Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

Lets just stop telling people to not suggest things because they think they can not be done

If Chris thinks it’s productive, then who am I to suggest otherwise? But I would like to clarify – because I think it’s important – that I never personally told people they couldn’t suggest something, merely that I found it unproductive, frustrating, and a waste of time.

But by all means, have at it!

Devata.6589:

It’s not that I dislike the airship suggestion but like you say yourself it’s not very customizable and looking at the the other MMO’s have to offer on the part of customization you can’t really ignore that. How hard it might be to implement it. The customization part would however indeed be what would take a lot of work so lets hope that they have already been working on a system for that. Anet must also have been seeing what the market is doing and understand that they can’t stay behind.

I have to disagree with this. An easy way of doing customization is to create 5 or 6 base models, then make some variants for small/medium/large guild halls. Give each model some color channels and you have enough of a starting point to allow re-skinning to create lots of different looks. The basic system works the same way armor does.

More advanced models could be more modular for proposed add ons and modification.

This would be enough customization for a majority of the player base I think. For those that don’t think its enough, they probably won’t be satisfied unless they can draw out the architecture themselves.

This always comes to mind. Attached for convenience, linked because I’m not a dirty thief. http://xkcd.com/1425/

A different take on acquiring guild halls.

Let every guild get a guild hall automatically, for free, when they hit 20 members.

This guild hall would be a basic meeting place with a few rooms that would offer little to no buffs or features. Just a place to park your butt and chat with friends. Guilds would then be able to build add-ons/upgrades as they see fit or as outlined in previous pages.

It would solve an issue over small guilds having guild halls, but might raise issues over the perceived prestige value of a guild hall.

I suppose the questions to ask are, Is the initial build cost important? And why?

timmyf.1490:

This always comes to mind. Attached for convenience, linked because I’m not a dirty thief. http://xkcd.com/1425/

Yep, this. Very much this.

Torsailr.8456:

I suppose the questions to ask are, Is the initial build cost important? And why?

This is a great question! Personally, I love the idea of having a guild hall that’s easily within reach for everybody. Perhaps a basic guild hall that you can then upgrade for a cost.

I think the idea of having there be a charge is two-fold: 1) prestige and 2) to limit the number of guild halls for single-man guilds.

Guild Halls might not have a huge performance impact sitting out there empty, but imagine every player has one or two personal guilds, each with a guild hall. That does add up.

Having some sort of minimum player count would help, though you could also potentially invite a bunch of people, get your hall, and kick them. That’s probably not behavior Anet wishes to incentivize.

timmyf.1490:

This always comes to mind. Attached for convenience, linked because I’m not a dirty thief. http://xkcd.com/1425/

It’s very true. However that’s no reason to not think big. It’s our job to tell the devs what we want. It’s the devs job to decide what’s possible. I think if we can make a well thought out design then they’ll put in the time to get it done. If it takes a year or two, then it does.

I’m sure in a couple days Chris will give some more guidance and we can start limiting ideas then.

Torsailr.8456:

Devata.6589:

It’s not that I dislike the airship suggestion but like you say yourself it’s not very customizable and looking at the the other MMO’s have to offer on the part of customization you can’t really ignore that. How hard it might be to implement it. The customization part would however indeed be what would take a lot of work so lets hope that they have already been working on a system for that. Anet must also have been seeing what the market is doing and understand that they can’t stay behind.

I have to disagree with this. An easy way of doing customization is to create 5 or 6 base models, then make some variants for small/medium/large guild halls. Give each model some color channels and you have enough of a starting point to allow re-skinning to create lots of different looks. The basic system works the same way armor does.

More advanced models could be more modular for proposed add ons and modification.

This would be enough customization for a majority of the player base I think. For those that don’t think its enough, they probably won’t be satisfied unless they can draw out the architecture themselves.

I do know what you where getting at and it would give room for some modification and don’t get me wrong I do like the idea of airships but at the same time I still feel the customization would be to limited and that does not only mean you can not customize a lot but it would also mean that the way to unlock those customizations would be limited. Goals for guilds would be to limited.

Thats one of the reasons I am so for customization. Not only (but also) so guilds can really build there own thing and look apart but also to give guilds things to do, things to unlock and things to work towards.

Unlock building blocks like walls, doors, windows, and so on. And that level of customization would you not be able to see in a airship. It’s still far of from drawing out the architecture yourselves but go’s further as picking armor and colors for your character (what would be similar to the level of customization you could do with airships I think).

But then again maybe we can have both. (or something can be added later) Would make sense that guild would also have a ground bases if they have airships don’t you think?

Proposal Overview

Guild halls are fractals of former areas and structures in the open world

Goal of Proposal

so far we have had discussions about how the guild hall should interact with the rest of the world. Open, instanced, instanced alliance/gated communities? I propose that Guild halls be fractals of areas visitable in the open world from the past.

Proposal Functionality

Ruined and abandoned or semi- ruined areas would now have ‘rifts’ that would allow for travel between open world and guild instance as an optional alternate to teleportation as mentioned earlier. ideally a portion of the instanced hall would be available in the open world as the ruined area.

A good example would be to have the priory excavate a bit more of rata pten to have some open world common area with a rift to some instance of the area that is larger.

Customization could come from having different time periods to unlock within the instance. was rata pten infested with destroyers at one point? have a destroyer based version? what was it like further back in time, a metropolis? this would allow for some customization, honor and explore past lore. additionally the nature of the mists is ‘peculiar’ and gives a good excuse for later additions to the guild to be included without breaking lore( GvG, would be to fractals merging together, i mean look at EotM)

on another note, if arena net were to do customizable features with guild halls it’d probably be best to have the unlocks scale exponentially in cost with influence. this would allow for small guilds to get their feet wet with a guild hall while allowing big guilds to make their epic guild hub.

Associated Risks
this proposal limits the customization options of the players and could allow for guild placement to circumnavigate some waypoint costs. Additionally this also limits the designs of guild halls to currently available locations in tyria. excluding areas (currently) like cantha, elona, dominion of winds. crystal desert ect.

(sorry about the length)

Devata.6589:

Unlock building blocks like walls, doors, windows, and so on. And that level of customization would you not be able to see in a airship. It’s still far of from drawing out the architecture yourselves but go’s further as picking armor and colors for your character (what would be similar to the level of customization you could do with airships I think).

Airships have walls, doors and windows. They also have exterior walls/hulls, balloons/propellers, turrets, etc. Anything you want to customize in a ground building can be customized on an airship.

But it sounds like you’re limiting yourself at the same time. Why not go a step further?

Floating islands with a keep/castle on them?
Maybe go full Asura and have a Borg-like cube in the air?
Or perhaps you want a giant dandelion puff that wanders aimlessly?
Or maybe you had too much candy last Halloween and you think it would be totally awesome to have a glowing spider shaped guild hall made out of dead candy corn elementals?
Or how about a wizards tower on a cloud that rains hearts on LA?

If you want to talk customization why are you limiting your ideas to just a keep? Personally I think most of those previous ideas are possible with some creative reskinning and a handful of floor plans.

Just wanted to mention I freaking love this idea!

I am glad to see the CDI. I have just one request: Let people use armor/food from PvE/WvW and not be restricted by what is in PvP. PvP mode is too basic as far as gear choices go.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Donari.5237:

The way I’m looking at it, this CDI is for brainstorming. It may transpire that some of the ideas are too grandiose or infeasible but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be discussed. Even if an idea is too much to implement, it may spark creativity on a smaller scale or inspire a spin-off concept that turns out to be wonderful.

Generally the devs running the thread come back after the initial brainstorms have died down and ask for more focused discussion on certain points. We’re not far enough in yet for that phase, imo.

Absolutely correct Donari.

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know I am up to date and that is one of the best CDIs to date in terms of superb proposals, brainstorming and problem solving.

Chris

The first CDI I participated in was the previous one for Guild QoL; is the final sorting where people give their 3 favourites the norm for CDIs?

Sadly, I missed that part and my ideas didn’t make the cut in the final document; although, I would have probably hesitated to pick all of my own as some other ideas I feel were more important to push trough…

I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything on this discussion.

Kulvar”

~ GUILD HALLS ~

Louveepine.7630 and me have discussed of Guild Halls and we came with plenty of basic elements that could make Guild Halls as customizable than our characters and practical ! They’re light elements, used in gameboy RPG that have some declinations and can be adapt to Guild Wars 2 to let us have a whole and flexible customization system. The proposed system and ideas can be use for Home instances too !
Thereafter, I will make adamant statement many times, but it’s because I suggest all of this the way my friend and me had imagined it. It’s of course up to Arena.net to pick what is relevant for them and improve it as they wish.

+ Location
First of all, the idea is to have different Guild Hall environment and landscapes.
It will also define where Guild Halls entrances were localized.
Each main city will have an interactive door/elevator for urban type Guild Hall.
Divinity’s Reach, Hoelbrak, Black Citadel, Rata Sum, The Grove, and Lion’s Arch.
Alternatively, it will have isolated entrances in each region type : Maguuma Jungle, Shiverpeak, Krytian temperate area, Charr savanna. With two declinations for each : plain and mountain.
And from Lion’s arch port an island location.
So we have fifteen locations. New ones can be add to make more declinations.

+ Building
We have the location, the second part is to select a building type.
Building type exist for each races with some declinations in parenthesis.
Declinations are separated between floor, walls and roof.
Note : It’s only the building (floor and walls), the inside is totally empty.

*Human fortress (stone, wood, chipped stone)
*Human house (Can end in noble manor or notorious tavern depending of texture choices)
*Norn Lodge (Classic, Bear, Wolf, Panther, Crow, Svanir)
*Asuran krewe (Synergetics, Dynamics, Statics, Inquest)
*Sylvari vegetal building (Dream or Nightmare)
*Sylvari isolated grove area (Dream or Nightmare)
*Charr fortress (Iron, Blood, Ash or Flame)
*Charr camp (Iron, Bloodn Ash or Flame)
*Caves ! (Mossy, Iced or Dark. Best for bandit guilds)
Nine buildings categories, many declinations, more can be added in future.

+ Special Guild Halls
Special guild halls could be reachable from Lion’s arch port : ships of every races ! A dashing Human three-masted, an heavy Charr ironclad, a proud Norn drakkar, a vegetal Sylvari ship, and an Asuran hovercraft.
An ultimate ship could be unlocked from Fort Trinity : the Pact Airship like the Glory of Tyria.
These special Guild Halls are “Buildings” with sea/air linked environments.
At this point, we already have hundreds possibilities.

*+ Furnishing
Now that we have the building, I will tell you about the furnishing !
Do you remember of old gameboy games like Pokémon or Zelda ? Gameboy cartridges have a little memory but they have stored a complete world inside. Guild Halls aren’t a whole world so it will take a “few” memory capacity to store a tile-based housing system.
One tile is roughly the size of a character (a big Charr of course).
Guild Halls start with 4 tiles by 8 (example). And it can be increased by the guild leader, adding a row of tiles in X and Y axis in exchange of influence and/or money.
Each tile can be manage to be occupied by a furniture. Table, chair, bar, fireplace, wardrobe, bookcase, weapon rack, armor dummy, plants. These elements have different declinations ordered by race.
In addition of these declinations, elements may have a direction. So we can make a tavern bar by putting a row of bar tiles. With a row of beds and curtains we can make an hospital or a dormitory. Beds are two tiles long with a “head” and “foot” part correctly oriented.

+ Interactivity
Some elements may be interactive : bed, chair, stool, bench…
By clicking on an empty bed, the character jump on the bed and use the sleep emote correctly oriented.
These elements can be count as siege weapon. For example a stool have four skills. By using one I can face a specific direction and can drink at the bar or looking back and talk.

+ Special “Furnishing”
With guild influence, special furnishing can be bought that will add life to a guild hall : NPC !
You want a tavern like hall ? Buy an innkeeper of the race and gender you want ! With the facing option it will be correctly oriented. The innkeeper is a merchant that allows guild members to sell junk and buy tools or salvage kits.
Also this is a list of decorative NPC purchasable :
*Norn Chaman of the [select spirit]
*Norn Master of the Lodge
*Charr Soldier of the [select legion]
*Charr Gladium
*Sylvari (Gardener, Valiant or Courtier)
*Asura Krewe assistant/member
*Asuran Golem (7-Series, D-Series, Assistant, Hazmat suit)
*Human Priest of [select god]
*Human Soldier/Worker/Farmer
Also special furnishing can be a Guild vault entrance or craftsmanship workshop and a material vendor NPC.

Kulvar”

~ GUILD HALLS #2 ~

+ Accessibility
A Guild Hall is split in two instances (same location and building main type). Public and private instances.
Guild members can go in the Public part freely, the private part access is managed by a new guild option in rank management.
The guild leader can also choose to use an access key generated by the game and unique. Anyone who give the access key at the guild hall entrance is allowed to enter in the public instance of the associated guild. The guild leader can ask for a new access key all time.
If the guild hall is “tavern like” or “shop like” or “hospital like”, the public part is open with the access key given and the private part is a dormitory.
If the guild hall is more private, the public part may be closed with no access key or the access key was given to a few people and the private part is reserved for the officers.
A free TP option is available to guild members that allow them to join the public part any time. Useful for low level members that can’t reach the guild entrance. And you will have two ways of leaving Guild Hall. By the entrance, you’re teleported in front of the portal. Or you can leave and reappear in Lion’s arch. The last option will prevent low level members to be killed when leaving, higher level member can use it too, it’s not different than the “teleport to the mists and take Lion’s arch portal” thing.

+ How to obtain a Guild Hall ?
Influence by the Architecture upgrade category !
Golds can be involved to unlock furnishing options or recruit NPC.

+ Features
Because Guild Hall need to be a little useful but without draining the world of its inhabitants, here we suggest some features Guild Halls can provide.
The innkeeper and workshops are a first thing that can be put in “features”.
Guild Halls should not allow members to teleport somewhere else than Lion’s arch and the entrance. No “dungeon TP”.
We have a suggestion that not directly provide a feature to Guild Hall but is related and will help to dispatch players in the world to make different regions more living.

+ Long term Guild missions
Currently, guild missions consist of making things with huge guild groups for a short amount of time.
Long term guild missions will consist of giving guild goals that can be reach only if many guild members help.
Missions will be weekly, randomly generated, guild specific, and proportional to the number of members.
Guild specific to dispatch guild goals in different regions, providing reasons to go there and life activity.
Proportional to discriminate involvement instead of member quantity. But rewards are partially proportional so you will not be wronged to have a big guild.
They’re one for each category “War”, “Exploration”, and “Economy”.

A few example of guild missions :
*Art of War : Durmand priory want cristal shards from the branded for studying.
*Art of War : Sparkly Fen is invaded by Skales, put an end to it.
*Economy : Vigils are in short supply of iron ore, gather some for them.
*Economy : Ebon vanguard want to replace worn gear and need new thick leather medium armors.
*Exploration : Evon Gnashblade heard that a treasure is hidden in Goemm’s lab. Help him by exploring the area and he’ll help you, perhaps.
Example for the jumping puzzle mission, it has to be done one time for each member of the guild. But if someone love jumping puzzle and do it four time in the week, it matters. But he can’t do the whole guild mission alone.
Linked to the Guild Halls, the gathered/crafted items have to be given to the Guild Vault entrance by a “donation” feature to count for the global mission progression.

Hello all, this is my first time posting on the forums, so please be gentle.

My guild is a small “family & friends” guild with 6 very active members and 4 not too active friends. I was reading this post with interest because of all the fond memories of spend hours in our GW1 guild hall chatting and planning our adventures of the day. Also the emoting/dancing/showing mini pets to entertain any of our guildies kids that were looking at the screen and laughing at our characters antics. As a small guild, we would love a Guild Hall. We are PvE only, as PvP, WvW and GvG (when it arrives) don’t interest us. Because of this and our size, maybe we could have something a bit different?

I have this idea of a Guild Manor House, like those from Tudor times. Accessed like our Home Instances (maybe a BLTP Guild Portal Stone?), it would be like a family home with two storeys and large garden. We could choose from a few layouts, but we’d be able to customise the look and colour (use dyes?) of the walls (inside & out), flooring, lighting, furniture (and placement), roof and whether we could add a tower to shove one of my brothers in.

The gardens could have a few layouts to choose from – formal knot gardens to relaxed country styles. These can be planted and tended with plants & trees, add a few rare plants (like rose bushes, sunflowers, exotic lilies) that could drop from gathering in certain areas, maybe add a few gathering nodes.

If we could have crafting stations, then have certain areas for that type of craft, e.g. kitchen for the cooks, workshop for the carpenters, huntsman and artificer, smithy for the armourer & weapon smith, tannery for the leatherworker, sowing room for the tailors and a work area for the sparklies crafter. These could be separate outbuildings or incorporated into the Manor House – maybe a basement or tower.

All these things and areas could be “paid” for over time by gathering and maybe some drops from certain places/bosses. No maintenance fee for having this size space or the buildings, but exclude the small Guild Manor Houses from certain things like GvG, any WvW buffs or anything similar that might be added, etc. (But please do give us anything PvE related – we’d love that!). The house plans could drop from World bosses or be bought from a Housing NPC. If we could have merchants, we would have to build a shopping area on the grounds so they could move in. Little things like that, that take time and give us a feeling of achievement and a goal to work towards.

I’ve probably missed a lot of points and if anyone could give feedback on this idea, I would love it. To be honest, I think I’ve just described my dream house. If I can’t get it in game, maybe I’ll have to play the Lottery & hope to win the jackpot! Thank you for reading – Tevara.

timmyf.1490:

This always comes to mind. Attached for convenience, linked because I’m not a dirty thief. http://xkcd.com/1425/

Bumping,

The difficulty of adding certain things may not be what you’d expect I mean I suspect that easy to add stuff is:
Instanced zone creation
Placement tools
Stucture tools
Leaderboards/Stat tracking objects
because they all already exist, they may need a more polished UI to be layman usable.

Medium:
New skins/objects/structures, just require development time and art resources.
New minigames, require same as above with some logistics too.

The hardest things to add would likely be:
Dueling arenas within an otherwise PvE zone (google 6/06/06 Runescape for a why).
Mobile objects (plant a banner while on the Airships in Arah and you’ll see that currently the map seems to move not the ship).
Open world structure placement (making sure people can’t block portals/map/dungeon entrances or otherwise use the tools to troll).

The size of the space and guildhall can be massive easily, its the smaller more complex objects that will cause problems. (This is just my speculation)

Hello Chris,

Im pretty sure, that I souldnt write here about something like a Guild Hall, which is visible for every other player on the map, but they simply can’t join this place, cause it’s reserved only for a guild members. Ofc it would be cool to see something like that – a ranomly arranged Guild Halls on the whole Tyria map, which are visible for every1, and guilds would act like “Ha! Look at us! We built it, and that’s ours!”

It sounds great, but it is unrealistic. We’ve got MegaServers, also this type of Guild Hall would be good for a small MMORPG i guess, but not for a big one, which is GW2. We should have one big server – not a few MegaServers.

So I think we should focus on the things that are feasible, and fit the mechanics of the game. It is no secret, that we’ve got “open world”, but everything is instantiated – it’s like… half-open world, but it gives a sense of a open world We can do something on the MegaServer “A”, but on the other Server everything’s different, and there are other people etc, etc. That’s why I think we have no other choice than instantiated Guild Halls. Therefore, I will focus on this and I will explain how I see it.

• It should be possible to teleport there with one click. There should be also a guild hall panel, which would be located near “Rooster”, “Upgrades”, “Guild Missions”, and all that stuff. We would see there a progress of our GH – or even more – mby put there a number, that tells us how many guild members are there.

• Guild should be able to choose what type of GH they want. There should be different to choose from. And when they’ll choose, then it’s possible to construct more rooms, or other elements, by upgrading a GH.

• It shouldnt be that easy to build everything in ur GH. Not every guild should have a GH – let them work for it. It will make that on the main maps will be a lot of people, which havent got a GH . Highlight up somehow guilds, which upgraded everyting in their GH – idk how. Mby any leaderboards for a guilds or something like that. We should use a lot of influence and merits – this will encourage people to continue playing a game. Simple goal. While now I’ve got medium guild, which have 500k+ influence, and almost always 250/250 merits… Now we have the number of people we want to – we dont want to became a big guild – but when we was a small guild, then we had pretty much influ, and merits too. There is nothing to do with these influ, and merits.

• It’s important to encourage people to appear in this pace. We do not want another empty place, which was created for nothing – just for being, righ? And this is the main point of a guild hall existence.
  Just think more about a content for a guilds – cause we’ve got no content for them. Guild Missions are neglected. Anyway, they’re located in the open world, which destroys guild’s fun. Argument with the fact that people from the outside would see how our guild works sounds good only when we’re talking about it. But in practice it makes a missions horrible. People want to do something alone among guild in peace and fun – without dozens of other guilds, and random people on the neck…
  And what we’ve got outside missions? Nothing.
  One big nothing for a guilds. Achh… Sorry, We’ve got WORLD bossess too, but they are not created for a guilds. It’s a open world content, which guilds can make.
  We cant do it with +-25 people – which is max for a raid IMO. Why u force us to build a mass-guilds with hundreds of players? Why we cant do some thing in the smaller groups? 10? 15? 20? 25?… On the one hand we have something for 5 (dungs,fractals,pvp) whats cool, but we can do it without a guild too . On the other hand we’ve got bigger activities but it’s for hundreds of players, like world bosses or even wvw – we cant go wvw, and expect a balanced fights, cause we can join it by 10/20 people, and met with 100 enemies.
  When we’ll have a GUILD dedicated content, then just put it in the guild halls – that’s going to simply encourage people to enter there, and use it.

Xar.1387:

Hello Chris,

Im pretty sure, that I souldnt write here about something like a Guild Hall, which is visible for every other player on the map, but they simply can’t join this place, cause it’s reserved only for a guild members. Ofc it would be cool to see something like that – a ranomly arranged Guild Halls on the whole Tyria map, which are visible for every1, and guilds would act like “Ha! Look at us! We built it, and that’s ours!”

It sounds great, but it is unrealistic. We’ve got MegaServers, also this type of Guild Hall would be good for a small MMORPG i guess, but not for a big one, which is GW2. We should have one big server – not a few MegaServers.

So I think we should focus on the things that are feasible, and fit the mechanics of the game. It is no secret, that we’ve got “open world”, but everything is instantiated – it’s like… half-open world, but it gives a sense of a open world We can do something on the MegaServer “A”, but on the other Server everything’s different, and there are other people etc, etc. That’s why I think we have no other choice than instantiated Guild Halls. Therefore, I will focus on this and I will explain how I see it.

• It should be possible to teleport there with one click. There should be also a guild hall panel, which would be located near “Rooster”, “Upgrades”, “Guild Missions”, and all that stuff. We would see there a progress of our GH – or even more – mby put there a number, that tells us how many guild members are there.

• Guild should be able to choose what type of GH they want. There should be different to choose from. And when they’ll choose, then it’s possible to construct more rooms, or other elements, by upgrading a GH.

• It shouldnt be that easy to build everything in ur GH. Not every guild should have a GH – let them work for it. It will make that on the main maps will be a lot of people, which havent got a GH . Highlight up somehow guilds, which upgraded everyting in their GH – idk how. Mby any leaderboards for a guilds or something like that. We should use a lot of influence and merits – this will encourage people to continue playing a game. Simple goal. While now I’ve got medium guild, which have 500k+ influence, and almost always 250/250 merits… Now we have the number of people we want to – we dont want to became a big guild – but when we was a small guild, then we had pretty much influ, and merits too. There is nothing to do with these influ, and merits.

• It’s important to encourage people to appear in this pace. We do not want another empty place, which was created for nothing – just for being, righ? And this is the main point of a guild hall existence.
  Just think more about a content for a guilds – cause we’ve got no content for them. Guild Missions are neglected. Anyway, they’re located in the open world, which destroys guild’s fun. Argument with the fact that people from the outside would see how our guild works sounds good only when we’re talking about it. But in practice it makes a missions horrible. People want to do something alone among guild in peace and fun – without dozens of other guilds, and random people on the neck…
  And what we’ve got outside missions? Nothing.
  One big nothing for a guilds. Achh… Sorry, We’ve got WORLD bossess too, but they are not created for a guilds. It’s a open world content, which guilds can make.
  We cant do it with +-25 people – which is max for a raid IMO. Why u force us to build a mass-guilds with hundreds of players? Why we cant do some thing in the smaller groups? 10? 15? 20? 25?… On the one hand we have something for 5 (dungs,fractals,pvp) whats cool, but we can do it without a guild too . On the other hand we’ve got bigger activities but it’s for hundreds of players, like world bosses or even wvw – we cant go wvw, and expect a balanced fights, cause we can join it by 10/20 people, and met with 100 enemies.
  When we’ll have a GUILD dedicated content, then just put it in the guild halls – that’s going to simply encourage people to enter there, and use it.

I think the suggestion I made earlier on the thread may be the type thing you are looking for.

To summarize it it’s Guild Zones. These are different racially themed zones that give the guild owners a chance to customize content and add new challenges via an unlock system that can be scaled to the guild size or needs.. It also allows players to switch between instanced version of the zone based on a “district” system similar to the GW1 model.

Attached is a sample of where the Guild Zones could be located to give an illusion of being part of the “open world” but still there own unique zones.

Title: – Guild Camps – (aka a Temporary Guild Hall)

Proposal Overview:
A temporary encampment area set up by a particular guild allowing access to various resources to all who visit
Goal of Proposal:
Increased Guild social interaction between members and the general public
Proposal Functionality:
It would be a guild upgrade in either the Architecture or Politics tree.

I see this as a sort of a temporary PvE open world Guild Hall but available to the public.
It would allow a rank approved guild member the ability to go to a particular open world area and set up a temporary small camp, complete with all guild hall related accoutrements so that anybody in the area could partake if applicable.

For Example: While waiting in the hour and a half queue for Tequatl to spawn, the potential vanquishers could:

• craft at the various mobile crafting stations
• access their Guild Vault/Bank inventories
• sell excess gear
• invest/pickup on the BLTC
• Situational Risk – AFKers could be a problem by occupying a viable slot for the active Teq players. The AFK game mechanics will need to be addressed to avoid this issue

And so on. Pretty much anything you could do in town you could do in Guild Camps.

Stipulations:

• Allowable building locations predetermined by ANet via map restrictions, should show footprint outlines on the ground (only during proposed construction) depicting where the camp is able to be placed.
• The camp and its surrounding area of effect would become a ‘Safe Haven’ for its duration, repelling all Yellow and Red Creatures beyond the longest skill effect range(breaking all agro), thus making it a non-combat area.
• Should be buildable underwater

Restrictions:

• Only one of a specific guild’s Camp can be active at any one time, though multiple guilds could have multiple camps active in general vicinity of each other.
• Could not be built in a city or near any open-world structures
• Could not be built near any chest, be it static or potentially spawned(i.e. Jumping Puzzle completion zone, Godslost Swamp’s SB spawn site), this would obviously not include Champion Bag chest drops.

Associated Risks:
Griefers spamming many camps in a particular area might be an issue but then, those hosers can Always be an issue. Guild Camp chaining (multiple guilds building a chain of camps to use their ‘Safe Haven’ as a Mob block) would need to be considered.

+1 Guild Airships!

I think ArenaNet should seriously consider this as an opportunity to really innovate the concept of Guild Halls. Not only do Airships really fit the game thematically, I think they could potentially address a few points in a really elegant way:

Non-instanced? Could airships really exist in the real world and bypass the issue of trying to ‘fit’ them into maps. OK so we wouldn’t be able to land them, but they would be there, visible when you look up into the skies complete with guild emblems and upgrades visible to all.

Interaction with other guilds. This could make the idea that you are in a neighbourhood or in alliance with other guilds really dynamic and scalable.

Location matters. Airships could be ported to any map in the game and guilds would be free to make this choice based on RP, accessibility to specific areas (Orr or Frostgorge for example) or in line with seasonal or living story events (Dry Top / Zephyr Sanctum). Each map could also have a unique ‘mooring’ cost as well as unique bonuses – a very basic example could be that parking in a snowy map could reduce chill condition duration by 5%. These things could all make the location of your airship a meaningful choice that can change over time.

Unique upgrades and maintenance – a variety of visual customisations and upgrade options. Mats could be used to generate fuel to be used as a maintenance cost?

WvW- Airships being used in WvW to ferry supplies and guild mates? Provide AoE buffs? Using them in actual combat would probably be a step too far into dreamland.

Although I haven’t taken a deep look at this thread yet, one potential solution to solve/ make it easier to implement a guild hall map system that could be expanded (in space, especially for housing), would be to get inspiration from palaces.

Palaces usually have a lot of corridors and rooms intertwined with each other. They remind me of spider’s webs, in this sense, except under a squared architecture.

So, if a guild could purchase a guild hall, and especially if there was a housing system there, the hall’s interior could start with a few rooms unlocked (doors opened), and the guild would expand its size by unlocking rooms and even entire floors.

This would be interesting both for small guilds, which would have less influence/ merit/ gold/ whatever to unlock them, because they wouldn’t even need to, while bigger guilds could unlock the entire palace structure.

This palace structure could also be a common model for all guild halls, with the only difference between selectable halls being how they are skinned. This may come of as lazy, or may be a good way to save resources.

I personally love the ideas of Guild Halls.
I’m the leader of a very active guild and I would love to see these implemented.

We are the most active PvP guilds in NA, please do not leave us out when you add Guild Halls to the game.
What I am saying is, when Guild Halls are added to the game, please implement the system in a way in which PvPers will not have to PvE to help create it.

“Maybe have a reward track to collect resources to contribute towards building the guild hall”.

Being able to invite other guilds to come guest in your guild hall would be brilliant, for a lot of reasons.

lorddavito.2395:

Even tho emotion makes no change wether it’s coming or not..

THEY"RE WORKING ON IT <33333

AFTER ALL THIS TIME, IT"S CLOSE

lorddavito – Just want to point out, this is purely a brainstorming session. It in no way makes any promises that Guild Halls are being worked on or developed. This is merely a place to discuss the topic of guild halls, along with getting dev input and feedback.

So, don’t go into this thread expecting guild halls to be a definitive thing. It’s not, this is merely a suggestion thread for “what we would like to have”.

And even if the guild halls do end up being implemented, it will still likely be quite a while before they’re in-game.

Torsailr.8456:

Devata.6589:

Unlock building blocks like walls, doors, windows, and so on. And that level of customization would you not be able to see in a airship. It’s still far of from drawing out the architecture yourselves but go’s further as picking armor and colors for your character (what would be similar to the level of customization you could do with airships I think).

Airships have walls, doors and windows. They also have exterior walls/hulls, balloons/propellers, turrets, etc. Anything you want to customize in a ground building can be customized on an airship.

But it sounds like you’re limiting yourself at the same time. Why not go a step further?

Floating islands with a keep/castle on them?
Maybe go full Asura and have a Borg-like cube in the air?
Or perhaps you want a giant dandelion puff that wanders aimlessly?
Or maybe you had too much candy last Halloween and you think it would be totally awesome to have a glowing spider shaped guild hall made out of dead candy corn elementals?
Or how about a wizards tower on a cloud that rains hearts on LA?

If you want to talk customization why are you limiting your ideas to just a keep? Personally I think most of those previous ideas are possible with some creative reskinning and a handful of floor plans.

Oow that would be fine customizable wise
.
But I would not consider that zeppelins anymore (what people are talking about here right?). It would be more like floating castles or something like the Zephyr Sanctum.

Still wonder if that could also be in the ‘open world’ (new ‘air’ maps and if you can still have a sort of neighborhood what I would like to see.
But maybe the air maps would then be like the see in a way? We fly by each other with PvP air maps) but yeah customizable enough. I just don’t see that as zeppelins and wonder if the people suggesting zeppelins and airships had that in mind?

BTW the WvW castles where just an example. I would expect many walls in many different themes walls and doors and so on. Basically the same sort of things you talk about here. And if that could be in a air maps in stead of a ground map that would be nice to.

So if we could build or own air castles and Zephyr Sanctum and so on I would love that.

What I talked about where customization would not be able to go far enough for my liking would be x models of zeppelins and then some colors to apply yourself.

Mash Hog.5672:

“Maybe have a reward track to collect resources to contribute towards building the guild hall”.

This is an outstanding idea!

Pocket.2740:

+1 Guild Airships!

I think ArenaNet should seriously consider this as an opportunity to really innovate the concept of Guild Halls. Not only do Airships really fit the game thematically, I think they could potentially address a few points in a really elegant way:

Non-instanced? Could airships really exist in the real world and bypass the issue of trying to ‘fit’ them into maps. OK so we wouldn’t be able to land them, but they would be there, visible when you look up into the skies complete with guild emblems and upgrades visible to all.

Interaction with other guilds. This could make the idea that you are in a neighbourhood or in alliance with other guilds really dynamic and scalable.

Location matters. Airships could be ported to any map in the game and guilds would be free to make this choice based on RP, accessibility to specific areas (Orr or Frostgorge for example) or in line with seasonal or living story events (Dry Top / Zephyr Sanctum). Each map could also have a unique ‘mooring’ cost as well as unique bonuses – a very basic example could be that parking in a snowy map could reduce chill condition duration by 5%. These things could all make the location of your airship a meaningful choice that can change over time.

Unique upgrades and maintenance – a variety of visual customisations and upgrade options. Mats could be used to generate fuel to be used as a maintenance cost?

WvW- Airships being used in WvW to ferry supplies and guild mates? Provide AoE buffs? Using them in actual combat would probably be a step too far into dreamland.

Yeah it would be even nicer if we could fly over the current maps. The problem however would be that they then need to make it a seamless world because else so high up you could see over the edge of the maps.

Devata.6589:

Pocket.2740:

+1 Guild Airships!

I think ArenaNet should seriously consider this as an opportunity to really innovate the concept of Guild Halls. Not only do Airships really fit the game thematically, I think they could potentially address a few points in a really elegant way:

Non-instanced? Could airships really exist in the real world and bypass the issue of trying to ‘fit’ them into maps. OK so we wouldn’t be able to land them, but they would be there, visible when you look up into the skies complete with guild emblems and upgrades visible to all.

Interaction with other guilds. This could make the idea that you are in a neighbourhood or in alliance with other guilds really dynamic and scalable.

Location matters. Airships could be ported to any map in the game and guilds would be free to make this choice based on RP, accessibility to specific areas (Orr or Frostgorge for example) or in line with seasonal or living story events (Dry Top / Zephyr Sanctum). Each map could also have a unique ‘mooring’ cost as well as unique bonuses – a very basic example could be that parking in a snowy map could reduce chill condition duration by 5%. These things could all make the location of your airship a meaningful choice that can change over time.

Unique upgrades and maintenance – a variety of visual customisations and upgrade options. Mats could be used to generate fuel to be used as a maintenance cost?

WvW- Airships being used in WvW to ferry supplies and guild mates? Provide AoE buffs? Using them in actual combat would probably be a step too far into dreamland.

Yeah it would be even nicer if we could fly over the current maps. Problem should however be that they would need to make it a seamless world because else so high up you could see over the edge of the maps.

You know, I was originally going to argue over how unrealistic this was to implement, but it suddenly gave me a spark of a really interesting idea.

So, the base idea here is floating guild halls that you can have physically over a zone, yes? Normally, I would say that’s problematic, and I don’t know if players would like having a guild base hovering over their heads.

However, what if that guild base is tied to a particular instance of a zone? Let’s say you park your guild base on Gendarran Hills. Now, your guild will have an instance of Gendarran permanently open with their guild hall in it.

The intriguing idea… what if you could move your hall, maybe once a week, and whatever zone it’s currently in will give a small bonus to XP/Magic Find/Karma (something like that) to all guild members while they are in that zone. So, movable guild perks for leveling or treasure hunting.

(As for the problem of having a ‘seamless world’, you could just have an artificial cloud cover over anything ‘outside the zone’. Would take up less resources than a seemless world, and would be a lot quicker/easier to implement.)

EDIT: After a bit of further thought, ensuring you’re in the proper instance might be troublesome. I don’t know if there would be a way to match your represented guild to the appropriate instance while gating in, but at the very least, there should be an option to teleport to your guild hall. Then, from there, either have a “move to the ground” option from the guild hall somewhere, or you could probably just waypoint to anywhere in the zone you want.

Anyway, after all you would create a tab on the main website called “Guild Halls” or something like that, where people could find every guild hall, that was built. Create there any special graphics, which reflect reality and show people how it looks like. Random players would check these halls this way – if they can’t do it in the ingame open world Then there could also appear the information that shows every guild upgrades, members, ranks, and all kinds of achieves and statistics.
Some games have on their sites this kind of previews of a guilds (or even players) – which is interesting thing for ppl – and Guild Wars 2 could have something like a guilds preview, but it would show a Guild Hall also.

But yeah, first of all we need a guild lobby, which is Guild Hall And guild content with this, then in the Guild Hall we could meet, and organize guild missions (which should be updated rly hard), killing bosses (requiring teamplay) together, etc etc… Idk, just create something, that will encourage guilds to play together. It’s your game so think >;p We need much much much content in these Guild Halls, then people will use them, and find there a fun.
We would e.g. unlock a Guild Missions room – which would cost new guilds an influence points. And then we can meet in the guild hall, and e.g meet in this special room, and then one person talks with a npc’s, which closes the door, and then we’ve got something like a “ready check”. When every player which is located in a room puts “yes”, then we’re teleported to this mission. Same with other activities.

Also being able to build things like mystic forge or hire npc’s like… trading post guy, banker etc, etc

Halls of the Mists

Overview
I just can’t see guild halls working in overworld Tyria, so we’re moving to the next best thing. Drifting Islands of the Mists.

Goal
To allow guilds to have their own private instanced guild hall map while still having an overall immersive ‘neighborhood’ that allows guilds to not only retain privacy, convenience and customization of their immediate location but to also allow guilds to show off their accomplishments within the guild, to other guilds. All this in addition to little risk of the surrounding area becoming a ghost town or stagnant.

Function
Each guild would work towards having their own customizable island that occupies the mists. The halls on each of these islands can be tiered up/down through different base structures with modular upgrades. The surroundings could also be changed based on themes such as seasons or special events not based off the calendar but off of guild decision. Each customization costs a fee relative to island/guild hall size but is substantial enough that there is a sense of accomplishment with whatever is achieved (perhaps with discounts on certain season/festivity themes when it is appropriatly timed in the year). The halls would range in size from small (think size of the dueling pvp map, perhaps with a bit more verticality) to large (Largest pvp map in size, or about equal to the great lodge in Hoelbrak in size, think lodge verticality perhaps?) with the surrounding island scaling to size.
Here’s where it gets tricky. Each island will border with other islands through a matrix of bridges that form between them, but this matrix is constantly shifting due to the nature of the mists so the surrounding islands only stay there for an arbitrary number of days, lets say 7, or it could even be randomized. The point is your neighboring guild islands shift every once in a while to provide you with fresh scenery when outside the halls map itself.
Depending on what is more efficient you could preview your current neighbors guild hall/island in one of 3 ways.
1) all the islands are connected in an instance that you can walk from hall to hall of like 5 halls total on the island network and enter the other guilds hall instance to preview the inside
2) the islands themselves are the entire instance that you can enter to preview via map portals on the bridges
3) be invited to the other guilds private instance by that guilds member with permissions to view it.

Previewing could have a small fee attached to it (think like waypoint fee in size, 2-3 silver). Note the preview would be a separate instance from the private one the guild owns so no one can barge in on meetings; plus this instance has a low inactivity timeout, like 2-5 minutes before you are kicked from being inactive as to keep the amount of maps generated at any one time in check.

When the islands switch if option #1 was in place there would have to be some sort of timeout warning implemented similar to the WvW reset warnings like, “The mists are shifting, being redirected to private guild instance.” sort of deal.

The shifting could also solve the problem of inactive guild halls being sent to other equally inactive guild hall groupings for the time while allowing the more active guild halls to be shown to other guilds who are just as active.

This would allow guild halls to be flexible in their implementation as well as remaining open to future options like permanent connections to other guild halls in your alliance if that ever became a thing in the future.

Associated Risk
I know this proposal brings forward many technical problems with the entire shifting/connected halls, but I went ahead with it because it seems far more viable than overworld guild halls present in Tyria (who knows, perhaps there could always be a random small, medium and large island that finds its way into a Tyrian map every week and just sits in the overworld while still allowing the guild to have the privacy of their instanced hall.) yet less boring and far more innovative than just flat instanced halls spread throughout the mists or Tyria. If you have any suggestions or ideas that might simplify the concept while retaining the general premise I would love to hear it.

Other
I would also LOVE to see some hall upgrades take the mawdrey approach to crafting, by needing to collect items form random spots around Tyria and augmenting them in some way before crafting them all together to add to the hall.

I think I will be happy with anything you guys decide to implement. The one request I have is that you allow us the ability to preview guild halls easily as a group on low-level characters, as we were able to do in Guild Wars 1. This was great for allowing anyone to weigh in on the design, and also created a vast diversity of safe, easily-accessed landscapes for RPing in.

Finally we talk about Guild Halls !!!

Devata.6589:

Yeah it would be even nicer if we could fly over the current maps. The problem however would be that they then need to make it a seamless world because else so high up you could see over the edge of the maps.

Nah, you wouldn’t need a seamless world for that. Either you place the altitude low enough that you don’t see over the border mountains or you make it high enough that you can place the hall in it’s own sky map. If there’s a sky map you could make it the size of the world map. 90% of the server resources would be in the guild hall, the rest of the map would just be a box with some detailed artwork.

My preference would be the latter. It allows for more of a roaming airship feel, and to put it bluntly, think of the VIEWS! I mean, for whatever faults the game has, it has some amazing artwork. I’d love to see what they could do with that kind of view. While it’d be a lot of work I think it’d be playing to Anet’s strengths if they did it.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Devata.6589:

Pocket.2740:

~

Yeah it would be even nicer if we could fly over the current maps. Problem should however be that they would need to make it a seamless world because else so high up you could see over the edge of the maps.

You know, I was originally going to argue over how unrealistic this was to implement, but it suddenly gave me a spark of a really interesting idea.

So, the base idea here is floating guild halls that you can have physically over a zone, yes? Normally, I would say that’s problematic, and I don’t know if players would like having a guild base hovering over their heads.

However, what if that guild base is tied to a particular instance of a zone? Let’s say you park your guild base on Gendarran Hills. Now, your guild will have an instance of Gendarran permanently open with their guild hall in it.

The intriguing idea… what if you could move your hall, maybe once a week, and whatever zone it’s currently in will give a small bonus to XP/Magic Find/Karma (something like that) to all guild members while they are in that zone. So, movable guild perks for leveling or treasure hunting.

(As for the problem of having a ‘seamless world’, you could just have an artificial cloud cover over anything ‘outside the zone’. Would take up less resources than a seemless world, and would be a lot quicker/easier to implement.)

EDIT: After a bit of further thought, ensuring you’re in the proper instance might be troublesome. I don’t know if there would be a way to match your represented guild to the appropriate instance while gating in, but at the very least, there should be an option to teleport to your guild hall. Then, from there, either have a “move to the ground” option from the guild hall somewhere, or you could probably just waypoint to anywhere in the zone you want.

That could work. Of course it would prevent you from really flying, at least in those maps. Maybe you could go to ‘higher’ maps above the clouds where you could fly but park you guild-hall lower on a map.

You would however still not be able to place a guild-hall near the edge because even with cloawds over the rest it would look really silly.

Mega-servers have been a problem for guild since the start and also for this we will run into problems with it again. Completely removing those problems will not be possible. You could prioritize members to get in the map / instance where there ship is parked but instances also close so what then?

I did come up with a solution to have guild-halls ‘really’ fly over the map but it’s a little harder to explain.. I will do my best.

Basically what you do is move ships up a lot higher (think airplanes in the real world). In reality it are different maps, you are not really hanging high in one of the current maps. But you are so high that when looking down you would not be able to see people walk. You would however see the map (it’s basically a picture of what you would see if the world was seamless).

So that air map or those air maps basically simply show a map of the world far down. Meaning that looking from the guild-hall down it looks like you are flying over the map.

Now for the ground map there will be a change as well. A ground map instance gets ‘linked’ to one of the air map instances and what that map then does is show the current guild halls from the air map at the location it would be but very very high up.

So now from the guild-halls (that you can really fly around in) you can look down and see the map below you and from the ground you can look up and see the guild-halls fly over.

This might sound very complicated but does not have to be so extremely complicated to build.

Torsailr.8456:

Devata.6589:

Yeah it would be even nicer if we could fly over the current maps. The problem however would be that they then need to make it a seamless world because else so high up you could see over the edge of the maps.

Nah, you wouldn’t need a seamless world for that. Either you place the altitude low enough that you don’t see over the border mountains or you make it high enough that you can place the hall in it’s own sky map. If there’s a sky map you could make it the size of the world map. 90% of the server resources would be in the guild hall, the rest of the map would just be a box with some detailed artwork.

My preference would be the latter. It allows for more of a roaming airship feel, and to put it bluntly, think of the VIEWS! I mean, for whatever faults the game has, it has some amazing artwork. I’d love to see what they could do with that kind of view. While it’d be a lot of work I think it’d be playing to Anet’s strengths if they did it.

The sky map solution I did give before and in my last post I went a little more in depth to that. But my reaction was based on an idea of having them really hover in a map (and maybe fly). Even then you don’t want them to low but go to high and you see the edge of the map.

So the sky map would then make more sense I think but you can still send data from the sky map to the ground map so if you are on the group map you can see the airships in the air. (like I suggested in my previous post).

A side thought on that, Devata. Boarding/disembarking: what if we got a short cinematic of something carrying us? Be it a dandelion fluff elevator as in the Grove, or a charr ‘copter, or a parachute, whatever. Just something other than pressing a button and getting waypointed. Heck, there could be a few customizations a’la finishers to let guilds or even individuals select their board/debark method.

Donari.5237:

or a parachute, whatever.

Sky diving! Hell yes! New sport? An evolution of sanctum sprint?

But really, I don’t know about a cinematic. Maybe if it was only 1 time in 10? Or perhaps 2 methods of egress, jump out of the airship for the cinematic or just WP as normal? I’d probably get annoyed if I was forced to watch a cinematic every time I left the airship.

Hmm, or just a thought…would it be possible for a cinematic of jumping out of the airship to replace the loading screen when waypointing?

Donari.5237:

A side thought on that, Devata. Boarding/disembarking: what if we got a short cinematic of something carrying us? Be it a dandelion fluff elevator as in the Grove, or a charr ‘copter, or a parachute, whatever. Just something other than pressing a button and getting waypointed. Heck, there could be a few customizations a’la finishers to let guilds or even individuals select their board/debark method.

Yeah I’m always in favor of something like that. If I could have it completely the way I wanted it would really be one big seamless world. For me loading screens (in between zones) are always a negative and immersion breaking distraction. So a visual animation to hide the loading screen when a real open world / no instance is not possible, is always a pro in my book.

Torsailr.8456:

Donari.5237:

or a parachute, whatever.

I’d probably get annoyed if I was forced to watch a cinematic every time I left the airship.

Hmm, or just a thought…would it be possible for a cinematic of jumping out of the airship to replace the loading screen when waypointing?

Yeah that is the hole idea. So you are watching a loading screen or an animation. Only small problem might be the different loading times but even that can be solved by having a short start and ending part of the animation while the middle part can be stretched as long (or short) as needed.

Oh, I wouldn’t want a forced cinematic. The Grove one has the option of canceling it, though you do get your alt jittering in place with an overhead film reel for a moment when you do so.

I know they can’t show us the current map from above, at least not from angles not designed in such as from mountain tops. There are all sorts of visual sleight-of-hands and false facades (this is why flying just won’t work, any more than it could in pre-Cataclysm Azeroth). Hence I like the idea of a separate map visible from above, that uses the same terrain but at a distance such as to obscure detail and doesn’t show the current player actions below.

Of course a lot of what happens in a guild airship will be inside the decks, anyway. The view is just a bit of polish on the concept. Though having zone-appropriate birds and such fly the portholes and windows would rock.

/sings "Birds fly … over my airship … why ooooh why can’t I…?

Hrmm, I really like the idea someone mentioned of linking the Guild Hall to GvG. Build a long, narrow map with a place at either end for a Hall to slot on. Aspects of the greater map are influenced by upgrades to your Hall. Set up a start time and duration, check a few boxes for rules and victory conditions, and fight your way into the enemy keep for glory and loot!

Aside from that, I think a special room in the Hall could be the perfect place for dueling.

Functionality
Guild Plaza
New square in a renovated LA built around a physical bulletin board to post Guild recruitment messages, open guild missions, public guild raid in WvW, open challenges to other guilds etc. A public house for gathering, various merchants, and an Asura gate to instanced Guildhalls.
Guild Hall
Exterior:
Common to all guild halls should be an arena no smaller than Obsidian Sanctum either in the back or the front of the Guildhall. This can be used for in-house Guild practices, 1v1’s, GvG’s, social Gatherings etc. (more below)

Guild Hall Proper:
Every guild on purchase/construction of their chosen racially themed Guildhall will start with a single main hall onto which they can expand. I see further construction being in line with something like ES: Skyrim: Hearthstone, where the core hall can be expanded in size, and purpose built wings being added off of the main hall.
Wings:
Different wings (i.e. Left, right, rear, upper floor, basement) would each serve a specific purpose. This would be the greatest customization portion of the Guild Hall. Each wing position, that is left right rear etc. would have a list of pre-made options for the Guild Leader to choose from.
So you could make your left wing be one of: A) an Armory, B) a Lounge , C) a Crafting Room, or D) Portal Room, and your right wing could be a A) a Planning Room, B) a Trophy Room, C) a Lounge, or D) A Greenhouse. With similar choices to each expansion off the Main Hall.

Each new wing added to the Main Hall would start sparsely furnished, with time-gated unlockable upgrades to each wing. The interior of each wing would be set by Anet, but where each wing goes is up to the Guild adding a layer of customization. Permissions into each wing would be set by Guild leader by guild ranks.

Visiting Guilds/ Merging Instances
By the Arena outside the Guildhall will be a Merging Guild Halls request post. Guild Leaders/Officers could use this to set up GvGs with other guilds or invite another Guild Hall to temporarily join to their own GH so they can hang out/show off. Both parties will agree to a set date/time for their merge. At the agreed upon time the Guildhall’s instance will be temporarily closed, kicking everyone. When the instance reloads, it will be both Guild Halls across from each other joined in the middle by a shared Arena (again, no smaller than Obsidian Sanctum not including the stands). This will be a “merge my Guild Hall instance with [xyz]’s Guild Hall @ this time” function. It will start with them being merged for maybe 1hr? with the option given to extend the time by set increments.

Edit: In an effort to build the neighbourhoods mentioned in other posts, allow up to 3 other Guildhalls to temporarily join onto the inviting Guild’s Hall via the Arena in the front Plaza?
Edit 2: Allow fairs to be held in the Arena, a short term gathering of merchants/performers & assorted NPCs paid for by the hosting guild.
Edit 3: have upkeep costs on the house associated with any merchants/permenant NPCs purchased for the house, so paying them a wage basically.

Gulesave.5073:

Hrmm, I really like the idea someone mentioned of linking the Guild Hall to GvG. Build a long, narrow map with a place at either end for a Hall to slot on. Aspects of the greater map are influenced by upgrades to your Hall. Set up a start time and duration, check a few boxes for rules and victory conditions, and fight your way into the enemy keep for glory and loot!

Aside from that, I think a special room in the Hall could be the perfect place for dueling.

You sir/madam are a genius. I hope the Guild Halls are in an actual “zone sized” instance to make for a little more variety. Maybe something like a miniature WvW but scalable depending on how many participants are in each “match”. Maybe allow the players to select how many participants are on each team (seriously like 1-250 man teams) and then change the diameter of the playable zone. Like in the personal story instances.

(PS: Please allow the use of WvW blueprints in GvG. Maybe have it ableto be toggled on and off like vehicles in a FPS muliplayer server.)

A banner “room”

Any time a banner is placed in a map a copy is placed in the guild hall. I say room, but this could easily be a dedicated dais or platform or something.

Before mega servers if a someone said there were banners someplace, anyone could go there and get the buff. Now, it’s a gamble if you get in the same instance. This would let guild members drop a banner wherever they want for something and guildies in another part of the world would still be able to get access to the buff by going to the guildhall to touch the banner.

I don’t think this would be an unbalancing feature, it would be more of a restoration for something that was possible before.

Overview
Guild halls built by guild members that would facilitate as a meeting place for individual guilds and their guests.

Goal
To allow individual guilds to have a place to meet and organize apart from the open world. To give guilds something more to build together besides guild activities. To build more guild socialization without having to resort to outside of game methods such as TS and Websites.

Function
For location, I really don’t care as long as they are instanced. If mists or as part of the explorable world, either is fine with me. If in the explorable world, I would like them to be implied buildings rather than actual buildings that would clutter and give urban sprawl to maps.

For what its actual function is, I see it mainly as a meeting place. I am not certain that I would like to see crafting stations, vendors, and other such amenities. I think a guild bank in the instance would be the exception. Other NPC vendors and amenities will severely deplete the population of the general world. I think that these places could become larger and more intricate as the guild decides to work on them. Lakes, buildings, trees, landmarks, animals, etc., etc., could be added as the guild chose to work on these aesthetic things.

Also these places could function as a Hall of Monuments. The guild hall itself could house it’s accomplishments as did the Hall of Monuments did in GW1 for individuals.

This would not be an area to replace world services but as a place for guild members to improve their surroundings, meet for guild purposes, and view guild accomplishments.

Associated Risks
Little as I proposed, but I foresee weakening of the explorable world should major services be added to guild halls. Also I believe that any personal home ideas have no place here either. If such things were ever considered they should be as part of a racial home instance.

Other
I think these halls would open up further creative ideas and development for creators of the game. I think the devs have their jobs because they are amazingly creative. If they gave us beautiful but simple halls to begin with, they would have much room to add to them in the future.

Gulesave.5073:

Hrmm, I really like the idea someone mentioned of linking the Guild Hall to GvG. Build a long, narrow map with a place at either end for a Hall to slot on. Aspects of the greater map are influenced by upgrades to your Hall. Set up a start time and duration, check a few boxes for rules and victory conditions, and fight your way into the enemy keep for glory and loot!

Aside from that, I think a special room in the Hall could be the perfect place for dueling.

This just makes me think of Facing Worlds.

http://www.pcgamer.com/why-facing-worlds-unreal-tournament/

https://www.google.com/search?q=unreal+tournament+facing+worlds&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9UosVLbwINKHsQTmyYLgCw&ved=0CB8QsAQ&biw=1280&bih=963

One lack of my previous proposal was a customization system that allow to place object inside GH. I read that it’s an high requested feature so I’ll try to describe this with the same “fast development” spirit of my previous proposal.

Proposal Overview
GH customization like WvW siege

Goal of Proposal
Provide a GH customization system that could be easy/fast to implement by developers (use already available game mechanics).

Proposal Functionality
My idea of customization is inpired by WvW siege.
You could buy items blueprint from an NPC (or produce them with the existing influence system). Using the blueprint will change your weapon skill and allow you to correctly place the item (just like siege weapons), placing the item will create the raw structure that need to be built.

The kind and size of items can be a lot different and may depend on GH map size and terrain. It could be allowed to build buildings (if there are no technical impediments with such large objects, such as collisions etc…), or only items like furniture, statue, fountain, ecc….
There can be texture variation for each items (they are essentially different items, you are allowed to chose one when buying it or just after using it, like selecting stats for legendary weapons), allowing different color and material for some items.

Resource:
For WvW siege, supply are needed to complete the siege. GH items could be free of charge (you only have to buy them) or they can need resources in order to be completed. In example you could need wood in order to build a platform, or need metal ore/lingot in order to build a statue, or cloth to build a carpet, soulbound items may be required in order to require a wide guild mates partecipation. Some items may give a buff when interacted (when completed) so resources should be needed to complete them (in example, a flag that give magic find may require cloth, metal, and ecto).
If is possible to build interactive items, could be great to build (in example) crafting station in this way, so if your guild want a tailoring station in their GH, they must gather enough cloths to complete it. If it is difficult to build items like crafting station in this way, you could build a “crafting station prototype”, this item give you a single skill when interacting to it, that skill activate the crafting station destroing itself and at the same time create kittenable crafting station in the same place with the same look.

Object limits
In order to prevent abuse, items should be placed only by guild member that have the right permissions (guild builder), and they should be placed only inside the GH. To get this objective, member with right permission could have a buff when inside GH, and only member with that buff can place items, everyone in the guild could be allowed to build such placed items.
Items should be limited in number, it will be the best if items are splitted in different category, each with their own limits (in example building should have a smaller limit than furniture).
Last but not least, there should be a weapon that can destroy items (and only that weapon can), this weapon could be used only by members with the guild builder buff. The number limit, also force guild builders to think well what they want to build and where.

Unlike WvW siege weapons, GH items must not disappear. I don’t think it is a big problem (build items should simply not have the despawn buff), but it is important that built items should remain in GH until they are explicitly destroied.

Moving items
What happen if I place an item in a wrong position?
There are two possible way to manage this situation that could often occur:
1) Interactive movement: items shoul be interactable and allow to move just like siege weapons could be rotated. Not all items could work in this way, furniture could, buildings cannot (well, they could, but it’s strange!). There could be a problem with character animation because he is moving an item from distance!
2) Items could be converted back to blueprints, or at least give back resource (all or a part of them) needed to build them in case they need resource like wood etc….
3) Items cannot be moved, you have to be very carefull when placing an item.
Best soultion in my opinion is the second, but could be triky for some items if they change after activating them (like the example of crafting station implementation I writed above), and may be difficult to give back resource (maybe can be sent to guild bank?). Third solution is still acceptable, a better solution may be found in the future, but will allow to get this system as fast as possible.

Associated Risks
in the following post

Associated Risks
Such type of items MUST be build in an instanced GH, I don’t imagine what kind of problem could be placing them in open world. This idea is linked with my previous one, so GH should not be used to GvG, it could be awesome to destroy items in the opponent guild, but this will create a lot of problem not easly solvable (items placed to block passage, or in strategic position, etc…).
There could be problem in overlapping items, I don’t know if it is a real technical problem, it could be partially solvable thanks to the weapon that destroy items, but a problem that may occur should not block this type of feature!
Single man guild could be a problem, it increase the amount of GH with items a lot, but if GH need influence to unlock and items need also influence to be build, it should not be a great issue.

P.S. The idea of looking guild mates when they are literally building their GH is simply awesome!