Guild Wars 2

The page bug rears its ugly head!

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

timmyf.1490:

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

This may be a part of how to do it. Larger guilds have to get larger halls which cost more materials. 100 people need 10X materials than a 10 person guild needs which means it’s a flat curve for guild hall building. IF 100 people have to get 100 items and 10 people have to get 10 items it’s exactly the same which is fair. I just want to reiterate here how much more of an advantage large guilds have with what they cn do with their guild right now in game. A small guild has way less access to a lot of the bonuses currently in the game because costs are so prohibitive with how much Influence you need. Please don’t let this happen with guild halls. I am with timmyf on the size thing.

JonPeters.5630:

Donari.5237:

On scaling of costs:

How do we keep it fair given that guilds change size? As Conski asks, would this system encourage people to make a small guild, create a huge hall, then invite in all the other members waiting?

I don’t want to limit small guilds, but with scaling it might be vital to have a hall size limit based on membership, so when you get more people in, you can build more space but at the increased costs. (And then we worry about inactive members bloating costs just as afkers scale up events). Contrariwise, guilds that downscale should not have their large space demolished. Remember my adamant stance against decay, here!

I think one solution to the scaling problems is to create different aspects that work on different scales. For example some aspects can be time gated and therefore don’t favor any size guild. Some can be based on straight up farming which favor larger guilds, and some could be driven by activity and favor guilds with active members. Think of it like the 3 branches of government, and the aspects within that. The senate favors states, the house favors population (or gerrymandering at least ), etc…

I think in that way the question that comes to mind is what parts of Guild Halls would you want to have work in what different ways so that we can reward big guilds for those areas but not punish small guilds for the things they really want…

Jon

Tier upgrades should take both small and large guilds into account. Nothing should be locked behind huge influence walls, but there is nothing wrong with tiering different levels of each category. The best example of this would be something like guild bounties – with each tier catered to the needs/challenge based on guild size.

Relating this to guild halls gets a little more complicated. First, all aesthetic and functional choices have to be available to all. Spending more influence should simply be about scope. So, as an example – for a minimal cost, you can create a banquet room. At tier one, the room is small and includes a guild banquet table (applying some kind of buff) with 25 charges. At tier two, the room is a little bigger and the banquet “feeds” 100 (and so on up to feeding 500).

No guilds are left out, but there is a benefit for larger guilds (who have the spare influence) to upgrade to higher tiers – a benefit smaller guilds would care nothing about.

The biggest issue with making things too cheap is that, if you make the initial cost too low, then everyone will just start forming one person guilds to build personal guild halls. That invalidates the value of the work actual guilds do and the idea of halls being places for guilds to meet. This can be dealt with by making the initial cost include guild merits (so something like 50,000 influence+250 merits). Once that initial investment is made, upgrades should be fairly cheap for all sizes of halls (with more expensive upgrades related solely to scope like the example above).

JonPeters.5630:

Actually it hasn’t been talked about at all. I’ve seen a lot of basic suggestions, but what I am suggesting is that we flesh something out here in this thread. I’m choosing the upgrade system because someone actually started breaking it down. I think the first question(s) I have is:
Are the current upgrade categories the ones we would use or would we break it up differently? If not, how many categories would you think make sense? Specifically what would your categories be?

Jon

I find the current upgrade system quite stagnant and boring, you get your influence passively, click a button then wait a week.
(no offense intended to the creator of the system)
Maybe have the initial guild hall unlock under architecture say level 2/3 but past that an active system is needed.

On Categories for upgrades ,I’d see it breaking down something like this: (I may have what you meant by this wrong?)
Structures:
-Towers -halls -corridors -entry halls -Misc rooms
Defenses: (could be just graphical)
-Trebs -Cannons -Hot oil -Misc
Interior:
-Seating -Tables/cabinets -Rugs/banners/flags -Wallpapers/wall -statues/monuments -Misc
Exterior (wouldn’t actually limit it to placement outside as I’d like water features in the command room)
-Fountains -Trees -plants -training grounds -Livestock -Misc
NPCS
-Functional -Decorative -Alts
Glory or Rare category (this section would have limited placement (i.e once per guild hall or 10 per guild hall) basically the more prestige and high end stuff.
Limited Section for limited items i.e reward from once off events or competitions like a new Christmas tree each year.

JonPeters.5630:

timmyf.1490:

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

Ok. I think as a good exercise, try and be more specific. If you give specific examples in each category it is a lot easier to extrapolate than if you try and generally describe the categories.

This is sort of difficult because I don’t know what functionality will be coming to Guild Halls, but I’ll try to give a few examples.

Things that small guilds need to be able to access with relative ease (i.e. time-bound):

• Waypoint in Guild Hall/Automatic teleport to GH
• Merchants and other services
• Any content (GvG, for example, or combat practice areas) tied to Halls
• Buffs or boosts tied to Guild Halls

Things that small guilds can put on the “long term” list safely (i.e. cost-bound):

• Additional rooms or larger guild halls
• Guild Halls as an automated Guild Mission launchpad (for example, meet in hall, move all members to new map)
• Any “show off in the open world” functionality of Guild Halls

I think this list covers most of the ideas people have for Halls, but if you think there’s something I forgot, let me know.

Titanium Argentum.1427:

One minigame only in Guild Halls: Guild Hall Defense

Location: In one existent map or one instanced.

Objetive: Protect your Guild Hall, pve style.

Mechanics:

-Other Guilds on your server or another servers, choose a drop point to send enemies, who can attack your guild hall. Only monsters summoned by other Guilds, no players.

-You can choose the difficulty. Easy, Medium or Hard. Easy activate few drop points, Medium activate more, and Hard activate all.

-To defend your Guild Hall, you have your pve skills, and special weapons in the Guild Hall, for example Electric Balistas (purchased upgrading your Guild Hall).

-If you win, get resources and influence for your guild. For example the next unlocked feature for the Guild Hall. Level up in global ranking of guilds.

-If another guild win, they can get resources and influence for their guild.

-If you fail, you lose influence and rank in the global ranking of guilds.

-If another guild fail, they lose the influence inverted to send the enemies, and rank in the global ranking of guilds.

-If you win and your Guild Hall its fully Upgraded, this minigame can give gold to the players.

Upgrading your Guild Hall, make your guild best prepared for this minigame.
(more Health Points for the Guild Hall for example)

The top 100 in the Global Ranking of Guilds, win a collection of materials to decorate the Guild hall, one year.

This is cool…I could see this as being rolled out as an “Added Content” thing after GHs are put into the game as a way to expand what you can do in them, as this appears as if it would take a bit of time to work out, develop, program, and get into the system successfully, and done so in a way it doesn’t become a Gold Farm or provide unbalancing advantages.

I still think to get the Halls started, a simple approach(with maybe having a small team tasked with the add-ins) would be something along the lines of Darmikau’s post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Guild-Halls/page/3#post4454902

With add ins maybe every couple of months or so of rooms that can be added by purchase(of some kind) or by completing a small quest(Like the “Guild Lord” asks for a special mug of Ale that has to be retrieved from some deep, already existing, cave to unlock the new Bar Brawl – Room)like this one, or the other rooms Blaeys suggested:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Guild-Halls/page/3#post4455607

Solid starting base, with plenty of room to add in stuffs for fun and to keep people interested in doing things for their Guild Hall.

munkiman.3068:

Devata.6589:

munkiman.3068:

While i think it would be a good place to run around in, a lot of those sandbox type elements tend to be difficult to maintain. Population changes a lot in MMOs what happens when we run out of space with a ton of inactive houses?

Anyway, i think we could address player housing in another discussion. I’d personally love to see the home instance get a make-over, including being able to allow your friends to check it out whenever they want.

Suggestions to solve this problems have already been made.

Simply lose your plot / place in the world if the guild go’s inactive. But don’t lose the guild-hall itself. When the guild is back spawn it again at a new plot. With air-ships despawn and spawn back again much like players do in the world but now at the moment the last guild-member logs out and the first logs back in again.

I’m not a fan of the idea of open world guild halls, there is already enough trolling going around, not to mention the amount of real-estate you would need to add to the game to support the thousands of guilds. I think if the game was more designed around the sandbox, it would be a cool feature though. I think we could focus on instance based halls and have similar utility without the complication and overhead.

Well being in favor or against it is another question. I just showed one way the problem you talked about there could be solved.

In all honestly you seem to be against because of mainly technical difficulties (just as most people who are against that). However for nearly all (some you can’t without knowing the code.. nor do you know if it’s really a problem) technical difficulties solutions have been offered in this thread.

Like what you talk about here. “There is already enough trolling going around” so your technical difficulty here is to prevent the trolling, not the idea of open world guild-halls itself. (btw what type of trolling do you mean?) Also “the amount of real-estate you would need to add to the game” is a technical difficulty not really something against open world halls. And for that one also multiple suggestions have been giving. Like the sky-maps (that work with over-flows) and dynamical increasing / decreasing ground-maps and a few other solutions.

I think if the game was more designed around the sandbox, it would be a cool feature though.
Well that is one of the things.. To me GW2 always have seemed as if it wanted to be more sandbox but wasn’t. The whole idea with a living breading world and so on.

Dynamic events don’t do much for that and also the ‘living world patches’ don’t help that much for it. A little more sandbox however would do exactly that. People building there own houses or guild-halls. Stuff changes, it’s dynamic, it’s a living world.
So that alone would be a reason and a time to go a little more sandbox with this imho. Especially if Anet want to keep talking about a living world.

Yes that brings technical difficulties with it and many of those have an easy fix (instance) but the technical difficulties can be solved.

JonPeters.5630:

timmyf.1490:

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

Ok. I think as a good exercise, try and be more specific. If you give specific examples in each category it is a lot easier to extrapolate than if you try and generally describe the categories.

i want a shot at this…

take guild challenge for example. here we have content that provides rewards for large guilds, but is very hard for small guilds to accomplish. simply having 20+ people at the challenge nearly trivializes the content, where even though its designed for 5+ people you cannot have 99% certainty of completion with only 5-8ish people. so basically, large guilds get more rewards (2 commendations / week) just for being big. small guilds can still go all pro, but if for 1 week 1-2 people get busy… there goes the challenge.

maybe this is a scaling issue with challenges and small groups, or rather with challenges and large groups (since large groups almost guarantee success). but its exactly what timmys talking about, that large guilds have an easier time of things just because theyre large, and largeness gets them more rewards.

guild puzzle is better than challenge at handling large vs small. its perfectly reasonable for a 6 man group to do a puzzle (well… i have to admit i would hate to try the icicle room in the snowden drifts puzzle with only 6). thus, no disparity for that commendation.

I would be shocked if ArenaNet would allow the beautiful landscapes they’ve created to be destroyed by open-world guild halls. That would basically destroy my interest in ever completing open-world PvE content ever again. (Because the primary reason I do open-world content is to game casually while appreciating the aesthetics.) I’ll stick to instances/WvW if that happens, but please: no thanks.

insanemaniac.2456:

guild puzzle is better than challenge at handling large vs small. its perfectly reasonable for a 6 man group to do a puzzle (well… i have to admit i would hate to try the icicle room in the snowden drifts puzzle with only 6). thus, no disparity for that commendation.

Langmar Estate’s picture room called and wants to beat you over the head with player-count gating. :-/

It is rather obnoxious to try to do Guild Missions with 8 or 9 people. You make a good point: there isn’t a consistent “You Must Be This Tall to Ride” with guild activities and that moving target can make it tough for small guilds.

If I need to turn out 8, I can do that. If I need to turn out 15, I need to recruit some more. Player-count gating, if used, should at least be consistent.

Hi Jon,
I think to balance the cost for different guild sizes, there should be different sizes of lands with different numbers of upgrade slots. As I stated early in this Thread, all that should be challenge(time-)-gated, that you have to do something in PvE, PvP or WvW (e.g. defend relevant resources).
In the current guildsystem every guild can reach the same, for smaller guilds it takes more time then for larger ones, if you play together you earn more influence. This theory should continue. Smaller guilds dont need the same space as larger guilds and probably not the same number of upgrade slots, so they select a small guildland and they must work together to earn the resources. A larger Guild can/should select a larger and more (guildresource-) expensive land. They need the same time.

At all every Guildhall should be upgradable in terms of size that growing guild can resize their land.

Greetings from Germany

Devata.6589:

Well being in favor or against it is another question. I just showed one way the problem you talked about there could be solved.

In all honestly you seem to be against because of mainly technical difficulties (just as most people who are against that). However for nearly all (some you can’t without knowing the code.. nor do you know if it’s really a problem) technical difficulties solutions have been offered in this thread.

Like what you talk about here. “There is already enough trolling going around” so your technical difficulty here is to prevent the trolling, not the idea of open world guild-halls itself. (btw what type of trolling do you mean?) Also “the amount of real-estate you would need to add to the game” is a technical difficulty not really something against open world halls. And for that one also multiple suggestions have been giving. Like the sky-maps (that work with over-flows) and dynamical increasing / decreasing ground-maps and a few other solutions.

Trolling in the sense that larger guilds hold “rituals” in open world and are often “bothered” by the open world population (see RP guild requests as well). You prevent that by making GHs instanced.

The suggestion to randomly toss halls around from plot to plot is more of a “where’s my hall at today” issue. I’m not really focused on the tech hurdles. There are several problems, those were just a couple.

Devata.6589:

I think if the game was more designed around the sandbox, it would be a cool feature though.
Well that is one of the things.. To me GW2 always have seemed as if it wanted to be more sandbox but wasn’t. The whole idea with a living breading world and so on.

Dynamic events don’t do much for that and also the ‘living world patches’ don’t help that much for it. A little more sandbox however would do exactly that. People building there own houses or guild-halls. Stuff changes, it’s dynamic, it’s a living world.
So that alone would be a reason and a time to go a little more sandbox with this imho. Especially if Anet want to keep talking about a living world.

Yes that brings technical difficulties with it and many of those have an easy fix (instance) but the technical difficulties can be solved.

By sandbox, i mean being able to plop down a structure and modify it which influences the open world. The living story is designed and structured by Arena which makes it more like a themepark. Introducing sandbox type elements doesn’t seem all that enticing to me.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

JonPeters.5630:

[…]

Saved for later when we get a dungeon or raid CDI: I like the direction in which this suggestion is going but I would suggest another implementation.

Back to Guild Halls
One question I would like to have answered:
Guilds can hold up to 500 players. Normal maps can hold up to 100 – 150 (?) players.
How do you want to ensure that players don’t feel separated from each other, can you raise the player-cap for Guild Halls?
Do you have any other idea how to get around this issue?

As Chris would put it: Le Bump.
I would like to know how you want to get around the player cap.

Just a pre-note: Please don’t make size upgradeable give everyone the largest size possible to work with as in GW1: Redesigning your whole guild hall every time you unlock a larger size would be annoying. It also punishes low number high skill guilds.

On How to gate unlocks:
I see some unlocks as having to be retroactive otherwise you really screw over some of your more advanced players. (who wants to have to do dungeon master all over again or kill 2000 players in Pvp just to get an unlock to register).

Basics:
This is stuff I’d expect to come pre-unlocked.
-5 racial syles of all the basic room types (Tower,hall,room,entry hall,wall,gate)
-Basic versions of all the furniture (Chair,table,dresser,bookcase, couch, bed)

Linked to the upgrade system
I.e You unlock it from the upgrades, could make the functional ones low cost and the decorative ones high cost.
-Way-points -merchants -crafters -Asuran Gates -Guild emblem displaying items

Linked to low level play (Not retroactive, could require a minimum of 2 guildies at the event.)
-open world trophies, i.e participate in the shatterer event to unlock a shatterer head for mounting on the wall (could fall under the glory category and only be placed once per hall).
-Story mode dungeons, Statues of the primary antagonist from each dungeon or the like.
-Story completion+ Map completion could unlock maps for display.

Linked to mid-level play
-Dungeon Master, and sub categories could each unlock a plot relevant item (gaherrans coffin for the entire COF subcategory etc).
-PvP A new title track could be added with several themed items could be guild wide.
-WvW would basically need new achievements to unlock stuff (capture all 3 keeps on all three borderlands at some point to unlock, capture stonemist 5 times to unlock etc.
-Low level fractal unlocks, complete Fractal lvl10 (while your reward level is equal or greater than it (to prevent just running level 10 straight off)) Fractal level 20, Fractal level 30.
-Wurm/Teq: kill it get a model of it maybe for the guildhall?

Linked to High end play
-Dunguneer and sub categories , Basically have each subcategory unlock an entire suite of furniture/structures themed to that dungeon.
-Fractals 40 , Fractals 50, 40 could unlock boss trophies, 50 could unlock themed structures and furniture.
-PvP, Win or participate in a guildwars2 tournament unlocks glorious buildings
-WvW…. struggling to thing of something hard enough for this category suggestions? unlocks savage buildings.
-A second tier fashonista title (say 2000 unlocks) unlocks the marble buildings.

Linked to guild play
Complete guild missions/puzzles/bounties to unlock some items
Complete a new guild challenge mission to get a cooler version of the guild items.
Have your buff banners used by 10000 people: unlocks a permanent set of buff banners for your guild hall. etc.

Limited Time
-Each holiday event unlocks a new item for your guild hall that’s unique to each year, lets you show off how old your guild is. (2013 Christmas tree,2014 Christmas tree etc).
-Each new living story comes with a “Guild Meta” that unlocks a themed item but is only around for 1 month.

Restrictions
-You must be a member of the guild for at least 1 week for your unlocks to apply.
-High end play unlocks can only be placed in one guild hall at a time (to prevent saturation)
-If you leave the guild the items that were solely from your unlocks are removed after 6days 23hours.
(I know that sounds bad but we need a way to restrict and control the distribution of the high end items so they don’t become dirt common.)

Why This way?
-If the guild doesn’t have these already unlocked it incentives play.
-They encourage individual participation.
-It brings rewards for activities that are currently under rewarded (you’ll notice that fractals 50 and dunguneer both unlock a massive amount of items because they are both hard and take time to get but currently give very little in return).
-It’s entirely based on your guild-members abilities, doesn’t matter if you have 2-500 members it simply comes down to are they good enough. Which solves any scalability problems.

Issues
People would have 90% of the existing unlocks instantly, I’m ok with this as if it’s not retroactive anyone who’s played since the start gets the short end of the stick.

Posted that ^ before I saw your reply Jon, will edit this with response.

EDIT

This is a great break down, but I was speaking more about categorizing guild upgrades. Let me give an example to help get things started:

• WvW
• PvP
• Guild Missions
• Dungeons

This would tie the upgrades more to game mode than to the current arbitrary categories.

I’m slightly confused by your wording, Are you talking about the existing guild upgrade system (War,Architecture etc) and just recatagorising the upgrades under these sections to different headings?

Or do you mean upgrades for the guild hall? In which case my above post would be a very rough version of this.

JonPeters.5630:

This is a great break down, but I was speaking more about categorizing guild upgrades. Let me give an example to help get things started:

• WvW
• PvP
• Guild Missions
• Dungeons

This would tie the upgrades more to game mode than to the current arbitrary categories.

So. This is about changing the categories to be more inline with game modes and it looks like you’re adding a few as dungeons and PvP only oriented categories don’t exist currently. Since politics and economy work globally across game modes (in general), where would they fall in this new category structure?

I’m at the point of trying to see what this has to do with the halls themselves though. Or are we just speaking about what parts of these new categories would be displayed in a hall? I like the idea of having an extra Asura Contractor show up and start building stuff in a workshop (which could currently sit in the architecture area “Build a physical workshop in your guild hall”). They could be crafting things like banners banquets and the like. While it’s a fun idea, it really doesn’t add much functionality to the upgrade system, but it does integrate the idea of halls more closely to the process.

munkiman.3068:

JonPeters.5630:

This is a great break down, but I was speaking more about categorizing guild upgrades. Let me give an example to help get things started:

• WvW
• PvP
• Guild Missions
• Dungeons

This would tie the upgrades more to game mode than to the current arbitrary categories.

So. This is about changing the categories to be more inline with game modes and it looks like you’re adding a few as dungeons and PvP only oriented categories don’t exist currently. Since politics and economy work globally across game modes (in general), where would they fall in this new category structure?

I’m at the point of trying to see what this has to do with the halls themselves though. Or are we just speaking about what parts of these new categories would be displayed in a hall? I like the idea of having an extra Asura Contractor show up and start building stuff in a workshop (which could currently sit in the architecture area “Build a physical workshop in your guild hall”). They could be crafting things like banners banquets and the like. While it’s a fun idea, it really doesn’t add much functionality to the upgrade system, but it does integrate the idea of halls more closely to the process.

Yep i’m trying to grasp what Jon wants here.

Does he just want us to redistribute the current upgrades under new names? or what?

JonPeters.5630:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

JonPeters.5630:

[…]

Saved for later when we get a dungeon or raid CDI: I like the direction in which this suggestion is going but I would suggest another implementation.

Back to Guild Halls
One question I would like to have answered:
Guilds can hold up to 500 players. Normal maps can hold up to 100 – 150 (?) players.
How do you want to ensure that players don’t feel separated from each other, can you raise the player-cap for Guild Halls?
Do you have any other idea how to get around this issue?

As Chris would put it: Le Bump.
I would like to know how you want to get around the player cap.

I’ll chime in a bit here. It is a good question. I think there would be some conflict here but that there would also be some technical wiggle room. I think we can safely assume that 500 players from a guild being logged in is not the common case. What is a “reasonable” maximum # of members in the guild hall to you? 150? 200? 400?

That is a tricky question. First of all, you have always assume the worst, so 500 players want to go into their guild hall simultaneously.
I think that all players of one guild should be able to interact with each other, ergo creating multiple instances for all players isn’t the best way to go. How do you want to make sure that if the worst case occurs that players of one guild don’t feel disconnected to each other?
It’s not the question of reasonable guild sizes but about a subtle feeling of gathering the whole guild in one place.

JonPeters.5630:

Devata.6589:

JonPeters.5630:

Sarrs.4831:

JonPeters.5630:

I don’t remember saying locked. I said how would you change some of the current functionality to be more integrated with guild halls? I don’t think functionality has to go away to do this and I’d like to see what value you all might envision a guild hall could bring to things like Guild Missions, the current Guild upgrade system, etc.

Jon

Let’s go all the way.

Your guild instance map is seperated into four sections: Politics, economics, art of war and architecture. As you upgrade these things through the I-VI lines, the sections will get grander; for example, if you have level 0 politics, you have no building on that section, if you have level 1, you have a basic lodge, all the way up to a palace at level 6.

The other smaller upgrades have smaller effects on the plot. For example, if you build a guild workshop, you have an actual workshop on your architecture plot. If you have Outsource Asuran Contracting, an Asura hangs out in your Politics building and you can talk to him. If those upgrades are actually doing something then they’re doing something in the guild hall; for example if you’re building something at the workshop, the machinery is running and you have a few NPCs running about working, if you have the Asuran Contractor working, he’s fiddling about on one of those computer things they have. Every upgrade should have something along these lines actually happening in the guild hall to correlate with it.

Also a few upgrades could have added functionality, or new upgrades that come out of them. For example, you can upgrade your Guild Workshop to have crafting tables.

This is a great start and since I said I would try and break down a single thing lets do it with this topic during the week. I think your proposal is great but it really only 1 step of the way. I hope we can take this a lot further and look forward to doing that on Monday.

Jon

This is the most basic idea of guild-halls. Taking it a lot further is what happened during the last 15 pages I would think?

Now about locking out content. You will be always locking something out for people who don’t join guilds as this is a guild-feature. What is important that guild off all sizes are able to participate. And that is give them things to do in the game.. Things that might not all be new or guild-related.

The examples of dungeons rewarding portals to city’s for example. The content ‘dungeons’ is already availing for people. Whats new is the reward and the ability to use that in the guild-hall.

Actually it hasn’t been talked about at all. I’ve seen a lot of basic suggestions, but what I am suggesting is that we flesh something out here in this thread. I’m choosing the upgrade system because someone actually started breaking it down. I think the first question(s) I have is:
Are the current upgrade categories the ones we would use or would we break it up differently? If not, how many categories would you think make sense? Specifically what would your categories be?

Jon

Maybe I did then understand you wrong?

Your question is:
Are the current upgrade categories the ones we would use or would we break it up differently?

Architecture would make the most sense name-wise but then not behind Guild-puzzle because one of the consensus seems to be that also small (new) guilds should have the ability to get a guild-hall.

Now in those upgrades I would expect only the basic things. Your startpoint for the guild-hall (a basic guild-hall) and the most basic unlocks (like guild-bank, repair guy and a vendor).

But after that I think (and that seems to be where it did go in the thread) is that the current guild upgrade system ends. Other unlocks are available in the world. As (auto guild unlock) blue-print drops or as a blue-print reward for doing a dungeon with the guild or a JP and so on (many examples in the thread).

So thats the part where imo we are much further in the thread. We moved beyond the current guild upgrade window.

Unlock stuff in the world would give guilds stuff to direly work for in the game, it would also allow smaller guilds to be able to work towards at least most of the blue-prints.

Same for the upgrades. The topic here basically talked about upgrading the guild-hall to different tiers while the tread moved on to building your own guild-hall.

Could the whole upgrade interface be redone in a Tree like upgrade system?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

Even the smallest guilds could own and upgrade their halls in GW1 if they were willing to work towards it. I feel that it should be the same here. It may take more time, but there is no reason a husband and wife guild (for example) should be excluded just because they don’t have ‘x’ number of people. Guilds are not about numbers, they are about companionship and cooperative play, and sometimes 2 is enough for some people.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

Min size:
5 active, It’s the size where you stop being a party and start being a guild, I’d balance around 5 being the minimum but wouldn’t hard lock out lower numbers.

Progression
I would have some stuff for the larger guilds they have gone through the effort of getting to that size so some progression for them would be nice too.

I would like to see a large amount of the progression gated behind content, a small guild of 5 good all round players can have a ton of stuff, while a guild of 5 players who only play one game mode or are not as competent in the game have less. It balances your progression on the quality of your players and not the quantity.

Shared Guild halls
I personally would like each guild to have their own guild hall, I think that may be the common consensus. A shared guild space for an alliance or having a designated hall from the alliance as the meeting guild-hall would work.

JonPeters.5630:

timmyf.1490:

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

Ok. I think as a good exercise, try and be more specific. If you give specific examples in each category it is a lot easier to extrapolate than if you try and generally describe the categories.

I would try to prevent time and grind gates. Time is only a temporary thing. Also I wonder if it would work.

Smaller guilds might already have the influence they need. It’s not like they had much to upgrade for the last year. So it would only benefit a small group and that are guilds that are pretty new at the moment the guild-halls are introduced. They are the only group who might need that time to build up influence and so who would be put on the same level as the rest when a time-gate is in place.

At the same time it would be a problem for guilds that are new after all those guilds got there guild-hall. It will take them even longer.

And griding mats or currency seems like a bad idea because there is already enough grind in the game, also it does not give a good idea of rewarding.. Oow your guild brainlessly grinding gold / mats. Great.

Now if the basic guild-hall would unlock with the current upgrade system you would have a small influence grind and time-gate. Then all guilds have there basic hall.

And after that you could unlock blue-prints in the world. Everywhere. No category needed there. If blue-prints for portals to city’s are locked behind completing all paths of one dungeon (with your guild) the difference might be that a small guild settles for only the portal to LA while a bigger guild will go for unlocking the blue-prints for the portals of all city’s by doing all dungeons.

Guilds can then decide them-self what they find important and what not and smaller guilds will have to be a little more careful with that.

The only thing as developer you would then have to be careful of is that you should not put an blue-print unlock of an item you think every guild should be able to get (smaller and bigger ones) behind content a smaller guild would never be able to do.

Lets say as developer you want every guild to be able to unlock the blue-print for the portal to LA then don’t lock that blue-print behind a possible raid-dungeon you might implement. But you could put something else in that dungeon you feel is oke for only bigger guilds to be able to unlock.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

I’d say little guilds could have a little hall, maybe, but I definitely would want to be in an alliance with a shared guild hall rather than individual ones. Maybe guilds inside an alliance share all their guild hall upgrades with the other guilds but have a dedicated instanced room that they can go in to meet privately if so inclined.

Iason Evan.3806:

timmyf.1490:

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

This may be a part of how to do it. Larger guilds have to get larger halls which cost more materials. 100 people need 10X materials than a 10 person guild needs which means it’s a flat curve for guild hall building. IF 100 people have to get 100 items and 10 people have to get 10 items it’s exactly the same which is fair. I just want to reiterate here how much more of an advantage large guilds have with what they cn do with their guild right now in game. A small guild has way less access to a lot of the bonuses currently in the game because costs are so prohibitive with how much Influence you need. Please don’t let this happen with guild halls. I am with timmyf on the size thing.

True so you have to be careful what you make accessible in what way.. But thats all.

It’s what I said in my previous post. You want every guild to be able to have a portal to LA or to give some bonus to guild-members? Then do not lock that behind a raid-dungeon. But you might want to unlock a cool looking tower or maybe a stable with pets or something like that behind the raid dungeon.
If you feel it would be oke if smaller guilds would have no access to that.

(I use the raid dungeon here because that would be something thats obviously not doable by small guilds. But it’s just an example)

In the current game (no raid dungeons) however it would mean that nearly nothing would be unaccessible for smaller guilds (maybe stuff locked behind guild-missions?). They would just have to choose what they want because they can not have everything.

Guys, while the whole design aspect is sounding fun for a guild hall, I think we are forgetting one thing:

In GW1, the guild halls were relatively the same design for GvG. So while developing and building a guild to look how you want, how would this effect the GvG aspect, where there could be some annoyance in trying to find a guild lord to kill?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

Hi Chris,

I’m kind of at a loss with this, it seems like we are all sort of going off in different directions? Are alliances a thing?

Anywho, some stuff is sort of floating around the virtual yard so far:

Increasing horizontal progression when is comes to halls
1. Visual upgrades (wall of achievements, representing upgrades)
2. Re-Categorizing current upgrades to reflect more with halls
3. Adding specialized structures (workshops, kitchens, personal spaces, etc. )

Guild hall limitations
1. Member caps
2. Ability to customize the structure (more sandboxy)

Open world halls versus instanced

Costs
1. Up-front fee
2. Maintenance costs (more in line with open world)
3. Equal footing costs for small and large guilds

I’m not looking to drive the conversation, but there is a lot floating around.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

Even the smallest guilds could own and upgrade their halls in GW1 if they were willing to work towards it. I feel that it should be the same here. It may take more time, but there is no reason a husband and wife guild (for example) should be excluded just because they don’t have ‘x’ number of people. Guilds are not about numbers, they are about companionship and cooperative play, and sometimes 2 is enough for some people.

Thanks Lanfear. To be clear I am definitely not suggesting exclusion.

Your answer makes absolute sense.

Not once we have discussed this question we ill move onto the next.

Chris

I didn’t think you were, necessarily, but the size thing is something that needs to be broached. I know there are many that seem to feel that unless a guild is at least ‘x’ size, it isn’t a ‘guild’ and for some reason shouldn’t be able to do the same things the bigger guilds do, which I don’t necessarily agree with. But, being a GW1 vet, I’m used to small guilds being on par with the full 100 member guilds, when it came to purchasing, upgrading etc. The only time a ‘minimum number’ came into play was for GVG. With the introduction of Guild Missions here in GW2, sometimes it feels like small guilds are being dismissed by the development team.

timmyf.1490:

Langmar Estate’s picture room called and wants to beat you over the head with player-count gating. :-/

actually, for this one specifically, the blog posts (or whatever information was provided) prior to the release of missions comes into play… puzzles were designed specifically with a 6 person minimum and it was communicated to us that thats the case.

running it with 6 is fine, but it needs to be well explained, moderately coordinated, and possibly practiced. (i havent tried snowden with only 6 tho.)

but some of those challenges with only 6? oh hell no. and the kicker is that challenges are a prerequisite for puzzles (not that you have to do them, but you have to unlock them at least), so were expected to be able to complete challenges before attempting puzzles.

timmyf.1490:

I would be shocked if ArenaNet would allow the beautiful landscapes they’ve created to be destroyed by open-world guild halls. That would basically destroy my interest in ever completing open-world PvE content ever again. (Because the primary reason I do open-world content is to game casually while appreciating the aesthetics.) I’ll stick to instances/WvW if that happens, but please: no thanks.

? So you see open world guild-halls as guilds being able to place there guild-hall everywhere in the current maps where they want? I don’t think there has even been one suggestion like that in this thread. All suggestions that where made would not destroy the landscape as it is.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

I think there’s no real minimum behind guild halls, unless you hide it behind merits, which is a bit harder to come by in a small-ish guild.

I worked on getting my guild upgrades done, the guild was created at pre-launch of the game, and my active players ranged from 3-4 to around 20 at peak time during those past 2 years+

We recently finish upgrading everything this summer. Yes, it took a while, and what we did in-between, we played guild missions with an allied guild, while we would get enough influence to upgrade everything we needed.

I think being a smaller guild, working towards these objectives that seems so far away, brings us closer together, working towards a common objective. Now we run our own missions every week, and when we’re recruiting we can say we have everything unlocked.

So nothing is really unreachable, if you don’t mind putting the time in it.

munkiman.3068:

Devata.6589:

Well being in favor or against it is another question. I just showed one way the problem you talked about there could be solved.

In all honestly you seem to be against because of mainly technical difficulties (just as most people who are against that). However for nearly all (some you can’t without knowing the code.. nor do you know if it’s really a problem) technical difficulties solutions have been offered in this thread.

Like what you talk about here. “There is already enough trolling going around” so your technical difficulty here is to prevent the trolling, not the idea of open world guild-halls itself. (btw what type of trolling do you mean?) Also “the amount of real-estate you would need to add to the game” is a technical difficulty not really something against open world halls. And for that one also multiple suggestions have been giving. Like the sky-maps (that work with over-flows) and dynamical increasing / decreasing ground-maps and a few other solutions.

Trolling in the sense that larger guilds hold “rituals” in open world and are often “bothered” by the open world population (see RP guild requests as well). You prevent that by making GHs instanced.

The suggestion to randomly toss halls around from plot to plot is more of a “where’s my hall at today” issue. I’m not really focused on the tech hurdles. There are several problems, those were just a couple.

Devata.6589:

I think if the game was more designed around the sandbox, it would be a cool feature though.
Well that is one of the things.. To me GW2 always have seemed as if it wanted to be more sandbox but wasn’t. The whole idea with a living breading world and so on.

Dynamic events don’t do much for that and also the ‘living world patches’ don’t help that much for it. A little more sandbox however would do exactly that. People building there own houses or guild-halls. Stuff changes, it’s dynamic, it’s a living world.
So that alone would be a reason and a time to go a little more sandbox with this imho. Especially if Anet want to keep talking about a living world.

Yes that brings technical difficulties with it and many of those have an easy fix (instance) but the technical difficulties can be solved.

By sandbox, i mean being able to plop down a structure and modify it which influences the open world. The living story is designed and structured by Arena which makes it more like a themepark. Introducing sandbox type elements doesn’t seem all that enticing to me.

For the trolling part, as long as your inside your guild-hall, even if you are in an open world, nobody could be trolling you. An option to block out map-chat inside your guild-plot was already suggested as a technical solution for that.

“The suggestion to randomly toss halls around from plot to plot is more of a “where’s my hall at today” issue. I’m not really focused on the tech hurdles. There are several problems, those were just a couple.”

Also this would not happen. With plots on ground maps it would only happed if a map becomes a ghost time or if a guild go’s inactive (and then you have to place it in the new map, it would not happen automatically).

For sky-maps they just spawn where they where before or at least close to that. (I would think in the case of sky-maps, airships would have hit detection to not fly into each other, so then they might need to spawn a little to the side if another ship is in the way) also then you would not have to look around because you would use something like a guild-hall stone to portal you there.

“I’m not really focused on the tech hurdles. "
I know your not however the things you talk about are not a reason why open world guild halls would be bad but technical difficulties to overcome when using open world guild-halls. Difficulties that would not be in the instance but not things that are unsolvable.

Yes I know what sandbox means. While it would not have to be in the current maps so would not have to influence the current maps.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Serophous.9085:

Guys, while the whole design aspect is sounding fun for a guild hall, I think we are forgetting one thing:

In GW1, the guild halls were relatively the same design for GvG. So while developing and building a guild to look how you want, how would this effect the GvG aspect, where there could be some annoyance in trying to find a guild lord to kill?

Hi,

GvG will be discussed after we discuss raiding.

Thanks,

Chris

gotcha

JonPeters.5630:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

JonPeters.5630:

[…]

Saved for later when we get a dungeon or raid CDI: I like the direction in which this suggestion is going but I would suggest another implementation.

Back to Guild Halls
One question I would like to have answered:
Guilds can hold up to 500 players. Normal maps can hold up to 100 – 150 (?) players.
How do you want to ensure that players don’t feel separated from each other, can you raise the player-cap for Guild Halls?
Do you have any other idea how to get around this issue?

As Chris would put it: Le Bump.
I would like to know how you want to get around the player cap.

I’ll chime in a bit here. It is a good question. I think there would be some conflict here but that there would also be some technical wiggle room. I think we can safely assume that 500 players from a guild being logged in is not the common case. What is a “reasonable” maximum # of members in the guild hall to you? 150? 200? 400?

But if we have maps with multiple guild-halls?

So the question then is, why is the number of players limited. Or does it only have to be limited within an area around players? So as long as we prevent more then x players to come to close to each other it should be fine.

Usually you would think there should not really be a max to the number of players in a map but there would be a max to the numbers of players close to each other.

And I think 250 would be the max even for a HC 500 man guild. But I’m not in a HC 500 man guild so would not know.

I would think you guys have the numbers for that. For us it would be guessing.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Munki,

We are just brain storming and thus throwing the idea of Alliances up. it was the top voted QOL proposal by the CDI group and something that I think would be really good for many aspects of the game.

It is important to try to not think of me as a dev in the discussion. I am just helping you guys to design and problem solving and you guys are helping me with your design ideas and community persona.

Chris

Fair enough, although i think of you and Jon as the ones that drive these conversations, more in the sense that we at least have a tighter structure so we can all sort specific ideas out. I mentioned some of this in a previous post.

I agree Alliances should be a thing, for sure. I also think you should be able to visit each guild in an alliance hall and guest to that guild for things like GvG and missions. A couple features that should come along with the Alliance idea. But, then again, we still need to work out the issue with a map cap even moreso then.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

I think, for smaller guilds, the basic bonuses should be obtainable easily. Examples like a guild armorer merchant or something. But the bigger, longer, and higher stuff should stay the bigger and longer. Yes, big guilds will reach it faster than smaller guilds, but that’s the nature of the beast. Bigger guilds are going to get to the bigger and better stuff sooner.

Not to mention, if a small guild were able to access everything so easily, imagine how empty the hall could look because the place is so big with so few people!

As for minimum size, I would say 25 members must be in the guild to start. That seems like an easily achievable number, especially with people able to join up to 4 guilds at a time.

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

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

It depends on what sort of road blocks would be in there for smaller guilds. Soft limiters would be okay(merits and influence would take longer to acquire) but hard limiters(you must have x people to do this, some of the guild challenges and puzzles are like this) would not be. A hard limiter just feels completely unnecessary. A small guild will probably take longer to get things but as long as it is reasonable I don’t see a problem.

Also if it is going to involve guild merits you should swap the unlock order of Guild Trek and Guild Bounty or just make them separate.

Some sort of hybrid approach would also be nice.
For example you want to build a mini Stonemist in your guild hall. You could start it by either spending currency or getting an item that drops from attacking Stonemist. Then once the building is in progress defending Stonemist could contribute to the progress.

This could be applied to pretty much all activities across the game. Sanctum Sprint could give a reward that lets you create your own customizable sanctum sprint course in your guild hall. Maybe someone wants to make their entire guild hall one giant sanctum course ….

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

Smallest size would also depend on if you would use something like air-ships (what could be much much bigger) or ground-maps.

However I would think that ground floor SM, and then the building, not the walls around it would be the good size to start with. The most important and unlocks should then also unlocked and would be easy for bigger and smaller guilds.

After that you can increase the side buy building stuff around it yourself. Placing things where you want it. Most of those unlocks / blue-prints should be available for smaller and bigger guilds. The difference here would be that smaller build might need to decide what unlock they want.

Again the portal example. Dungeons reward portals blue-prints, a small guild can decide to go for the LA portal while a larger guild has the manpower to take all all portals by doing all dungeons. But most stuff is available for all guilds.