Guild Wars 2

The more I think of it, the less appealing seem customizable guild halls to me. Think about a 100man+ guild, or even multiple guilds forming alliances with one common guild hall… and then there’s you, a non-guildleader who has little to no way to customize anything.

Compared to the concept of housing (taking WoW’s garrisons as example) with heavy customization opions, tons of personal things to do in those areas and directly driving your game-progress (even storywise and the higher level progression) guild halls just seem lacking tons of things.

so my question to the guild hall supporters: what specific thing would make you want to be in a guild hall other than hanging around with friends? Why would I care about some crafting NPCs in there, when I’m not interested in looking at people while I’m crafting stuff. Why would you care about some tables, curtains,… that someone from your guild might have put at certain locations? What gameplay value is there?

I personally love the idea of GW1 style guild halls with unlock able merchants, crafting stations, or forge nodes. The ideas for customization are also cool, personally I’m in favor of the Skyrim-esqe upgrades where you choose add-ons or upscaled parts of your hall. Again the mists are the perfect place to put guild halls you drop one asura gate in LA and it ports you to whatever guild’s hall you are representing.
What would be interesting is if the area for each hall is EoTM style and resembles a floating island GVG could also work similar to WVW as GVGVG and the guilds in contest have their halls “link” to a common battleground allowing immediate access to GVG from the hall similar to a WVW keep.
I would like unlock able gates to home cities, merchants that sell guild customized gear, (I would love a menu that lets you customize colors effects, add spiky bits, or bones for a fee of course) Let the guild leader design a full outfit for each armor class and weapon that each guild member can buy that can only be worn while that guild is represented. Gate more exotic designs or components by making them cost gems or guild merits. I would rather have custom guild uniforms (not the logo pasted guild shirts) than the ability to move a table I cannot sit at.
Lastly please include a Guild Hall preview function similar to Guild Wars 1, you could even make more advanced halls achievement based or include a legacy hall for those will enough HOM points.

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is where achievements do well – a guild hall can grow naturally via the achievements the entire guild focuses on, rather than the guild leader spending influence that everyone worked so hard to build up on something only they want. Whether or not to add a building might be up to them, but the capability, the “unlock”, would come from the collaboration of the guild, whether it’s a big fight, a certain amount of PvP, jumping puzzle championry, or whatever.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The more I think of it, the less appealing seem customizable guild halls to me. Think about a 100man+ guild, or even multiple guilds forming alliances with one common guild hall… and then there’s you, a non-guildleader who has little to no way to customize anything.

Compared to the concept of housing (taking WoW’s garrisons as example) with heavy customization opions, tons of personal things to do in those areas and directly driving your game-progress (even storywise and the higher level progression) guild halls just seem lacking tons of things.

so my question to the guild hall supporters: what specific thing would make you want to be in a guild hall other than hanging around with friends? Why would I care about some crafting NPCs in there, when I’m not interested in looking at people while I’m crafting stuff. Why would you care about some tables, curtains,… that someone from your guild might have put at certain locations? What gameplay value is there?

With the addition of guild halls the upgrade categories imo should stay more or less the same. The changes I would make would be adding a new category and reorganizing some unlocks in the existing categories.

[Example]

Politics
Same as now with the inclusion of all banners

(I’ve changed all banners to politics because I feel banners are ways to advertise your guilds regardless of the buff.)

Art of War
Same as now
+ Allow creation of asura gate at fort claimed by guild

Economy
Same as now (move banners to politics)

Architecture
Same as now (move banners to politics)
+ Create asura gate in claimed fort ( build time 3hr )
+ Create test golems in Training Grounds (This can be upgraded to eventually have practice NPC’s like in HotM)
+Create asura gate to each major city in Courtyard (basically an asura gate hub like in lions arch where you can get to any major city from your guild hall)
+Create Work Stations in Workshop (the fear of people not going to main cities to use the stations I feel are not warranted. People will go to city hubs to interact with others; in GW1 i used city hubs more then my guild hall to buy/sell things because the cities were always buzzing with people talking and people debating this or that.)(Now when it comes to banks then yes ill agree they should only be in major cities and guild banks should be in guild halls)

(I’ve added asura gates because halls imo should be launching points where all guildies can join up and jump together to each event.)

Guild Hall

Note: Guild halls will have five different zones that can be unlocked

Unlock Hall
Unlock Courtyard
Unlock Training Grounds
Unlock War Room
Unlock Workshop

For each zone that you unlock more upgrades become available in the Architecture category.

These are just a few ideas. Everyone feel free to play around with this idea add/remove things. I left a few categories the same mainly because I don’t know what would be good add ons to them but again if anyone has any ideas feel free.

I didn’t add anything about alliances because since they are not part of the game their is no reasons to include them in the GH idea but I do have some nice ideas if they ever come into fruition.

Note Adding asura gates to claimed keeps/towers/camps would give incentive to defending imo because once a guild invests influence to creating an asura gate in the claimed area they would want to defend their assets. Guilds would want to create asura gates in their claimed forts because it will be a faster way to get to their fort in mass to defend.

@VOD: Well done mate! I recommend your summary to anyone participating.

@Marcus Greythorne: At some point we discussed the idea of adding “private rooms” for guild members, with a single entrance for it, you enter an instanced, personal small room just for yourself, that you can customize. Other than that, why don’t you tell us what kind of benefits you would like to se, that are not necessarily focused on the group, but rather on the single player perspective?

I agree with people saying we should utilize the existing upgrade categories, but I think the whole system could be reworked. Many of the options could be removed from the guild panel UI, and added into the hall, as NPC’s and other points of interaction.

Yes, it’s less efficient than doing everything from the panel, but it’s also a lot more interesting.

Continuing with that, remove access to deeper levels of the guild bank unless you’re visiting it in person. Make it so banners, banquets, and similar items have to be picked up from the hall. It seems annoying at first, but things like this will keep people flowing in and out of the guild hall regularly, helping to keep it feeling alive at odd hours.

Critical to this, however, would be having the big “Go to the Guild Hall” button in the panel UI, and a similar big button when in the hall to take you right back where you were. I don’t really seen any version of guild halls being consistently populated without that function in place, as I think others here have pointed out.

And while having a guild hall wouldn’t necessarily be automatic and free upon guild creation, the first upgrade that’s bought becomes your first structure – you have a guild hall from then on. Which isn’t to say that the structures you get for simply purchasing the existing upgrades should be in any way “expansive” or “nice,” mind you. I’m picturing the equivalent of a run-down shack in the ghetto – or the disintegrating wreck of an abandoned airship scattered across a field.

Baltzenger.2467:

Other than that, why don’t you tell us what kind of benefits you would like to se, that are not necessarily focused on the group, but rather on the single player perspective?

Well to break it down I guess I would like to see progress that I as a player have achieved, not having 100people who do this for me.

I like the idea of having a place you call home that really shows this progress unlike our current home instance. I would feel redundant when I’m not doing anything but the progress-bar still grows (because of all the people who make this happen).

I also feel that there has to be a gameplay-outcome of most of the upgrades. I don’t see this when another upgrade unlocks guild-curtains for my guild which will be placed by our guild leaders and co. What would a crafting npc inside the halls be good for other than making cities empty? It’s just convenience and not good enough (imho) for an meaningful upgrade to guildhalls.

Proposal Overview
Personally I would like the guild Halls to be set up much like a large castle. Inside the gates would be farm land for getting your harvesting nodes, maybe some sort of recouces it will cost the guild to keep them “watered” but really alls it does it keep them there for everyone to enjoy. I would also like to see player housing be put inside the castle and of course the guild lord in the throne room. I would want many different set ups to be chosen from the different cultures of Guild Wars and regions of guild wars aswell. Also damage done to the guild hall is permanent after a guild battle (where another guild invades your castle) Until the guild uses its funds to repair it making it vunlnerable to another attack from another guild. Guilds that win in GvG can take a small amount of gold or something from the guilds vault. Adding some conciquences to GW because we are lacking them.

Goal of Proposal
The goal would be to give guilds more of a purpose and meeting place to there own. Currently i’m in a guild but the only real sense of togetherness we have is through Guild Chat. I cant even tell you what half their characters look like and who has what weapon or what cool title because how often do we just get to hang out all together ina non combat enviornment. Guild Wars is seriously lacking the rp in MMORPG. Alls it is is fight, kill, repeat. I want things like fishing and housing but that is a discussion for another time I suppose.

Proposal Functionality
I assume a new button would be added to either the Guild Menu or the top left corner of the screen which will take you to your guild hall. It would cost Guild Merits, influence and a whole lot of gold to buy. making it a good sink and goal and possibly upgrades would make the time sink even larger.

Associated Risks
Not even reason to just hang out in the guild hall because of lack of down time activities.

then can add in new crafting professions like archetiecture and carpentry to build the decorations AND map pieces to craft like halo reaches map builder thing. you have set amount of room to build freely in and can expand it to max as guild grows. even have basic gardens that can farm stuff like sacrifice one item like food omnom berry for chance of higher yield after say 24 hours or something.

Proposal Overview
equality in access. instanced halls. guild participation

Goal of Proposal
sweet and simple
Small close knit guilds vs Large guilds, make sure both can get access to halls

Proposal Functionality
I really like how GW1 had the guild halls. really really like being able to choose different styles. The Mists would be a great avenue for access to halls. and from the few pages i read the suggestions seem really good
the important thing for me is that ALL guilds, no matter their size, can get halls without jumping through ALL the hoops. PLEASE DO NOT make them only accessible through guild mission based currency (ie, merits). Influence is fine, but many guilds i am a part of do not have access to guild missions of any sort and thus cannot get merits, nor do they have a player base large enough to do them effectively (or at all in 1 case). it is important that ALL guilds be able to access the implementation of guild halls.
personally, gold (though arbitrarily easy to get) would be a great way to GET the halls, using things like dungeon tokens, karma, badges of honor, merits, commendations, influence to add furnishings related to those currencies
eg: 500g via rank with access to build the hall to get the hall. and then other currencies will get other things. Like dungeon tokens (in this case CoF) might add charr soldiers as NPCs to your hall (CoE adds asura/golems, HoW adds koda etcetc), and badges of honor might make WvW supply dolyaks walk around, or karma gets a table and some chairs, laurels get you games/activities etc

Associated Risks
ease of access (which is not to say instant access or nothing but rank holding back, but not requiring to go too all ends of tyria and back to get access. hell level 5 in architecture alone feels like a good amount of gating) is a must.
but it has to appeal to vets and new comers alike. (if it were a boss, not hard like TT, but not melts like butter a la Fire Ele, think Teq as of right now, can be done via zerg, but is done faster with organization)

This is a follow up to my previous posts, located here and here.

Here’s a quick Summary:

• Guilds are grouped into small neighborhood instances which share a common space that they all develop by working together.
• Neighborhoods compete with each other each week to have a copy of their neighborhood copied into the open world for everyone to see and enjoy.
• Guilds buy themed “Content Packs” to unlock modular room types, basic furnishings, etc. in any order they choose, using Influence.

Prestige
The manner in which Neighborhoods develop their common area and compete with each other is through “Prestige.” This is not a currency, but a value; each Guild Hall has an individual Prestige score, and the neighborhood’s score is simply the sum of all halls located there. Think of it as a rating of how awesome your Guild Hall is; the more cool stuff you throw in there, the higher your hall’s score.

The primary source of Prestige is the furnishings that players add to their guild halls. A hall with fine-quality [Wooden chairs] can’t compete with a hall full of exotic [Ascalonian Thrones]! There are other means to increase your prestige that I am still working on, but here’s how furnishings would work;

Furnishings
Like equipment, furnishings come in tiers, from Fine to Masterwork to Rare to Exotic (or white, blue, green, yellow, orange). Better quality furniture and decor means a higher Prestige score. Furnishings purchased via Content Packs do not contribute to the hall’s Prestige, as they’re Basic quality and can be placed repeatedly without cost. They’re intended to be ‘freebie’ decoration items or objects that you would want lots of (like trees and windows). Very good for starting out or just filling a room up with neat stuff.

Items of Fine quality and above are single-use items; if you have one [Plush Chair] in your guild inventory, then you can place one [Plush Chair] in your guild hall. However, like gear, furnishings can be obtained in several different ways. A ghost in Diessa Plateau may drop a masterwork [Ascalonian Chair Piece] (collect 4 to complete a chair), while the exotic-quality [Ascalonian Throne] is a reward for running a guild group through AC without anyone being defeated (A guild “Commission”, more on those below).

Here’s a rough list of ways players might obtain non-basic furnishings;

• Completing dungeons as a guild
• Successful completion of guild missions
• Capturing and holding objectives in WvW
• Winning PVP Matches where the majority of the team are guild mates
• A special PVP Reward Track
• Completing Living Story chapters together
• Enemy drops, including world bosses
• Chests
• Produced by crafting professions
• Purchased with other currencies;
  • Dungeon Tokens
  • Commendations
  • Gold (including buying furniture from the Trading Post!)
  • Special event currencies (Holidays, etc.)

For example, if a guild group runs AC together, at the end a special pop-up would appear that allows them to pick from either an Ascalon-themed table, chair or painting (See attachment below). Remember, these are not unlocks but actual items (i.e. if you want multiple Exotic Ascalonian Chairs, you’ll need to run it repeatedly) that are placed into the guild hall’s inventory.

Alternatively, a player might spend a few Ascalonian Tears to unlock a Fine-quality Adelbern Statue for her guild. I might defeat Tequatl and unlock a trophy that can be displayed. You might ask your guild weaponsmiths to craft cool candelabras or your tailors to make carpets. You might defend a tower in World vs. World and unlock a large map of your Borderlands to display in your war room.

Remember!

• Influence is only used to unlock modular room templates (different sizes, shapes, styles) and basic furnishings. You cannot increase your prestige via Influence, you just get a wider variety of room types to place on your plot.
• Furnishings of Fine-quality or above increase your prestige and are obtained like regular loot, with higher quality items being tied to guild activities.

Continued below…

Continued from above….

Guild Commissions
I initially toyed with the idea of Guild “Achievements”, but I’m not sure that’s particularly interesting or useful. The core idea that I wanted to get across is that, in addition to getting all of these furnishings from all over the world, there are very specific tasks you can undertake to get very specific, unique things that you want. The goal is to really push your guild to work together in a collaborative way that is also repeatable and isn’t necessarily something you have to do in real time. Thus, Guild Commissions. These are special tasks that guild members can perform to pick up the coolest, most Prestigious furnishings.

Commissions are assigned by the guild master (or any rank that has permission), and several can be active at once. They are essentially want-ads; “somebody go out and do this task and we get this cool thing.” They could range from the mundane (“donate 500 copper ore”) to more challenging endeavors (“Complete Ascalon Catacombs as a guild, without any player being defeated”). Each Commission has a unique reward, so if your guild is after an epic Tequatl statue for the lobby, you can assign your guild the task of, say, defeating Tequatl under a given time limit while part of a guild group. The best furnishings come from Commissions, and ideally there wouldn’t be any unlock required to start assigning them. As an added incentive to visit the hall itself, Commissions could be viewed and tracked at a special ‘wanted board’.

A few notes on Furnishings
One idea I was tinkering with is being able to destroy furniture you don’t want to generate influence. If you find your guild inventory is loaded with 500 wooden chairs, you could scrap them for an influx of influence. This might cause issues with the economy (a guild could buy a ton of cheap furniture and recycle it as Influence). I was also thinking that players could duplicate furnishings in exchange for influence, but I’m not sure I want that either. Thought I’d share, maybe somebody can run with it because the single-use furniture items could potentially be slow if you want a lot of the same items, but because furnishings are tied to your Prestige score being able to duplicate items too easily is asking for imbalance.

I’m sure folks will ask “If furnishings are 1-to-1, what if I want my chair back?” My line of thought is that they are treated as consumables, like the “Guild Discoveries” you get from BL chests. Once you donate them, they’re in the guild inventory and cannot be removed. That’s why the best stuff is unlocked via Commissions; the greens and blues are just like… well, greens and blues

Floating Tangents
A few ideas I’ve had in my notes / outline;

• An “Upvote” system where players visit a guild hall and sign a guestbook has been suggested a few times already. Adapting that concept here, more visitors = more prestige. I was trying to think of a way to have randomized ‘tours’ where players would volunteer to take a tour of a set number of halls and pick their favorite. I like the idea of going from Guild Hall to Guild hall trick-or-treating (as Nike.2631 suggested) or having a “Pub Crawl” where players sign up and then partake in something like a big drunken footrace between guild halls. I’ll work on this idea as getting folks to visit your hall is going to be essential to the experience.

• I have not covered how Prestige affects the “Common Area” that the guild neighborhoods share; I’m thinking that certain rewards are unlocked at certain thresholds (i.e. “8000 Prestige – The guilds vote between different upgrades like hedgerows, cobblestone roads, etc.”). I’ll continue to work on this as well, suggestions are always welcome.

• One of the ways in which guilds could gain additional Prestige beyond the value of their furnishings is throwing social events via Commissions. For example, putting out a bunch of tables with stat-boosting food (guildies donate a variety of food items) would give you bonus Prestige. Building a jumping puzzle (again, as Nike.2631 suggested) or throwing a concert (A mini-game similar to Choir Bells?) are ideas that came up as well. The idea is to make your guild hall the happening place to be via Commissions, and the more random folks wander in and partake of your festivities. The trick, of course, is how to get them in, but… that’s another post when I have the time.

Thanks for reading, looking forward to any feedback you guys may have. Feel free to ask if something isn’t explained clearly, chances are I didn’t mean the worst case scenario you think I did, it’s just that I’m limited by the 5001 character limit.

My god, I really really loved this!
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/169819/Example1.jpg

Now if we could actually /sit on a chair it would be awesome

Xaton.1902:

then can add in new crafting professions like archetiecture and carpentry to build the decorations AND map pieces to craft like halo reaches map builder thing. you have set amount of room to build freely in and can expand it to max as guild grows. even have basic gardens that can farm stuff like sacrifice one item like food omnom berry for chance of higher yield after say 24 hours or something.

You know what? that is a very good idea/point. It shows that just by adding one feature, it could expand to create new things. Nice job.

For those who are concerned that their personal achievements aren’t celebrated in a guild hall or that that they don’t want to be subject to the choices of a single guild leader, I have to say “A guild, being an organization of many people, lead by a small sampling of those people, is meant to be a team, not a representation of any single team member.” If you feel that your personal achievements are more important than those of your guild as a whole or you don’t want to follow your guild’s leadership, you should leave that guild. It may even be the case that being part of any guild is not really your thing and that’s okay too.

Guild halls should bring people together. They can’t do that by providing monuments to individualism. They do it by offering and promoting group achievements. Guild leaders do impose their own points of view, because sharing vision towards a common goal is what leaders do. If you don’t want to opt into that dynamic, it is easy enough to opt out.

CureForLiving.5360:

Raap.9065:

snip

I suggested something similar to that many pages ago, didn’t get too much traction since everyone was still focused on exclusive-or-ing the conversation.

NeedMoreDinosaur.4250:

This is treading closer to the territory of GvG which is a future CDI. Lets try steering this conversation back towards the desired topics.

Given that the one kinda leads to or requires the other I don’t think we can so cleanly separate them.

My thoughts as well, guild halls/claims, particularly open world ones, are easily connected to GvG, making the discussion perfectly fit for this thread providing the discussion doesn’t go into the details of how such a match would play, etc.

Not realising this now, would be a wasted opportunity for the future, so give the idea of having both instanced guild halls and limited open world guild ‘claims’ some thought before dismissing it for whatever reason.

no idea if this was bought up yet.
Testing dummies. I’m bored of having to test in the heart of the mists, where there is so many people competing for a spot on a dummy.

Also, ability to hotswap gear as in heart of the mists, for testing. Perhaps an option to toggle?

even in PvE it is often to fast paced, and to many variables for one to get comparisons of builds/gear/rotations etc.
Or mobs die to fast, and one cant mindlessly bash while watching combat log vs a champ (unless full nomads or something, but this kinda defeats the purpose).

Artemis Thuras.8795:

no idea if this was bought up yet.
Testing dummies. I’m bored of having to test in the heart of the mists, where there is so many people competing for a spot on a dummy.

Yeah, I brought this up when I was talking about Alts as npcs for sparring. Either every player would have all his alts in his personal instance as sparring-partners or something like the top-players (in terms of sPvP achievements) would have their Alts as sparring-npcs for everyone in an open guild-area.

It’s like having a little competition amongst the sPvP players in a guild… who has more sPvP achievement-points? Reward: “look at me”

Retro.6831:

This is a follow up to my previous posts, located here and here.

-snip for space

Furnishings
Like equipment, furnishings come in tiers, from Fine to Masterwork to Rare to Exotic (or white, blue, green, yellow, orange). Better quality furniture and decor means a higher Prestige score. Furnishings purchased via Content Packs do not contribute to the hall’s Prestige, as they’re Basic quality and can be placed repeatedly without cost. They’re intended to be ‘freebie’ decoration items or objects that you would want lots of (like trees and windows). Very good for starting out or just filling a room up with neat stuff.

Items of Fine quality and above are single-use items; if you have one [Plush Chair] in your guild inventory, then you can place one [Plush Chair] in your guild hall. However, like gear, furnishings can be obtained in several different ways. A ghost in Diessa Plateau may drop a masterwork [Ascalonian Chair Piece] (collect 4 to complete a chair), while the exotic-quality [Ascalonian Throne] is a reward for running a guild group through AC without anyone being defeated (A guild “Commission”, more on those below).

Here’s a rough list of ways players might obtain non-basic furnishings;

• Completing dungeons as a guild
• Successful completion of guild missions
• Capturing and holding objectives in WvW
• Winning PVP Matches where the majority of the team are guild mates
• A special PVP Reward Track
• Completing Living Story chapters together
• Enemy drops, including world bosses
• Chests
• Produced by crafting professions
• Purchased with other currencies;
  • Dungeon Tokens
  • Commendations
  • Gold (including buying furniture from the Trading Post!)
  • Special event currencies (Holidays, etc.)

For example, if a guild group runs AC together, at the end a special pop-up would appear that allows them to pick from either an Ascalon-themed table, chair or painting (See attachment below). Remember, these are not unlocks but actual items (i.e. if you want multiple Exotic Ascalonian Chairs, you’ll need to run it repeatedly) that are placed into the guild hall’s inventory.

Alternatively, a player might spend a few Ascalonian Tears to unlock a Fine-quality Adelbern Statue for her guild. I might defeat Tequatl and unlock a trophy that can be displayed. You might ask your guild weaponsmiths to craft cool candelabras or your tailors to make carpets. You might defend a tower in World vs. World and unlock a large map of your Borderlands to display in your war room.

i really like this idea. this should be they way they implement furniture. i would add one thing though. there should be ascended and legendary furniture as well. ascended could be assembled from parts found via a large scavenger hunt/crafting excursion (see Maudrey for example). Legendary furniture would be created with lots of mats and possibly even a precursor furniture piece (might not be as rare as weapon precursors). Imagine crafting a “Gift of Chair” or something like that. Maybe throw in the precursor chair piece, the Gift of Chair, a stack of ectos, and some other random thing to make a shiny “Glow in the Dark Armchair” or something like that.

Brown Fang Thump.9482:

For those who are concerned that their personal achievements aren’t celebrated in a guild hall or that that they don’t want to be subject to the choices of a single guild leader, I have to say “A guild, being an organization of many people, lead by a small sampling of those people, is meant to be a team, not a representation of any single team member.” If you feel that your personal achievements are more important than those of your guild as a whole or you don’t want to follow your guild’s leadership, you should leave that guild. It may even be the case that being part of any guild is not really your thing and that’s okay too.

Guild halls should bring people together. They can’t do that by providing monuments to individualism. They do it by offering and promoting group achievements. Guild leaders do impose their own points of view, because sharing vision towards a common goal is what leaders do. If you don’t want to opt into that dynamic, it is easy enough to opt out.

I want to address this as a guild leader because I don’t feel your comments represent my guild in the slightest. (And also, I earlier suggested allowing guild halls to have statutes to recognize the efforts of members, so it’s relevant to my proposal.)

As a guild leader, I have a few objectives.

• Create a community in which my members feel safe, supported, and comfortable
• Give members the opportunity and ability to do the things they like in the game
• Challenge my members to grow and improve and “pay it forward” with other guild members

This also includes recognizing member achievements. It feels GREAT when a colleague takes the time to thank you for your work or congratulate you on an effort you made. This same thing works for guilds. When I see my members doing good things – learning how to command in WvW, scouting or upgrading, mentoring new members, teaching new players dungeon paths, etc – I try to take the time to thank them both privately and publicly.

This also sets an example for my guild of the kind of behavior for which we strive. If the guild leader is constantly saying “so-and-so did this, thank you, you’ve done a great job” then it can help motivate others to do the same.

To my mind, guild halls with statues/portraits/members of the week/whatever assist me in this. I can make the callouts at certain points in time or in the MotD (which is often ignored), but having gigantic statues of the player along with a note, “Scouted home BL for 6 hours, ran all the upgrades?” Even better.

All of that is to say: sometimes personal achievements improve the guild just as much as group achievements and it’s totally appropriate to recognize individuals for their efforts.

The more i think about decor and furnishings as a “progression mechanic”, the less i feel it’s as appropriate for halls. I’d much rather see something like that in personal instances.

timmyf.1490:

QUOTE EDITED FOR SPACE
This also includes recognizing member achievements. It feels GREAT when a colleague takes the time to thank you for your work or congratulate you on an effort you made. This same thing works for guilds. When I see my members doing good things – learning how to command in WvW, scouting or upgrading, mentoring new members, teaching new players dungeon paths, etc – I try to take the time to thank them both privately and publicly.

This also sets an example for my guild of the kind of behavior for which we strive. If the guild leader is constantly saying “so-and-so did this, thank you, you’ve done a great job” then it can help motivate others to do the same.
All of that is to say: sometimes personal achievements improve the guild just as much as group achievements and it’s totally appropriate to recognize individuals for their efforts.

I agree that good leaders do the sorts of things you mention, as a matter of course, to inspire and reward their followers. What I disagree with is the view that every member in a guild needs to have all of their personal achievements represented within a guild space.

When a guild leader is able to single out a member or a party and draw the entire guild’s attention to any form of exceptional or desired behavior, morale can be bolstered wonderfully. My real point is that the value of such recognition is diluted to the point of irrelevance if everything done is given this type of attention.

For example, I think it would be great for a guild leader to be able to erect a statue that publicly recognizes a member or party fostering good play through mentorship in some part of the game. What I wholeheartedly disagree with is the notion that a guild hall has an automated system that displays even the most banal and mundane personal achievements, without leader input, in the guild’s communal space. This is to say that guild hall recognition should focus on fostering the kind of ideals and play that the guild leader envisions as best for the guild as a whole, rather than simply advertising individual activity.

My opinion is also based on the fact that I don’t see a guild hall as a “city” made up of home instances; but, I see halls as portals to and from home instances, the eye of the north, major cities and specialized portions of the game such as fractals and wvw. Thus, I want guild leaders to be able to select and customize “player of the month/day/week/et cetera” features within the guild’s hall. I don’t want any automated system cluttering a leader’s message with things like “player X bought a legendary” or “player Y has completed daily achievements N times.” Those latter types of displays belong in a player’s home instance, not in a guild hall’s communal space. If guild halls encompass a new form of home instance for members, there should always be a clear delineation between communal and personal player space that allows leaders to recognize members in a way that helps guide member participation.

Guild halls should be places where guild leaders share their vision for the guild with members, in a constant dialogue. They should provide access to member home instances so that players can share their experiences together; but, they shouldn’t be dump sites where every individual action taken by members is collected and displayed. They are not echo chambers for braggadocio. They are curated galleries of services and activities that enhance group dynamics and player experiences.

Hey- this is not a set what would be ideal, this is just what i personally think would be cool. I hope maybe some of those ideas sound appealing?

1- Size
Have small, medium and big guild halls- (Small for type 20, medium for 100 and big for 300+)
2- Building a guild hall
Recipe:
Recipes are bought in arcitecture lv.7 (comes longer down)
Materials:
5000 of each basic matirial but orichalcum and ancient wood- you only need 250 of those.

Medium hall would increase cost by 50% and double of that on biggest.

3- Architecture lvl.7
- ?0000 influence to unlock teleport to g-hall button on guild panel?
- ?0000 influence to unlock recipes for small guild halls, ?0000 for medium, and ?00000 for big
-13000 pr portal to places like one’s borderlands, LA, EB, your racial city and home instance.
- Crafting stations, all standard merchants (Laurel, guild, weapon, craft and so on) can he bought for 9000 each?
4. design
- it’s not logical to assume you have the resources to sit down and design this furniture stuff people are proposing, it’s a little much atm. Although you could offer a few layouts for choices (Outside area and building)

munkiman.3068:

The more i think about decor and furnishings as a “progression mechanic”, the less i feel it’s as appropriate for halls. I’d much rather see something like that in personal instances.

Many of the ideas here including mine are probably at least somewhat co-opted from personal housing ideas. Unless they know personal housing is also coming people are going to try and get some of the recognition into guildhalls instead.

That said there’s not a lot of progression methods to choose from and you’re bound to upset one group or another. Furnishings/skins are the tried and true method.

If you make size the progression: I’d complain and decorating people would too.
If you make functionality the progression: small guilds will complain.
If you make location the progression: people who like one particular one will complain.
If you make NPC population the progression: most people won’t try.

munkiman.3068:

The more i think about decor and furnishings as a “progression mechanic”, the less i feel it’s as appropriate for halls. I’d much rather see something like that in personal instances.

I think it can be fun and interesting while it indeed would have a higher focus in personal homing then in guild-halls.

So I would add it (I like to have chairs in a guild-hall and some nice other stuff) but focus even more on other things. To me the guild-hall itself should be the progressing. Unlocking things for the guild-hall so you can build a different guild-hall or and functions like portals and so on. Decoration however can be a big part of it because it is also what gives a look to a guild-hall so to that extent furnishings do matter as thats part of the decoration.

I already said this, but how would players feel if GH were racial themed, and guild improvements/siege/effects were also racial based, lets say guild A would be norn/kodan themed and its effects, this would also affect WvW, would this had more strategy to guild and wvw gameplay?

Trying to make a system where guilds are not just a “copy pasta” and have different tech.

Aeolus.3615:

I already said this, but how would players feel if GH were racial themed, and guild improvements/siege/effects were also racial based, lets say guild A would be norn/kodan themed and its effects, this would also affect WvW, would this had more strategy to guild and wvw gameplay?

Trying to make a system where guilds are not just a “copy pasta” and have different tech.

I like the idea of themed GH. It would be cool if for example your GH is Norn/Kodan themed once you claim a keep/tower/camp it also becomes themed liked the GH (Norn/Kodan) .

Zoso.8279:

Aeolus.3615:

I already said this, but how would players feel if GH were racial themed, and guild improvements/siege/effects were also racial based, lets say guild A would be norn/kodan themed and its effects, this would also affect WvW, would this had more strategy to guild and wvw gameplay?

Trying to make a system where guilds are not just a “copy pasta” and have different tech.

I like the idea of themed GH. It would be cool if for example your GH is Norn/Kodan themed once you claim a keep/tower/camp it also becomes themed liked the GH (Norn/Kodan) .

You could reskin siege, so the themes transcend the guild hall too.

@Brown Fang, thanks for clarifying. I believe we’re exactly on the same page. Guild Leaders should be able to recognize individual members, but automated achievement boards shouldn’t be for trivial things.

Examples that might be cool:

• Statue for player who most recently account-bound a Legendary weapon
• Statue for player who entered Top 100 rank on PvP Leaderboard
• Statue for player who in past week finished 100% map completion

That sort of thing could be an interesting way to automate the system.

Regarding racial themes: these are cool ideas, but there should definitely be lots of non-racially themed options. Given that most of my guild play toons of all races, I wouldn’t want to be too heavy-handed with norn or asura-themed stuff. A Pact option would be an interesting alternative/addition.

Brown Fang Thump.9482:

For those who are concerned that their personal achievements aren’t celebrated in a guild hall or that that they don’t want to be subject to the choices of a single guild leader, I have to say “A guild, being an organization of many people, lead by a small sampling of those people, is meant to be a team, not a representation of any single team member.” If you feel that your personal achievements are more important than those of your guild as a whole or you don’t want to follow your guild’s leadership, you should leave that guild. It may even be the case that being part of any guild is not really your thing and that’s okay too.

Guild halls should bring people together. They can’t do that by providing monuments to individualism. They do it by offering and promoting group achievements. Guild leaders do impose their own points of view, because sharing vision towards a common goal is what leaders do. If you don’t want to opt into that dynamic, it is easy enough to opt out.

Or, you know, take a page from Nike.2631’s post and allow for “private rooms” or my suggestion would be to allow guild masters to set permissions for specific rooms so that regular members can edit some areas but not all of them.

In fact, that’s another benefit of furniture being “Guild Bound” in my earlier suggestion; you can let anybody edit the hall and not have to worry that they’re going to steal your furniture. Didn’t consider that, but… yay.

Gobble D Goop.4081:

i really like this idea. this should be they way they implement furniture. i would add one thing though. there should be ascended and legendary furniture as well. ascended could be assembled from parts found via a large scavenger hunt/crafting excursion (see Maudrey for example). Legendary furniture would be created with lots of mats and possibly even a precursor furniture piece (might not be as rare as weapon precursors). Imagine crafting a “Gift of Chair” or something like that. Maybe throw in the precursor chair piece, the Gift of Chair, a stack of ectos, and some other random thing to make a shiny “Glow in the Dark Armchair” or something like that.

Yep, furniture at a higher than exotic level was in my notes but I was already fighting the character limit and wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach it. It would need to be really cool and unique; not just a bigger statue or fancier chair but something insanely awesome. I don’t even know how they’d do it, but some kind of Legendary Statue where you drop a blank pedestal and then have your guild mates stand on it. Then when you’re ready you can activate it and it creates a statue of everyone that you can drop in your guild hall. Maybe Ascended statues would be similar, just be for single characters. /shrug

But yeah, lots of potential there, I just didn’t want to jump into it and complicate the post further. Gotta keep it simple… or die trying

I’m okay with private rooms in guild halls, but those should be designed for guild officers or certain ranks, not for individuals. Guild Halls should not be a poor man’s player housing.

timmyf.1490:

I’m okay with private rooms in guild halls, but those should be designed for guild officers or certain ranks, not for individuals. Guild Halls should not be a poor man’s player housing.

Because of the way guild halls pretty much have to work to keep them from being insane grinds and to allow smaller guilds access, private banking guilds pretty much would be player housing. I don’t think there’s any way around it because some guilds are literally two or three people. While I don’t believe guild halls should be built specifically for those tiny guilds, we also can’t fairly set arbitrary limits on how many people qualifies as a ‘guild’.

Retro.6831:

timmyf.1490:

I’m okay with private rooms in guild halls, but those should be designed for guild officers or certain ranks, not for individuals. Guild Halls should not be a poor man’s player housing.

Because of the way guild halls pretty much have to work to keep them from being insane grinds and to allow smaller guilds access, private banking guilds pretty much would be player housing. I don’t think there’s any way around it because some guilds are literally two or three people. While I don’t believe guild halls should be built specifically for those tiny guilds, we also can’t fairly set arbitrary limits on how many people qualifies as a ‘guild’.

Yeah, understood. That was more addressed at ideas like “this guild hall should have a bunch of little rooms that players can claim as their own and then customize…”

I think having one private area in each hall with a corresponding rank needed to enter is a good thing. But it should just be one room.

Retro.6831:

timmyf.1490:

I’m okay with private rooms in guild halls, but those should be designed for guild officers or certain ranks, not for individuals. Guild Halls should not be a poor man’s player housing.

Because of the way guild halls pretty much have to work to keep them from being insane grinds and to allow smaller guilds access, private banking guilds pretty much would be player housing. I don’t think there’s any way around it because some guilds are literally two or three people. While I don’t believe guild halls should be built specifically for those tiny guilds, we also can’t fairly set arbitrary limits on how many people qualifies as a ‘guild’.

Giving guild leaders full latitude with customization options while allowing them to assign proxies who can also edit the hall at different levels is important. If I were leading guild hall design I would make optimal customization options for guild leaders a requirement. Part of such customization would be allowing guild leaders to define the rules for how members can congregate in specific areas of the hall: leaders only, parties doing dungeons, role players, et cetera.

Naturally, my views are based on my earlier proposal to make guild hall real estate elastic. I believe that even a guild of 1 should be able to earn a certain amount of guild hall functionality, based on how often and how well that player plays. Greater rewards and functionality should be available to guilds larger than a single player based on how active and accomplished those guilds are. I don’t believe guilds should be rewarded simply for having large rosters of members that don’t participate with the guild. Also, I don’t think guilds should be based on oligarchical ideals that limit them to luxuries afforded to players who happen to have a lot of gold or gems. Rather, if a single player takes 3 years to earn enough rewards to fill a large guild hall I see that as a reward for loyal play, not an obstruction that reduces the value of larger guilds.

I would consider private guild hall rooms to be more akin to voice chat channels: established by leaders for specific purposes to serve the greater good of the guild community. I don’t think it would be a great benefit to allow players who are not guild leaders to impulsively create private guild hall rooms that persist until the guild dissolves; but, the option should be available to leaders to empower such things (if server space and bandwidth allow).

Private Rooms

I think I am going to have to come down on the side of Not liking the idea of private rooms.

It seems to me like this idea pushes us more toward Guild Hotels/Hostels rather than Guild Halls. I know this does not have to apply to IRL but I cannot imagine very many instances where guild/club/organization or the like, allow the members go there and stay in a personal room. For the clubs that I belonged to or are familiar with, you go there for a particular purpose, participate in whatever activity you were there for and you go home.

If transportation time were an issue maybe I could see the validity of allowing overnight stays but with Way Points about a 5 minute walk from almost any point on the map, I am just not seeing the practicality of intra-guild personal housing.

As for Rank X restricted rooms, wouldn’t that be segregating the very community that we are trying to unite?

Just my 2 coppers

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

As for Rank X restricted rooms, wouldn’t that be segregating the very community that we are trying to unite?

That’s a good question. I think the idea of a rank-restricted meeting area has many real-world examples.

• Corporate Board Rooms
• Airline Clubs
• Military Central Command

I know I keep a password-protected channel on my voice server for private discussions. I can see the advantage of having an officer’s only room in the GH for sensitive discussions. Party chat can be used if you need to include 5 people or less, but right now, there’s not an easy way in-game to have a private chat with 8 people. (Or am I missing a way?)

Edit: and if there is a way, can we send all the ERP folks there?

I know people were moving away from Alliance hall areas and I’m unsure if someone suggested this, but why not take a part of the earlier discussion in? If alliances have a cap on how many guilds can be in them, say….five. Each guild has some tech or room that makes a contribution to the hall, and the sum of said contributions are used to make it. Like say, a 5x Weaponmaster guild alliance hall or a 3x Weaponmaster 2x Armorer or what have you. With each ‘tier’ from 1-5 having some attribute to it. Leave the alliance? Join a new one? That alliance base gets it. Something like that could be a solid foundation.

On the topic of Alliance Halls, or what not, Others and I had some ideas that I don’t know if they were touched on.

In my vision of Alliance Halls, should they happen:

What: Guild Halls and Alliance Halls would be separate entities. An Alliance would build up some resource (like Alliance influence or something), and purchase one of a few numbers of Airships (I have no particular thoughts about numbers, but I was thinking at least one per map, but maybe more depending. This will depend on some following factors).

Contents:These Airships would allow for some convenience factors for members of the Alliance in that map. With its own waypoint, and maybe crafting stations, guild/alliance banks, specialized vendors, etc. I’m feeling the content inside should be rather static as opposed to upgradeable, particularly if there are fixed numbers.

Outsider benefitsNow, what else these Airships would provide, is a variety of buffs that are specific to that map. These could include, but wouldn’t be limited to: Gathering buffs, magic find buffs, character stat buffs, etc. One other important portion, that Alliances (potentially with an “Alliance Representative” guild permission) could create brand new, Airship specific events, to run in the map. These could either be one-shot events, or perhaps they’ll run for an amount of time. Likewise, there could be specialized “Alliance Missions” that would act like a Tequatl or Wurm for a day. These events would be able to not only represent the Alliance to the playerbase, but also provide the playerbase with more and varied content with which to play.

Technical issues
I’m going to list some issues in no particular order:

• If there’s only one airship per map, they’ll be very desirable, but not very accessible.
• If there are many airships, the airship saturation could become a problem
• Likewise, if there are many airships per map, the event (particularly large, world events) saturation could become too high.
• Unless Airships can provide a lot of good content, the Return on Investment could be low. Creating a lot of content requires a lot of time and effort (and money). The effort vs RoI ratio might not be sufficient.

Other Thoughts

• What if Alliances could just purchase access to a single, non-claimable airship per map? If there’s a time limit, that could avoid issues with folding alliances.
• Instead of Alliance influence, Alliances could just use tons of Guild influence. Some guild influence could probably be tagged as “usable by an Alliance”, and if the Alliance folds, the influence would just never be spent.

Also, Chris Whiteside, I also got around to watching your video you linked. I never knew you had been involved with XGIII. That was a fantastic game.

Ohoni.6057:

I suppose you could have different lockouts based on the size of the hall made available, a solo guild wouldn’t need a massive castle, and could have a solo-based quest to unlock it, while a massive guild would want a massive castle, and could require an epic campaign across Tyria to unlock it, involving dozens of parties completing smaller objectives, and massive raids completing others. The important thing though would be to keep the tangible functions of each hall balanced so that those in a larger guild hall do not have access to practical features than smaller ones lack.

This.

I haven’t read the rest of the thread and and this point I give up but I was skimming through and found this post which makes perfect sense. The basic features of the guild hall should be available to even very small guilds. (Example: I belong to a 3-account guild of just family.) Having a personal space, etc.
If you want a really huge fancy castle, or so on, well that would be unreasonable to expect any group of 3 people to obtain naturally, wouldnt it? It makes plenty of sense for the large and extravagant to cost more than a few people would normally be able to get by themselves. But it shouldn’t allow any actual features that a smaller space wouldn’t be able to sustain. (edit: By which I mean features that are not available in the open world anyway. )

As far as instanced vs non instanced: I don’t think anybody wants guild halls filling every available flat surface in the world. which is pretty much what would happen with non-instanced. However, someone mentioned earlier in the thread the possibility of a location per map or some such that a guild that has some special achievement, being ‘better’ than other guilds, etc could occupy. Maybe their instanced guild hall could be duplicated, or at least externally duplicated (with a door to the instance inside), to the surrounding world. I don’t think any guild I am in would ever achieve that. But it would be cool to see, especially if it changes from time to time. Let a big awesome motivated high achiever guild go out and win something that gives them X amount of time displaying their awesome guild hall to the world in general. I wouldn’t mind just seeing what they come up with.

I wanted to add that most of the ‘building blocks’ or ‘models’ or whatever you name it (the stuff that you unlock the blue-prints for) is the stuff that is for the most part already in the game.

Things like a nice statue of Teq could be added and a nice tower and so on but look around you in the game, the models the game is made out of. Light post, walls, fences, fire pits, Halloween decoration, tree’s, plants, flags, little rocks, sofas, wheelbarrows, crates, tents, barrels, buckets, tables, candles, beer, beds and so on and so on. The stuff Aned used to build up the world.

Using mainly those has multiple major benefits. Reduce of development-time, There is a huge amount of them, you could build something from in the game and every-thing stays in style with the game. For some however I think they need to add animations, like making chairs sittable what is then also useful for the game-world itself.

There are many more items that could use animations but chairs, sofas and beds would have the first priority I think. That would add some more work but if those tree would go first other animations can be added slowly. It would be awesome to be able to place and pick up beer from a table and drink it. But that might be a little to hard seeing how everything works at this moment.

All i want is access to Super Adventure Box from the guild hall…or just access to Super Adventure box from anywhere for that matter >.>

Proposal Overview

Guild Halls will be a location where guild members can do a training against NPC , and a GvG against other guilds. Also all the Normal things , market place , merchant .. and they can customize the place adding little funny games for guild members (Moa or dolyack race !)

Goal of Proposal
Nowadays, you can t do nothing structured against other guild. You can t, whith your guild, try new combo to improve your dps against NPC like in PvP. You can t do a duel with your team mate for training.

Proposal Functionality
Guild halls will be a closed world where people can fight each other or against npc. When they want to fight a search button will find a guild with the same number of people to fight. Maybe the guild will have to defend a sort of castle against other guild. Like in WvW , but with a little scale. Each time the guild will defend or attack and will be a succes they will earn points to improve the castle. They can also do a deathmatch

Associated Risks
You have to love fighting in your Guild Halls against others , Guild members who don t love fighting maybe will not find an interest. That s why i think we have to offer little funny games just for guild member

I am really really sorry , i am not an english speaker , so i tried to do my best.

Although I understand that many players here are very enthusiastic about guild halls as being arenas for GvG play, I think it would be better if guilds were given more choice than that. When playing GW1 I was always disappointed that once the guild hall was chosen it became the one and only home map a guild could play on (until a new map was chosen to replace it). I really would hate to see this kind of arbitrary limitation imposed in GW2.

I think the guild hall instance should be separate from the roster of GvG maps that the guild prefers to play on. This, obviously, would require Arenanet to produce more than a small number of GvG maps. I’d suggest 20-30 maps of various sizes, from dueling compatible small maps to vehicle compatible large maps, akin to the initial roll out in old shooters like Unreal Tournament 3. This would allow each guild to select 3-7 preferred GvG maps into a play roster. Each guild’s roster could be combined with an opposition guild’s roster to complete a map list for competition. This would give guilds a chance to master a set of maps while also affording enough variety to keep players interested and challenged. It would also help to avoid the greatest failing of GW2 spvp: lack of map variety.

The idea that the guild hall map would be used as a battleground may seem great, until you’ve played in that single arena for a month and the monotony of it sets in. Even in GW1, I believe the actual match arena was a separate instance from the communal meeting place instance, to allow guild members to congregate before, during and after each match. So, expanding the potential of that separate instance from a single map to a roster of many guild favored maps should only enhance the play experience.

As a bonus, the metrics collected from favored maps would give Arenanet a great sense of what kinds of mechanics pvp gamers in general and gvg players in specific enjoy.

To this end, I’d launch guild halls completely separately from GvG play so that competition could be done right. I’d introduce GvG maps is sets of 5 over a period of time to allow tuning as maps were released. Then I’d address alliances only after I’d gathered sufficient data about guild hall and GvG activity.

I also suggest not tying GvG to guild halls, or at least not making the main purpose of a hall to host GvG. There are plenty of players with zero interest in PvP who still would adore a lovely hall to call home for their guild. Certainly a guild that wants to face off other guilds and fight them for honor, for glory, for blinged out furniture, whatever, certainly they should have that option. However, the guild hall system overall should not be predicated on such things or you’ll have a large part of the playerbase just not bothering.

Have you guys started to work on the halls? Is the design made but you are lacking the features? If we had something to work on from we could help so much more: just a concept art, anything.

Xillllix.3485:

Have you guys started to work on the halls? Is the design made but you are lacking the features? If we had something to work on from we could help so much more: just a concept art, anything.

Anet’s policy is never to discuss about something currently in development that is not in the final stages before release.

So no they haven’t started to work on this yet. It is just a brain storm and nothing suggested here is guaranteed to be implemented.

However you are free to post your concept arts here. I could use more eye candies.