Guild Wars 2

Give me Guild Halls and GvG, which I loved so much in the actual ‘’Guild Wars’’.
And I will start playing again.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Zoso.8279:

4411kittenris Whiteside.6102:

Go Hawks!

Seahawks? They will be almost unstoppable this season.

Yep the Seahawks (-:

Chris

Sorry, still going to quietly root for the Browns to the Super Bowl.

I know it won’t ever happen but that’s what I said about a lot of other things which since happened.

On topic: did we have an idea whether the guild halls would be open world, instanced areas . . . ?

Zoso.8279:

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.

That’s why I was referring to “the initial purchase” meaning the bare minimum guild hall costing very little. Upgrades cost. It’s my belief that even a 5 person guild should be able to easily afford their initial guild hall and work their way up from there. IDK how they would abuse it really. It still is gonna cost them a ton to get a guild bank for personal storage.

Proposal Overview
A re-work on the whole guild system.

Goal of Proposal
To make guilds feel more like guilds again.

Proposal Functionality
Creating new way to make you feel like you are actually part of a guild and that being their makes a difference.
Examples would be a whole new UI to give us more of an opening feel to the game. I could log on and there is my guild’s shiny UI saying these are our guild objectives for the week, here are the events, these people would like to do this dungeon.

I would also like more of a personal and guild related reward system. Similar to the guild commendation but something we could work towards as a guild that is specific to your guild. Examples could be Capturing and holding towers for X period of time. It could unlock certain bonuses for the week or month. Similar to the way WvW boosts the world. Your guild can boost your guild members.

Guild Event’s based on current maps. Having a guild instance based map for example where you have challenge runs (which scale) to complete certain objectives in certain amount of time. multiple events happening with a large raid boss at the end. Like the Harathi hinterlands, but for guilds. Giving them rewards for the guild and players based on how well it went. If you do it really well (score system) increase the loot to high level rewards.

Guild Quests, I would love a way to post objectives I would like my guild to achieve during different parts of the game. WvW, PvP and PvE it is difficult to see if they have finished these objectives or not. To then be able to automatically reward them and gain something would be awesome.

Improve the guild bank to have it’s own version of material storage, This could be capped and should be the last upgrade, this could allow guilds to gather materials to sell to it’s members at prices they determine, maybe based on tier rather than individual basis. I would also like a way to gather guild funds like a tax that means we generate gold and materials to fill the guild bank, getting players to deposit the whole time can be awkward.
Obvious one is a guild hall, a more in game visual representation of the UI being placed in the game. I would like to see a message board and possible NPC versions of off line guild members sat around. It would be a good place to log on to and then venture out in to the world from. (I know this is being discussed else where, so I’ll save all these crazy rants til then)

Better ways to upgrade rather than influence, using crafting materials, weapons and other items to make upgrades. This could help balance out the current difference in materials and possible remove some from the economy, especially if each week there was a guild event that require you to gather X number of items to get a big reward for the week. maybe a large increase to magic find, karma, gold, tokens etc any currency could be used.

Associated Risks
The design for these would take a long time to get together and balance so people couldn’t exploit the system to allow themselves bigger and better rewards. It would also potentially damage the in game trade system if bigger guilds no longer have to use the black lion trading post.
People who represent multiple guilds may find it difficult to keep up with all the requirements for them all. So maybe we will have less guild straddlers but also mean at least at the start the number of guild may increase.
It would be a longer design process that most but it would be nice to see guilds working together more than the current log in on Sunday do all the events, then go back to doing WvW with lots of random people.

Cant wait for the next phase – So we can finaly discuss the capes afer all these months

This is just a short summary of the most mentioned things in this Thread. I hope it helps a little

Guild mail
-ability for the guild leader so send mail to the whole guild at once

Guild halls

Guild capes
-visible representation of own guild

GvG
-8v8 match between two guilds

Guild recruitement boards
-possibility to post facts of own guild for guildless ppl to read at one place

Guild event calendar
-ingame event calendar to post guild mission dates and other events

Auto upgrades
-set specific upgrade times for guild buffs e.g. every friday

Alliances
-ability for guilds to group up for guild missions and other events

Guild tags
-commander tag only visible for guild members, for organizing guild missions and other events

Guild bank changes
-separate material slot
-donations possibility
-finer tunement for member rights e.g. view only, moving only of items

Divisions in guild roster
-ability to group members by activity

API
-access to ad ability to edit guild info and rooster outside the game

MotD
-make MotD more visible for members

rename Guilds
-allow renaming of guilds

Guild chat
-allow guild chat for all guilds, not only the one who gets represented

Guild missions changes
- mission in instances
- missions can only be started with given permission

Account guild
-new toons rep one choosen guild automatically

Guild UI changes
-make it harder to leave guilds by accident
-show player join/ last representing date
-more ranks

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.

But it should very much add game-play as well.

Devata.6589:

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.

But it should very much add game-play as well.

Sure. I agree. That wasn’t the point of my post though. My point was “the initial purchase” of a guild hall. I tried to make it clear that there shouldn’t be a gate associated for acquiring a guild hall initially.

I like the idea of doing something with crafting, but is better logistically to go with something that needs less storage?

I’d prefer to keep crafting individual items on a personal level which you could still throw in the bank, but maybe have material funds stacking up like influence does as numbers. Say a counter each for things like common materials, rare material, siege blueprints, donated skill points etc. Then if we had vendors that people with permissions could go and trade for things like bulk superior blueprints to save us all time and repetitive strain injuries at the mystic forge.
Values on the different materials could possibly be fluid like in GW1 or set periodically in the background to keep it on par with open market values (mithril could give you one point ori might give you 5 for example).

It could be possible to tie in with the reward for 100% rep ideas. If we had a guild chest that worked like the Zaishen chest in GW1 but affected by a guild magic find essentially. The more % of time you spend representing the better odds you have of good loot. A key for the chest could be a rare reward for donations, missions or something that could be built with donated materials. If we could build something as a one shot boost for players too to be handed out for a player of the week reward it could be even more interesting.

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.

Here are a few ideas about QoL improvements that guild halls could facilitate:

[ Organization ]

• Calendar
• Posting boards managed by guild officers which allow members to organize for events (e.g. listing of what dungeons people need for DM achievement) or other fun things (contests, etc.).
• Space to assemble for guild missions, events, training sessions, etc.
• Consistent and logical place in the game to drop buffs, consumables, etc so guildies know where they might be able to find those things immediately on login
• Posted lists of who in the guild is interested in certain categories of content (this could also/instead be in the guild panel) – general PvE/dungeons, leveling, training newbies, WvW, PvP
• List of new recruits so interested guildies can get to know them!
• Guild policies or requirements in a centralized spot for new members (currently my guild stores ours on our website, which takes effort to maintain and is rarely visited by new members who need the info the most)
• Dedicated spot for RP, which is harder for RP folks w/ the megaserver

[ Convenience ]

• Crafting areas which unlock when members have contributed x number of 400/500 level crafting mats
• Gathering point for a variety of events
• Unlockable entrance to HotM and/or guild custom arena (if one exists)
• Unlockable entrance to WvW maps
• Guild bank

[ Guild Pride! ] okay, not totally QoL, but still important!

• Place to display guild achievements, upgrades, and the like
• Display of guild banners for alliance guilds (hint hint!)
• Various cosmetic/convenience hall unlocks (using dungeon tokens, karma, commendations, fractal relics, badges of honor, or any other currency items) which members contribute towards and have their contributions shown

If guilds carried only the value of “social tools”, as you say, there would be no difference between Squads and Guilds:

Of course there would be. Squads are noting like guilds. Squads are just like groups, only larger. Guilds are long term things that allow you to keep tabs on the members and communicate without having to /join constantly. Guilds are semi-permanent social structures, while squads are more ad hoc and transitory. I don’t even know why you would compare the two.

The point is, your character’s personal growth capability should never be tied to which guilds you belong to. Anything you can earn through membership in a guild. you should have access to as a solo player. The only defining feature of a guild should be as a way to organize players in a long term fashion.

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.

No, this seems to be way too much content to lock away from players who are not part of a large guild. Having these areas would be fine, but only if they did not require guild participation to access them fully.

Improve the guild bank to have it’s own version of material storage, This could be capped and should be the last upgrade, this could allow guilds to gather materials to sell to it’s members at prices they determine, maybe based on tier rather than individual basis. I would also like a way to gather guild funds like a tax that means we generate gold and materials to fill the guild bank, getting players to deposit the whole time can be awkward.

Any of this would give guilds way too much economic advantage over non-guilded players, particularly the “give us free mats” part.

Iason Evan.3806:

Devata.6589:

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.

But it should very much add game-play as well.

Sure. I agree. That wasn’t the point of my post though. My point was “the initial purchase” of a guild hall. I tried to make it clear that there shouldn’t be a gate associated for acquiring a guild hall initially.

Well it depends on how you would design it. It would be totally epic if you guild build the guild-hall like a castle and you work / unlock building blocks. But yeah I see what you mean so maybe the inner part (that holds all main functions) should not be gated and you can then later expand.

The biggest QoL feature that I can think of, that ‘only’ a Guild Hall could provide is as a Megaserver Transportation system.

If only guild members (or invitees perhaps) can access the hall, then it would be an easy place to gather a large group together and be sure to all be on the same map. There could be an NPC that each player speaks to, and by speaking to them, megaserver system is able to get an exact count of the number of players wanting to travel together to a particular zone, BEFORE they try to travel.

Rather than each player loading a zone independently, and the system using predictive logic to try and group people together, it would know exactly how many spaces it needs to have on whichever map the collective attempts to load.

JonPeters.5630:

Kaz.5430:

The biggest QoL feature that I can think of, that ‘only’ a Guild Hall could provide is as a Megaserver Transportation system.

If only guild members (or invitees perhaps) can access the hall, then it would be an easy place to gather a large group together and be sure to all be on the same map. There could be an NPC that each player speaks to, and by speaking to them, megaserver system is able to get an exact count of the number of players wanting to travel together to a particular zone, BEFORE they try to travel.

Rather than each player loading a zone independently, and the system using predictive logic to try and group people together, it would know exactly how many spaces it needs to have on whichever map the collective attempts to load.

While obviously cool there are some details that would be required to start talking about this.

• How big of a group would be required to create one of these zones?
• Could you join half empty zones or would you always want them guild exclusive?
• Would zones created for your guild stay exclusive to your guild?
• etc.

I’d love to see your thoughts on the details of this proposal to talk through some of the issues and see if it is in fact realistic, knowing that obviously you don’t know how the server infrastructure for megaservers works but I’ll try and be here to guide you.

My initial thought was just about ‘prepping’ the megaserver prediction system so that it can either find an existing megaserver with enough space, or make a new one if one doesn’t exist.

For example, TTS could arrange to meet in the Guildhall 30 mins before Teq. The sheer number of them would end up forcing a new map. A smaller guild could do the same, and get sent to a map that’s already got players, but has enough room for them all.

The ability to create a guild only megaserver would be cool, but it would need to be locked behind a pretty hefty price tag to prevent abuse. Otherwise nefarious players could create a bot guild and farm your own server without anyone seeing or reporting.

The biggest QoL feature that I can think of, that ‘only’ a Guild Hall could provide is as a Megaserver Transportation system.

If only guild members (or invitees perhaps) can access the hall, then it would be an easy place to gather a large group together and be sure to all be on the same map. There could be an NPC that each player speaks to, and by speaking to them, megaserver system is able to get an exact count of the number of players wanting to travel together to a particular zone, BEFORE they try to travel.

Rather than each player loading a zone independently, and the system using predictive logic to try and group people together, it would know exactly how many spaces it needs to have on whichever map the collective attempts to load.

I’d like to see this, but not tied to a guild at all. Just have NPCs in the world that provide this function. I would put one in LA that can transport you to any map you like, or one each in zones that would really benefit from this like Sparkfly and Bloodtide, so you zone into a Sparkfly instance, and then talk to an NPC there and say “I’d like to transfer to a queued instance please,” and then it starts like a five minute countdown, and any player that also signs up within that period are added to that queue, and then when the time is up (or the queue is filled) everyone is transported to that map together. This would provide the same level of functionality, without tying it up behind guild mechanisms.

Ideally, of course, they would just let players choose their megaserver from a list, like in other games that feature similar systems.

JonPeters.5630:

I’d love to discuss this. How would you all expect a better recruiting system to work? This is a pretty rudimentary version. What other options are there? A guild recruiting board? I think one of the largest issues facing any guild or player looking for a guild is finding a guild that you want to join or finding members that you want to retain.

How do other social groups match people together? How do you meet like-minded people in real life. Some examples include:

• Clubs with special interests.
• Hangout areas that are themed

There are many steps here
1) Interacting with those people in a social setting
2) Remembering the contact info of the people you interact with.
3) Reasons to continue to interact
4) Eventually forming a formal social group.

There are probably steps in between as well but it would be good to brainstorm ways that GW2 can bridge these steps and what other steps there might be.

Jon

I do think a basic recruitment board with the sorting functions and description of your guild would be a good start even without any prior social interaction. My playgroup usually recruits new people through dungeons/fractals. If they’re interesting or prove to be really skilled in dungeon runs we invite them, however that’s a very time consuming method of acquiring new members.

If you’re the likes of a WvW guild or a PvE event guild (Teq, TT) you just need bodies and awareness which is where a guild board would really shine. For more niche groups like say a role-player guild or the 70 year old + guild which I know exist but don’t know how to contact. The guild board provides the means to locate them without having to hope you randomly run into them or search outside of the game.

When I was in college I went to the Clubs and Societies day, browsed all the clubs and then joined the ones I had already planned on doing so along with two that were on impulse from seeing they existed. I did’nt have any real social interaction with them prior to joining. Based on that, an impractical but fun twist could be a weekly guild fair held in the cities where guilds can set up little stands to recruit, it would provide an opportunity for social interaction, allow guilds to show off their active members and create a social event in itself.

JonPeters.5630:

Great points here and I think what I am hinting at is that if there was a way to maintain the current guild functionality of multiple guilds but also add a way to really commit to a singular guild what are the features old and new that you think are important for your basic guilds vs your, for lack of a better term, “home” guild.

Jon

I think that whether the players will commit to a guild depend on the social factor, the nature of the guild and also guild related contents. The social factor is self explanatory. The nature of the guild will be if the guild is pve, wvw, pvp or pvx and if the players interests are within the domain of the guild. Finally, guild related contents, unfortunately, there isn’t much to speak of, will determine if people will want to commit to the guild.

I believe that if there is more guild related content that are more competitive, players might get more involved with the guild and slowly become more attached to the guild.

JonPeters.5630:

I think one of the largest issues facing any guild or player looking for a guild is finding a guild that you want to join or finding members that you want to retain.

How do other social groups match people together? How do you meet like-minded people in real life.

For guilds, I think the answer will be multifaceted (based on the purpose of the guild). While all guilds are inherently social, some are less focused on the appeal of their social experience and more on the content they specialize in.

I run a social guild, so it’s easy to pick up new members from meeting fun people in dungeons/world events. We try to be a guild that helps new players, so periodically we’ll recruit new players (who are very easy to find). The social component is our biggest selling point so we are very much out there socially. In this sense, guilds which serve a more niche social community would benefit from a search function which helps people 1) know they exist, and 2) get in touch.

In contrast, for more content-oriented guilds, people know what they want primarily in terms of the content/goals it lets them achieve rather than the initial social experiences they have w/ guild members. In Conski’s example, he or she might have prioritized the content of the clubs rather than the social experience. If I was looking for an elite dungeon running guild, I would be interested in their performance in that content area rather than their personality as a group.

Expanding on this, I think any guild+player matching system would need a few features:

• Broad categories for starting a search
• Fine-tuned descriptors perhaps? (Dungeons, Leveling, World Bosses, Casual/Hardcore, etc)
• Description
• Specific policies which most guilds will have to some degree (e.g. rep requirements)
• Contact info
• Application info if applicable

Possible additional things guilds might like to share on a recruitment board could include:

• Links to sites which feature the guild’s performance if that is relevant (livestreams, guild website, etc). This might appeal more to content-oriented guilds.
• Open events (e.g. guild missions as a recruitment tool and a way for prospective members to scope out the group socially). This might make more sense for a social-oriented guild.

JonPeters.5630:

In your college examples do you remember which groups were successful in recruiting you and why? Do you remember which groups you had the most fun with and why? Which ones did you attend more often? What did they do to keep your attention? Was it the content of the group? The people in the group?

The most fun was where their core activity aligned with my hobbies, You could always find friends in any club but actual passion about your activity was important too. As an example I was in gymnastics purely for exercise, they were nice people but they liked to discuss new moves or upcoming intervasities which I had no real interest in.

For the rest of the questions its split. I’d go to gaming events for gaming because it was my interest they held events and competitions regularly as a draw for people. The people themselves could be a mixed bag but you’d find your clique. Gymnastics was purely social because some friends had joined at the same time and we kept each other going. It’s the same split you see in game currently, people have their social guilds and their functional guilds.

From that rambling I’d surmise: I had to join the club first to get a real sense of whether it would suit or not and I’d say the same for people joining guilds, you only really get to know them once they’ve let their guard down and you’re a fellow guild member and in some cases you’ll end up staying purely for a service they provide.

JonPeters.5630:

Since I started it let me list my top QOL improvements from guild halls.

1) Some way for the entire guild to physically gather in a location.
2) A more physical representation of guild upgrades allowing the upgrades themselves to take on forms that are more physical as well.
3) A place where you can do in game activities in a space controlled by your guild (technically custom arenas offer this for PvP already but the only activity you can do in them is conquest PvP.)

Jon

In conclusion you want something similar to a guild hall, so yeah pleasse do that lol.

Took me 3 hours reading all the comments, discussions and brain storming.

Here are my thoughts :

Guild chat
As for now the majority asks for chat to show all guild chats.
My addition to this notion: Customizable Chat channels, this tool can be used by players to gather up their friends from different guilds or oustide guilds and form new circles. (though this is off topic I thout this point needed to be strengthened as to not be forgotten afterwards ).

Calendar- huge thumbs up for that one. additionally speaking of guild halls I think this tool should be stationed in a guild hall to make the GH attract the members inside.

Guild Bank- guild hall tools of deposit
I have seen some post mention crafting stations inside guild hall and a way to withdraw materials from the guild bank material tab idea. This created the issue of the gready member taking and not giving. To resolve this thought experiment why not set it as: withdraw mats from the bank, deposit the product in return. When the items tab get clogged members can no longer withdraw materials to craft and the guild will either sell/salvage/use the crafted items.
In addition, you can add a list of items that are required, managed by officers and the leader. (also a wishlist by members)

Guild Hall QoL thoughts
In my opinion GH is a social Cafe meeting place, so a quality of life issue should be sit-able chairs.

(please excuse any grammar /misspellings it’s 2:30 am when I started writing this, and finished readin the cdi from start to finish on my mobile phone inside my bed, heh and I thout I’d go to sleep early tonight…)

JonPeters.5630:

Kaz.5430:

The biggest QoL feature that I can think of, that ‘only’ a Guild Hall could provide is as a Megaserver Transportation system.

If only guild members (or invitees perhaps) can access the hall, then it would be an easy place to gather a large group together and be sure to all be on the same map. There could be an NPC that each player speaks to, and by speaking to them, megaserver system is able to get an exact count of the number of players wanting to travel together to a particular zone, BEFORE they try to travel.

Rather than each player loading a zone independently, and the system using predictive logic to try and group people together, it would know exactly how many spaces it needs to have on whichever map the collective attempts to load.

While obviously cool there are some details that would be required to start talking about this.

• How big of a group would be required to create one of these zones?
• Could you join half empty zones or would you always want them guild exclusive?
• Would zones created for your guild stay exclusive to your guild?
• etc.

I’d love to see your thoughts on the details of this proposal to talk through some of the issues and see if it is in fact realistic, knowing that obviously you don’t know how the server infrastructure for megaservers works but I’ll try and be here to guide you.

Stuff like Tequatl could remain on as an open world boss type thing, but the guild started ones (built using influence) I would see more as a private instance type of thing. I see guild missions in a similar way.

And for a smaller guilds that need more people to be able to do those instances or cooperate for guild missions, it could be a feature for alliances to allow those guilds to cooperate.

The reason I see those things as private is that bigger guilds sometimes have a hard time getting everyone in the same instance for the missions and the “pugs” that are there as helpful as they can be, it’s a waste of their time since there is no real interest for them to tag along (unless they felt like exploring).

Sup. I dunno if this directly relates, but I have some suggestions I’ve been thinking of for the megaserver system. I’m thinking, for illustration, of the crazy popularity for select ‘gold’ Boss Blitz maps, which were coordinated in teamspeak during the Queen’s Gauntlet event. How it worked was, people would find a taxi party, and every second right click the taxi players name, click ‘join in’, then rinse-repeat.

However, what if you were to add a queue system? In addition, which ties a little more into guild logistics, if a guild was to be running a guild mission for example, a guild member joining a full map queue would instantly be bumped to the beginning, after the last guild member to join the queue, but after in front of pugs.

EDIT: In addition, that volunteer’s blessing thing that you added; why not do the same thing for ‘guild branded’ maps, where a significant enough portion of the map is being used by a large guild, and give that buff to pugs who get switched to another megaserver.

JonPeters.5630:

Kaz.5430:

The biggest QoL feature that I can think of, that ‘only’ a Guild Hall could provide is as a Megaserver Transportation system.

If only guild members (or invitees perhaps) can access the hall, then it would be an easy place to gather a large group together and be sure to all be on the same map. There could be an NPC that each player speaks to, and by speaking to them, megaserver system is able to get an exact count of the number of players wanting to travel together to a particular zone, BEFORE they try to travel.

Rather than each player loading a zone independently, and the system using predictive logic to try and group people together, it would know exactly how many spaces it needs to have on whichever map the collective attempts to load.

While obviously cool there are some details that would be required to start talking about this.

• How big of a group would be required to create one of these zones?
• Could you join half empty zones or would you always want them guild exclusive?
• Would zones created for your guild stay exclusive to your guild?
• etc.

I’d love to see your thoughts on the details of this proposal to talk through some of the issues and see if it is in fact realistic, knowing that obviously you don’t know how the server infrastructure for megaservers works but I’ll try and be here to guide you.

As I was one that proposed this idea I will respond.

• How big of a group would be required to create one of these zones?
  • 70-80% of server soft cap. Or higher then any percentage of the lowest population server. The idea is similar to what you did with guilds only allow friends of guild to join at the same time. TTS and Server runs sponsored by guilds is a good example of this use.
• Could you join half empty zones or would you always want them guild exclusive?
  **As long as all players that meet up before hand can easily meet up on the new map with no cap problems it could be a existing zone.
• Would zones created for your guild stay exclusive to your guild?
  **No I do not feel a need for that. I am sure there are some that would appreciate this but I feel that is a bit exclusive.

The key here is it is a prepping a megaserver feature not only for guild but for guild and guests of the guild.

I have a very simple QoL suggestion. Guild Bank label edits should be logged. I was also surprised to find out that anyone can make the edits, that isn’t locked behind permissions either.

My guild has recently been battling with an individual who has been actively replacing the labels with crude language just to spite the guild rules. This is impossible to catch and/or prove outside of circumstantial evidence (to my knowledge), and it is not worth our time to police the guild bank 24/7 in attempt to find the culprit.

JonPeters.5630:

Devata.6589:

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.

I’d love to discuss this. How would you all expect a better recruiting system to work? This is a pretty rudimentary version. What other options are there? A guild recruiting board? I think one of the largest issues facing any guild or player looking for a guild is finding a guild that you want to join or finding members that you want to retain.

How do other social groups match people together? How do you meet like-minded people in real life. Some examples include:

• Clubs with special interests.
• Hangout areas that are themed

There are many steps here
1) Interacting with those people in a social setting
2) Remembering the contact info of the people you interact with.
3) Reasons to continue to interact
4) Eventually forming a formal social group.

There are probably steps in between as well but it would be good to brainstorm ways that GW2 can bridge these steps and what other steps there might be.

Jon

In guild wars 2 and MMO’s it is not always the case that you interact with them before you join with them in a guild. Often times there is a getting to know period.

Clubs in college and high school do this during club days. Members then compare their list of requirements an interest with those of clubs that are open to members. They then join the club in about a week or two they decide if they want to stay.

The problem is recruitment currently takes a lot of time out of game play from the officers to even advertise that they are recruiting. That would be the biggest hurdle to overcome.

I think using the guild banners as the following:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/page/4#post4398383

Would be a good way to advertise similar to how a lot of clubs give out free swag to pull members in. The advantage is the guild members can advertise near places of similar interests. Dungeon guilds can advertise near dungeons. PvP guilds can advertise in Hearts of the mists and WvW.

Here my top five QoL of life features i would like to see in guild halls.
1.)be a spiritual successor to gw1 guild halls and have vendors the guild can buy for the guild hall with influence. Crafting vendors,laurel vendor,banker,BLTC rep,armor repairer etc.
2.)should have guild activities. Maybe a set of activity asura gates they can opt to link to custom arenas,WvW and various mini games. Exclusive mini games would be nice but it they should at least link to the existing ones like keg brawl and crab toss.
3.) Incorporate GW2 features not in gw1. The guild halls should have places to swim.crafting stations and places to jump to and maybe even a jumping puzzle.
4.)should not be gated by guild commendations. requiring guild commendations for guild halls and guild hall vendors could be bad for small guilds
5.)I wouldnt be against guild commendations for extra things in relation to the guild missions. Like maybe guild halls already have a easy jumping puzzle but commendations can unlock a hard JP. or since theres a chicken guild rush commendations can buy a risen chicken for your guild hall.

Guild Halls – the first and most important thing you can bring to guilds in GW2 is a place where community and social bonding between players can happen.
Somewhere people can idle away in privacy – with clean chat and good friends and just discuss, joke around and have fun.

Guild halls are instrumental in creating this sense of community and belonging and I’ve experienced it first hand in GW1.

So how do I think Guild Halls should be like?

1)Have access to vendors, merchants, general utilities and things you might need as a player.

2)Give players a unique boost for visiting the GH in the last 12-24 hours. It doesn’t have to be big – but some incentive to get in there would be nice.

3)Give us big Guild Halls – I’m not saying monumentally immense but something akin to GW1 – where you had plenty of space to run around and admire the view, hide and whatnot.

4)Give us fun activities in guild halls – make them the heart of this new home for guilds. Things like sparring, maybe some mini JPs, and other small mini-games we were promised before the game was released.

5)Give guild halls a unique identity and give us variety – Guild Halls ( just like in GW1) should have themes – what works for one guild may not work for another.
The halls should fit thematically with what that guild is going for.

An Ascalon-based GH might be amazing for nostalgic GW1 players while a heavily tech influenced Asura GH might be just that thing for that guild that has almost all asura players.

Keep a theme and stick with that theme – a Shiverpeaks themed GH would be great but don’t go sticking an Asura Portal right in the middle and ruin the entire atmosphere

The possibilities for themes and atmosphere are endless and since you can place these halls in the mists and not on Tyria it doesn’t interfere with existing locations and lore.

We could have GH set existing locations or past locations – who wouldn’t like a GH based on the amazing theme and visuals of the Cliffside Fractal?
Who wouldn’t want to call a pre-searing Drascir the home of their guild?

I cannot stress out enough that so much creative good can be put into the game through Guild Halls and that Anet has to take this as seriously as the community does.

That’s my 2cents anyway. More to follow if I think it through.

JonPeters.5630:

Devata.6589:

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.

I’d love to discuss this. How would you all expect a better recruiting system to work? This is a pretty rudimentary version. What other options are there? A guild recruiting board? I think one of the largest issues facing any guild or player looking for a guild is finding a guild that you want to join or finding members that you want to retain.

How do other social groups match people together? How do you meet like-minded people in real life. Some examples include:

• Clubs with special interests.
• Hangout areas that are themed

There are many steps here
1) Interacting with those people in a social setting
2) Remembering the contact info of the people you interact with.
3) Reasons to continue to interact
4) Eventually forming a formal social group.

There are probably steps in between as well but it would be good to brainstorm ways that GW2 can bridge these steps and what other steps there might be.

Jon

Before we discuss anything related to how people meet each other and get acquainted, can we discuss the lack of any location for people to meet in the first place? Unlike the real world, this game and it’s player base is separated into multiple servers.

As Devata said, guilds are still very much server based because of WvW however there is no where outside of WvW where the only people you meet are people/guilds from your own server. People playing WvW are generally already in guilds so other guilds looking to get recruits from their server look to meet people in the open world but because of the megaserver, it is impossible.

Proposal Overview

A competition system in which Guilds, and associations of Guilds, compete each other for certain goals, missions and objectives both in WvWvW and PvE maps.

Goal of Proposal

The goal is to allow smaller Guilds to associate versus bigger Guilds, and also to stablish competitions between Guilds, different than a GvG arena in which the only objective is to fight each other. Another goal is to stablish something similar to “Guild politics” in which involved players can play on long-term goals. A small Guild could opt to participate in a Alliance, and work towards that alliance’s objectives, and change the membership the next month or proposed period of time.

Another goal is to make a bridge between Guilds and Overall Narrative.

Proposal Functionality

There should be a cap number of members, for example 2 Big Guilds, or 3. Big Guilds could still form an alliance. There should be a UI managing automatic acceptance in alliances, and alliance membership should be public. 1 Guild = 1 Alliance. This could be similar to a LFG tool, Guild leaders could propose and post alliances, select from a menu of objective’s options, and select a NPC (from a list?) who patronize or represent the alliance. They also select a time limit to get the creation objectives (minimum # of members, minimum # of guild rank, minimum gold contribution, etc)

Other Guilds join, establishing a time in which their offer is valid. If objectives are get, the alliance is formed. Every Guild gets a message from the patron NPC, and a new set of objectives and missions are added to the daily/monthly (Alliance objectives), with corresponding AP. The selected NPC can dictate missions according to their nature (it can be member of an order, a Pact general, etc…), and missions and objectives can be tied to overall game narrative. Other options are objectives set by the game that are rewarded to the first alliance that accomplish them, so you are not directly fighting the other guilds, but competing in being the first to get there.

Finally, one of the objectives/missions could be a battle or series of battles in the GvG Arena, it could be a instance in an existing PvE or WvWvW map, with part of the UI dedicated to show possible battles and join.

An alliance that survives n months (a season? 3 months? a self-defined time?) may allow other NPC to join, or “improve” levels of the Alliance patrons, this Alliances can be part of the Narrative and affect or vote on future events.

Associated Risks

Infiltrators (which could be a feature, allowing some “realpolitik” making spies and sabotage coming from untrusted Guilds), complexity too high, could be exploited by 1-person Guilds.

About the recruitment. You could have a recruitment window and I think that would be a good idea. However many people will not check those out so recruiting in map-chat is simply something you have to accept that is going to happen and take that knowledge into your design..

A more immersive way might be a in-game bar / bars for such purpose but people are no so likely to go there. Another option would be multiple places where guilds can place flyers much like the flyers in Fields of Ruin Stronghold of Ebonhawke but then how prevent spam?

So I have been thinking how you could convert all of the above.

- First of you will need a story patch that talks about how guilds are gathering once again but now all with a similar goal just all with different approaches. (That fits more in the lore of GW2)

- Allow guilds to design a flyer. It has to be partly pre-formatted because it has to fit on the world, but a guild can maybe move there emblem and name a little) and a more detailed but still limited and (again) pre-formatted separate guild-recruitment message.

- Place bill-boards in many places in the world (Multiple Living Story’s have had them. If I remember Cutthroat Politics used them and currently we still have the boards with flying for lost people. So it would fit in the world.)

- Now to make that more alive / dynamic on those bill-board show random flyers of guilds (I think this could best be server-based) Of course not all guilds will fit on one board so use some Asura technology to switch flyers all the time or (maybe better fitting in the current world) just randomly load in some of the flyers whenever a player gets near it (like much of the other data that gets loaded in around players). A tip here, arrange the flyers also partly random to really get more of an ‘realistic’ feeling. So it’s every time different as if guilds have been hanging up new flyers in-between.
It’s important this should not cost guilds anything (to be fair for small guilds) but should be an option guilds can turn on and off.

- A member can not click on a flyer but can click on the board what will send him to a UI (designed like a board) that works much like many of the guild-recruit sites. People can filter there (also for other servers) and find guilds there.

- On a page of a guild has a few options (partly depending on how the guild set it). He can ask an invite, or ask to get in contact or can ask to meet. Guild-members (based on the rank) get a message (pm and/or mail) of this and can react on it (need to find a way not multiple members react on it). Maybe guild-mail would be a good idea and this comes in on guild-mail. People can then read and check a box that they took action or something like that.

-When a meeting is requested it’s possible to portal the guild-member and the person asking to meet to a public place in the guild-hall to have a talk there. After that they can get ported back to where they where. (I’m personally not a big fan of being able to part all over the world but for as long as we have way-points I guess this would also be possible. From a lore perspective guild-members have stones and the people requesting for a meet used the flyer that is magically modified by a mesmer)

- Recruiting in map-chat would also still be possible and I think should still be server-based like I said before. However it’s also possible to in the message link to the guild-recruitment page of that guild.

Randall.7306:

Proposal Overview

A competition system in which Guilds, and associations of Guilds, compete each other for certain goals, missions and objectives both in WvWvW and PvE maps.

Goal of Proposal

The goal is to allow smaller Guilds to associate versus bigger Guilds, and also to stablish competitions between Guilds, different than a GvG arena in which the only objective is to fight each other. Another goal is to stablish something similar to “Guild politics” in which involved players can play on long-term goals. A small Guild could opt to participate in a Alliance, and work towards that alliance’s objectives, and change the membership the next month or proposed period of time.

Another goal is to make a bridge between Guilds and Overall Narrative.

Proposal Functionality

There should be a cap number of members, for example 2 Big Guilds, or 3. Big Guilds could still form an alliance. There should be a UI managing automatic acceptance in alliances, and alliance membership should be public. 1 Guild = 1 Alliance. This could be similar to a LFG tool, Guild leaders could propose and post alliances, select from a menu of objective’s options, and select a NPC (from a list?) who patronize or represent the alliance. They also select a time limit to get the creation objectives (minimum # of members, minimum # of guild rank, minimum gold contribution, etc)

Other Guilds join, establishing a time in which their offer is valid. If objectives are get, the alliance is formed. Every Guild gets a message from the patron NPC, and a new set of objectives and missions are added to the daily/monthly (Alliance objectives), with corresponding AP. The selected NPC can dictate missions according to their nature (it can be member of an order, a Pact general, etc…), and missions and objectives can be tied to overall game narrative. Other options are objectives set by the game that are rewarded to the first alliance that accomplish them, so you are not directly fighting the other guilds, but competing in being the first to get there.

Finally, one of the objectives/missions could be a battle or series of battles in the GvG Arena, it could be a instance in an existing PvE or WvWvW map, with part of the UI dedicated to show possible battles and join.

An alliance that survives n months (a season? 3 months? a self-defined time?) may allow other NPC to join, or “improve” levels of the Alliance patrons, this Alliances can be part of the Narrative and affect or vote on future events.

Associated Risks

Infiltrators (which could be a feature, allowing some “realpolitik” making spies and sabotage coming from untrusted Guilds), complexity too high, could be exploited by 1-person Guilds.

I am not 100% sure what type of ‘battles’ you where talking about. However what I would like to see for GvG and might be similar to what you are suggesting is battles like you have them in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

So not just fighting each other but basically both parties have a different objective and killing each other is at best a tool to get that objective but the objective is the true goal. Usually there is a team team that has an objective as ‘blow up there base’ and the other has ‘protect the base’. Getting the objective has multiple stages (like getting inside the base, once your inside, get to the machine-room and then set explosives in the machine-room).

Not sure if that are the type of battles you are talking about but if it is then yes I would be in favour of that. It will sure be something I will bring up when GvG is really being discussed.

Proposal Overview
Allow gw1 style guild guesting.

Goal of Proposal

• allow non members access to a future guild hall or just the guild tag/bank
• allow for guild members to test out players who would may or may not be a fit for there guild.

Proposal Functionality

• in the guild ui when representing a guild you would be able for a small fee maybe 5 silver to invite outside players
• Add a cap so you could just invite tons of people
• add a new rule/rank set for guests so access to the guild could be limited
• allow them access to your guild hall (if and when this is added).
• Allow for removing guests access
• allow for guild leader/other ranks to set who can invite/kick guests.
• add an auto kick for guest users after x amount of set able hours

Associated Risks

• spamming players
• guild leaders /officers might confuse a guest invite with a real invite.
• if guild permissions are not set correctly could cause problems
  • like guests stealing items from banks

Note late night post so please excuse grammar and spelling. ill edit tomorrow.

Proposal Overview

MistVille – Instanced Mists Guild Hall,GvG Arena and Server guild recruitment Area.

• Instanced Map to hold all the needed Guild Halls / Houses placed inside the Mists.
• Includes an entry point to GvG Arena – (Multi purpose – Acts as lobby for GvG Arena same as sPvP Lobby but only for GvG Arena / Acts as Server map to be used for Guild Recruitment purposes for WvW since megaservers killed this option)
• Instanced Server map where Guilds can hold server specified meetings and events

Goal of Proposal

Create a single map that can be used as hub for many things that are requested from players related to Guilds/Guild Halls/GvG/WvW/PVP/Events but mainly to be used as hub for every server. (we have no privacy out of WvW maps and we desperately need some)

Proposal Functionality

Since Guild wars 2 already have the duplicating instanced map system i think we can use this to create a MAP inside the mists (inside the mists since it will be entry point for GvG and maybe WvW) where Guild Halls / Houses be placed.
A Multi-Purpose map called “MistVille” or w/e else (i’m sure other players will come up with better names) that can be used for various activities while acting as Server hub that contain Guild Halls and GvG / WvW entry points as well as server hub for organizing server specific events (we have no privacy and we need a place only for our server!)
The map can be home for the future merchants and crafting work station that will be bound with the guild halls / houses to sell mercendise for them and a place where you can craft furniture and other items specific for Guild Halls/ Houses.

This place will be a Paradise for Role Players :> (Just think about it) – The map can have different themed placed like Pirate ship,Ancient battleground or a beautiful lake where this part of our community can use for their needs.

Same way your guild hall can be placed in 1 of those themed areas so you can brag about how you own a guild hall next to a Pirate ship or Asura Lab (mini version of Traumanova anyone?)

Associated Risks

Risk of this project are related to social parts of the game.

Guild Wars was pushed to become “1 BIG BLOP of Nonsense” with all the Megaserver and stuff where this idea will separate players and create different social eco-system.

I’m not sure where Devs stay in this but creating MistVille will open the door for many things and be an giant step and improvement.

I will stop here and let others discuss about this because i can write a book of 1000 pages on this idea ^^

I know it’s already been suggested, but for this QOL stuff I’d really like to see:

1) A way to manage in game events for a guild (Guild Calendar)
2) A chat channel for each guild you are in (so repping is not required to see chat)

To be honest.. It’d be nice to get rid of the idea of “repping” altogether.

Proposal Overview
Remove Representing

Goal of Proposal
To help players feel they belong to all of their guilds and help encourage natural guild alliances.

Proposal of Functionality
Remove the concept of representing.

Details:

• This would be in addition to guilds receiving their own chat channel so that representing is not needed for this.
• Buffs from each guild would apply to the players but don’t stack in effect (10% increased MF, even if both guilds are running it, remains 10% increased MF).
• Influence gain would be spread out equally to all guilds but running content with members from one guild increases the influence gain for that guild (exponentially? or at least linearly but with a modifier).

Associated Risks

• Influence gain might be a little odd to implement I suppose.
• Making a player feel like they are a part of all their guilds might make them less attached to any particular ONE. (I don’t see this as an issue though, run content with the guild that runs that type of content, or with the guild that has something going on at the time)

Closing Comments

I just wanted to mention that this would naturally lead to organized guild alliances. Guilds could coordinate to keep different types of guild buffs up and share their members equally.

I just wanted to chime in and say I am NOT IN FAVOR of these ideas:

• Representing multiple guilds simultaneously
• Ending representation
• Earning influence for multiple guilds simultaneously
• Reducing the number of guilds you can join
• Completely doing away with build queues (as queues are one of the few ways small guilds can keep up with large guilds)

mahri.8410:

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.

This or add a new open pvp map for this

Harper.4173:

Guild Halls – the first and most important thing you can bring to guilds in GW2 is a place where community and social bonding between players can happen.
Somewhere people can idle away in privacy – with clean chat and good friends and just discuss, joke around and have fun.

Your entire post is fantastic, and largely what I came to the post to say. I am huge on immersion, and a physical hall with unique characteristics to make [Deathguild] look different from [AsuranPuppies] would be amazing.

Along those lines, as someone whose main guild withered away long ago, I have a hard time deciding who to join based on mapchat. What if they could invite me to the gateroom of their guild hall? They could show off their visual style to potential applicants, including trophies pointing to their accomplishments, and the minute they invite me to the guild, I can walk through to see the rest? Holy cats would I jump up and down at such amazing guild game immersion. It’d be like joining the Thief’s Guild or Companion’s Guild in the other game I spend all my time in.

The reason I want a Guild Hall is because I want the “Guild” part of Guild Wars(2) to feel real, like it’s really a part of the actual world, at least as real as the Personal Story.

That’s my QoL.

timmyf.1490:

I just wanted to chime in and say I am NOT IN FAVOR of these ideas:

• Representing multiple guilds simultaneously
• Ending representation
• Earning influence for multiple guilds simultaneously
• Reducing the number of guilds you can join
• Completely doing away with build queues (as queues are one of the few ways small guilds can keep up with large guilds)

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask.. but can I ask why you’re not in favor of items 1, 2 and 3?

If you’re not in favor of them, you could always ask that your members only be in one guild.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

I have just woken up and and am feeling decidedly unwell.

I am heading back to bed and will be back online tomorrow.

Chris

Aww…hope you feel better really soon. Rest up, and don’t come back until you feel up to it. We will survive!

callidus.7085:

timmyf.1490:

I just wanted to chime in and say I am NOT IN FAVOR of these ideas:

• Representing multiple guilds simultaneously
• Ending representation
• Earning influence for multiple guilds simultaneously
• Reducing the number of guilds you can join
• Completely doing away with build queues (as queues are one of the few ways small guilds can keep up with large guilds)

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask.. but can I ask why you’re not in favor of items 1, 2 and 3?

If you’re not in favor of them, you could always ask that your members only be in one guild.

You sure can! I should start by stating that I’m a guild leader and my guild does not have a 100% rep policy. In fact, we even have several ally guilds with whom we often do activities/cross represent.

So why am I opposed to these things?

Why Representing Multiple Guilds Simultaneously Is Bad

I think it’s important to distinguish between the act of representing and the additional results of that action. Representing, specifically, means that you wear the guild tag of a guild. Period. The other things – guild chat, buffs, influence gain, etc – are tied to that representation, but the representation itself is just a matter of choosing which guild tag you wear.

It’d be silly to let people wear 5 guild tags at the same time, in my opinion, so I come down on the line of only representing one guild.

Why Ending Representation/Multi-influence is Bad

There’s two ways to accomplish this: ending everything about representation except it functioning as a way to choose which guild tag you wear (I call this “ending representation in name only”) and fully ending representation. I get the feeling most people here think you should still be able to choose a guild tag to wear, so I’ll argue against the former.

To me, the purpose of guilds is to build community. That community could be small or it could be large. Certainly players can participate in many communities at the same time, but my worry is that allowing buffs/influence gain from non-represented guilds means that non-social, buffs-only guilds become the norm.
t
Not to represent, of course, just to join and leave on in the background for buffs.

Also, I think this would greatly increase the both the number of guilds and total amount of influence generated. You think 100% rep guilds are bad? Wait until guild leaders realize if they force members to join ALL FIVE of their guilds, they can earn 5x influence. I can see mapchat now…

Nub Hunta: Evil Emote Empire [JUMP] recruiting | 5x 500 guild | Must rep all 5 guilds | TS, Enjin, full buffs, lottery. Whisper 4 info.

The important question I have is WHY people want to end representation. My hunch is that people 1) want free influence for their bank guild and 2) want to join guilds that require 100% rep for buffs or special events without having to actually rep the guild.