expanses of open space, or cluttering the normal maps’ skies with airships that people have to render, if they want it to look any kind of reasonable.
When you’ve spent a week looking for a plot, any plot, to build on to no avail, or when your beautiful house gets neighbors that block out your nice view or build something that aesthetically looks like trash to you and clashes with your house, you get a lot less enthusiastic about the “open world” part of housing.

Instanced housing/guild halls that can have some sort of interaction with outside forces (gvg being a popular one, but it could include other things like the ability to make the hall open to the public and having events within) would, I feel, be far more conductive to community interaction while circumventing the real estate issues entirely.

I’ll say it again for anyone on the side of “open world housing”. Go try Archeage and see what Open World Housing is actually like in practice. I’m not saying it’s entirely bad, but a reality check on what it actually entails in practice is always a good thing.

Completely agree. Open World Guild Halls are yuck

Wolfey.3407:

Anything below 6-10 is really just a glorified party, if you want
A place to call your own, you should just share a home instance…

I disagree with this. You can’t build a home instance, you can’t grow it. It’s no where near the same as a guild hall.

This is like saying you shouldn’t be able to purchase a house unless you have at least 2 children. It’s just wrong.

Arewn.2368:

Devata.6589:

And yes I am aware I said instance. This is purely because I am a fan of instance over open world (-:

But why?

That is a much more important question. It’s Anet who talks about a living and breeding world. Open world guild-halls (and housing) that people can build them-self will be able to do that. Even more so then dynamic events and the living world.

An instance makes is less interesting and more put away, in addition it’s out of the game in a way, or better said it’s out of the game-world.

I very strongly urge you to actually go try Archeage, which has open world housing as a primary feature.
tldr; it can be an absolute nightmare, and in practice the only real benefit is “oh look, I can see some random guy’s house/some random guy can see my house”, and “haha I ganked you on your farm” (in Archeage’s case, it’s an open world pvp game).
Unless Anet can guarantee a plot per player, it’s going to cause some pretty ugly situations and some very jaded players. And they’d likely have to do so without introducing vast expanses of open space, or cluttering the normal maps’ skies with airships that people have to render, if they want it to look any kind of reasonable.
When you’ve spent a week looking for a plot, any plot, to build on to no avail, or when your beautiful house gets neighbors that block out your nice view or build something that aesthetically looks like trash to you and clashes with your house, you get a lot less enthusiastic about the “open world” part of housing.

Instanced housing/guild halls that can have some sort of interaction with outside forces (gvg being a popular one, but it could include other things like the ability to make the hall open to the public and having events within) would, I feel, be far more conductive to community interaction while circumventing the real estate issues entirely.

I’ll say it again for anyone on the side of “open world housing”. Go try Archeage and see what Open World Housing is actually like in practice. I’m not saying it’s entirely bad, but a reality check on what it actually entails in practice is always a good thing.

I did and I did check out Landmark as well. And sure is had some hurdles to overcome but it also has some big pro’s. Seeing homes / buildings pop up, seeing people building them, getting resources there, seeing that complete build process does make the world feel much more alive and it also gives those people much more of a goal to work towards.

However you are correct that is at the same time has possible negative effects and looking at those I do think the sky-map approach would solve most of them in a pretty easy way.

But even if you would not go for something like sky-maps, the negatives like a guy builds something next to you that you do not like is also exactly what makes it feel that bid more alive. Then you can move to another plot and so the world keeps changing.

Also in AA people can just build from a selected few models, they can not really build the homes them-self. They can do that a little more with the guild-castles but it’s still very limited. I think Anet could take that a step further really letting you build your guild-hall yourself where there are models for walls and so on that you can place together to build your own guild-hall.

Not as far as Landmark btw what is almost like a 3D design game.

VodCom.6924:

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

Another flaw was putting the easier missions (treks, rushes) behind a merit wall that can be passed only with a harder mission (bounties). Due to this small guilds that would be able to do the easier missions without much problem can’t do them because they lack the merits needed to unlock them. This was really bad design (though i no longer hope it will ever be corrected).

I’d hate to see any similar problem crop up in the Guild Halls implementation – any guild hall upgrades should be available to guilds of any sizes, both big and small. Of course, small guilds would likely find upgrading to be a much slower process – that is okay, as long as there is no gating mechanics.
The sole exception could be any upgrades that are useful only for the big guilds. Guild Hall size is not one such example, if anyone’s wondering.

Gulesave.5073:

With all this talk of how to build and manage the halls, and where to put them, and who can see them and go in them, I’m not seeing any mention of what you would want to do once you’re in there.

The desired functions of the hall and its constituent upgrades should be considered from as early a point as possible, to inform the design from the legs up.

Preferably, I think, it should be a place to do things we can’t do anywhere else. Otherwise why build it? Unless you really just want your guild hall to be nothing but an elaborate meeting hall with a few crafting tables…

There could be more pinning down on the “why have a guild hall at all?” There are a TON of suggested functionality that kicked off this thread. I’ll just assume, pinning down those features are a dev thing anyway.

Various posters ideas:

open versus instanced
While compelling, open world halls could come with a pretty hefty price tag in development. I think we can agree instanced halls are within the scope of the game design.

Guild hall acquisition.
Seems like many are in favor of a flat out, reasonable fee, to purchase a hall.

Alliance hall
While still early in the discussion, i think we are leaning toward not having one. If for no other reason than the “divorce” of the alliance. I personally like the rotating schedule of the designated hall that ties in with where missions kick off from. (see functionality)

Functionality
Some ideas:

1. Private meeting place (especially good for RP)
2. GvG
3. PvP sparing/training on a bigger level than what can be done in arenas (8v8 for example)
4. Different missions objectives confined to halls (multiple ideas floating around for this)
5. New mini-games
6. Expanded guild goals like upgrades/Merchants (with the caveat that merchants stick to guild related ones)
7. Visual representation of currently building upgrades (workshop)
8. Visual representation of guild achievements (like total AP of all members, total WvW rank points, total PvP, etc.)
9. Visual representation of player of the week/month assignment

some tidbits of note

1. Guild halls shouldn’t take too much from open world
2. guesting needs to be a thing
3. Guild halls shouldn’t be too “sandboxy”
4. Functionality should include things we can’t already do in the game world that should or could only be offered in a guild hall format
5. no maintenance fees seems to be the most popular

For simplicity sake, i’ve avoided some (if not all) of the complex additional features suggestions (like guild towns instead of halls and sandbox type suggestions). I also took out the ones that you could already do in town (like crafting) and a lot of the suggestions about personal housing.

While there is some novelty to the idea of open world guild halls, I think – from a practical perspective – that the limits it would place on potential design, flexibility (particularly the ability to link with other guilds for GvG) and expansion potential make instanced halls the logical choice.

As the leader of a 300+ person active guild, I would also be against the idea of heavily themed guild halls (airships, caves, etc) because it could easily feel out of place in a diverse guild (an asura wouldnt want to be in a tree, for instance). I would rather see the guild hall be a well designed standard model (with some aesthetic options) – and save things like airships/trees/etc for player housing options down the road.

As far as “rooms” in the guild hall, I would be interested in seeing areas dedicated to the following:

- A general meeting area
- GvG
- Guild Mission Control Room (with possible missions INSIDE the guild hall)
- Guild Mini Game Room – with access to existing minigames (as a guild) and other activities (really love the orchestra idea someone had above – would also like to see a “bar” with a group belcher’s bluff type activity, etc)
- Guild PvP area (guild version of the custom arena)
- Portals to “living quarters” (player specific housing areas for members)

I know it sounds strange, but I would rather not see the crafting vendors or other NPCs in the guild hall. These should be used to populate the cities the way they are now. In my opinion, the guild hall should be about guild activities (the items listed above) – the obvious exceptions being the current guild vendors.

Jimmy JimBob.2801:

Arewn.2368:

Devata.6589:

And yes I am aware I said instance. This is purely because I am a fan of instance over open world (-:

But why?

That is a much more important question. It’s Anet who talks about a living and breeding world. Open world guild-halls (and housing) that people can build them-self will be able to do that. Even more so then dynamic events and the living world.

An instance makes is less interesting and more put away, in addition it’s out of the game in a way, or better said it’s out of the game-world.

I very strongly urge you to actually go try Archeage, which has open world housing as a primary feature.
tldr; it can be an absolute nightmare, and in practice the only real benefit is “oh look, I can see some random guy’s house/some random guy can see my house”, and “haha I ganked you on your farm” (in Archeage’s case, it’s an open world pvp game).
Unless Anet can guarantee a plot per player, it’s going to cause some pretty ugly situations and some very jaded players. And they’d likely have to do so without introducing vast expanses of open space, or cluttering the normal maps’ skies with airships that people have to render, if they want it to look any kind of reasonable.
When you’ve spent a week looking for a plot, any plot, to build on to no avail, or when your beautiful house gets neighbors that block out your nice view or build something that aesthetically looks like trash to you and clashes with your house, you get a lot less enthusiastic about the “open world” part of housing.

Instanced housing/guild halls that can have some sort of interaction with outside forces (gvg being a popular one, but it could include other things like the ability to make the hall open to the public and having events within) would, I feel, be far more conductive to community interaction while circumventing the real estate issues entirely.

I’ll say it again for anyone on the side of “open world housing”. Go try Archeage and see what Open World Housing is actually like in practice. I’m not saying it’s entirely bad, but a reality check on what it actually entails in practice is always a good thing.

Completely agree. Open World Guild Halls are yuck

They can be yuck, they don’t have to be yuck I would think.

But a better question, how do you know instance would not be yuck?

Anyway I was asked to go check it myself. I did see it before but if somebody ask you then you should do that (again) I guess.

So I just did go again have a look how open world self building guild-halls would look like. (Not AA)
And some screenshots:
http://oi58.tinypic.com/15owfva.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/2gumpmu.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/wryzv6.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/2n1z05c.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/2cnw0hi.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/2bs4dv.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/dnbo0n.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/w7oeqb.jpg
http://i58.tinypic.com/3304pat.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/1zxno6x.jpg
http://i58.tinypic.com/2v7zzp5.jpg

That was the first building I came across and was even build in a guild-hall way.
So maybe we have a different definition of yuck. However I would think if you have an open world guild-halls that people can build them-self and do that in a smart way there will be yuck buildings and they will be great building but they should not bother you and they will make the world feel more alive. Also finally we get the impact on the world Anet has been talking about for over 2 years.

Blaeys.3102:

While there is some novelty to the idea of open world guild halls, I think – from a practical perspective – that the limits it would place on potential design, flexibility (particularly the ability to link with other guilds for GvG) and expansion potential make instanced halls the logical choice.

Not so much a problem for the air-ships who you could be able to link to each other.
But when you let people build there own guild-halls you would indeed have a problem with GvG, you could not do it like in GW1. So that would require the GvG area to be separated from the guild-halls while if you would not let people build it them-self you could use a system like in GW1.

The airship idea btw was more a floating plot where you could build your own thing. So it would not be a themed guild hall at all. You design your own theme. The well designed standard model you talk about is also build in a theme (or selection of themes) and there you have no impact on it except for maybe choosing one of the themes.

- Guild Mission Control Room (with possible missions INSIDE the guild hall)
How about a control-room where you can also see things visualized like what is active but maybe also a guild calendar?

Could the guild map be customisable with a gvg arena as well as a small room for duels? I mean you have not been so in a hurry to create deathmatch style map like in GW 1 RA 5v5 so would you mind making a 1v1 map in the guild hall for player conveniance?

Save for that you could add progressive additionnal npc that grants service pretty much like in town based on the guild current power and level. Guild hall need not just be a hub but also a sanctuary. Make it so the guild leader can customise the place like idk the SIMS by purchasing various stuff with influance like a standing plush quaggan and what not and hand placing them in the hall

Since we at it there should be various possible guild map to begin construction on
exemple
1. Maguma deep jungle (a dense forest wich resemble much a treetop housing map)
2. Asuran crew lab (all in the rata sum style)
3. Charr steampunk bunker (a warrior den that could handle a full siege)
4. Norn lodge (a safe place to rest away from the cold of the shiverpeak)
5. Droknar forge reborn (a dwarven relic of the past rebuilt on)
6. Human village (in the old krytan fashion)
7. Tengu refuge (In the old canthan style)
8. Hero ascent (a stronghold in the middle of a volcano)
9. Sylvaris planthouses (a vegetal town the like of the grove, a restfull place with a vegetal theme to it)
10. Island (a small island with a pirate base)
11. Classic guild hall (a classic guild hall in the fashion of guild wars 1 zaishen town)

Heavily themed guild hall isnt so bad and you can always build in 2 or 3 template for less thematic guild because yes we to like to roleplay and limiting maps to a single option for everyone can be kind of lame for idk a sylvaris or ranger guild for instance who would like a more natural set up.

Devata.6589:

I did and I did check out Landmark as well. And sure is had some hurdles to overcome but it also has some big pro’s. Seeing homes / buildings pop up, seeing people building them, getting resources there, seeing that complete build process does make the world feel much more alive and it also gives those people much more of a goal to work towards.

However you are correct that is at the same time has possible negative effects and looking at those I do think the sky-map approach would solve most of them in a pretty easy way.

But even if you would not go for something like sky-maps, the negatives like a guy builds something next to you that you do not like is also exactly what makes it feel that bid more alive. Then you can move to another plot and so the world keeps changing.

Also in AA people can just build from a selected few models, they can not really build the homes them-self. They can do that a little more with the guild-castles but it’s still very limited. I think Anet could take that a step further really letting you build your guild-hall yourself where there are models for walls and so on that you can place together to build your own guild-hall.

Not as far as Landmark btw what is almost like a 3D design game.

I haven’t played Landmark, but I’ll continue to share what insight I’ve gleamed from my experiences in Archeage. The last paragraph about house design is unrelated to “instance vs open world”, so I’ll leave it aside.

I see two (broad) categories of open world housing(or in this case, guild halls): In-zone housing and housing-zones.
In-zone housing provides housing in actual game zones, it is intrinsically the most immersive as it resides in the native game world, but has very hefty real-estate issues. This limiting of space, I feel, makes it incompatible with GW2. There’s already worry about the accessibility of guild halls to smaller guilds, adding further limits to the number of players who can access the content through space restrictions isn’t going to be conductive with community desires.
Housing (guild hall) zones, on the other hand, provide large expanses of space dedicated to housing, outside(or beside) the native game zones. For example, a “guild hall zone” in the Mists, or an “airship zone” above the skybox. This for the most part circumvents the limited-space problem, but you’re now dealing with clustered hog-podges of halls that don’t serve much purpose. This makes it difficult for Anet to actually implement any content around the houses because they have such little control over the surrounding landscape. No GvG, no dynamic events, no living story integration. They essentially become home-instance 2.0, the only difference being that your neighbor can see you, and you customized/built it yourself. That’s nice… I guess? But it’s not aiming very high for a new, dev resource-intensive to make, feature. I’ll go play The Sims if that’s all it’s going to be. I want my guild halls to supplement my immersion in the guild wars experience, not be some place I build, say “it’s pretty yay” and then only occasionally stop by to use vendors or as a loading-screen short-cut.

What I’m interested in is what “positive” things being in the open world uniquely provides, and if “I can see strangers” is as far as it goes, then I don’t feel it’s worth.

Airship halls above zones strikes me as useless. From the ground, the ships would be indistinguishable from the airships floating above Orr. That is to say there would be no difference whether it was an actual player’s ship or some random NPC that floats by. From the ships, the ground would be indistinguishable from a backdrop that matches the zone it’s supposed to be over. All this does is limited the “type” of guild hall you can make to being variations of Airships, instead of Castles/Airships/Lodges/etc that you could otherwise have available. Edit: just saw your post on this matter, your suggestion makes the whole “it’s above the zone” idea even more pointless, it would be completely and utterly indistinguishable from the ground. It might as well just be a sky instance with a backdrop that looks like “insert zone here”.

Way too many ideas in here to comment on all of them, but here’s my thoughts on a few.

Instanced versus Open World
Instanced makes perfect sense because it will take way less effort to implement, avoids a lot of the player cap issues and completely avoids the problem of the open world becoming cluttered. Open world guild halls could be amazing in certain scenarios, but realistically I think it would be too much work to implement them.
note: I will admit that walking through Lornar’s Pass, for example, and seeing this huge towering structure built into the mountains would be a very impressive sight

Alliance Guild Halls
I think that having an actual hall for guild alliances would be a mistake, for all the same reasons as everybody else has already mentioned. It would make for a messy divorce. However, I think that building a “bridge” between guild halls that would allow guilds that have an alliance to visit each others Halls, or a large area that specifically exists so the 2 guilds can mingle, would be an excellent compromise and would present no issues whatsoever. If the alliance ever fell apart the “bridge” or auditorium-style room would simply disappear.

Minimum Size of guilds
People are suggesting that a 1 or 2 person guild should have access to a guild hall as well, but my question is “why would they need a guild hall?” They won’t have anybody to talk to, it wouldn’t increase a sense of community, they can’t really GvG (1v1 I guess, but they can do that in PvP or WvW), and the other “stuff” (ie crafting stations, etc) can be found in the open world.

Suggestion to Devs
I think it would be extremely helpful if the devs could constrain our brainstorming a little bit by making a decision on a few key areas, such as instanced -vs- open world and minimum size. That would help streamline the conversation a little. I would also suggest starting an entirely new thread once a couple concrete decisions are made.

Lots of amazing ideas so far and there’s a lot of potential here.

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

instanced guarantees all slots can and will be used by guild members making it a great place for a meeting ground.
instanced i also think is a much safer way to do it and expand on the idea of guild halls as you go forward (look at the mess of land claiming in archage)

Open world guild halls would benefit from guild exposure and could be a good means of recruitment as players pass by.

Proposal

Guild Aquariums and Submarine Guild Halls

What about utilizing the water zones for Guild Halls? Guild Aquariums? Guild Submarines? Crucible of Eternity has one of my favorite things in the game in it: An aquarium. That as a Guild Hall would be pretty great. Guild Submarines could work too and along with Aquariums would add life to underwater areas which are really not all that populated. At first I wanted to do away with water completely, but I think using it is better.

• It’s important to note that I think Air, Sea, and Land Guild Halls should all be options.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Grevender.9235:

VodCom.6924:

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

As far as I understand, influence is a “measure” of the activity of the members of the guilds and merits reward your achievments done collectively as a guild.

Also, as others suggested earlier, we’ll need new guild challenges and event that need to be done as a guild.

the true problem imho is that “influence” serves a purpose that is normally fulfilled by “money”; therefore “influence” should be recalibrated to be proportional and reflect the amount of efforts invested in a certain area of the game.
I really think we have way too many currencies…

The problem with influence is that it is literally gold, you can buy as much of it as you want for gold meaning anything you put behind just influence will be unlocked immediately and not by the active guilds, by the whales and TPer’s.

On the other hand that equivalence gives a smaller guild an additional option. Some people might not like that option but I prefer it over not having any alternatives.

Tryxtr.6295:

Way too many ideas in here to comment on all of them, but here’s my thoughts on a few.

Suggestion to Devs
I think it would be extremely helpful if the devs could constrain our brainstorming a little bit by making a decision on a few key areas, such as instanced -vs- open world and minimum size. That would help streamline the conversation a little. I would also suggest starting an entirely new thread once a couple concrete decisions are made.

Lots of amazing ideas so far and there’s a lot of potential here.

I agree, however i do wonder if it’s just that further internal discussion would need to take place before they could narrow things down. I like that they are putting in little guided points to discuss, but not totally locking us into a key concept. Both Jon and Chris have stated they prefer instances (vs open world design) as well, but it’s good that they are willing to listen to reasons behind the idea and various suggestions to fix the issues, instead of just entirely dismissing it. Still at some point someone has to call it, just for the sake of progress or not beating a dead “mount”

Chris Whiteside.6102:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Serophous.9085:

Edgar Doiron.2804:

Serophous.9085:

As for guild alliance halls. They could work, and would be neat. The only issue would be, what happens if the alliance breaks apart? who gets the hall? Does it go away if the alliance fails and a new one has to be started all over? If anything, that could be a completely new and different CDI if (or after ) guild halls are implemented.

That sounds as complicated as a divorce :P

and chances are, it would be!

All the more reason to keep things separate imo. Fewer peeved people in the long run.

Note we have come up with two valid options that can also be part of the design.

1: Small Guilds aren’t Excluded.
2: Alliances can create a shared Guild Hall.

Chris

Just want to throw my 2 cents in.

1. I love the idea that small guilds will not be excluded. I belong to a medium sized guild for people over 30 years old. We are a big enough guild to do anything for upgrades and that is great. I also belong to a very small guild that consists of me, my closest friend from my other guild and his sons. They are not old enough to join our other guild. I would like the opportunity for my smaller guild to have access to a guild hall. Even if it is a basic hall. As stated above in GW1 players with a one person guild could have any of the halls available to anyone else.

2. I think a shared/created guild hall with alliance members is a disaster waiting to happen. The alliance breaks up and who gets the guild? Who decides which upgrades to do? Arguments over initial hall set up. It just screams “bad situation” to me.

Give alliance members access to your guild’s hall if you wish, but keep halls separate.

One more comment along this line. Who gets to pick what the hall looks like, which upgrades to do, etc.? Will it be the Guild Leader’s decision alone? Do officers and members get a say? Just curious what you might think.

What about a zone just for guild halls? Then it can have the open world feel, but not be all over the map. I just think guild halls all over would be intrusive. Especially for those who don’t do much with them. Experience says that if you open the world to building, people will drop buildings right where they start. Or in the most intrusive places possible.

And I do not like the idea of airships. I’d rather have buildings, where we can have a large room to see everyone at once.

Khisanth.2948:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Grevender.9235:

VodCom.6924:

JonPeters.5630:

Good categories. I agree influence is not a good system and we should think about how we would change how you obtain upgrades once we have talked through the specifics of what kind of upgrades a new system has and how it incorporates the existing upgrades.

Apologies for picking up the discussion late.

The system influence/merits system is by no mean perfect however I do not think a massive revamp is necessary (like supression of glory in spvp).

The massive flaw of the merits is that they are earned only through PvE guild mission and this excludes WvW and sPvP centered guilds. Introducing new ways to earn merits in the two modes is a good start.

As far as I understand, influence is a “measure” of the activity of the members of the guilds and merits reward your achievments done collectively as a guild.

Also, as others suggested earlier, we’ll need new guild challenges and event that need to be done as a guild.

the true problem imho is that “influence” serves a purpose that is normally fulfilled by “money”; therefore “influence” should be recalibrated to be proportional and reflect the amount of efforts invested in a certain area of the game.
I really think we have way too many currencies…

The problem with influence is that it is literally gold, you can buy as much of it as you want for gold meaning anything you put behind just influence will be unlocked immediately and not by the active guilds, by the whales and TPer’s.

On the other hand that equivalence gives a smaller guild an additional option. Some people might not like that option but I prefer it over not having any alternatives.

I’d much rather people were not able to bypass the method of getting something using gold/gems. (This is more a general rant on that than specifically influence although I do believe that small guilds should understand it’s a consequence and that the “reward” for larger guilds is that extra influence.)
It frustrates me that people have it in their head “all this games content is for me to play. I should have access to it all , so if I can’t do something the correct way they should clearly make a second method for me”.

Someone said:

People are suggesting that a 1 or 2 person guild should have access to a guild hall as well, but my question is “why would they need a guild hall?” They won’t have anybody to talk to, it wouldn’t increase a sense of community, they can’t really GvG (1v1 I guess, but they can do that in PvP or WvW), and the other “stuff” (ie crafting stations, etc) can be found in the open world.

If Guild Halls have no purpose other than a meeting hall, GvG, and crafting stations, I suppose that person’s question could be valid.

But, I’m thinking Guild Halls will have much, much more associated with them than just those few things, and thus, would be something every Guild would desire, whether large or small.