Guild Wars 2

When I first read about guild halls, I thought that this would be content that we could all experience. Similarly to Guild Wars 1 where you could buy a guild hall by yourself or with one other person and fully upgrade it if you had enough money.

Likewise in this game I was able to buy a guild and upgrade all the bank tabs with my own money (which is nice).

Once HoT came out though I realized that the only way to decorate (or even claim) a guild hall is to basically have 10+ people in your guild. It gets even worse in that even with 10 people you need to spend a tremendous amount of time and gold to decorate or unlock any of it.

So in reality if you want to play all of the new content they made for guild halls, which was a huge chunk of the development of this expansion, you need to be:

1) in a guild with at least 50+ people in order to unlock the content in a reasonable/affordable manner.

2) be one of the few officers/or leaders who has permissions to actually decorate the guild hall.

Why does ArenaNet spend so many resources on content that only a VERY SMALL subset of the population – (guild officers/leaders of guilds with 50+ members in them) can experience. I’d like to spend my guild decorations and decorate my own guild hall, why not make this content more accessible to everyone?

and no making a guild and recruiting 50+ members on my own, is a horrible solution to this problem as I already have a guild/s that I enjoy being in, I don’t want to form a new guild just so I can play house decorator and use my decorations that I earned through content.

I don’t think their marketing people realize that they would get more people buying guild accessories if they opened it up to everyone. That’s too simple to actually work, right?

I totally agree with you. I was bummed as well. We have a large guild full of people who no longer play and it’s not something I want to share with strangers. Would be great if the few we have left could still enjoy it, and maybe it would entice the others to come try HoT when we post pics of the new guild hall—the one we can’t have because there are only 3 of us playing.

People would jump onto the hype train of individual and guild player housing. I can understand a guild hall needing some time and effort, but it’s too much right now.

It’d be a big step in the right direction to make it cheaper, and even have individual housing too.

I was very disallusioned to start with, but after a bit of work, myself and 4 others are now up and running. We’re at level7 I believe. Started decorating and such.

The main issue I really have is the place is HUGE!. It’s clearly designed for massive Guilds – which is a shame :/

As a matter of fact, if you check on Guild Halls CDI, this Guild Hall design was one of those case that a lot of ppl were clearly wanting something big, but couldn’t express themselves well. This turned out the Guild Halls that we are seeing today, but believe me, if you read the CDI for Guild halls, you’ll see that ppl ASKED for it. ArenaNet just believed that a small part of the playerbase would be speaking for the majority, because the majority wasn’t vocal at that time. I can’t really blame them for that, in this particular case.

Edit: context.

I was personally very active in the 32 page Guild Hall CDI from page 1. One thing that was made abundantly clear was that Guild Halls were to be made available for Small, Medium and Large guilds.

Maybe the Small/Medium guilds were left out in the initial release of Guild Halls but it was stated that there was specifically a Guild Team now so they may be working to bring the rest of us into the fold shortly.

One can only dream.

Mosferre.1246:

The main issue I really have is the place is HUGE!. It’s clearly designed for massive Guilds – which is a shame :/

The thing is because of the way the instancing works even in a huge guild I find myself seeing ~5 people in the guild hall, ~10 if I get a map merge notification. Not very effective as a place to gather and/or see other guildmates.

Who would of thunk it. Guild content designed for groups of people to accomplish.

This wasn’t personal player housing they were making. In-fact I’m pretty sure what you are describing is what they were trying to avoid all together. I can imagine they want to avoid data and server resources it would take have to store and load a customized instance for each single player that wants a guild hall, and the server resources it would take to have public instances of all those custom instances running simultaneously. That really doesn’t benefit anyone, so the designed it around giving guilds something to work towards and share.

It is working as intended for alot of guilds. Something that guilds could work on long term and make into their own and big enough for everyone to take part in customization with being big enough to add since of exploration.

I have seen some guilds as small as 10-20 people turn out some really impressive halls, but those players played enough to have the resources and dedication to earn it. And, if you are in a guild only the guild leader and officers have decorating privileges, you are in the wrong guild. There are many guilds like mine that extend privileges to the vast majority of members because Guild Halls are for the entire guild to enjoy.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Who would of thunk it. Guild content designed for groups of people to accomplish.

This wasn’t personal player housing they were making. In-fact I’m pretty sure what you are describing is what they were trying to avoid all together. I can imagine they want to avoid data and server resources it would take have to store and load a customized instance for each single player that wants a guild hall, and the server resources it would take to have public instances of all those custom instances running simultaneously. That really doesn’t benefit anyone, so the designed it around giving guilds something to work towards and share.

It is working as intended for alot of guilds. Something that guilds could work on long term and make into their own and big enough for everyone to take part in customization with being big enough to add since of exploration.

I have seen some guilds as small as 10-20 people turn out some really impressive halls, but those players played enough to have the resources and dedication to earn it. And, if you are in a guild only the guild leader and officers have decorating privileges, you are in the wrong guild. There are many guilds like mine that extend privileges to the vast majority of members because Guild Halls are for the entire guild to enjoy.

right because its not annoying at all to decorate an entire area of the guild hall yourself only to have one troll guild member with privileges tear all your decorations down. This is another reason you might want to decorate an entire hall yourself, with your own resources and time.

And as far as the cost to the servers go, I paid $100 for the deluxe expansion i would say that would cover the cost of my own personal instanced guild hall, and not to mention how much development and time went into making guild halls so that again only a small number of individuals or like minded individuals can actually experience it. Your example Is in the minority of users I am sure.

They actually developed an entire new crafting class and how many people actually use it? Usually each guild has only one guild scribe, anymore would be redundant, why bother making such complex content for only one person per guild to enjoy?

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

I was personally very active in the 32 page Guild Hall CDI from page 1. One thing that was made abundantly clear was that Guild Halls were to be made available for Small, Medium and Large guilds.

Maybe the Small/Medium guilds were left out in the initial release of Guild Halls but it was stated that there was specifically a Guild Team now so they may be working to bring the rest of us into the fold shortly.

One can only dream.

I was stating that ppl were wanting something BIG there. But the way ppl expressed themselves led to arenanet think they would want to compromise themselves to the Hall. Everyone wanted something that every guild could have access to, but at the same time, they were wanting micromanagement, huge buildings, upgrades tied to the buildings, pretty much everything that we have now too. Even to get rid of influence and replace it for something else was pretty popular there, and look what it became.

The problem is that to give all that was wanted there, they created something that for now, only major guilds can manage to get AND play the game for themselves at the SAME TIME.

But it’s like someone said once: careful to what you want, Anet may give it in a way you don’t like.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

… so they may be working to bring the rest of us into the fold shortly.

One can only dream.

Indeed. I’ve been running into a lot of discouragement regarding smallish guilds making little to no progress. Even worse, people that are in huge guilds are telling people that prefer small guilds to either join a big guild or shut up about it.

As far as I’m concerned (and I have stated this in other threads re same), I miss having access to my own WvW upgrades. After all, not all WvW guilds let you have permissions to access said upgrades. RIP my former small havoc guild.

Me and my friends have a guild that is still small, and right now it’s pretty much just the three of us working on upgrades. We’ve knocked out the first few ourselves but I imagine it’s going to get much harder later without more people helping.

Luckily we do plan on getting some more actual members for stuff like this, so it’s not really bothering me right now.

I’d love to see the option for like… a smaller scale guild hall or something some day. For people who really just want a small guild and don’t need all of the space or the things in the giant guild halls right now. But they could still have a small customizable area for their little guild.

10+ people aren’t required to afford or acquire, or even level up a guild hall. I’ve seen it done with 5, though it probably could be done with fewer if they are particularly skillful. Also if you are having trouble clearing out the guild hall with less than 10 people you can always ask friends outside your guild for a had because people don’t have to be members of a guild to go in.

jeezlaweez: I do not know what contact you had directly with ANet during the CDI, so I am not able to refute your knowledge of what ANet did or did not think. But you seem to have been privy to information many of the rest of us were not.

From my correspondence with Chris Whiteside during the CDI and how the CDI progressed as a whole, my expectation of what the overall Guild Hall structure and function would be was much different than what was finely presented.

That said, Chris was very clear that the CDI would not be transferred into an ANet internal roadmap, which is why I have not said much of anything about the final GH outcome.

As you said: “The problem is that to give all that was wanted there, they created something that for now, only major guilds can manage to get AND play the game for themselves at the SAME TIME.”
I was not aware that ANet said …they created something that for now, only major guilds could manage… That is good news, it leaves me with hope that change is in the near future, thank you.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I’d like to spend my guild decorations and decorate my own guild hall, why not make this content more accessible to everyone?

I generally agree with 99% of all resentments against the current guild hall system, but it sounds like one of your main struggles at the moment is having the right to decorate. It only makes sense that not EVERYONE is allowed to play around with the guild inventory. Resources of any kind need to be protected. My suggestion is to be pro-active about it in your guild. Regarding the ridiculous costs of decorating, there are workarounds I’ll explain below

I was a nobody in my guild (only somewhat active, only a handful of 3-5 core players who regularly go on) But I really wanted to get into decorations! We were able to beat the guild hall mission with 5 people. No one did anything with the GH after we claimed it.

I saved up on pumpkin decorations during Halloween ‘15, which were very accessible (bought with candy corns). I asked the guild leader for permission to decorate with these and expressed general enthusiasm about decorating. He was totally cool with giving me permission (guild leaders can create whatever ranks they want. you don’t necessarily need to be some one “uber important” w/ a fancy title be able to decorate, you just need the appropriate permissions)

Did the same for Wintersday and Lunar Fest. Got my hands on alot of the festival related decorations that were generally affordable (i.e. get snow piles w/ flawless snowflakes or red lanterns w/ essence of luck [which can be salvaged from greens or ectoplasms])

The hardest part is saving up for the Guild Workshop upgrades. As a casual player since launch, I did have enough gold and mats already piled up to complete a few necessary upgrades myself.

Again, I asked leader for permission to approve upgrades. I also asked him if he can make announcements to ask for donations. He was glad to give me permission for both things.

What helps for saving up resources is to make the guild hall experience more social. My guild isn’t particularly active and social, but I was able to make it work. I asked the leader to host some guild missions (get favor for upgrades) along with “flax farm field trips” (to help create linseed oil for upgrades) We’ve done this a few times, not a lot, but it really helped!

After achieving the Workshop, I found out about a guy from Reddit who was willing to create Snow Makers for guild hall owners so that he can level his own scribing. I am not rich enough to pursue scribing full time, but I had the 15 snow piles required, and the 20g in mats needed. I told my leader about hiring this guy. He entrusted me with rest of the appropriate permissions related to decorations (like accessing the resonator and everything)

I created this thread to find some more high level scribers to help me w/ decorating:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/432582/scribes_for_hire/
Thanks to these scribers, my guild hall contains high level decorations (my favorite so far is the Lunar Arch) Eventually, the guild leader also entrusted me w/ the right to send invites and assign permissions, so I can keep decorating this way w/o his oversight. At this point, I basically have the rights of an officer, simply from showing enthusiasm in decorating.

TLDR;
1) Show enthusiasm for decorating and prove yourself trustworthy, and unless your guild leader is an uptight elitist snot (in which case, leave the crappy guild) you should be able to earn the rights to do everything you want to do for decorations. Sure my leader might just be a nice person, but like any organization, it makes sense you need to prove yourself as someone who is reliable and serious about handling resources and privileges

2) In addition to being pro-active about decorating, be pro-active about making the guild hall upgrade process a social one. Make an event out of procuring resources. Every bit helps

3) Keep an eye out for Festival decorations in the future! Because my advice isn’t particularly useful now since you can’t buy red lanterns and what not at the moment, but atleast now you know? Because it looks like every GW holiday comes w/ new decorations that are accessible. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decoration/Festivals
I’m still saving up for Decorations Merchant 1 and that’s gonna take forever, but atleast my hall is filled with festival decorations.

4) Fortunately Anet has addressed the ridiculous costs associated w/ decorations/scribing and aims to resolve it. So for the day you do get your hands on some basic or festival decorations, and if Anet still hasn’t resolve this, and if you can’t handle leveling your scribe level…look for outside help. The lvl 400 scribes I’ve hired are more than happy to help as long as you can provide mats