Guild Wars 2

I won’t go through all the details, I will let others who are more passionate on the subject do that. I would like to mention this though:

When designing guild halls, don’t just make a place guild members hang out. Make them GvG maps, as in GW1. Even if initially there is no GvG, at least think ahead for GvG when designing them.

Proposal Overview:

The mist a new frontier: the major problem I have seen in guildhalls for this particular game is the lack of land to place this type of infrastructure, the realm of the Mist would make a perfect home for Guildhalls.

Proposal Functionality:

The idea of this proposal involves an already in game concept, the lore and mechanics that revolve around the realm of the mist. How I would think this concept would work is that a guild would buy property (floating islands) in the mist and collect resources to build Assets like a Guildhall, Barrack or pub in the local marketplace. A guild can buy and combine more than one island and connect them through bridges kind of like the Edge of the Mists. Also another thing I would like to see in this concept is to be able to choose the biome of the island a guild can buy.

Associated Risks:

The problem I see is the currency that would be needed to buy islands and the assets to build the infrastructures. Would we use gold and crafting resources or would we use tokens like in dungeon that you would obtain through guild events?

It would be nice to be able to hop in and out of guild halls to use merchants, banks, crafting, trading post, etc. I currently use my home borderland in WvW for that, but there are the obvious problems of occasional queues, having no guild bank sometimes, and having downtime during reset.

Having some sort of way for dedicated guild members to leave their mark in the guild hall would be cool too.

Just to throw a suggestion out, Let us customize them to what the guild likes to do, or have decoration packs to buy with GOLD. If you run dungeons, have something to show that that guild runs dungeons, same for WvW and such.

Also would be nice to have different floor-plans for each size of guild hall, which you can buy bigger halls as your guild grows.

And yes, like GOSU said, try to make sure you think ahead for GvG if you intend to implement that some day.

Been saving up for this one!

Title: Guild Halls – If you thought my last ones were long, heh. Sit back, relax and kick your shoes off, cause there is No, tl;dr.
Proposal Overview: Guild Hall Construction and Implementation
Goal of Proposal: To allow for a meeting place for like-minded individuals. Filled with fantastical wonders both great and small. A place to spur the imagination in whimsical delight, touching the very soul of all who enter. A bastion of hope and embodiment of dreams. Where even the 6 gods would envy to tread…
Proposal Functionality: As stated in the previous CDI Guilds thread, it could be part of the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch or be part of an instanced map like GW1.

This post has 3 parts
Part 1
The Guild District:
I initially thought that the Guild District should be located in Lion’s Arch (see previously posted example titled Guild changes in Lions’s Arch). However, with the implementation of the mega-server, either the inability to keep guilds together on the same map would have to be solved or population per map would have to be drastically increased; if not, the stress on the frame rate might overtax poor LA. So maybe the Guild District in its entirety should be an instanced area of LA(most favored idea). Or maybe each guild specifically has an instance somewhat like one’s home instance in Divinity’s Reach or good ole GW1. This would hopefully alleviate that problem.

So why LA? Well with Scarlett’s destruction of the city, it is now a perfect clean slate with which to build. The only thing which would be more flexible would be to claim a new bit of map space in open world or yet to be introduced area. But since ANet originally made LA the hub of Tyria, putting the guilds there would bring LA back as the center of the known world.

• District Assets: Strewn out over the entire Guild District area(all guilds in one instance) would be permanent guild related Assets that might attract guilds to build near that particular location (to spread out the “good spots”) For Example:
  Proximity to Asuran portals, Guild resource nodes, Cliff top vistas, Instance exit portals, the Guild Marketplace, Way Points, Cheaper real estate prices and so on.
• The Guild Marketplace: Central hub of the Guild District. This would be a central meeting area for congregation outside of the guilds proper for intra-guild, inter-guild members and non-guild members of the community. I kind of think of it as a sort of huge Bazaar. All kind of nontraditional vendors coming and going (here today, maybe gone tomorrow, maybe not?). Guild recruiting could be done here but it could not go to general chat, because of the spam factor would be overwhelming. Mystic Forge, Shops, Pubs, Hawkers, Performers, Bards, Criers, Beggars, NPCs… It would be a RPGer’s paradise.
• Communities: Then branching off the Marketplace, the Guild District could be further broken up into Communities depending on what the guild sees itself as being best known for(PvP, WvW, Crafting, Dungeons, PvE Open World, Guild of All Trades, etc). These Districts could also be instanced if need be.
• Neighborhoods: Next it could further be broken into Neighborhoods if you wanted to refine the groupings even more.

Real Estate: Mechanics consideration
The guild would then need to pick a street and a plot of land on which to build their Guild Hall.

• Real-estate pricing would need to be set prior to anyone claiming any land since the huge guilds with the most resources, would naturally monopolize much of the desired locations leaving the smaller guilds pushed to the outskirts. Maybe make some advantage to spreading out, possibly a higher value for being closer to a certain resource.
• Malls could be set up for small guilds to share space, for example: Let’s say that a large guild would take up an acre of land but you have a Mall prebuilt on the acre and 50 small guilds could take up the same space.
• As there is going to be a crazy rush when this is first made available, you will need to come up with some variables to who can build what, where and when. All guilds will need to start from equal footing to make it fair for everyone. So some ‘gates’ will need to be established that cannot be circumvented with preexisting gold, influence, merits, etc.
• No guilds can be built in the first two weeks so that everyone can go into the District and survey where they would like to build and to allow other guild members to agree on a location.

continued…

Part 2
Land Development: The Guild Plot

Perspective Locations: Once the guild district is opened, there is a 2 week time frame before any plot is reserved, where Guild members can place Perspective Build Location Markers at a cost of 1 silver per marker. These markers would only be viewable by members of the guild who placed the marker. This will allow all guild members some time to check out perspective locations and advise their officers.

Guild Hall Footprint Template: Since Hall location plot size will be determined by the number of guild members, an on the ground footprint outline template will be needed so that each member can see if the location that they propose as a future building site is of sufficient size to allow construction.

Finding a Home: Once the initial 2 weeks has expired, a guild officer can purchase 10 Guild Plot Banners numbered 1st through 10th for a small non-refundable fee, say 1gp. The officers could then place banners in any 10 locations of decreasing desired location priority that would denote interest in that particular plot for building. This desired location phase would last only for a short period of time, say up to 7 days. Expressing interest in the plot would erect a Guild Banner “Future location of the XxYyZz Guild” with guild tag and their Herald Icon. Only guild members would be able to see the banner priority rank 1-10, all others would just see a guild had interest. Moving a banner would cost nothing. Banner placement would come with a server side time stamp not viewable by any players(to determine time of claim).
Sometime while the location is on reserve the Guild would then buy a Deed which will come to maturity when the waiting period has expired. Once the deed matures the guild can start building.

Contested Plots: What happens if more than one guild wants the same plot? Oooo this is a tough one! First come first serve, highest bidder/open auction, highest bidder/blind auction, fight to the death, random lottery. None are of particular liking to me; I guess random lottery would be the lesser of evils. But dang it the RNG absolutely hates me, maybe I will let my Officer do it.

But what if a guild doesn’t get their first choice?

Ah so here is where the Prioritized Banners come into play. When selection time is opened all first choices are resolved uncontested plots are granted then all second choices are resolved, and so on…

Ok so what if at the end of the 10th choice you don’t get any deeds granted?

Umm, your guild gets the title Worst Luck Ever maybe. I am sure it will happen considering the sheer number of guilds involved. Sorry no answer comes to mind.

Deed Pricing: Pricing to purchase the Guild Deed would need to depend on Plot location, Plot size, closeness to resources, view, etc. Being way out in the boonies might be very cheap to buy but the same spot next to a spectacular view, much more expensive. Being next to a Way Point or Mystic Forge would be more expensive than one down a side alley. This would help to spread everyone out more.

Problematic speculation: Since we have not an inkling as to how many guilds exist of various sizes or how many would even be interested in building a hall in the first place, the speculative extrapolation on whether this suggestion is even remotely feasible when considering the amount of map space involved is problematic at best.

continued…

Part 3
The Physical Guild Hall Structure:

Time Gating Required: Yes my friends, construction takes time. Now I know this will drive the “Race to 80” players bat guano crazy but to have buildings just pop up overnight ready and raring to go just doesn’t sit well with me. Acquisition of funding, availability of materials, labor availability, number of members contributing resources etc. could all be factored into time to completion.

Currency to be used for building? I am struggling with this one.

1. Gold has the disadvantage of catering to more farming and there is enough of that being rewarded already.
2. Influence makes a little more sense as it has some tie in to dedication to the guild, but influence can be purchased with gold, which then taints it somewhat.
3. Merits are a big NO, as that system already penalizes the smaller guilds.
4. Guild Credits are a proposed new guild-wide currency that could be accumulated thru guild representation (your guild is repped that day by anyone, 1credit), world event representation (your guild is repped by anyone that day during a world event, 1 credit up to 5 max), etc. This way there is no advantage to being big or small as long as someone reps the guild regularly.

Building Materials: What is the structure going to be made of? And now that I think about it, with the following option, there really is no need to charge for building a Guild Hall as it could be entirely covered by the system below.

• The cost for building a guild hall equals cost of materials. So let’s say a small guild wants to build a basic Hall out of green wood with iron fasteners and paint it with carrot colored paint. Well those are all starter area harvesting nodes and thus would be very inexpensive to build. If it costs a stack of green wood, 10 iron ingots and 2 stacks of carrots to build the structure, as soon as the members come up with the materials, that part is built.
• Now let’s say a large guild wants to build an opulent Hall out of Orichalcum overlay Ancient wood structure with darksteel fasteners and Omnomberry paint, well that will be ridiculously more expensive. It is kind of a materials/gold sink (quit licking you lips ANet)

Hall Size: Bigger is not always better

• The roster size of the Guild should predetermine the size of the Guild Hall itself. A three person guild should not have the same size structure as a five hundred person guild. Only certain size halls can be built on a certain amount of land. So, a 500 person guild could not build a huge guild structure on a 5 person plot of land. The smaller the guild the smaller the hall so a 3 person guild would have a small one story, one room building where as a 500 person guild would have 5 story(1 floor/100 members) and many rooms.
• Building a Guild Hall should Not be available to Personal and Paired (1&2 person) guilds.
  Ohhh Yalora, you sure gonna pay for this one!
  I belong to a Personal, a Paired and a multi-person guild but I think that one and two person guilds should not be able to build a Guild Hall. I expect this to be an unpopular consideration by some but logistically, realistically and to facilitate game mechanics; I think the restriction is required.
• What if a Guild outgrows its current structure. Then they could find a new location, buy the Deed, pay a moving fee, pay an upgrade fee (gives you a basic hall for that particular size, further upgrades in materials would be possible) and everything they already achieved would be transferred to the new location. If a guild roster shrinks below the allotted size for that particular plot of land then the guild will be evicted, their previous costs refunded(less security deposit) and they can move to a smaller plot or put the Hall status in stasis, to be moved/built later.
• No matter what happens, the accomplishments of the guild must always be retained, regardless of what its size is, for as long as the guild (not the Hall) exists.

The Mechanics of Building the Guild Hall: How best to build a guild hall so that guilds of all sizes can access them?

Our guild’s expectation at launch was that they were going to embed the Guild Halls somewhere in the Architecture tree. Though since guilds might be due to be revamped, maybe a new branch ‘Guild Hall’ should be added to the structure.

Whatever is decided, and I cannot stress this enough…*PLEASE*, unless you completely overhaul the Merit system so as to include the little guys, keep Merits out of the equation. Segmenting the guild community into Small/Medium vs. Large guilds would further fracture the already divided guild community into the Merit haves and have nots.

Associated Risks:
I imbedded a lot of the possible negative opportunities of this proposal in its body. The biggest I see as, how do you make it fair for all guilds from a size, cost and plot location perspective?

I’ll take a shot here, why the heck not. Time for “Bad Idea #1”

Proposal: Individualized Guild Hall Building

Proposal Overview
Allow the players in a guild to donate specific resources to alter parts of a guild hall model, or to add specific furnishings. Furthermore, let it be possible to ‘personalize’ each guild hall so guilds can potentially have their own hall which is unlike others.

Goal of Proposal
To attempt to add a bit of flavor to the guild halls rather than let them remain simple, cookie-cutter experiences.

Proposal Functionality
Add in a panel to the Guild menu to show the status of the hall and allow access from anywhere (as long as not in combat), as well as to view “rennovation projects”. When a guild hall is purchased, an NPC architect can be spawned by anyone with the proper permissions set by the Guild Leader. Here, the rennovation projects can be queued up, but rather than being timed they are open for guild members to contribute to. Each rennovation project alters part of the guild hall by using crafting materials or other items.

For instance, the guild leader can begin a rennovation to “replace wood” from a default appearance to one determined by the type of wood donated. Each tier of wood would have its own appearance, and the more wood gets donated, the more the effect is on the remodeling. If a small amount of wood is donated, then the appearance of wooden items changes slightly to show the different wood was put to use. If a large amount is donated, then accents are visible around the guildhall like support beams exchanged for pillars, or wood floors change patterns and color.

For lesser rennovation projects, let it be possible to collect trophies from exploration or killing Champions. The guild leader can see a list and the requirements for the trophy to be developed, and can pick one of them out to display. The guild members can find a list of required events to complete, or targets to hunt down in order to fuel progress towards the trophy. Once it is done, the trophy is displayed and work may begin on another one.

Associated Risks
If the requirements are set too high for the materials to rennovate, it could be punitive towards guilds who don’t want to “farm” nodes for the required materials, or for guilds with members intensely interested in crafting. This could, as well, cause spikes of certain materials in the Trading Post if it is decided one particular look is desired above others. Furthermore, the “trophy” system might drive players to congregate at easily completed events rather than spread out and complete a more varied selection – there could be a backlash if it was forced they complete a list, rather than progress.

Just want to throw some ideas out there. Too lazy to write essays over them, but I will be reading the ones other people write!

-A button on the guild tab that says “Go to Guild Hall” when you are out in the world and “Leave Guild Hall” when you are in it. Works well for WvW and PvP.

-Guild Hall instance should be in the main world map so we can all go straight to our destination after meeting up.

-WvW portals like the ones near Fort Mariner wp so we can use our halls as a meeting place before WvW reset.

-A few pre-made guild hall maps with different themes we can select. Tbh, I don’t think guild halls will be implemented if people need it to be very customizable with furniture and the such. Let’s keep it simple to start with. More customization options can come at a later time.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

…

I disagree with making guilds occupy parts of the same district. That would cause so many problems of guilds arguing over who gets what space. Larger guilds would argue that they deserve the best spots. Smaller guilds would argue that all guilds should have equal rights. Almost every guild would probably want the same spot, and only one could have it, leaving almost everyone in the game to be disappointed. There would be a limited amount of space, yet theoretically unlimited guilds. It would just be a huge mess.

Each guild should be able to have their own little place that they can customize and manage however they like, without other guilds being able to ruin that for them.

Arcadio.6875:

-A button on the guild tab that says “Go to Guild Hall” when you are out in the world and “Leave Guild Hall” when you are in it. Works well for WvW and PvP.

That’s exactly how it worked in GW1, and it was great. I agree that that would be the optimal implementation for GW2.

Proposal Overview:
Guild Fortresses (combo of GvG and Guild Halls – I know you said there’ll be a separate GvG CDI, but this concept doesn’t make sense without it)

Goal of Proposal:
To provide in depth and semi-customizable features for both Guild Halls and Guild vs Guild combat in a modular format to allow for expansion and iteration.

Proposal Functionality:
Instead of simply guild halls, allow guilds to build their own fortresses. These fortresses could be used for guild vs guild battles. GuildA challenges GuildB to a battle. Both of their fortresses are put in an instance some distance apart, and battle commences using some set of victory conditions, such as capturing the opposing guild fortress, killing their lord, et cetera. Or GuildA could defend their fortress while GuildB attacks from a camp or spawn point and vice versa. Should have customizable number of players allowed on each side.

The fortresses could be customizable with multiple configurations of walls and gates, siege weapons, and traps. Guild halls could be part of the fortress and contain much of the functionality other posts in this thread will undoubtably request. After it is built, it could be reconfigurable, so that changing meta or future features don’t lock a guild into a single configuration.

Not everything needs to be one guild against another. When a guild has a fortress, they could have PvE type missions such as tower defense type play against waves of enemies (e.g. “Save Our Supplies” just with walls).

There are a huge number of possibilities to expand on the concept, and I’m sure other players can add things I’d never think of. This is more of a framework around which ideas can be added on.

Potential Risks:
This proposal is a major feature piece that touches many systems. It could require a lot of development time and resources. My hope is that bringing it up here could provide more of a long term roadmap, and that development of GvG and Guild Halls could be built with proper hooks for this system and individual features added in regular intervals.

Intro
My proposal is based on using the guild hall as a functional space in addition to creating gameplay from it and allowing group and individual showing off/bragging rights. For a Tl/Dr of the main system read Interior Design.

To create an aspect of the game based purely off gameplay with no external influence. I would like a conscious decision to be taken to not implement guild halls at release or after with any aspect that involves the use of Gems and only partially using Gold.

And apologies in advance for the messiness getting all the ideas out in one go.

Proposed Design:

Proposed Functionalities:

Potential Issues

Not sure what boundaries we have, guessing that development on halls is already started some suggestions might be useless but nonetheless less here is what I would like to see.

Proposal Overview
Building your own Guild Hall what would be more like a Guild Castle in an open world map. (maybe (also) in a WvW like map) and letting you unlock ‘building blocks’ with other guild activities.

Goal of Proposal
Giving a guild more to work towards and making guild-halls more specific to a guild in stead of just being some instance you can go to.

Proposal Functionality
First you would unlock some basic guild-hall (like the lords room in a WvW castle), you do that with influence and should be accessible also for smaller guilds. This gives you all the basic abilities.

But after that you can also start playing with your guild for building blocks (not buying it in a cash-shop and it should also be more fun as just influence unlocks).
Maybe some can be unlocked by doing a dungeon or they can drop during guild-missions and that sort of things.
While I would love to see this as detailed as small voxels more realistic for the way GW2 works would be bigger parts. If you would go to WvW but also some of the buildings in PvE you can see how there are many of the same ‘blocks’ that make up a building. For example the gate,s the wall’s that can be destroyed, the cannon, the parts linking walls, the part with the stairs inside and so on.

It are all predefined building blocks. Add some more of them and let guild play for blueprints of those building blocks.

Then let them place those building blocks like they want it and so create there own guild castle. Next to those builds you might also unlock the ability for mini-games and letting you set up a rush in your castle and so on.

Guessing you need supplies there might be like a guild building bank where members can donate mats that are (and can only be) used for the building process.

This would be nice in PvE but could even work in some WvW like maps where it then gives a real reason to defend your castle.

Associated Risks
Likely not something smaller guilds can do much with and it does have some complexity.

Mega-server is a problem here but it’s a problem for guilds in general. If you make special maps for guild-halls those maps would likely have to server-based. But then you still have the problem of guild-members that are on different servers.

Welcome back Chris. Glad to see you.

Was just discussing with friends at dinner table about how we were missing your presence in the forums. Just telling them you are back

All of them sending you and every1 at ANet their best regards Hope everything is doing alright.

We have been talking about this subject for some time now, and we have something in a raw form to present. Ill post it l8r on, after coffee and whisky is served

Proposal Overview
Guild Hall entrances should be in existing zones and/or off of the edge of existing zones.

Goal of Proposal
Guild Halls should be integrated into the existing world. This will get players into existing zones and make every Guild Hall have a very real “place” in the world and fit into the aesthetic/design of the place in which it is situated. Players will continue to go to all zones this way.

Existing art assets can be incorporated, making it easy to select items/textures that fit the Guild Hall.

Proposal Functionality
At one spot in each non-city zone there should be a “guild hall entrance” zone line. Any guild can have their hall at any one of these entrance locations. Zoning in takes you in to an instance much like a Guild Wars 1 Guild Hall.

Players can use a token of some kind and redeem it at an NPC standing near that zone line. Possible NPC dialogues:
Q: “Would you like to set this location as your guild’s Guild Hall?”
A1: “Let me take a tour first.” (takes player into the instance to check it out)
A2: “Yes, please make this location my guild’s Guild Hall” (consumes 1 token, indicated at the option).
A3: “No thank you.” (X)

The token should be able to be purchased by all guilds. Merits favor larger guilds but exclude smaller ones. It seems like a lot of revenue could be produced by gem sale of the tokens.

An initial batch of Guild Halls can be rolled out, one for each region (Ascalon, Kryta, Maguuma, Shiverpeaks, Orr[optional]), and more can be added as time/development resources permit. The system is entirely modular and upgradeable from a design standpoint.

Suggest that initial batch is rolled out in the mid-level zone in each region. Goal is to eventually have one off of each zone, with the Guild Hall instance reflecting the unique style of its adjacent zone.

As for function of the Guild Hall, it is assumed that it will have unlockable merchants and other NPCs (gold sink) and will be a staging area for some kind of GvG (and will otherwise function as Guild Wars 1 Guild Halls did as well).

Associated Risks
I guess if one guild hall design becomes “meta” in some way for GvG it might cause lots of guilds to pick that one, which might mean that, I don’t know, Timberline Falls (or whatever the adjacent zone is) becomes the most popular zone in the game.

Also: there will need to be a new guild rank toggle for deciding who can set guild hall location – otherwise anyone with a token can move the guild to another Guild Hall location.

EDIT/tl;dr: I’m suggesting instanced Guild Halls like in Guild Wars 1, but with the doorways into them being added in to existing zones. Reading back, I might explain it better in this follow-up post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Guild-Halls/page/13#post4465740

Dear Chris,

I hope all goes well with you.

Now this is going to be difficult as I know that people are really not going to like what I am about to say.

However, it is just something that I hope can be kept in the back of your minds when designing these things or approaching these topics.

Problem : I am concerned about how guild halls will section off large parts of communities. I see this fracturing people. The point of mega servers was so that when you went to a map you would see more people around. I do not know how much of an impact Guild Halls will have on this aspect of the game. I truly love going to Lions arch or any place where groups converge and seeing all the names and people around. I would hate for Guild halls to make it so that guilds could shut themselves away. As a Guild leader myself alot of recruiting occurs from being around others.

Solutions? : I am not saying don’t have guild halls, I just wish there was a way to make them more community friendly, by perhaps having the portals for them in Lions arch, not including items that people use alot (like the mystic forge) so that Guilds still go out and and mingle with everyone else.

Or consider alliance halls.. For conglomerations of guilds…

Thanks for listening.

Proposal Overview
Addition of guild halls, vendors, crafting stations, bank, and PvP Areas, Guild Wars.

Goal of Proposal
Add guild halls and other features.

Proposal Functionality
To be able to have a guild halls the guild should have a minimum of 3 people, so even small guild can have one.
To get to the Guild Halls a button should be added to the Guild Window.
The guild halls should be upgradeable, either by influence, in-game currency, or any activities that can be completed by the minimum player requirements (3 players).
The upgrades would include things like vendors, bank access (guild and personal), crafting stations, Karma Vendor.
Members should be able to form teams in order to PvP/Practice, maybe integrating Custom Arenas already existing.
There should be several different Guild Halls, similar to GW1.
The cost of creating a Guild Hall should be in in-game currency (by in-game currency excluding gems), additional guild halls “Themes” could be added as Gem Store items.
Also from the Guild Halls it should be possible to set up GvG matches.
As the name suggests, add the ability to “Declare War” to other guilds, this should be optional, to avoid harassing, a guild should be able to opt in or out of this feature.
When war is declared one guild should be able to attack the other guild Guild Halls, and neutralize vendors and stuff until the war is over (Never permanent).
For guild engaging in guild wars, there should be rewards, not sure what kind, i’ll have to think more about this.

Associated Risks
Possibility of main cities with less people, tho it didn’t seem to affect GW1 that much.
Guild Wars would need to be balanced, so a huge guild cant declare war on a smaller one. Most likely taking into consideration active members.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

…

I disagree with making guilds occupy parts of the same district. That would cause so many problems of guilds arguing over who gets what space. Larger guilds would argue that they deserve the best spots. Smaller guilds would argue that all guilds should have equal rights. Almost every guild would probably want the same spot, and only one could have it, leaving almost everyone in the game to be disappointed. There would be a limited amount of space, yet theoretically unlimited guilds. It would just be a huge mess.

Each guild should be able to have their own little place that they can customize and manage however they like, without other guilds being able to ruin that for them.

Yes, I agree the finite space issue is certainly a problem. I did try to address this by putting different guild resources all over the potential Guild District to try to spread the guilds out but it all comes down to location, location, location.

Picture if you will a map the size of Kaineng City from GW1. Guilds sprawled everywhere depending on what resources they wanted to be closest to. I come from an old D&D DM mentality where building functional cities was required for an all encapsulating game.

Ultimately it all comes down to how well ANet builds the Guild District map to make any potential plot viable.

Good to see these CDI’s continue and Guild ones are very much needed in GW2.

Guild Halls in GW1 were good and I think implementing them in a similar way would be a good idea. With merits serving as currency to buy upgrades. What we do need is some sort of a connection with wvw.

Have Gw1 like guild halls that can be used for a new gvg format similar to gw1 or for an arena team deathmatch like of current GvGs. It worked great in gw1.

Another option would be to claim one of the towers/keeps in wvw to use as a guild hall. The issue would be permanence. What if during a claim on a tower/keep , it would produce influence for the claiming guild? Same with pve? Have areas and keeps in the pve areas that can be claimed by different guilds or alliances? This would have an issue of loosing your upgrades etc. So maybe a gw1 version is easier and simpler to implement.

- Guild Halls QoL

IMO the biggest QoL change that GH would bring to GW2 would only work as such if entry points for porting to your GH would be inside capital cities and major locations like the stronghold of ebonhawke, where the constant flow of players getting in or out of GH would help fill these places.
I know that most likely people would want a button to click and port there from any area in the game map, and well its the most logical thing to have, but i would like to see some of the major areas in the game populated and ill try to squeeze this factor where i can and i got some ideas for it.
I know if GH are to be a reality, ANet will most likely design formatted spaces that resemble areas of the game map. Those areas could well be extensions of capital cities and major locations.
Here is my idea for it:

• Design implementation
  - several designed GH concepts for each one of the major cities and locations in the game. Each concept would have to be introduced inside the theme of the respective area. So if its in Div Reach make it a pub, if in the grove make it a tree, etc etc
  - the entry/exiting point of each GH would be inside that respective area, and would be interactive for every guild that chose the same theme, but where ofc each guild would have their own virtual space.
  These entry points would have to be added to the existent design of cities/location, where you can have, e.g.:
  A tavern in Div Reach would be entry point for an alike theme designed Guild Hall.
  Durmand Hall inside Div Reach would be an entry point for another theme designed GH.
  Cottage Bend another, seraphs HQ another, and so on etc etc
  Who wants a GH inside a tech pyramid in rata sum or in memorial quadrant of Black citadel? \o/ me me gief plz
  Entry points for each themed GH should be implemented in a large radius to help loss of FPS when too many players around, and to help implementation itself as it would only require to add an interactive icon/gate/etc to an already existent structure.

• Featured services
  - Centralize all major services, bank, crafting. BL trading, around a public center spot of the city, taking in account the distance of each GH entry point.
  - Only guild related services should be inside the GH, like:
  *guild vault
  *guild tier/reputation seller
  *guild Hall of Monuments
  *guild staging area/activities entry point
  etc etc following some of the great ideas i have read in this CDI.

Pros: help to increase the flow of population to major game hubs, like capital cities and other important areas.
Cons: FPS related issues when we get the WvWvW raid party stopping by for refreshments ?

• Related design
  - Add NPCS/gates/etc to a centralized hub for all GH entry pointd , where all services exists, to serve as a Q point for WvWvW, sPvP, dungeons, etc
  - Scrap Heart of the Mists current purpose, and make it a staging area for guild related activities. I feel that HotM lost its orignal purpose, and im glad it did, as it was yet another massive town population dispersion factor. It could now serve as a departure point for future guild related activities only.
  - Add guild and server related services in the central public area. This can count as:
• Guild recruitment board
• WvWvW server position, spvp top players, GvG scorecard etc etc

Defining aspect of the concept —-—
This would require a player to teleport to the city pertaining his GH theme and not undermine the purpose of this concept by simply clicking a button on the UI and gaining access to the GH.
Add free teleport points to any major area in the game map from within the Guild Hall to help diminish the factor described above.

Pros: —-—
Improve the health of the game by increasing player population in major hubs. Don’t regard this as a minor factor. Empty cities are a major factor to player base loss.
Give Guild Halls a significant approaching factor between players and game lore.
Give Guild Halls as a human significant tool towards game content. Buttons in the UI to access game content makes it so shallow. There is almost no human interaction previous to starting a given activity in GW2, except in FotM where luckily players are given a small hub before starting the mini dungeons.

Cons —-—
When the population of the game starts to grow because of these changes, ANet will have to turbo boost the hamster spinning the wheel.

Thanks to Antonio, Paulo, Rui, Daniel, Mario and Sergio for helping me with this.

TL;DR version: Guild halls are customizable, instanced, PvE zones that simultaneously act as WvW maps when queued up similar to how SPvP queueing works now. This alleviates all current and future problems of the game. I’m the greatest.

Overview
Guild halls as an all-encompassing solution to player complaints and easily met development deadlines.

Goal of Proposal
Solving the WvW problem, PvE content problem and also, the lack of immersion (due to megaserver) in one fell swoop. This can be achieved by using guild halls as a center for the games’ player base. The real beauty is that it hones development cycles to focused areas.

Proposal Functionality
PvE Solution: Under this system, when visited in PvE, guild halls are instanced zones available to any member of that guild. They can be visited by non-guild members if a guild member invites them to their group (like joining a zone now). There is a keep (of some kind), open lands, even events that fire off and ultimately, if left unchecked, mobs taking over the guild keep/structure. Further, there is an outside area/cave/structure that has difficult/high-level, scaling mobs and a boss or bosses. This area should be very difficult. It respawns once every 24 hours and of course, has great loot associated with it to encourage this as a daily spot for guild members to congregate while doing their dailies.

These guild hall zones can be varied, like halls were in GW1, for example a Shiverpeak themed zone, an Ascalonian themed zone, even a Canthan theme etc. Also, each zone would have a jumping puzzle – everything a PvE player could want. Further, you can allow guilds to purchase/unlock additional halls. This expands their content etc. You can make this very expensive/achievement based/time-gated as additional maps are unlocked. This also saves development costs by enabling each guild to eventually have all guild halls and therefore, to experience all the content created for guild halls rather than one per guild.

WvW Solution: A guild queues up, similarly to the way they do now in SPvP. Team sizes are either 25 or 50. Both guilds select which guild hall they want to use as the map fought on. One team would be selected to win the “coin flip” and their choice of hall is used. The PvE mobs and events would disappear and be replaced with supply camps, towers and other WvW significant structures. Game modes go to a given point total or the team with the highest points after 60 minutes. The enemy keep could spawn where the aforementioned high level, desirable farming mobs spawn.

WvW bonuses as they exist now, become guild wide bonuses resetting on a regular basis. These bonuses don’t have to be rewarded on a win only. As players are killed or objectives taken, they could be rewarded allowing for less successful guilds to still acquire the bonuses.

Rewards scale up as such: One “reward unit” (whatever it may be) for 25 and three “reward units” for 50. This is to give incentive to players to retain the large scale feel of WvW and also to give players a just reward for managing 50 people into a queue. It also keeps current large WvW guilds active and happy that they’re receiving rewards like PvErs do. Edge of the Mists would still exist for people wanting to participate in old school WvW.

Associated Risks
None really. The 24 hour respawn prevents guild halls from becoming an exploitable farming area. It gives guildies something to do together everyday as a guild.

WvWers ongoing complaints are addressed – they get to show that their group of players is truly the best with no “noobish” pugs or siege trolls ruining things. No population imbalances or coverage complaints. Also, no more complaints from PvErs about WvW maps requiring map complete. Further, it’s likely that WvW guilds would aggressively recruit people and train them to obtain the peviously mentioned higher rewards of 50 man combat. So, new players have a comfortable “in” to WvW.

Lastly, the megaserver isn’t harmed because the Living Story will still take place in actual zones. Resource nodes are still in the real game world as well. PvErs are overjoyed at the new content that can be quickly added and they also feel as though they have control over content because they’re choosing which map(s) to unlock/purchase. Also, Living Story enemies could launch invasions on guild halls allowing guilds to feel as though they’re a closer part of the Living Story and pulling in participation from a unique angle.

- Consider allowing the above WvW to gear up using the same way SPvP does. Allows for quick, changing metas, is easier to balance, and marries the game modes together in a logical fashion.

Proposal Overview
Guild Neighborhoods & Competitions

Goal of Proposal
One of the repeated concerns with housing systems is that they remove players from cities in favor of private, instanced areas. The goal of this proposal is to alleviate this to some degree.

Proposal Functionality
Due to the sheer number of guilds, it is impractical not to instance them. However, they do not need to be isolated from one another, nor do they all need to be instanced.

My proposal is that Guild Halls be grouped into neighborhoods where multiple guilds (4+) each have their own editable plots set around a central common area that cannot be directly modified (See first attachment). Those guilds then work together to upgrade their neighborhood, adding both aesthetic features (fountains, statues, landscaping) and gameplay features (special harvesting nodes, vendors, etc.) to the common area by popular vote / donation drives. A neighborhood of low quality would be a dimly lit area with dead grass and dirt roads, while a neighborhood with attentive residents would have lights and festive banners, musicians and entertainers, manicured gardens and elaborately paved streets.

A score is assigned to each neighborhood, based on the individual guild plots (quality and quantity of furniture, number of trophies, specialized services) and common area. Optionally, points can be awarded for successful completion of Guild Missions, WvW claims and successful dungeon / PVP matches done as a guild. Guilds would be grouped into “leagues” based on size, overall neighborhood quality, etc.

Within Lion’s Arch, several ‘blank’ neighborhoods would be placed around the city, all using the same template (See second attachment). Each week, the top-ranked neighborhood for each league is placed directly into the regular, persistent game world where all players can see it and take advantage of any amenities present (each blank neighborhood represents a different League). The portal leading into the private guild instances would be placed at the exact center of the neighborhood, creating an area where people gather to both take advantage of services present and to travel into their own neighborhood instances.

Associated Risks
- Requires the Megaserver system be abandoned inside cities or adjusted to compensate so players only encounter the neighborhood of guilds based on their home server.

- Requires some method of loading large chunks of instanced content into the persistent world (perhaps it requires a reloading of the zone to change).

- A system would need to be developed where guilds can migrate in and out of neighborhoods. For example, if an active guild is stuck in a neighborhood with several inactive ones.

Proposal Overview
Add instanced personal quarters to Guild Hall (viewing the guild hall as though it were almost like a fraternity house)

Proposal Functionality
to add an environment you are able to customize, grow, and eventually evolve based on the guild merits you earn for the guild…..these customized features would range from general architectural aesthetic to individual furniture that your character could interact with. you can invite other guild members into your “instance”….as your “room” would also include the ability to add mini-games like belcher’s bluff…..something simple like chess/checkers….or even an “SAB video game console”…all purchasable at a specific vendor in your guild hall. obviously, a copy of all earned personal nodes will be placeable by you in your room.

While all this can be divorced from the Guild Hall (and maybe should), i felt it could benefit from the existing guild merit unlocking system, and add an extra perk to being committed to a “main” guild over your others…….and i just wanted to get this out in a CDI !

Associated Risks
Home Instances in cities will be even more irrelevant and completely relegated to a few Personal Story episodes. (so what?…they are already irrelevant).
May pressure some players to choose a “main guild” when they don’t want to.

Proposal Overview
————-

Guild Halls similar to the idea of player housing. A building with services and room for guildmates to hang out, that will serve as a meeting place for guild related activities.

Goal of Proposal
——————-

Following the idea of a social game, offering guilds a place for meeting, personalized, that will strengthen their group identity and allow them to bond better with their members.

Proposal Functionality
——————-

An instance will serve its purpose. It should be in the shape of a regal building with at least two ambients, where guilds could contract services related to guild activities, like guild armorers, guild bank, a butler, etc.
It will function similar to pvp private arenas, with a password and will require a monthly payment for maintenance. It could be acquired on major cities, making your Guild Hall to be different depending on the major city it was acquired on, also the exit and entrance of this instance should be located on the specific city it was acquired on (should not be possible to guilds to have more than 1 guild hall)

If it’s possible, the butler could be customized to resemble the theme of the guild (as seen in the ps2 game .Hack//G.U. or the series related to that game, also novels), which would be a nice feature, we could be able to choose what race we want the butler to be (and have it dressed on a certain way, for example, not just a naked quaggan like in the rest of the game).
The amount of rooms or space it will have, should be upgradeable with the guild system, a small guild should be able to get a small room for their players, where a huge 200+ members guild should be able to get an instance similar to forts or towers we see on wvw.

Associated Risks
———————

Spreading out the community is a risk, but at the same time, the idea of a stronger guild based community, where players can relate to a guild identity not just thanks to an emblem or a name, but also a virtual place. If guilds are stronger, the community will also be.
Another possible risk is depopulating main cities in the game, causing it to be seen as “empty” or with not many players around. But this, in my opinion, is just a symptom and not the cause of a problem where players see the game as “dead” or with not enough players. Guilds need to recruit and do activities to stay alive, so it is unlikely that people will just stay in guild halls and not go outside. Crafting, mystic forge, karma and token vendors, to mention some, will stay on major cities, so most players won’t leave those places. It is a risk to be evaluated against the benefit of stronger guilds and the presence of a cool feature like guild halls (which the community is asking for).

Retro.6831:

Proposal Overview
Guild Neighborhoods & Competitions

Goal of Proposal
One of the repeated concerns with housing systems is that they remove players from cities in favor of private, instanced areas. The goal of this proposal is to alleviate this to some degree.

Proposal Functionality
Due to the sheer number of guilds, it is impractical not to instance them. However, they do not need to be isolated from one another, nor do they all need to be instanced.

My proposal is that Guild Halls be grouped into neighborhoods where multiple guilds (4+) each have their own editable plots set around a central common area that cannot be directly modified (See first attachment). Those guilds then work together to upgrade their neighborhood, adding both aesthetic features (fountains, statues, landscaping) and gameplay features (special harvesting nodes, vendors, etc.) to the common area by popular vote / donation drives. A neighborhood of low quality would be a dimly lit area with dead grass and dirt roads, while a neighborhood with attentive residents would have lights and festive banners, musicians and entertainers, manicured gardens and elaborately paved streets.

A score is assigned to each neighborhood, based on the individual guild plots (quality and quantity of furniture, number of trophies, specialized services) and common area. Optionally, points can be awarded for successful completion of Guild Missions, WvW claims and successful dungeon / PVP matches done as a guild. Guilds would be grouped into “leagues” based on size, overall neighborhood quality, etc.

Within Lion’s Arch, several ‘blank’ neighborhoods would be placed around the city, all using the same template (See second attachment). Each week, the top-ranked neighborhood for each league is placed directly into the regular, persistent game world where all players can see it and take advantage of any amenities present (each blank neighborhood represents a different League). The portal leading into the private guild instances would be placed at the exact center of the neighborhood, creating an area where people gather to both take advantage of services present and to travel into their own neighborhood instances.

Associated Risks
- Requires the Megaserver system be abandoned inside cities or adjusted to compensate so players only encounter the neighborhood of guilds based on their home server.

- Requires some method of loading large chunks of instanced content into the persistent world (perhaps it requires a reloading of the zone to change).

- A system would need to be developed where guilds can migrate in and out of neighborhoods. For example, if an active guild is stuck in a neighborhood with several inactive ones.

Nice idea but how do you prevent the same guilds from always ‘winning’ (also once a few guilds are up frond it get harder and harder for other guilds to beat them.. like AP’s)? And would that not be unfair to smaller guilds?

In addition to that automating a system with points might not give proper results. Maybe one guild / group of guilds should win because they have the best looking guild hall but don’t have nice fountains that give points or maybe they want dead grass because it fits better with there Halloween style neighborhood.

So I really like the idea (it would also fit with my own suggestion) I even like the competition idea but I also see a few problems with that competition. If there would be ways to solve those problems it could be really nice.

The same system as you suggest here could also be done in a WvW map giving the option for a PvE and a more PvP / WvW approach.

In my suggestion I also talked about unlocking mini games when combined with your suggestion you might be able to unlock capture the flag, a game that those 4 guilds can play together, taking the flag from each other camp.

Yes, Guild Halls and GvG would be awesome to see in GW2!!!!!

My only recommendation is make sure you implement it so that small guilds can be involved as well. Guild missions are a great example of something that small guilds can’t really do. If the guild hall requires tokens in a similar manner, small guilds are essentially shut out.

proposal overview
Constructing a guild requiring members to donate materials and/or gold for rooms, props, and services, allowing the guild to have a sense of progression.

goal of proposal
To work alongside challenges and promote teamwork to achieving a common goal.

proposal functionality
With crafting rooms, work benches, etc, into tilesets to be placed by the GM, no two guilds will look alike, as well as drawing out supplies from the trading post.

associated risks
Being removed from the guild, thus giving a sense of effort wasted.
Balancing of costs to craft building structures and time
Cities becoming ghost towns.

Arzo.8671:

My only recommendation is make sure you implement it so that small guilds can be involved as well. Guild missions are a great example of something that small guilds can’t really do. If the guild hall requires tokens in a similar manner, small guilds are essentially shut out.

You still need to make a guild work for it just the same having a one man guild hall just because you where able to pay to make a guild and pay for the influence to “buy” a guild hall realty takes out the meaning behind having a places for your guild.

Small guilds can do guild mission just not as fast now one man guilds cant do guild mission and that a good thing.

I like to see guild halls be more on the lines of pvx where you get a very basic guild hall from some guild mission and influence but you can get different looking ones by completing events with a % of your guild in that event. For both pve events and pvp/wvw events.

Having more of a pvp guild hall where you set up events where ppl can attk your keep is a cool idea but then you run into A. do you let ppl attk other guild keeps “guild halls” when ever they want to (leading to needing ppl to be on all the time of your keep going to get grifed) B. have a system to let ppl attk you a set up pvp system (odd to let some one attk you it just do not feel like a real places if it that way well to me.)

The idea of competition against fellow guilds from the same realm/world/server is good, but doesn’t fit with GW2 model in my opinion. At this point, to improve the wvw competition, we need stronger communities, and having guilds hold grudges against other guilds from the same server because “they got the plot they wanted” doesn’t really help to this purpose.

And in regard to Arzo’s comment, I agree. If you leave small guilds out, when this is not a competition of who has the biggest guild, then you are hurting the community. Small guilds are very important to the game, starting with the idea that many “big” or “highly competitive” guilds, start as small guilds that didn’t want to expand at first. GW2 is great in the idea of having small communities cluster around the idea of your “world”, and being able to participate on more than one.
Guild Halls should vary depending on the power of the guild, yes, but at the same time, small guilds should be able to afford at least, some version of it that fits their needs. (which are different from the needs of bigger guilds)

Proposal Overview

“Guild Town”

Goal of Proposal

The goal of the “Guild Town” is to have the traditional “Guild Hall” function as more of a village or town or city depending on guild size. Each different Race’s capitol has a place for each Guild Town and architecture preferences would be set to the same style as the Capitol it was in. The Guild Town is connected to not only the Capitol, but the Home instance as well. Guild leaders and designated officers are allowed to designate where buildings and amenities are placed allowing a level of customization to make the Guild Town feel unique to each guild’s town. Permissions can be set on the level of privacy and if set to “Open” players in the game can visit specific Guild Towns to view them. Recruiting bulletin boards can be placed in Guild Towns that offer information about the guild. When at the entrance to a Capitol’s “Guild Town” there is an NPC there that has a menu of each guild and a short description can be posted.

Proposal Functionality

“Guild Towns” offer a way for guilds to have a setting that feels lived in by the guild. They also offer the ability to advertise to potential guild members by showing off their town as a potential place for that person. A bulletin board in each “Guild Town” tells people how they can join and who to contact or they can meet people that happen to be around!

Associated Risks

“Guild Towns” set to open status could open themselves up to potential trolling, but a feature could be implemented that any guild member could kick someone out of the guild hall and ban them from future entrance.

Baltzenger.2467:

The idea of competition against fellow guilds from the same realm/world/server is good, but doesn’t fit with GW2 model in my opinion. At this point, to improve the wvw competition, we need stronger communities, and having guilds hold grudges against other guilds from the same server because “they got the plot they wanted” doesn’t really help to this purpose.

Perhaps in a spvp sense a team from all one guild could resprent the guild for victories and recognition.

I have a few things to suggest here, I’m going to start with this one. Each guild hall should look distinctive, and have the feel that it belongs to the guild. In addition to things like a hanging tapestry with the guild logo, upgrading to include various merchants and services and an SAB game console, and the ability of the guild leaders to determine the architecture and model (Norn architecture? Asuran?), and maybe swap out the carpet or something, there should be something more, something which distinguishes the guild itself.

Proposal:
Guild member statues and portraits, and item display cases.

Proposal Functionality:
Allow an upgrade to take a snapshot of another guild member’s current character, and create a full-color statue of that character in their current gear, in one of a few selectable poses. Then allow this statue to be placed in one of several spots in the guild hall- perhaps with an interact node giving the player’s name.

Additionally, have a similar function to make a full-body or chest-up portrait of a character, to be places on a wall in the guild hall.

Finally, allow a guild member to create a display-case to be hung on the wall, containing one of their items (the item is not consumed), which holds the model on display in the guild hall.

Associated Risks:
Unsure how this would be implemented safely, not sure how many systems it touches.

Baltzenger.2467:

The idea of competition against fellow guilds from the same realm/world/server is good, but doesn’t fit with GW2 model in my opinion. At this point, to improve the wvw competition, we need stronger communities, and having guilds hold grudges against other guilds from the same server because “they got the plot they wanted” doesn’t really help to this purpose.

And in regard to Arzo’s comment, I agree. If you leave small guilds out, when this is not a competition of who has the biggest guild, then you are hurting the community. Small guilds are very important to the game, starting with the idea that many “big” or “highly competitive” guilds, start as small guilds that didn’t want to expand at first. GW2 is great in the idea of having small communities cluster around the idea of your “world”, and being able to participate on more than one.
Guild Halls should vary depending on the power of the guild, yes, but at the same time, small guilds should be able to afford at least, some version of it that fits their needs. (which are different from the needs of bigger guilds)

About the competition. If you would do it in a WvW like manner you could do it with guilds from different servers and then it changes together with the WvW reset.

About smaller guilds. I completely agree small guilds would need to be able to get a hall as well. At the same time, guilds need goals to work, things to do. If a guild-hall would just be some simple thing to unlock then guild unlock it and be done with it having nothing to do.

So I suggest unlocking some basic guild-hall much like the lord room of a WvW castle should be very doable for smaller guilds. But after that guilds should be able to build things around it and unlock many other elements they can use. Many cosmetic, some not cosmetic. Doing that would then be harder for smaller guilds but it does give guilds goals to work towards and set them apart.. not so much in since but also in the way they build there guild-hall.

Proposal Overview
Guildhalls that enhance already existing in-game activities and introduce more guild exclusive activities and non-gamebreaking rewards.

Goal of Proposal
Non-offensive guildhall content.

Proposal Functionality

If Guild Halls were to be implemented, I think that linking them to already existing content while still providing a sufficient amount of guild exclusive content would be best for everyone. That means no new currencies involved and a large amount of goals that slowly improve the hall rather than a few big upgrades that take a long time to achieve.

To achieve this we need to use a currency that is available through different types of content yet accessible for both small and large guild communities.
To keep things simple I think Guild Merits would work best. These can be hard to achieve for smaller guilds so there could be an item that can be bought for Karma or Guild Commendations that gives a number of Merits to the guild you are currently representing. This might have to be time-gated.

The Guild Hall would most likely have to be put in a separate upgrade tree, but once constructed it should feel like a permanent boon for all guild members.

I suggest implementing an item that can transport you to the Hall of any guild you are currently representing for free, but without the option to teleport back to your previous location.
A vanilla Hall might have only a bare minimum of vendors (Merchant and Crafting Stations), but exclude Black Lion so people and bots don’t park characters there. Any player who teleports there can choose a buff to experience or karma earned for a moderate amount of time. Lets say 20% bonus experience or 15% bonus karma for 45 minutes to avoid forcing people to revisit the instance way too often.

Possible upgrades might include:

Getting both the karma and the experience buff
Better buffs (WvW XP for WvW guilds)
Cheaper WvW siege
Auto-repair on Guild Hall entry and other minor conveniences
Time-gated Collectors like Nicholas the Traveler (Bring me 10 times item X to get 1 Laurel/Guild Commendation, where X changes weekly)
Guild Commendation exchange for any other account bound currency
Increased chance for critical crafting success in the Guild Hall
Mystic Forge
Portals to all capital cities
Exclusive boss battles inside/outside the Guild Hall that demand high coordination and enhance the Guild Hall when completed
Exclusive jumping puzzles inside/outside the Guild Hall that demand high coordination and enhance the Guild Hall when completed
GvG Features

I believe that hall-exclusive content should feel like a gamble or a shortcut to promote guild events. Lets say unlocking the Mystic forge in your hall costs 100 Merits, there could be a second option to pick a boss battle or a jumping puzzle instead for 60 Merits. If you complete the challenge successfully you get the upgrade, if not you have to wait for a few days to retry for that specific challenge.

Of course big guilds will be more organized and that should be promoted. These guilds might go for an even bigger gamble. Lets call it Hard Mode Challenges. These could be a much harder version of the normal ones but with a few differences. You pay the full price for such a challenge rather than a reduced one (100 instead of 60), but these are not time gated. Big guilds will be able to upgrade much faster, if they are good enough.

I’m not very familiar with GvG and while I agree that it should be promoted I also think that it should be restricted to serious guilds.
My only suggestion here is to restrict GvG to guilds with Halls and the appropriate upgrades.

Associated Risks

Hosting too many instances might be too taxing for the servers
Too many features might make Halls too time-consuming to implement (maybe release upgrade tiers overtime rather than have everyone wait for a long time?)
Reduced population in major cities
Major impact on economy

Hello,

Before I submit my idea I’d like to bring forth a few issues that people need to address in their ideas because they’re pretty big.

1. Megaservers. If you suggest something that involves putting guild property in an open world area, the problem arises when megaservers are considered. Basically how will the guild halls/property interact with megaservers

2. Afk/Inactive guilds- Should there be any punishment if a guild goes inactive for a long time in regards to their guild property? This is especially important in situations where it is in the open world

3. Currency. How do guild acquire guild halls and with what currency? How will this balance to provide the same level of satisfaction to new and old guilds? For example my main guild has a huge amount of influence becase we’ve been around since release. We usually have max merrits too. If the cost is cheap/low then it may not provide our guild the same level of satisfaction then for a newer guild if it barely puts a dent in our currency. This goes for upgrades to it too

4. Usage. If guild halls “drain” capital cities of inhabitants, is this a problem? How can it be prevented? etc

My idea is in another reply, message capped

Alliance Courtyards:
Proposal Overview:
The next logical step to the Guild Hall saga
Goal of Proposal:
Bringing a larger group of people together for greater social interaction without tarnishing the sanctity of the individual guild
Proposal Functionality:
This would further elaborate on the previous 3 part Guild Hall proposal
Part 1 of three starts here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Guild-Halls/first#post4454209

Given: This proposal goes under the assumption that Guild Alliances are already functional.

So I originally was contemplating Alliance Halls as being just a huge version of Guild Halls but after further consideration, this seems somewhat redundant. I therefore reconsidered and came up with the alternative idea of Alliance Courtyards.
Alliance Courtyard: This would be a central meeting common area for all guild members of a specific Guild Alliance. I envision an open Dodecagon courtyard with a “portal” on each side leading to each respective member guild, one of the sides you would have a public entrance which leads back to the Lion’s Arch Guild Marketplace. This public door would always be useable to all members of the Alliance but could be locked to the general populous, if desired. This leaves you with one side to put some sort of Alliance wide item like an Alliance announcement board or some such.
As in with building Guild Halls, it would take a minimum of 3 guilds(up to 10) to make an Alliance Courtyard, for all the same reasons as were posed in the Guild Hall post. I use a maximum number of guilds as 10 for no other reason than that is what they were in GW1.
I would think there should be some commonality with guild halls but for it to be useful it would need to have some very different things too. If you had the same stuff in the Courtyard as you did the GH…what’s the point?
Stipulation: If there was say, a Guild Bank in the Alliance Courtyard, for a member of guild XxYyZz to use it, the guild would still need to have previously activated it in their guild Architecture tree and have the proper guild rank permissions to use it; otherwise, it would just say, not available. This way a guild could not rest on their proverbial laurels and leach off the Alliance instead of putting forth the effort initially in their own guild.

Building the Alliance Courtyard
This could be handled the same way as was proposed for building Guild Halls, with harvested materials. I suggest to either add a new 6 tier harvest node in all map areas or supplement the current mineral node harvesting with a stone byproduct.

• i.e. 1. fieldstone, 2. sandstone, 3. limestone, 4. slate, 5. marble, 6. granite or some simular

The Question:So I guess the question lies in, not what are the similarities between the Guild Hall and the Alliance Courtyard but what would the Courtyard have to offer that the Guild Hall does not? Outside the obvious meeting area, most of the ideas I am coming up with have some very serious negatives. Anyone else care to chime in on this one?

Associated Risks:
One major issue I see is map size. Now if it is 10 guilds in an Alliance and each guild maxes out at 500 players, that’s 5000 players in a map. I don’t know if that is even possible in the GW2 engine, without dropping frame rate to Zero.

Anyways here is my idea

Proposal Overview
Provide an area that showcases guild accomplishments in the world that not only benefits the guild in a way to make them feel accomplished as a group/guild, but also provides benefits on the personal player level. This area can also be accessed by others. This will be done by incorporating open world and instanced areas with specific parts of the map

First there will be select locations in the map that will have a special NPC you can talk to. These npcs will then open a menu that gives a list of all the guilds that have the area he is at “claimed” (in other words have a base there), allows them to search by name, filed by size, etc. The list will have the format of showing the guild emblem on the left side, then on the right is the guilds name, amount of influence, merrits, size, and guild progression. The guild progression is like a set of achievements that a guild can accomplish and upon accomplishing them they unlock something special for their guild hall. It’s like the upgrades but instead of using a currency it uses actions/content. Examples could be holding SM for a certain amount of time in WvW, doing a guild challenge in a certain time limit, doing something special at tequatl, having a certain percentage of guildies at a certain fractal level (like 50% of your players are act fractal level 50), etc. These could unlock a variety of things. They could be trophies that hang in certain areas, special costmetic changes, special vendors, etc. The vendors could give a variety of things. They could be special gear, special guild siege, special buffs, guild wide buffs, buffs that interact with certain ingame events (like when activated, the next time you have a certain % of guilds at tequatl and you complete it, everyone in your guild gets 3 times more rewards or something along those lines).

For currency I suggest putting a cost that somehow interacts with the amount of members you have. I’m sure this will be incrediably hard to program, but like if you have 5 guild members the influence cost will be 500 with an upkeep cost of 250, if you have 50 guild members the guild hall cost will be 8,000 influence and 1500 upkeep cost. Then put in a flat rate of merrits for the inital cost. Such as 100 merrits to buy a guild hall plus the scaling influence cost. Owning a guild hall has an upkeep cost of influence which takes away influence daily. If you don’t keep logging in and your guild goes dead and you miss a influence payment, then you lose the guild hall and all upgrades within it. This is to help entice people to continue being active and reward active guilds.

Now with megaservers this area needs to be instanced. The area can be locations in games or just plots of land that upon entering the instance show a “guild fort”. Or perhaps you can see the guild fort but you can’t go inside of it in the open world and have to talk to the npc to get into a instanced version. Kind of like the home district in Divintys Reach.

The NPC has a list of guildies that you can visit if they have public enabled. Basically if the guild has enabled public guild halls it will allow random players to see them on the list, travel to their guild hall, and take advantage of certain vendors (like regular merchants). If they have it disabled they can’t see them on the list.

As for crafting tables and such I think a upgrade that can either be bought or earned are crafting tables (tied to a guild crafting achievement), Guild Bank, and regular bank. No TP.

Goal of Proposal
Right now guilds I feel don’t feel accomplished as a whole. There are many good guild accomplishments that a guild can do, yet there’s no way to show people that they’ve done this. You can have a 2 year old guild and a 6 month old guild and have them look the same progression wise. I want to give guilds some ways to “show off” what they’ve done as a community and to show other players that hey, we know what we’re doing.

Proposal Functionality
Right now one of the riches, most exciting, and most growing part of the game is the open world. With the living story it is constantly changing and there’s a lot of flexibility. So with new living story updates you can offer more guild areas. Guilds can change their areas at an influence cost, but keep their upgrades. So the living story will allow you to continue adding new “guild achievements” for guilds to earn while offering more halls for them to buy.

Associated Risks
Lots of complicated programming, possibly too many public guilds in a list, UI issues with the guild search, guilds losing their halls from being inactive and complaining, more work for the living story team.

Piogre.2164:

I have a few things to suggest here, I’m going to start with this one. Each guild hall should look distinctive, and have the feel that it belongs to the guild. In addition to things like a hanging tapestry with the guild logo, upgrading to include various merchants and services and an SAB game console, and the ability of the guild leaders to determine the architecture and model (Norn architecture? Asuran?), and maybe swap out the carpet or something, there should be something more, something which distinguishes the guild itself.

Proposal:
Guild member statues and portraits, and item display cases.

Proposal Functionality:
Allow an upgrade to take a snapshot of another guild member’s current character, and create a full-color statue of that character in their current gear, in one of a few selectable poses. Then allow this statue to be placed in one of several spots in the guild hall- perhaps with an interact node giving the player’s name.

Additionally, have a similar function to make a full-body or chest-up portrait of a character, to be places on a wall in the guild hall.

Finally, allow a guild member to create a display-case to be hung on the wall, containing one of their items (the item is not consumed), which holds the model on display in the guild hall.

Associated Risks:
Unsure how this would be implemented safely, not sure how many systems it touches.

Yeah that would also be nice for many things. You could place statues of winners somewhere at the entrance.

But also could have a basement where you can make like your guild stone army https://photos.travelblog.org/Photos/10357/93506/f/598584-An-army-of-stone-3.jpg
You can then see all people who have ever been in the guild, maybe even see them in different faces (like a year a go and now). Really nice idea.

Devata.6589:

Nice idea but how do you prevent the same guilds from always ‘winning’ (also once a few guilds are up frond it get harder and harder for other guilds to beat them.. like AP’s)? And would that not be unfair to smaller guilds?

Repeating winners is a problem, but I liken it to World vs. World; there are always servers that are at the top of each league that occasionally falter or are beaten. If it’s a problem, of course there can be mechanics such as a removing previous winners from the next few weeks’ competition.

As far as the smaller guilds, that’s why there are different “leagues”; smaller guilds aren’t pitted against large ones. It is definitely an issue, but that’s why we’re collaborating; to work together to find problems and polish the various ideas.

Devata.6589:

In addition to that automating a system with points might not give proper results. Maybe one guild / group of guilds should win because they have the best looking guild hall but don’t have nice fountains that give points or maybe they want dead grass because it fits better with there Halloween style neighborhood.

One of the ideas I bounced around was to include a voting system where players can go into random instances and “like” them in exchange for some sort of reward (tokens that can be exchanged for more housing goods, for example), so that there’s a constant drive for people to go around and promote things that look really cool.

However, that would unfairly favor large guilds and open things up to collusion. You also can’t have a rating system because players would be constantly down-voting other neighborhoods to try and improve their own odds.

Devata.6589:

The same system as you suggest here could also be done in a WvW map giving the option for a PvE and a more PvP / WvW approach.

In my suggestion I also talked about unlocking mini games when combined with your suggestion you might be able to unlock capture the flag, a game that those 4 guilds can play together, taking the flag from each other camp.

Right; the individual plots or even the entire neighborhood could theoretically appear anywhere, including in the middle of a WvW map as a type of fortress.

As far as mini-games go, I kind of envisioned those as the top-tier neighborhood amenities. Guilds could collaborate to set up, say, a Jousting Tournament one week, or set up a shooting gallery in their common area.

I would very much like to see guild halls instanced based out of different locations of Tyria as opposed to hosting them all out of a single central location. Guild halls would be of much more significance if they came with some history . Examples of such could be a guild hall located in an ancient barracks along the Great Wall of Ascalon, or a guild hall hidden deep underground in the twisting caverns of Mount Malestrom, or (my personal favorite) a guild hall based out of the Wizard’s Tower in Kessex Hills.

Deified.7520:

Anyways here is my idea

~

For currency I suggest putting a cost that somehow interacts with the amount of members you have. I’m sure this will be incrediably hard to program, but like if you have 5 guild members the influence cost will be 500 with an upkeep cost of 250, if you have 50 guild members the guild hall cost will be 8,000 influence and 1500 upkeep cost. Then put in a flat rate of merrits for the inital cost. Such as 100 merrits to buy a guild hall plus the scaling influence cost. Owning a guild hall has an upkeep cost of influence which takes away influence daily. If you don’t keep logging in and your guild goes dead and you miss a influence payment, then you lose the guild hall and all upgrades within it. This is to help entice people to continue being active and reward active guilds.

Now with megaservers this area needs to be instanced. The area can be locations in games or just plots of land that upon entering the instance show a “guild fort”. Or perhaps you can see the guild fort but you can’t go inside of it in the open world and have to talk to the npc to get into a instanced version. Kind of like the home district in Divintys Reach.

The NPC has a list of guildies that you can visit if they have public enabled. Basically if the guild has enabled public guild halls it will allow random players to see them on the list, travel to their guild hall, and take advantage of certain vendors (like regular merchants). If they have it disabled they can’t see them on the list.

As for crafting tables and such I think a upgrade that can either be bought or earned are crafting tables (tied to a guild crafting achievement), Guild Bank, and regular bank. No TP.

Goal of Proposal
Right now guilds I feel don’t feel accomplished as a whole. There are many good guild accomplishments that a guild can do, yet there’s no way to show people that they’ve done this. You can have a 2 year old guild and a 6 month old guild and have them look the same progression wise. I want to give guilds some ways to “show off” what they’ve done as a community and to show other players that hey, we know what we’re doing.

Proposal Functionality
Right now one of the riches, most exciting, and most growing part of the game is the open world. With the living story it is constantly changing and there’s a lot of flexibility. So with new living story updates you can offer more guild areas. Guilds can change their areas at an influence cost, but keep their upgrades. So the living story will allow you to continue adding new “guild achievements” for guilds to earn while offering more halls for them to buy.

Associated Risks
Lots of complicated programming, possibly too many public guilds in a list, UI issues with the guild search, guilds losing their halls from being inactive and complaining, more work for the living story team.

Would rethink this part.

“For currency I suggest putting a cost that somehow interacts with the amount of members you have. I’m sure this will be incrediably hard to program, but like if you have 5 guild members the influence cost will be 500 with an upkeep cost of 250, if you have 50 guild members the guild hall cost will be 8,000 influence and 1500 upkeep cost.”

That means you will almost force guilds into forcing there members to be really active. It could be a dead sentence for just social friendly guilds. In addition it might also not be completely fair. If you are a big group you can accomplish more. Thats no problem.

Proposal Overview
A hub to allow guilds easier and exclusive access to World Events (and other major events like Pavilion). If a guild wants to do a Tequatl run by themselves or attempt Wurm, a guild now has a room to gather and organize more difficult content.

Goal of Proposal
At the moment, events, world bosses, and living world content are difficult and time-consuming for a guild to organize (especially given specific times). Much of the more difficult content (Tequatl, Wurm, even Pavilion) can be ruined by random players joining your event (scaling, pulling Wurm away). It would be far easier if a guild could tell its members “meet in the Guild Hall @6pm PST for Tequatl” and the guild would have exclusive access to creating a new map only for the event, rather than its current form of creating the event on an existing map.

Proposal Functionality
World Events are already available for Guilds to create. Guild Wars map servers create new servers all the time. Hopefully the two could be combined, with restrictions on time length and frequency, to allow guilds exclusive control over creating their own events without outside influence.

Associated Risks
Abuse of the system if there aren’t enough checks in place could result if a guild creates events over and over. However, that’s simple enough to prevent.

Members of medium-small guilds could find little reason for sticking around if the only focus of a guild for PvE was to participate in Wurm and Tequatl. However, as long as this isn’t the only proposal for Guild Halls, that isn’t a problem.

Being unfamiliar with server space, cost, and fragility, I’m not sure if the monetary cost to ANET would be too high when creating new maps for each large guild that wanted to do a world event.

whatever you do, do it with the little guilds in mind.

Problem I see is racial hubs and LA would become ghost towns if they allow crafting ect on a full time basis so I think maybe it would work better as a two week unlock.

Anyways here is what I would like to see:

1. nodes for harvesting that you unlock through guild achievements.

2. Guild portal hub directing to racial cites and the mists as well as a portal into your home instance which would need to be unlocked on both ends.

3. daily loot boxes

4. Furnishings

5. critters to kill for hides and other materials

6. A personal Champion encounter in your zone that you can unlock . I assume it would be best if it was time gated.

This bug bugs me out.