Guild Wars 2

Guild Hall QoL improvements:

- Private meeting areas
- Quick teleport option as a replacement for the free pass to Lion’s Arch via PvP. Start with a UI button to enter guild hall, and one portal from the guild hall to LA. Additional portals can be unlocked, depending on how unfair it is to others.
- Low-rez World map and WvW map in-game with general member locations – light up each map area based on # of members in it, not names or even dots, just highlight the whole submap. Add a ‘mists’ section for PvP. This would be awesome as a map underneath a glass floor in the main atrium.
- Board for guild elections – simple text only would be fine. Implement voting tech for guild elections similar to Evon vs Kiel election. Report only the results, the roles could be changed manually.

non QoL improvements
- Internal guild leaderboards (I envision in-world dynamic bulletin boards, with overall standings, as well as monthly standings that the guilds could use to manually award items for contests)
– Fastest dungeon run by team (all players must be guildies)
– PvP leaders
– Achievement points
– WvW rank
– Influence points earned
- Visual piles of gold/influence meters
- Visual goal markers set by guild leaders – Need Xx for Yy

JonPeters.5630:

Ok time for a third topic.

Guild Halls.
What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

1. Private meeting place: Sure we can hang out everywhere in the world, but I really miss having a meeting place for out guild, a space only for us… It would be much more fun to have a home for the guild and also our almost always afk-guy could go back to guarding the guild hall like he did in GW1 instead of standing afk in Lions Arch
2. Merchants, bank, crafting stations could be added there for giving the guild hall functionality and giving us some other way to do that instead of needing to visit the sometimes annoyingly full cities.
3. And it would also be a great way to spend our influence and guild marks since even my small guild (normally 5-10 people online) has more than enough it is just getting more and more.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok time for a third topic.

Guild Halls.

I see this subject come up a lot in this thread and while we can talk about other aspects of Guild Halls at some point, let’s try another exercise.

What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

I’m out for the day hiking at Mt. Rainier but will try and return with my own top three later this weekend.

HI,

This is for me one of those double-edge subject.

While for me Guild Halls is a must have, i fear it will bring about another problem: the population in major towns.

Dont get me wrong because i love the concept of Guild Halls, but for me is far more important to find ways to max the use of already created content rather than jumping to generate new one and leave the rest abandoned.

Now, if the towns in GW2 were ugly and badly designed i wont even give it a thought, but they are not. They are simply the best designed cities i have ever seen in a game and nothing compares to it…just looking at Divinity’s Reach dazzles me and i lose myself trying to figure the amount of time and hard work that was put into designing it.

I fear the creation of Guild Halls will just worsen the problem that currently exists in GW2: there is no much of a reason to go to major towns after you are done with personal story, and if people can meet in a Guild Hall and have all services available there, it will definitely make this issue scale to a higher proportion.

It would be great if we could somehow fit the structure of Guild Halls or a similar concept using a major town as a way point to get inside the Guild Hall.

Chris, I may have missed it — did you do that list of CDI game impacts yet? (no pressure, just don’t want to miss it due to distraction once it’s up).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Donari.5237:

Chris, I may have missed it — did you do that list of CDI game impacts yet? (no pressure, just don’t want to miss it due to distraction once it’s up).

Hi Donari,

I haven’t done it yet. Part being very busy and part not wanting it to distract focus on the CDI.

Should have time next week. Just depends if folks are happy to wait until after this CDI or during.

Chris

Just better not try and blame us for the changes to unlocking traits or leveling or personal story or any of that mess, that’s all on you guy.

While for me Guild Halls is a must have, i fear it will bring about another problem: the population in major towns.

Dont get me wrong because i love the concept of Guild Halls, but for me is far more important to find ways to max the use of already created content rather than jumping to generate new one and leave the rest abandoned.

Now, if the towns in GW2 were ugly and badly designed i wont even give it a thought, but they are not. They are simply the best designed cities i have ever seen in a game and nothing compares to it…just looking at Divinity’s Reach dazzles me and i lose myself trying to figure the amount of time and hard work that was put into designing it.

You know what would be cool? If they could merge guild halls INTO the existing cities. I don’t mean like having dozens of them lying around, but have a single one in the city that you don’t have to zone into like the Home Instance, but that somehow phases in details like guild banners and that sort of thing on the fly.

Like you could just walk into it from the street, same as entering LA’s old bank or something, and for you, it would be “your” guild hall, with your banners and maybe decoration options, but if someone else from another guild entered, it would appear to be theirs, but they would be standing right next to you, still sharing the space, still sharing LA’s chat channel, all that. This way you wouldn’t drop off the map just by entering your guild hall.

Now they could also maybe have an option for “privacy mode” in which the guild leader could set a mode on or off, and if on then once you entered you would only see guild members inside and anyone else would not be visible.

I’m sure there are technical hurdles in all of that, but it might be interesting.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Do we feel like we have much more to discuss on current QOL and Logistics in regard to existing guild features etc?

If we do that’s cool. Just thinking about when to do a summary and closing discussion on this phase before moving onto Guild Halls.

Chris

At least for me, I think I’ve said just about everything I can say, probably would just have one last bit of input based on your summary of what the general consensus is. But so many people are eager to move onto guild halls and we’ve had so many good ideas on logistics and qol that I think most constructive debate has been had.

The QoL discussion related to Halls is fine with me, but I have two closing notes:

1) The Hall could have some mechanic to reward altruistic play. For example, a small guild acquires the starter Hall (call it Tier 1), or its that size due to Influence purchases done by the guild so far. A vendor could be inside that rewards Influence – basically the ‘sell’ tab for your inventory on a vendor, but giving out Influence at a similar scale to Copper. This would only exist at the starting levels/Tiers, and getting less returns over time (for example, at T2 he only accepts toward speeding up anything in queue, at T3 its at 5:1 ratio, and T4 he no longer accepts). How to determine the Tier status is the tricky bit; If there’s been no tracking of total Influence spent then its all for naught.

The idea here is to create a separate sink for lower classes of items (for players that have no need for them), and in a way that also helps smaller guilds get some starting infrastructure in place.

[Edit – An alternative is to have this guy exist to ‘buy’ Merits as you get him more and more items (unlocked when Bounty Practice is available). Costs should expand in a linear fashion, similar to Luck – that way you’ll probably hit the DR on this guy around the same time you’re maxing on Merits.]

2) Related to Ohoni’s previous post: How about opening the various Home Instance doors, and replacing them with ‘star’ entrances? Or do something similar to the Order Gate system (i.e. at Trinity), where you talk to someone to determine if you want to go inside the Megaserver instance (no personal additions), or the player’s instance (personal additions etc). This opens up more areas for group interaction, while also keeping less instances running. It also leverages existing tech you have in place now, so should not take too long from a planning and implementation point.

Regardless, that will probably end my involvement for now, as I have no direct interest in the Halls themselves (I just like to view the challenges from a technical and social aspect).

Shorah and /salute

JonPeters.5630:

[…]
What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? […]

First of all, there should not be Guild Halls.
They should be Guild Fractals!
Guild Halls should be where the competitive content is, and that’s The Mists in GW2, therefore Guild Fractal instead Guild Hall.
That’ll also open the possibility of having to conquer a fractal with a massive raid of people instead just merely purchasing something like with Celestial Sigils in GW1.

As for the QoL changes…

1. More control over PvE Guild content and making easier to get together to do the stuff:

• The guild would be able to unlock an aether portal in their Guild Fractal.
  Once unlocked, they would be able to use the portal and consume two uses of the Guild World Event consumable to create a private copy of the map limited to the world event, with no other events going on and borders that kick you back in if you move far away, like those in the starting instances. The only way to enter those instances would be from the Guild’s Fractal. So only guild members and guests would be able to join.
  This would also allow things like bringing back The Marionette as Guild World Event in a fractal, or hardcore versions of existing bosses like The Shatterer.
• The Guild Fractal would also have portals to each main city, allowing faster travel between all cities connected with asura gates without having to go through Lion’s Arch, helping players get together faster.
• The Guild Fractal could also allow jumping maps together.
  After all players are ready, the guild leader or an officer with permission would be able to start a “jump”. If there’s no copy of the map with enough room, a new one would be added and guild members would have priority to enter. Once everyone who was in the Fractal is in the map, the map opens for further players.

2. Some privacy. Currently private maps are limited to 5-player instances. Anywhere else someone else may come along, invited or not.

If you guys released an expansion… that would bring a bunch of my guildies back to the game and really improve the quality of my life… you know, in game.

o.O

I think what Guild Halls could do for the game varies on how they’d be implemented. If they’re just a side-instance guild members could visit (GW1 style) then they’d probably just be used like Airship/Terrace Passes and the like.

Now, if they were structures in PvE . . . that could affect things differently. And if it was available through pockets of the Mists and could permit PvP content? It might actually be interesting to people wanting to revisit the old GvG fights.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok time for a third topic.

Guild Halls.

I see this subject come up a lot in this thread and while we can talk about other aspects of Guild Halls at some point, let’s try another exercise.

What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

I’m out for the day hiking at Mt. Rainier but will try and return with my own top three later this weekend.

Guild Halls should provide at least the standard things they’ve provided in other MMOs
1) centralized location for crafting/trading/training/deployment
2) allow guilds customizable aesthetics and design to display logos and colors
3) add a collectible market and economy component for utility

I think a stagnant mansion/keep in an instanced zone, outside one of the major cities, is a played out and boring way to do guild halls or player housing, and would add little to the game.
I think the idea needs a more active component, to allow guild members to feel like an organized force, with enhanced group mobility and connectivity. Guild halls could bring benefit to all aspects of play.
I think the guild would be better off with an airship. Possibly with siege machinery and parachute shock troopers, to engage in a land to air wvw or pve battle. Or maybe a giant dredge tunneler, or a Charr heli-fortress etc etc. the guild could arrive in style in any of the cultural methods.
Maybe it’s just a pipedream, and it’s adding content not just QoL- but I think it would be fun.

Hey guys!

I’d like to suggest some QoL and not QoL ideas I’ve had for a while about Guild halls.

1) Non-instanced Arena

- The purpose of a non instanced Arena would be to create an area within Guild halls with constant entertainment for everyone around, and challenge for those who choose to participate. (Therefore making Halls constantly active places)
- The structure itself, as I imagine it, should be placed on a central, plaza-like location in the hall, and it would be similar to the pit fighting arena on the personal story: “Trouble at the Roots”, Basically a slightly-below ground small arena, (Although a bit bigger and eye catching, possibly having selectable/Buyable environments for decoration, and perhaps even sizes)
- It’s functionality would be based on an arena manager NPC, with whom you could arrange friendly skirmishes between players/parties, or even arrange Players vs Boss/Monsters challenges, like many before have suggested in this thread (Both open for everyone to watch, thanks to it not being instanced and placed in a central area!)
- Regarding benefit, I believe skirmishes should be just for fun, but Player vs Monster challenges could use a few achievements, after all, they’re non-abusable fun goals. (I could see “Defeat X guild boss” as an occasional part of the Daily)

I realize this is an ambitious idea, but it doesn’t sound impossible, and would be awesome and become an amazing piece of Guild Halls if it were implemented.

Some other minor suggestions I have are:

2) Personal instance nodes/trees/etc being in Guild Halls. They’re like homes for guildies, after all.
3) Extensive theme-like customization
4) A furniture, interactive, Bulletin board

Let me know what do you guys think about these ideas!

This is more of a “how to have a guild that doesn’t take people out of the open world” than “How can a guild hall be used as a platform to introduce QoL features for guild management.”

So, for Guild Halls… I suggest then:

Guild Waypoint

- placed anywhere within the PvE open world
- shows up on the map (new colour/label?) or in the Guild Pane by the daily message
- only visible when representing the guild which placed it
- one per guild, may buy a new one to move guild location
- you have to be able to get to the area in the map (ie: no new character exploit opportunity) before you can use it
- upgrades to guild are placeable objects (like a banner) within maybe 900-1200 units of the waypoint and also only visible/usable by representing members. Expire like guild boosts?

Benefits

- Open world Guild Hall!
- No need to make a bunch of new Guild Hall instance maps (a la GW1)
- No hiding in a Guild Instance
- Non-guild members can still happen upon the halls
- Entering via WP helps put guild members in the same megaserver open world map instance
- Finding a cool place to act as your guild hall in the open world!

On that note, for

GvG

- guild purchasable item like a pvp custom arena, which enables you to invite another guild when you first click it. Then it is open for 24 hours for the two guilds to battle.

If I could get a nod-go-ahead to think up a bit on the idea of Guild Halls as the instanced vs open world, I’ll get a post out sometime in the morning for you red-tags

Proposal Overview
– QOL – Friend request system.

Goal of Proposal
– Rework of the friends list and to add a friend request system.

Proposal Functionality
– Ability to accept or deny friend requests, Auto denies blocked players.

Associated Risks
– I can’t see any associated risks by adding this.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok time for a third topic.

Guild Halls.

I see this subject come up a lot in this thread and while we can talk about other aspects of Guild Halls at some point, let’s try another exercise.

What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

I’m out for the day hiking at Mt. Rainier but will try and return with my own top three later this weekend.

Very cool exercise. Helps to understand what you guys go through and truly makes me feel a part of the “team” while also getting my noggin on creative mode! I’d like give this some serious thought before posting anything and maybe waiting for the guild hall phase to start in the CDI. Honestly feel the transition will be a smooth one the way things are going.

@Chris I feel like everything that I wanted to say about QoL and Logistics has been said my vote is to start the new CDI on guild halls. Of course it is not only me here so if anyone else in the community has more thoughts on QoL and Logistics I can be patient and wait till all ideas have been covered.

P.S Really enjoying this CDI!

I’m sorry if anyone suggested before, but I would very much like having a cleaner tab for guild upgrades. Right now there are so many things, missions and banners etc are just there together. I would like few tabs with a few iterations as you click them.
ie
-Guild missions >> Guild Bounty >> Tier 1,2,3, Training
-Banners>>…
and so on. Hope you get it and again sorry for not reading the whole thread

While guild halls would be a good place to congregate and socialize (and has some benefit for RP) The only QoL i can see is the GvG scene. QoL in the fact that guilds can’t battle guilds unless they are matched up in WvW currently. If you did GHs, I would keep it to only having guild related merchants and bank, otherwise people would be less likely to congregate in the cities. I also believe that it would really help the competitive scene a lot.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Do we feel like we have much more to discuss on current QOL and Logistics in regard to existing guild features etc?

If we do that’s cool. Just thinking about when to do a summary and closing discussion on this phase before moving onto Guild Halls.

Chris

Well so far is has been more about listing suggestions then really discussing them.

Is there also a summary of all suggestions coming?

Zead.1524:

Hey guys!

I’d like to suggest some QoL and not QoL ideas I’ve had for a while about Guild halls.

1) Non-instanced Arena

- The purpose of a non instanced Arena would be to create an area within Guild halls with constant entertainment for everyone around, and challenge for those who choose to participate. (Therefore making Halls constantly active places)
- The structure itself, as I imagine it, should be placed on a central, plaza-like location in the hall, and it would be similar to the pit fighting arena on the personal story: “Trouble at the Roots”, Basically a slightly-below ground small arena, (Although a bit bigger and eye catching, possibly having selectable/Buyable environments for decoration, and perhaps even sizes)
- It’s functionality would be based on an arena manager NPC, with whom you could arrange friendly skirmishes between players/parties, or even arrange Players vs Boss/Monsters challenges, like many before have suggested in this thread (Both open for everyone to watch, thanks to it not being instanced and placed in a central area!)
- Regarding benefit, I believe skirmishes should be just for fun, but Player vs Monster challenges could use a few achievements, after all, they’re non-abusable fun goals. (I could see “Defeat X guild boss” as an occasional part of the Daily)

I realize this is an ambitious idea, but it doesn’t sound impossible, and would be awesome and become an amazing piece of Guild Halls if it were implemented.

Some other minor suggestions I have are:

2) Personal instance nodes/trees/etc being in Guild Halls. They’re like homes for guildies, after all.
3) Extensive theme-like customization
4) A furniture, interactive, Bulletin board

Let me know what do you guys think about these ideas!

“4) A furniture, interactive, Bulletin board”

Like having a guild-calender + additional information somewhere on the wall to visualize it better the only / just a window in your guild tab? That would be nice and more immersive.

Maybe adding something to the UI which allows us to display a set of Guild items like outfits but customizable.

The point is so that we can easily switch between our ‘’guild uniform’’ when doing guild events without having to sacrifice our unique individual look.

There would be a tab like outfits in the hero’s panel called Guild Outfit. The guild leaders/officers can customize what to include in the outfit from a list of unique guild items unlocked from doing guild achievements and missions. Also perhaps have it so that the guild could give a slightly different look to each member depending on their rank in the guild and/or so the guild leader can choose whether to disable the access to the outfits to initiates. The guild leader would also get to choose a set of four colors to use to customize the outfits for all ranks.

The guild uniform tab could be unlocked through the influence system in the politics line (or maybe just replace the existing one)

Fault would be that new players to the game and guild who have not contributed much or done much in terms of accomplishment might get a free access to cool looking gear so may have a minimum influence earned for the guild before they can use it.

Guild Halls in the open world is such a cool idea, that I’ll try to develop that idea next week. (If I get the time…)

Even if the game couldn’t handle the full scope for it, there could exist a limited number of places in the open world and the big cities for them – at higher, probably pax-paying costs. Then those places could either be closed or open to the public, but we’d certainly see Tyria more alive this way.

So, is that another QoL for the game? A more living world (lol)?

What I fear, is the scope and ambition for housing + open world together. Adding a few selectable instance maps is one thing, making them customisable, possible to expand in size and in the open world is another.

I missed the start of this thread, but thought I’d still summarize the QoL things I am missing with the current guild system. Not really huge things, but things that would help us out immensely all the same.

- Two separate message panes. One that is more static core guild info (showing stuff like guild wesbite, ts, etc) and one that is a true “Message of the day”, which is automatically sent in chat to every (representing) member as they log in (this is the important bit). This would be invaluable to spread information quickly without bogging down people’s mail boxes and whatnot. Downside could possibly be that members were annoyed by this message (although it never was a problem in GW1), solved by letting people opt out (as they can for emote chat messages)

- No mail suppression for intra-guild mail. Possible downside that guilds start spamming each other. Solved by making it a rank ability so can limit it if needed. Another downside is gold sellers using guilds to bypass message spam limits.

- Add to the “online last” feature to include “representing last” to help guild maintain an active roster. If possible also “% online representing”, although that might be stretching it a bit.

- Alliances. Does not have to be a lot, just a joint chat channel would be enough really. Would be neat if one could gift influence/merits to allies or share mission activations, although that might become some kind of market in itself, especially merits (since influence can already be purchased with gold).

- Being able to “blacklist” user names, so they are not accidentally invited (can override if confirmed). Sure can keep a shared spreadsheet, but would be so much better if there was an in-game block. Possible downside being greefing, but do not think it should be too bad.

- Achievements for Guild Missions. It is right there, so why not add achievements for it? (there are achievement for everything else! ;D). Possible downside that it could further disenfranchise small guilds.

- Date joined listed on roster. Again, can keep a separate spreadsheet, but would be nice to have in game. Can not think of any downside.. cramped roster listing?

- More Guild Missions. The ones we have are nice and all, but getting old now. Downside is development costs, but surely some things could be repurposed, like the Dolyak race or a scaled down marionette fight.

- More uses for merits. For medium-sized guilds that can reliably complete missions, the merits quickly max out but cannot be used because influence is gained way slower (all non-unlocks using merits use a lot of influence too). Merit-influence conversion would be best option imo. (say 100 merits to 10k influence or something).

- About Guild Halls I personally really only want somewhere to idle, hang out with guildies, and perform some basic features. Important that it is available from everywhere (like PvP or WvW) and if possible exempt from anti-idling rules. So for me the top three things a Guild Hall is really only one top thing; somewhere to hang out with guildies, a natural meeting place when not playing actively or when wanting to meet up to “show latest armor” or whatever. Instance or open world does not matter, as long as we can go there with a single zoning from everywhere (including WvW and PvP). Anything more than that is just gravy to me even though I know a lot of people want scrimmage arenas and stuff.

Going to relink to an earlier comment of mine about halls in general for some vague ideas. I may develop if there’s interest:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/4392532

Proposal Overview
Being able to send a recruit message in map chat but only show it to people on the same server however possible over multiple map instances.

Goal of Proposal
Better recruiting members for your guild.

Guilds are still very much server based because of WvW. Thats fine but because the PvE would is not so much server based anymore recruiting members for your guild has become extremely hard after the mega-server patch. (only option would be recruiting in WvW but for a PvX guild thats no option because they also want PvE players)

Proposal Functionality
An option to chat with your server basically. So map-server chat. That lets you chat with your server but over multiple instances of the same map.

Associated Risks
Not sure there are any risk.

Proposal Overview

Guild Wars introduction

Goal of Proposal
Adding Guild Wars to Tyria

Proposal Functionality

Guild leaders could declare War to each other’s guild. In that moment, for all the players in the confrontation, a timer appears. When a guild member goes online, it receives a notification message if he wants or not to participate to the current war. If he accepts, when the timer reaches 0, he must fight the other guilds.

Guild Wars take place all across Tyria. The location of the guild members engaged in war are displayed to the ennemies as islands, and to ourselves as dots.

While engaged in a Guild War, there is a limit of waypoints usage. After you use one, you can’t teleport again for 10 minutes. (this would leave ennemies time to search for you). Also, when they’re closer, you can’t teleport.

The goal of a Guild War is to kill all the members of the ennemy guild that engaged in conflict.

Logging out during a guild war would lower your guild’s war team with 1 member. Logging it back will leave you outside the conflict.

If you get killed during a Guild War, you get kicked out the War.

Winning a Guild War grants rewards such as items.

Associated Risks
Altough this feature could raise the competition and guild collaboration, it could also bring hatred to people. Tyria would become a Guild Wars zone.

Proposal Overview
Guild Store – An extra tab in the Guild Bank where members can buy things donated to the guild for prices set by the guild leadership.

Goal of Proposal
In my guild a lot of veteran players donate dyes, miniatures, backpack skins, rare materials and other fun stuff to the guild for other guildies to pick up. The guild often sells the things at a price lower than the market price, so it’s appealing for members to buy from the guild. The guild then uses the money as prize money in all kinds of PvE and PvP events. As it stands now, dealing with these kind of transaction requires a lot of trust and officer management: we’re a large guild and don’t want the newest members plundering the guild bank so we’ve locked all tabs away for certain ranks, but even then it’s completely up to members to actually donate and for more expensive products often officer involvement is required to get it out of the Guild Bank. Having an extra unlockable tab in the Guild Bank acting as a store would alleviate the need of officers to monitor the Guild Bank and guild transactions.

Proposal Functionality
Using influence and merits, guilds would be able to unlock an extra tab in the Guild Bank, in which only officers/leaders with the appropriate authority can put stuff from other tabs and assign a price to them. Other members would then be able to pick those items after paying the assigned price. Alternatively the guild could unlock a Guild Merchant to which officers/leaders can send stuff directly from the Guild Bank bladiebladiebla…

Associated Risks
This might turn into a trade circuit parallel to the regular economy, thinking of big guilds and multi-guilding. How to tax this, have some sort of goldsink regulation so not everyone leaks away from the TP (which is probably why this wasn’t implemented in the first place)?

Ohoni.6057:

I play more RPGs than action games,

…but you missed the core mechanic difference between the two, that’s nothing I can help with.

here I am first and foremost a GW2 fan, and GW2 is not about locking you into permanent choices, so if that’s something you like, go to a different game for it.

I like GW2 too, and it has already many “locks”, that’s why instead of going where “the grass is greener” I try to contribute on initiatives like CDI to improve the final result and make steps forward

But you’re trying to apply your definition to this game, where ti clearly does not apply.

you are trying to interpret something that has universal value.

Don’t you understand that sometimes words have different meanings in different contexts?

you are free to call birds “fishes” if that pleases you.
If guilds carried only the value of “social tools”, as you say, there would be no difference between Squads and Guilds: but there is. If you take as example a squad of 20 ppl and a guild of 20ppl, following your logic there would be no difference, as they are both social containers who gathers ppl with similar interests/goals.
Spoiler: there is a difference.
We just want more and more to make that difference abysmal , luckily I am not the only one seeing the potential as endgame content of such beatiful features as I am reading a lot of fantastic ideas in this thread. Keep them coming

What makes a guild a guild?
This is subjective and a guild has different meaning to different people. Some people use a guild as a storage place, some people use a guild as a meeting place for their friends, some people use a guild as a form of service provider to meet a certain goal, some people see a guild as a virtual family. Everyone sees a guild differently.

Likewise, guilds are built differently as well. Some guilds are less forgiving, some guilds don’t care about the members, some guilds are more social-able, some guilds are more elitism, some guilds are more welcoming, and so on.

Since everyone sees the guild differently and use them differently. It is very difficult to create a generic guild system that is able to satisfy every party. When you try to satisfy one party, you might undermine the other parties. The guild system as it is now try to compromise the different parties by not going too far or too little. I don’t really see there’s a need to change how representation work and I don’t see how you can change it without angering the different groups of people.

Influence & Repping
A lot of the arguments are centric around influence, proclaiming that guild enforce 100% rep because of influence. I wonder how true is that.

Personally, I took over a guild because the leader went inactive and then founded another guild. When I took over the guild, it is no different from a dead guild with only handful of representing members. While I am trying to build up the guild single handedly, I realise that the flexibility of representation is making it very difficult to build a generic guild because people will end up representing different guilds, those guilds were populated back then but no longer exist today. I decided to enforce a high rep rule. Was it for influence? It wasn’t at all, it was necessary to create a social environment. Then, I founded a new guild, bringing all the active members over, looking for a proper closure with the inactive leader and start a guild where I am the legitimate leader. Then, my guild grown and space become limited, it was then I implemented the 100% rep rule on my guild.

Just to state a point, just because some people use 100% rep rule to gain influence, not everyone has 100% rep rule for the same reason.

Good & Bad leaderships
Some of the suggestions are towards helping certain type of guilds to gain a more stable memberships. However, I think such suggestion arise because of people who are bad at running a guild. Not everyone is a leader, a leader is not a commander but more than that. Some guilds which was once large, populated, and reputed but now, they no longer exist or have shrink to a pathetic state. Was it because of representation or was it because of collapsed leadership that lead to their downfall? I think that whether or not a guild can succeed or not depend not on the representation but rather on the people that are running the guilds. I personally don’t support suggestions that aim at helping guilds with incapable leaderships. This is pretty much a player problem and not because the system is flawed.

Multi-guild chat
Personally, I don’t approve of such thing. In my guild alone, I already have much difficulties trying to know everyone. So, it is pretty much impossible for me or any individuals to have any meaningful interactions with another 4 guilds worth of members. In other words, people who mentioned improve social interactions, with 2500 players, are you serious?

However, to those who are suggesting that because you wish to talk to a selected group of individuals, that sounds reasonable. But, I would suggest that the chat system to be improved to allow group chats, something similar whatsapp or facebook chat or google chat which allow you to chat with multiple people. Simply because not everyone uses the guild in the same way and as mentioned, there can be no one generic guild system that is capable of satisfying all parties. Rather than changing it and taking the risk, huge risk in fact. It is better to adapt something that is more feasible, viable and more reasonable.

Current representation system
Finally, I see the current representation as a form of virtual physical movements. It simulate the fact that you can’t appear at two different places at the same time just like you can’t be in two different parties at the same time.

I am not sure if it has been brought up, but I would like to see a “guild search/advertise tab” in the Y window where all the guilds will be displayed in a list.

An apply button should be available for joining a guild whose recruiting formalities are open.

Guild Name < Tag < Apply
Selecting a guild will open its advertisement

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Pixels.6532:

If you guys released an expansion… that would bring a bunch of my guildies back to the game and really improve the quality of my life… you know, in game.

o.O

Hey Pixels,

Your post made me smile. Very clever and a fun way to get your feedback across. This said let’s try to stay on topic please (-: which as you know is QOL and the logistics of guilds based on the game.

Chris

P.S: Cool Name!

chris, i keed, i keed.

Proposal Overview
Guild Looking For Group (LFG)

Goal of Proposal
Create a more direct way for guild members, esp. in larger guilds, to help each other out.

Proposal Functionality
Create a guild specific LFG that allows you to see what your guildies need help with. As an example, if I’m having trouble with a specific dungeon path, I can post a request saying I’d like help running that path and list the time and day I’d like to do it. Other guild members can sign up for that day and time.

You can use the existing infrastructure of the current LFG, but instead of being real-time, it would work more like a bulletin board.

Potential Risks
It doesn’t get used or the functionality doesn’t work properly and there’s always the risk that the community doesn’t want this feature.

JonPeters.5630:

What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

- Player Housing. Think of it more like a guild village. That’s one major part that Guild “Halls” are good for.
- Showroom for guild-achievements (another suggestion of mine)
- Hotspot for all guild related stuff

HHR LostProphet.4801:

JonPeters.5630:

What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

- Player Housing. Think of it more like a guild village. That’s one major part that Guild “Halls” are good for.
- Showroom for guild-achievements (another suggestion of mine)
- Hotspot for all guild related stuff

This is really good. Making the instanced parts of cities into “Guild housing towns” where members can get houses all in the same instance that can be decorated to player tastes etc. Commendations could be spent to unlock upgrades for the village —i.e. Mystic Forge, Crafting Stations, Guild Vendors, Laurel Vendors, BLTC etc.-- The different racial cities naturally offer different architecture choices and themes. It would offer a place that felt lived in and you would be surrounded by friends.

A QoL feature that would stem from guild hall implementation but is outside of guilds themselves is that it sets the ground work for player housing , and possibly WvW custom built forts or general structure customization that may be implemented in other content and parts of the world it would be worth the development hours just for that.

And slightly off topic , but I think I’d like my player housing in a separate instance to guild halls, mainly due to aesthetics i.e I want a nice stone structure/ castle but my guild hall is sylvari styled or located in the grove etc. I’m fine with their being player rooms/houses within the guild instance as a separate thing though (See Final Fantasy 14, which has guild player rooms within the guild hall and is also implementing a separate player housing )
(A second example would be Mabinogi which has a “homestead” which takes the functional aspects (farm,resources,crafting tables etc) and the more expensive “houses” which act as shops and decorate able spaces. They also have controllable guild castles with dungeon which are akin to GW1’s Cantha elite dungeons with entry controllable by the guild.

Proposal Overview:

Guild Halls , Alliances / Guild chat share.

Goal of Proposal :

Guild Hall will help players to join their respective group for Guild Events , Also Adding guild bank , and all other guild Associated NPCs + Basic NPCs (bank , merchants,…) , those NPCs are a big QoL improvement allowing you to sell/store/take stuff , before the event starts . ( + —> gvg ? )

Alliances / Guild chat shared : allow you to talk to guild mates, unrepresented guild mates , unrepresented guilds and to Alliance mates (guilds grouped into an alliance (separated from unrepresented guilds).)

Alliances 2 : Allow little guilds to do bigger events ( Aka jungle worms , etc…), Allow Big guilds to help little ones , allow big guilds becoming bigger and make even more stuff.

Proposal Functionality

Guild Hall : A place in the mist you can access from everywhere (exept dungeons / fractals/ etc … ) and when you leave it you go back at the place you where at.
+ Unlocking stuff (merchants / chests / decorative stuff / having home instance in it.)

Alliance : new chat channel , new window for alliances management (add guilds / remove guilds / promote guilds / etc …) in guild window (rename guild Menu “Alliances & guilds”)

Associated Risks :

Guild Hall : People leaving cities to camp in their guild hall (that’s why you don’t wan’t to put all merchants there.).

Alliances : To Many people in the same alliance just rolling over all the game content (there should be a Guild and player Limit).

NB : + not allowing guild masters to leave their guild , but put an option where they have to delete the guild it self (+ confirmation message) or leave command to some one Else (Just QoL change where you don’t kick your self from your own guild.) .

Proposal Overview:
Guild Zones.

Goal of Proposal:
I love depth in MMOs. It is the main reason I play them over other genres. I assume there are other like me who feel the same way. Well, my idea to add more depth to GW2 involves the addition of new special themed zones with player/guild/alliance driven content. These zones will exist by districts that the player can select similar to GW1’s cities.

Proposal Functionality:
Each zone will have content that is unlock able through Gems, Gold, Dungeon Tokens, Badges of Honor, and most (if not all) other forms of currency in game at an appropriate and fair exchange rate. This is to avoid adding another currency but instead adding a vendor accepting all currencies for this feature.

Each zone will include:
——————————————-
-Keeps (Strong customization options)
-Housing (Strong customization options)
-Zone exclusive mounts
-Unique Enemies (fitting each zone)
-Unique Biconic Characters (to drive extended PvE content)
-Hard Mode
-Zone Buffs/Debuffs
-Open World Boss
-Zone PvP Toggle On/Off
-Zone Guild vs Guild Matches (some instanced version of the zone maybe)

Each zone will lack:
——————————————-
-Capitol City vendors (to keep Capitol Cities well populated)
-Multiple Waypoints (to encourage the use of mounts, but one or to to res.)

Potential Risks:
Players may be upset with the amount of time needed to get the required funds to unlock the content. It may also make content that requires more organization than is normally done in pugs.

Can we be able to join Keg Brawl as a guild?

Also, can we have a personal 7 days a week keg brawl arena added as a potential addition to any Guild Halls as an expansive purchase with in-game gold or KB tokens or something?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

FYI folks the next phase will be all about Guild Halls and we will start early next week.

So feel free to continue to discuss QOL and Logistics of guilds with Guild Halls being an excellent segue into the next phase.

Chris

Wow Guild Halls, finally!
Guild Halls imply GvG. You cannot have one without the other.

@JohnPeters : don’t look at guild halls like you do, “a feature that could change gw2 as a whole”, just look at it like a feature that will just make players happy because they wanted and asked it for so long.

Stilk.6312:

@JohnPeters : don’t look at guild halls like you do, “a feature that could change gw2 as a whole”, just look at it like a feature that will just make players happy because they wanted and asked it for so long.

I agree with this a lot. Guild halls should be looked at as for the player. Something added to purely benefit the player base as a place to congregate with friends. The initial purchase of the Guild Hall(sans upgrades) shouldn’t be a gold sink. It shouldn’t be a gem sink. It should be there as a private area for guilds to enjoy.

Iason Evan.3806:

Stilk.6312:

@JohnPeters : don’t look at guild halls like you do, “a feature that could change gw2 as a whole”, just look at it like a feature that will just make players happy because they wanted and asked it for so long.

I agree with this a lot. Guild halls should be looked at as for the player. Something added to purely benefit the player base as a place to congregate with friends. The initial purchase of the Guild Hall(sans upgrades) shouldn’t be a gold sink. It shouldn’t be a gem sink. It should be there as a private area for guilds to enjoy.

IDK it seems like people might abuse this like they abuse the guild banks and make their own “housing” and if linked with influence affecting all guilds not just one you represent people might abuse the guilds. What is the points of guilds? Personal or communal use? Personally I want Guild Halls but will put up my suggestion once the CDI for Halls begin.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Go Hawks!

Seahawks? They will be almost unstoppable this season.