Something I’ve noticed since HoT Guild Halls were released is the sudden decrease in desire to donate and progress a guild hall. Many saw the price and noped. They would rather put those items towards personal goals (such as legendary) or sell them on the TP for coin. I’ve talked to many of them and most of them agree that there just aren’t good enough personal rewards to get a guild hall.
So there are two routes I can see Anet going if they want to fix this. First, they reduce the requirements in terms of materials.
The second route is to put more bonuses for personal players at the end. There’s one may way I can see doing this that will not only produce a unique experience that will get guilds to work together and unify, but greatly benefit players.
Decoration Buffs.
So the concept works like this, you have two components. You have an upgrade component (such as workshop 2 or guild trader) and a decoration. When you have both of them, they produce a special buff that is applied to all players in the guild. Here are some examples.
-Sunless Inoculation – Fighting Teuqatl the Sunless has provided your guild with deep knowledge of plague magic. All players will receive a -15% condition duration applied to them while in the open world or instanced PvE (fractals, dungeons, raids) while the Tequatl Trophy/Decoration is placed in your guild hall
Requirements:
1. Guild Tequatl Kill – Your guild spawns and successfully kills Tequatl. This will give the guild access to decoration (such as a Trophy of Tequatl).
2. Guild War Room 2
-Ogden’s Hammer – Your guilds members have shared their deep and masterful knowledge of the smiting arts. While Ogden’s Hammer is deployed in the Guild Hall, all required crafting materials for weaponsmithing and armorsmithing are decreased by half if the required amount is greater then one.
Requirements:
1. 50 Armorsmithing Pendulums – They required 450. Are low to medium in cost. They have a weekly timer. Its key to note that in terms of materials, these will NOT be expensive. Their purpose is mainly for crafters to donate something that more represents their level. You could also use backpacks here too. The weekly timer forces players to work together, instead of just one person doing it.
2. 50 Weaponsmithing Pendulums – similar to above
3. Workshop 2
These are of course just examples, but you get my point. They will provide VERY Good buffs to the personal player by employing a mix of guild hall requirements and group content requirements. You can’t make these small bonuses like the 3-10% increases from the exp buffs. While those exp buffs are ok, they’re small enough that not many people care too much about them. They’re also not global, so it’s not uncommon for guild members to forget about them. I know in my examples they seem a bit overpowered, but think about it. Workshop 2 requires a ton of items right now. Current prices have it over 800g in items. Tavern 2 I think is well over 1,200g. So not only is there a timegate to these upgrades, but also they have quite large expense attached to them. I know my guild of 130+ active players will be taking close to 1 month at current rates to achieve. Tavern 2 could easily take 3-4 months. Plus achieving whatever content requirement, which again wont be easy. These are extensive and hard/grindy requirements.
My point is, there needs to be more personal incentive for players to donate. You’ve sort of enforced a very self centered outlook in the game by providing a reward system that can be easily achieved alone or through open world content (where grouping will often happen automatically, like vanilla world bosses).
(edited by Deified.7520)