Guild Wars 2

I’ve been looking forward to HoT for a very long time, especially due to Guild Halls. My 7-person guild was looking forward to having a place to call home, so we were a bit excited. However, the extreme costs of upgrades was just insane. The initial expedition cost was reasonable enough, but just the first upgrade would either force us to grind dry top, or wipe out all our funds. These costs may be fair for massive guilds with plenty of donors, but many small guilds are rendered helpless by these costs. It may be one thing to offer the big guilds a better guild hall, but we can’t even afford the first upgrade. Some could argue that we should either merge with a big guild or try to grow, but we, and many others people prefer small groups, where everyone knows each other. It seems a bit unfair to punish players for a preferred play style. Of course balancing it would be difficult to implement, but the current system is unusable. Even if we gave up all our personal costs, such as new armor and equipment, we still could never afford the upgrades. At this rate, most people are going to swarm nothing but the big guilds, purely so they can have a decent guild hall….

Look on the bright side. Guild hall is kind of useless anyway. It’s just a cool thing, but don’t have much use.

Which could be summarized by all the grind the game. Why are you grinding for something which barely have any use. If you think about it, this game really have no grind.

They’re insane for larger guilds as well.

RacoonLord.5016:

It seems a bit unfair to punish players for a preferred play style.

Yeah, “punishing” … that’s what’s happening here…

RacoonLord.5016:

I’ve been looking forward to HoT for a very long time, especially due to Guild Halls. My 7-person guild was looking forward to having a place to call home, so we were a bit excited. However, the extreme costs of upgrades was just insane. The initial expedition cost was reasonable enough, but just the first upgrade would either force us to grind dry top, or wipe out all our funds. These costs may be fair for massive guilds with plenty of donors, but many small guilds are rendered helpless by these costs. It may be one thing to offer the big guilds a better guild hall, but we can’t even afford the first upgrade. Some could argue that we should either merge with a big guild or try to grow, but we, and many others people prefer small groups, where everyone knows each other. It seems a bit unfair to punish players for a preferred play style. Of course balancing it would be difficult to implement, but the current system is unusable. Even if we gave up all our personal costs, such as new armor and equipment, we still could never afford the upgrades. At this rate, most people are going to swarm nothing but the big guilds, purely so they can have a decent guild hall….

To be fair, there should be some kind of progression. I know that Anet talked about alot of fancy things in their manifesto however it is quite clear that alot of those concept turned out to be impossible to accomplish.

Progression is needed even if it is an illusionary kind of progression and to be fair, it is not logical to say ‘’I personally dislike playing the game alot, that is how I play the game and enjoy it, so why FORCE me to play so I could get legendaries? I want an easier way to get them as a casual since I want the way to accuire rewards in the game to fit my own playstyle’’.

Now, that is an extreme example and am pretty sure all you meant to say with your post is that you want to enjoy the game with your small guild. However, as it stands, that is impossible. Guild halls are made for bigger guilds. In fact, one could argue that Guild halls are one of the more ’’hardcore’’ endgame content because thee costs are insane and need grinding for a long time.

While I agree that the upgrades are seriously expensive, they are not meant to be completed in a week.

I honestly don’t even know what the function of guild halls is, so you aren’t being punished that much. It’s just something you want.

yeah way too expensive but the biggest issue is the favor!!!! need to earn favor for all sorts of things not a cupple of missions, solo stuff, group stuff etc, its just kitten right now, small guilds trying to a group to complete something is a pain in the kitten when its a small international guild working on different time zones grrrrr!!! And don’t start on me about the complaining, not everyone has a huge group of Warhammer buddys they played with out the back of model shops since the 1980’s to do the content with!

small guilds will ofcourse have a harder tme to get guild hall up and running and it should be that way mate.

See it as a long term goal to get said guild hall up and running.

Nate.3927:

While I agree that the upgrades are seriously expensive, they are not meant to be completed in a week.

of course, but with a guild like ours, just a single upgrade will require nearly all of our time and money…

Linken.6345:

small guilds will ofcourse have a harder tme to get guild hall up and running and it should be that way mate.

See it as a long term goal to get said guild hall up and running.

My issue is, If I want to build a house I first obtain the meterials then procede to build the house, with the current setup I need favor which is like, having some kitten at the building supply shop say he doesn’t like you and you can kiss his A then maybe you can have the timber you need, see my point t all? I’m happy to grind and all that to get the mats to build but as for the favor wtf!!!

Andred.1087:

RacoonLord.5016:

It seems a bit unfair to punish players for a preferred play style.

Yeah, “punishing” … that’s what’s happening here…

The term punishing does not always apply to a disciplinary action. I believe the term was appropriate, but to put it in simpler terms, it feels as though they are allowing the game function to harm those who choose small guilds over massive ones.

Fluffball.8307:

I honestly don’t even know what the function of guild halls is, so you aren’t being punished that much. It’s just something you want.

For guilds that play WvW the guild hall is critical to their success in WvW. All of the guild “buffs/enhancements” that WvW guilds had before HoT were reset to zero, nada, square one. The tiers were mixed up, new stuff was added. It’s “one” of the reasons there have been so few people in WvW since HoT release. Guilds are grinding and farming their kittens off trying to regain everything that was reset. The costs are immense and daunting! There has even been a possible oversight of removing an area of the game that contained the ONLY place one certain item (required for guild hall upgrades) dropped.

There is a kitten ton of great content in the new guild hall system. You should check into it

Fellfoot.8156:

stuff

Ok, sounds interesting, I will check it out.

Fellfoot.8156:

For guilds that play WvW the guild hall is critical to their success in WvW. All of the guild “buffs/enhancements” that WvW guilds had before HoT were reset to zero, nada, square one. The tiers were mixed up, new stuff was added. It’s “one” of the reasons there have been so few people in WvW since HoT release. Guilds are grinding and farming their kittens off trying to regain everything that was reset. The costs are immense and daunting! There has even been a possible oversight of removing an area of the game that contained the ONLY place one certain item (required for guild hall upgrades) dropped.

Just to get back +5 buff requires a lot of work and time which is daunting when we had this and more as a smallish WvW guild before the expansion. Due to the structure of the upgrades we have to build things we really wouldn’t want otherwise, such as a tavern, just to get what we need.
While I love the concept of the tavern attracting NPCs for other upgrades the lack of flexibility for guilds to focus on what they want to do first and in what order is disappointing.

The guild I am in has done a great job so far working towards getting back our WvW buffs and the ability to claim structures again. We’ve pulled together as a team to try and get some of our WvW functionality again (which is awesome!) but it feels like WvW players are no longer being nudged to spend time in PvE, we’re being forced to do PvE if we want these WvW based guild benefits again (which is not at all awesome).

My disappointment and frustration isn’t about the fact that guild halls are clearly a long term investment and goal. It is about, once again, a rather obvious disconnect with and disregard for those players who prefer the WvW end game. Such oversights as the heavy supply bags and WvW daily options that use the removed alpine borderland map are just the most recent examples.

Vespertilionidae.5018:

Fellfoot.8156:

For guilds that play WvW the guild hall is critical to their success in WvW. All of the guild “buffs/enhancements” that WvW guilds had before HoT were reset to zero, nada, square one. The tiers were mixed up, new stuff was added. It’s “one” of the reasons there have been so few people in WvW since HoT release. Guilds are grinding and farming their kittens off trying to regain everything that was reset. The costs are immense and daunting! There has even been a possible oversight of removing an area of the game that contained the ONLY place one certain item (required for guild hall upgrades) dropped.

Just to get back +5 buff requires a lot of work and time which is daunting when we had this and more as a smallish WvW guild before the expansion. Due to the structure of the upgrades we have to build things we really wouldn’t want otherwise, such as a tavern, just to get what we need.
While I love the concept of the tavern attracting NPCs for other upgrades the lack of flexibility for guilds to focus on what they want to do first and in what order is disappointing.

The guild I am in has done a great job so far working towards getting back our WvW buffs and the ability to claim structures again. We’ve pulled together as a team to try and get some of our WvW functionality again (which is awesome!) but it feels like WvW players are no longer being nudged to spend time in PvE, we’re being forced to do PvE if we want these WvW based guild benefits again (which is not at all awesome).

My disappointment and frustration isn’t about the fact that guild halls are clearly a long term investment and goal. It is about, once again, a rather obvious disconnect with and disregard for those players who prefer the WvW end game. Such oversights as the heavy supply bags and WvW daily options that use the removed alpine borderland map are just the most recent examples.

Ermm….. Thus, there should be WvW obtainable-only items, for fairness sake. WvW players are capable of playing PvE but not the other way round.

As always it’s getting that balance that’s difficult. Either it becomes too easy for larger guilds to rush through everything, or it becomes difficult for smaller guilds to accomplish. That’s the nature when you’re having a feature like this. Striking that perfect balance between member contribution and guild size, now that’s the holy grail.

Pharazon.3095:

As always it’s getting that balance that’s difficult. Either it becomes too easy for larger guilds to rush through everything, or it becomes difficult for smaller guilds to accomplish. That’s the nature when you’re having a feature like this. Striking that perfect balance between member contribution and guild size, now that’s the holy grail.

It will never be balanced that way, larger guilds will always get things done faster, the sacrifice the larger guilds had to made is the problems that come along to become a larger guild and maintaining it. That’s how it balance out.

The material costs are most likely not only balanced in term of what many keep saying, guild size. It is also to control the market and keep certain materials’ stocks in check while ensuring that it takes months to complete so anet is less pressured to release contents at faster rate.

Linken.6345:

small guilds will ofcourse have a harder tme to get guild hall up and running and it should be that way mate.

See it as a long term goal to get said guild hall up and running.

My thinking too. Unfortunately catering for a 5 man and a 200 man guild with the same system is near impossible.

SkyShroud.2865:

Ermm….. Thus, there should be WvW obtainable-only items, for fairness sake. WvW players are capable of playing PvE but not the other way round.

Because running after the commander tag in a giant zerg is hard? :P

Faster yes, but smaller guilds are the backbones of any MMO because that’s how most guilds starts out. If it weren’t for the small guilds, the large guilds wouldn’t be there. That’s why it’s important to encourage guilds to be established, and having a balance on things the guild can acquire.

Look at World of Warcraft per example. They made Guild levels and gave Guild perks in form of rewards, spells and other assorted things. It was in short a disaster, levelling a guild to 25 (which was max level) took a lot of members a lot of effort, and the perks given were very good (such as reputation gain, gold gain and dungeon badge gain). This led to smaller guilds more or less being demolished and left in ruins, no one joined a guild that weren’t level 25 and had all the perks and the smaller guilds just went out because they couldn’t recruit new members. On the other hand, the larger guilds became filled up, and maxed out the number of people it could hold (900 ish) and making them unmanageable. Blizzard realized their folly in this and have since removed guild levels and guild perks.

So having a balance in perks given to guilds is and will always be a tricky balance. If the guild hall is in such a nature that it becomes impossible for smaller guilds to get it and maintain it, then there’s an issue at hand. Especially if what the guild hall provides is something that the guild members want. What we get is the same situation as with Blizzard’s Guild levels.

Nate.3927:

While I agree that the upgrades are seriously expensive, they are not meant to be completed in a week.

There are other ways to make sure of that than just a massive mats sink.

The answer is kinda obvious.
The “basic” guild upgrades should be quite cheap and quick to achieve, regardless of the guild size.
This basic level of upgrades would give back most of the upgrades that were possible in the previous guild system.

Then you add higher tiers of upgrades which get progressively more expensive but which only give very small improvements or QoL things. Maybe more banner/mats storage or a higher limit on how much stuff can be crafted each week or some cosmetic upgrades. Stuff that you could live without but that might be nice to have.

The aim would be that pretty much any guild of any size can achieve the basic level and get a “mostly functioning” set of guild facilities.
The bigger guilds will still want to max everything out partially for those small improvements but mostly for the bragging rights. “Come join us. We have a maxed guild hall with shiny decorations of leetness!”

Astralporing.1957:

Nate.3927:

While I agree that the upgrades are seriously expensive, they are not meant to be completed in a week.

There are other ways to make sure of that than just a massive mats sink.

Aetherium is just one way they have time gated guild hall upgrades. Even if you have all the materials Aetherium and Favor slow the acquisition of upgrades with a time factor and caps on weekly favor earning. You can upgrade to mine aetherium faster, to hold more capacity, but higher tier upgrades cost more aetherium so it is relative.

I do think these are good ways to slow down the process, especially when compared to slowing them down with requirements of very much in demand materials that have limited means of acquisition.
Time gated guild based missions that add to the progress of certain upgrades and unlocks, in ways other than just favor would also help slow the process down while still allowing guilds to earn a feeling of accomplishment and progression with team effort.

As an example: Your guild just captured a guild hall and the tavern npc appears, rather than asking for empty kegs and glass mugs just to pitch a tent he mentions rumors of a hidden stash of fine whiskey and other spirits somewhere in the hall itself. Wouldn’t it be a fine way to celebrate your victory by finding this cache for him?
Agreeing to find him these items would trigger a guild mission and completing it will create a minimal tavern, just enough to attract the mining npc and give the guild who just captured their own guild hall a small reward and ‘jump start’ on the long process of fixing everything up.

I understand that a lot of the bells and whistles of a guild hall are purely cosmetic and intended to be a sink, and are meant to be long term goals for a group of players.

However, I wonder if perhaps this would have worked even better with three levels of completion for the structures, instead of two. Getting something up and running with the bare basics shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish, even for smaller guilds. Turning those basic structures into visually impressive places with lots of convenience based amenities, or increased output and capacity, could be where the real sink takes place.

While i’d agree anet has an unhealthy obsession with linseed oil I’d say that the guild hall costs are balanced just fine. My own 10 man guild are progressing at a steady rate and the largest issue right now is gathering 150 pvp reward track progression potions in order to build our arena. One tips is to have all of your guild members gather and donate their daily flax seeds at the Itzel garden to the guild and the cost will be alot more managable.

This is good advice, I found it worth running a few alts (if you have them to spare) through the first part of the story to park them in the Itzel garden for the daily harvest.

Vespertilionidae.5018:

Fellfoot.8156:

For guilds that play WvW the guild hall is critical to their success in WvW. All of the guild “buffs/enhancements” that WvW guilds had before HoT were reset to zero, nada, square one. The tiers were mixed up, new stuff was added. It’s “one” of the reasons there have been so few people in WvW since HoT release. Guilds are grinding and farming their kittens off trying to regain everything that was reset. The costs are immense and daunting! There has even been a possible oversight of removing an area of the game that contained the ONLY place one certain item (required for guild hall upgrades) dropped.

Just to get back +5 buff requires a lot of work and time which is daunting when we had this and more as a smallish WvW guild before the expansion. Due to the structure of the upgrades we have to build things we really wouldn’t want otherwise, such as a tavern, just to get what we need.
While I love the concept of the tavern attracting NPCs for other upgrades the lack of flexibility for guilds to focus on what they want to do first and in what order is disappointing.

The guild I am in has done a great job so far working towards getting back our WvW buffs and the ability to claim structures again. We’ve pulled together as a team to try and get some of our WvW functionality again (which is awesome!) but it feels like WvW players are no longer being nudged to spend time in PvE, we’re being forced to do PvE if we want these WvW based guild benefits again (which is not at all awesome).

My disappointment and frustration isn’t about the fact that guild halls are clearly a long term investment and goal. It is about, once again, a rather obvious disconnect with and disregard for those players who prefer the WvW end game. Such oversights as the heavy supply bags and WvW daily options that use the removed alpine borderland map are just the most recent examples.

Tavern is for the 24 hour buffs that you can unlock. This includes things wvw players might want.
The workshop is needed to queue WvW blueprints, infact they have a whole special WvW queue in the workshop.
The only thing that has no value is the mine, it is purely setting back progression.

That said, I agree that the first few upgrades shouldn’t cost too much material wise. The bare bones GH is when you have all the tents up. Or just the tent you need. That should maybe be lowered in material costs. But I definitely expect a refund on those spend materials if that happens.

(With 15 or so guildies/ friends we have, currently unlocked wvw and pve guild mission slots, mining rate 2 and are working for mine expansion 2. Silverwastes shovels definitely posing a problem with the nerf to silverwastes shovels in silverwastes.)

Coarse sand is much more trouble than Flax. Flax gathers up almost automatically while playing in thenew areas , but for coarse sand you actually have to spend hours after hours in Dry Top or Silverwaste farming it and it is needed in crazy amounts too. Thousands and thousands of sands.

Pharazon.3095:

Faster yes, but smaller guilds are the backbones of any MMO because that’s how most guilds starts out. If it weren’t for the small guilds, the large guilds wouldn’t be there. That’s why it’s important to encourage guilds to be established, and having a balance on things the guild can acquire.

Look at World of Warcraft per example. They made Guild levels and gave Guild perks in form of rewards, spells and other assorted things. It was in short a disaster, levelling a guild to 25 (which was max level) took a lot of members a lot of effort, and the perks given were very good (such as reputation gain, gold gain and dungeon badge gain). This led to smaller guilds more or less being demolished and left in ruins, no one joined a guild that weren’t level 25 and had all the perks and the smaller guilds just went out because they couldn’t recruit new members. On the other hand, the larger guilds became filled up, and maxed out the number of people it could hold (900 ish) and making them unmanageable. Blizzard realized their folly in this and have since removed guild levels and guild perks.

So having a balance in perks given to guilds is and will always be a tricky balance. If the guild hall is in such a nature that it becomes impossible for smaller guilds to get it and maintain it, then there’s an issue at hand. Especially if what the guild hall provides is something that the guild members want. What we get is the same situation as with Blizzard’s Guild levels.

I don’t think the small guilds (which are still seeking for growth) are what we are discussing here, I think the small guilds in discussions are guilds that intentionally restrict themselves to a specific social circles like families, real life friends and etc.

CureForLiving.5360:

SkyShroud.2865:

Ermm….. Thus, there should be WvW obtainable-only items, for fairness sake. WvW players are capable of playing PvE but not the other way round.

Because running after the commander tag in a giant zerg is hard? :P

nah, is about not getting wiped even if u have numbers advantage, do u play wvw?

SkyShroud.2865:

Pharazon.3095:

Faster yes, but smaller guilds are the backbones of any MMO because that’s how most guilds starts out. If it weren’t for the small guilds, the large guilds wouldn’t be there. That’s why it’s important to encourage guilds to be established, and having a balance on things the guild can acquire.

Look at World of Warcraft per example. They made Guild levels and gave Guild perks in form of rewards, spells and other assorted things. It was in short a disaster, levelling a guild to 25 (which was max level) took a lot of members a lot of effort, and the perks given were very good (such as reputation gain, gold gain and dungeon badge gain). This led to smaller guilds more or less being demolished and left in ruins, no one joined a guild that weren’t level 25 and had all the perks and the smaller guilds just went out because they couldn’t recruit new members. On the other hand, the larger guilds became filled up, and maxed out the number of people it could hold (900 ish) and making them unmanageable. Blizzard realized their folly in this and have since removed guild levels and guild perks.

So having a balance in perks given to guilds is and will always be a tricky balance. If the guild hall is in such a nature that it becomes impossible for smaller guilds to get it and maintain it, then there’s an issue at hand. Especially if what the guild hall provides is something that the guild members want. What we get is the same situation as with Blizzard’s Guild levels.

I don’t think the small guilds (which are still seeking for growth) are what we are discussing here, I think the small guilds in discussions are guilds that intentionally restrict themselves to a specific social circles like families, real life friends and etc.

Don’t agree on that one, a small guild is a small guild, and there are a whole lot more of the small guilds that try to grow and keep afloat than small guilds restricted to a specific social circle.

And as such, any restrictions that hinders a guild to live up to expectations is inadvertently damaging the creation of new guilds. The big builds will one day crash so it’s important that there are new guilds to pick things up.

Pharazon.3095:

SkyShroud.2865:

Pharazon.3095:

Faster yes, but smaller guilds are the backbones of any MMO because that’s how most guilds starts out. If it weren’t for the small guilds, the large guilds wouldn’t be there. That’s why it’s important to encourage guilds to be established, and having a balance on things the guild can acquire.

Look at World of Warcraft per example. They made Guild levels and gave Guild perks in form of rewards, spells and other assorted things. It was in short a disaster, levelling a guild to 25 (which was max level) took a lot of members a lot of effort, and the perks given were very good (such as reputation gain, gold gain and dungeon badge gain). This led to smaller guilds more or less being demolished and left in ruins, no one joined a guild that weren’t level 25 and had all the perks and the smaller guilds just went out because they couldn’t recruit new members. On the other hand, the larger guilds became filled up, and maxed out the number of people it could hold (900 ish) and making them unmanageable. Blizzard realized their folly in this and have since removed guild levels and guild perks.

So having a balance in perks given to guilds is and will always be a tricky balance. If the guild hall is in such a nature that it becomes impossible for smaller guilds to get it and maintain it, then there’s an issue at hand. Especially if what the guild hall provides is something that the guild members want. What we get is the same situation as with Blizzard’s Guild levels.

I don’t think the small guilds (which are still seeking for growth) are what we are discussing here, I think the small guilds in discussions are guilds that intentionally restrict themselves to a specific social circles like families, real life friends and etc.

Don’t agree on that one, a small guild is a small guild, and there are a whole lot more of the small guilds that try to grow and keep afloat than small guilds restricted to a specific social circle.

And as such, any restrictions that hinders a guild to live up to expectations is inadvertently damaging the creation of new guilds. The big builds will one day crash so it’s important that there are new guilds to pick things up.

However, how many posters here are talking about upcoming small guilds and not guilds that restricted to specific social circle?

In many other threads, a lot of discussions about small guilds are about guilds that restrict to specific social circle and not growing small guilds. I think this must be made clearly because both have different rate of progression. A growing small guild will never remain small forever, they will eventually pick up speed. However, a small guild that restrict to specific social circle will remain in that circle size for a very long time. So, is the guild hall’s cost going to adapt to a growing speed of a guild or a guild that will remain small for very long term? Yea, I am talking about the details now, not the general overview of things.

I wish they’d bring back bonuses from guilds partying together. Whether it’s bonus favor, mats whatever; something to entice guildies to work together.

I also think that the upgrade descriptions should be more specific. I know this information is becoming more available as people unlock stuff and share it with the public. But as the upgrades are both time and material expensive, not knowing what you’re getting out of the upgrade is a pain in the rear.

laokoko.7403:

Look on the bright side. Guild hall is kind of useless anyway. It’s just a cool thing, but don’t have much use.

Since now all guild upgrades go through the guild hall, including EXP buffs, Karma buffs, Magic find buffs, Banners, WvW claiming, WvW schematics, Guild Missions, etc, Guild Halls do have a fair amount of use. Necessary? definitely not. But to maintain the pre-expac guild functions, you do need to upgrade your Guild Hall.

Vespertilionidae.5018:

Time gated guild based missions that add to the progress of certain upgrades and unlocks, in ways other than just favor would also help slow the process down while still allowing guilds to earn a feeling of accomplishment and progression with team effort.

As an example: Your guild just captured a guild hall and the tavern npc appears, rather than asking for empty kegs and glass mugs just to pitch a tent he mentions rumors of a hidden stash of fine whiskey and other spirits somewhere in the hall itself. Wouldn’t it be a fine way to celebrate your victory by finding this cache for him?
Agreeing to find him these items would trigger a guild mission and completing it will create a minimal tavern, just enough to attract the mining npc and give the guild who just captured their own guild hall a small reward and ‘jump start’ on the long process of fixing everything up.

I would love this. You, sir (or ma’am) deserve a medal. I don’t have any medals though, so I just gave you a +1.

They could also add in collections with upgrade directed rewards; collect 15 different types of booze around the world; get some Empty Kegs or Glass Mugs. Find 5 likely mining locations in the guild hall, get some silverwaste shovels. Lead 5 PvP wins as a Guild Team Leader, earn some extra Potions of PvP Reward. Collect 1000 flax; earn some Linseed Oil. They did something similar to this; the Linseed reward from the story achievement, which helped to drop the flax / linseed price which helped a lot of guilds get started. Honestly, upgrading my guild hall is the most interesting part of the game for me at this time (I love the new maps, skills etc, but i’m really excited about the guild halls), and I would love to have new and fun ways to sink my time into it, rather than just spreadsheeting for upgrade paths and farming for mats and money to sink into it.

Until a re-balancing or a market shift allowing Guild Hall upgrades to be more accessible, I would suggest doing what I and my 2 allied guilds have. My guild is larger and has had an easier time upgrading, so we opened up to our allies; they can come in and use our facilities, come along on missions, etc while they work on their own guild halls. Occasionally, we trade materials (I needed PvP Reward potions, they needed Silverwastes shovels). It’s not a perfect solution, but it is something at least.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. . . bored at work.

morrolan.9608:

They’re insane for larger guilds as well.

And medium guilds. They’re insane for everyone.

Andred.1087:

RacoonLord.5016:

It seems a bit unfair to punish players for a preferred play style.

Yeah, “punishing” … that’s what’s happening here…

A punishment is something — anything really — that makes it less likely for a behavior to be repeated. In its truest sense of the word this qualifies.

SkyShroud.2865:

Pharazon.3095:

SkyShroud.2865:

Pharazon.3095:

Faster yes, but smaller guilds are the backbones of any MMO because that’s how most guilds starts out. If it weren’t for the small guilds, the large guilds wouldn’t be there. That’s why it’s important to encourage guilds to be established, and having a balance on things the guild can acquire.

Look at World of Warcraft per example. They made Guild levels and gave Guild perks in form of rewards, spells and other assorted things. It was in short a disaster, levelling a guild to 25 (which was max level) took a lot of members a lot of effort, and the perks given were very good (such as reputation gain, gold gain and dungeon badge gain). This led to smaller guilds more or less being demolished and left in ruins, no one joined a guild that weren’t level 25 and had all the perks and the smaller guilds just went out because they couldn’t recruit new members. On the other hand, the larger guilds became filled up, and maxed out the number of people it could hold (900 ish) and making them unmanageable. Blizzard realized their folly in this and have since removed guild levels and guild perks.

So having a balance in perks given to guilds is and will always be a tricky balance. If the guild hall is in such a nature that it becomes impossible for smaller guilds to get it and maintain it, then there’s an issue at hand. Especially if what the guild hall provides is something that the guild members want. What we get is the same situation as with Blizzard’s Guild levels.

I don’t think the small guilds (which are still seeking for growth) are what we are discussing here, I think the small guilds in discussions are guilds that intentionally restrict themselves to a specific social circles like families, real life friends and etc.

Don’t agree on that one, a small guild is a small guild, and there are a whole lot more of the small guilds that try to grow and keep afloat than small guilds restricted to a specific social circle.

And as such, any restrictions that hinders a guild to live up to expectations is inadvertently damaging the creation of new guilds. The big builds will one day crash so it’s important that there are new guilds to pick things up.

However, how many posters here are talking about upcoming small guilds and not guilds that restricted to specific social circle?

In many other threads, a lot of discussions about small guilds are about guilds that restrict to specific social circle and not growing small guilds. I think this must be made clearly because both have different rate of progression. A growing small guild will never remain small forever, they will eventually pick up speed. However, a small guild that restrict to specific social circle will remain in that circle size for a very long time. So, is the guild hall’s cost going to adapt to a growing speed of a guild or a guild that will remain small for very long term? Yea, I am talking about the details now, not the general overview of things.

I’m referring to the OP though which specifically mentions the predicament in which I’m also addressing.

A small guild won’t eventually grow big if the restrictions are as they are in futures the Guild members are looking for. I’ve been on both sides of the fence in WoW, in 2006 I was part of the officer ranks that worked to expand a fairly small guild on a rather dead server (WoW doesn’t have a mega server structure). We managed to grown quite some throughout the time. Then some years later (2011-2012 I think it was), the Guild levels were introduced. At that time I was on another server, helping on establishing another guild. This server was fairly active and had a lot of potential members. However the guild didn’t manage to grow at all, all the members asked for was the Guild level, and when told the guild was newly started, refused to join. This because the guild levels came with some significant perks. We kept at it for around a year or so, with no visible progression in guild recruitment.

So a small guild won’t eventually grow bigger, if what the members are looking for is unobtainable by a smaller guild.

If the case is that people are looking for a guild with a guild hall and won’t join a smaller guild, then the guild hall and its progression is in fact having a detrimental effect on guild recruitment for smaller guilds.

nGumball.1283:

To be fair, there should be some kind of progression. I know that Anet talked about alot of fancy things in their manifesto however it is quite clear that alot of those concept turned out to be impossible to accomplish.

Progression is needed even if it is an illusionary kind of progression and to be fair, it is not logical to say ‘’I personally dislike playing the game alot, that is how I play the game and enjoy it, so why FORCE me to play so I could get legendaries? I want an easier way to get them as a casual since I want the way to accuire rewards in the game to fit my own playstyle’’.

Now, that is an extreme example and am pretty sure all you meant to say with your post is that you want to enjoy the game with your small guild. However, as it stands, that is impossible. Guild halls are made for bigger guilds. In fact, one could argue that Guild halls are one of the more ’’hardcore’’ endgame content because thee costs are insane and need grinding for a long time.

I do agree that there should be progression. It’s important. There was progression in the old guild system, although it did eventually top out. But in the old system the progression took time, playing together for influence, and doing guild missions for merits. In this system progression costs first and foremost wealth in the form of both gold and materials and completely ignores us playing the game with our guildies which is really what guilds are about.

Influence was a great commodity and I think we should still be able to earn it and use it to buy the other things that are needed in the hall. Having a trader that would take influence and put items into the treasury without them ever touching the player’s hands might work. But there needs to be something that can be done to allow us to progress while playing the game with our guildmates.

The thing I have the most problem with is the guilt that I’m seeing when people decide to keep their wealth instead of donating it to the guild. It makes having a guild a burden instead of a joy.

Ameepa.6793:

Coarse sand is much more trouble than Flax. Flax gathers up almost automatically while playing in thenew areas , but for coarse sand you actually have to spend hours after hours in Dry Top or Silverwaste farming it and it is needed in crazy amounts too. Thousands and thousands of sands.

This is off topic, but might still be a help to people… Last night I spent just over 3,750 bandit crests on sandy gear at the Silverwastes trader. I got 6 rares, one exotic, and a ton of greens, but in addition I got almost 6 full stacks of silky sand to sift through. This is where you get your coarse sand.

Aye.8392:

But in the old system the progression took time, playing together for influence, and doing guild missions for merits. In this system progression costs first and foremost wealth in the form of both gold and materials and completely ignores us playing the game with our guildies which is really what guilds are about.

Influence was a great commodity and I think we should still be able to earn it and use it to buy the other things that are needed in the hall. Having a trader that would take influence and put items into the treasury without them ever touching the player’s hands might work. But there needs to be something that can be done to allow us to progress while playing the game with our guildmates.

The thing I have the most problem with is the guilt that I’m seeing when people decide to keep their wealth instead of donating it to the guild. It makes having a guild a burden instead of a joy.

Yes. I don’t care if it’s actually influence, but rewards for guild parties was a really cool aspect of the early guilds and should be brought back. Influence has already been worked into the current upgrade path (can buy favor or aetherium). Extra guild commendations could work, as well, and then utilizing the Guild Trader (an NPC who allows you to trade a Commendation for a Loot Bag) and include Upgrade specific loot bags.

I also am disappointed with the guild mission changes (to reset, at least). My guild used to have Saturday / Sunday weekly guild missions. We would gather a huge group and have tons of fun. With how the changes went, we can no longer wait until the weekend; we need the favor first thing, or we can’t buy upgrades and waste aetherium. Since most people can’t commit the time on weekdays for guild missions, this large community aspect has fallen apart. So, currently, I am attempting to plan upgrades to use the aetherium with a lower cost to favor so I can build up a reserve so that one week we can delay missions until the weekend, and then use the previous week’s favor for the upcoming week’s upgrades. I hope it works.

The other big issue I have run into is getting info out. Most people don’t spend their time reviewing the mats necessary for the upgrades, and the Message of the day is useless. I’m trying to find a way to get the info out so people can see what we’ll need a week or so in advance, so they can hold onto it for the guild or, if they have some free time, go farm some for the guild. The treasury (now that I have the Tavern, Mine, Workshop, PvP Arena, Warroom, and Market) is overloaded with mat requests, but I’d love a way to highlight specific materials that we need first, or some in game method (say, a calendar) that would allow me to put in the info without swamping the MotD.

Aye.8392:

Ameepa.6793:

Coarse sand is much more trouble than Flax. Flax gathers up almost automatically while playing in thenew areas , but for coarse sand you actually have to spend hours after hours in Dry Top or Silverwaste farming it and it is needed in crazy amounts too. Thousands and thousands of sands.

This is off topic, but might still be a help to people… Last night I spent just over 3,750 bandit crests on sandy gear at the Silverwastes trader. I got 6 rares, one exotic, and a ton of greens, but in addition I got almost 6 full stacks of silky sand to sift through. This is where you get your coarse sand.

That is really good to know. I will pass this on to my guild and take advantage of it myself.

There was an interview with Colin that the GW2 facebook page shared where Colin pretty much summed it up that small guilds (less than 10 members) should use the Guild Initiative in Lion’s Arch and that Guild Halls are not meant for them.

So, all the small guilds (husband & wife, family, close IRL friend guilds) are shut out of Guild Halls by Colin’s Proclamation.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

There was an interview with Colin that the GW2 facebook page shared where Colin pretty much summed it up that small guilds (less than 10 members) should use the Guild Initiative in Lion’s Arch and that Guild Halls are not meant for them.

So, all the small guilds (husband & wife, family, close IRL friend guilds) are shut out of Guild Halls by Colin’s Proclamation.

He said <4 aren’t a guild in another interview elsewhere.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/10256/Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-One-Week-In-with-Colin-Johanson.html

And yet, they cater the easy missions to 3.

I’m fine with the amount of supplies, but there should be another option. Our three man PVE “guild” doesn’t even want a “hall” that’s the size of 1/3rd of a zone and we don’t want any PvP missions. Just give us a small house or let us decorate our own Guild Initiative office.

Colin:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/10256/Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-One-Week-In-with-Colin-Johanson.html
…anything less than that is really just a small group and can use the Lion’s Arch HQ hall.

Not when you’ve gated upgrades specifically around the Guild Hall!

Let us unlock the WvW stuff in the guild office. Remove the nonsense like an anvil that just wasted favor that is very precious as a small group.

Ideally, they will add small specialized guild halls that focus on the respective areas of WvW, PvE or PvP. These smaller halls would bypass some of the gates, like the tavern, allowing them to stay focused but wouldn’t allow anything else outside of that unless they upgraded to a larger hall. Example: A WvW hall would only allow WvW upgrades. They would have to pay another 100 gold and 100 favor to transfer to a larger hall.

We’re stopping at the Workshop. That gives us a Guild Bank and a Personal Bank. The rest we will do without, because I won’t have my players kittenting away all their rare and expensive materials for little or no reward. It is poorly implemented, and will be the ruin of smaller guilds, with players jumping ship to go with some large Walmart guild.

At least with the multi-guild system you might keep some players. . .technically.

Ameepa.6793:

Coarse sand is much more trouble than Flax. Flax gathers up almost automatically while playing in thenew areas , but for coarse sand you actually have to spend hours after hours in Dry Top or Silverwaste farming it and it is needed in crazy amounts too. Thousands and thousands of sands.

There’s a work-around for this if you’re sitting on a lot of bandit crests. Grab sandy bags of gear from the merchant. They cost 15 crests and 80 copper, and they give you a piece of gear and a random amount of sand. I picked up 60 bags last night and gained over 400 piles of silky sand in a matter of minutes. Ended up salvaging all the gear for mithril/silk/leather/elder wood as well.

ETA: Well someone beat me to it

RacoonLord.5016:

I’ve been looking forward to HoT for a very long time, especially due to Guild Halls. My 7-person guild was looking forward to having a place to call home, so we were a bit excited. However, the extreme costs of upgrades was just insane. The initial expedition cost was reasonable enough, but just the first upgrade would either force us to grind dry top, or wipe out all our funds. These costs may be fair for massive guilds with plenty of donors, but many small guilds are rendered helpless by these costs. It may be one thing to offer the big guilds a better guild hall, but we can’t even afford the first upgrade. Some could argue that we should either merge with a big guild or try to grow, but we, and many others people prefer small groups, where everyone knows each other. It seems a bit unfair to punish players for a preferred play style. Of course balancing it would be difficult to implement, but the current system is unusable. Even if we gave up all our personal costs, such as new armor and equipment, we still could never afford the upgrades. At this rate, most people are going to swarm nothing but the big guilds, purely so they can have a decent guild hall….

You are not being punished. Its not a need, its a want. You made the decision to have a 7 man “guild”. The alternative of course to a larger guild for you is to simply take longer to achieve the same result.

not insane just gives to a incentive and something to work and look forward too kinda what progression is anyways work for it and you will get it.If not then you wont.

Pharazon.3095:

SkyShroud.2865:

Pharazon.3095:

SkyShroud.2865:

Pharazon.3095:

Faster yes, but smaller guilds are the backbones of any MMO because that’s how most guilds starts out. If it weren’t for the small guilds, the large guilds wouldn’t be there. That’s why it’s important to encourage guilds to be established, and having a balance on things the guild can acquire.

Look at World of Warcraft per example. They made Guild levels and gave Guild perks in form of rewards, spells and other assorted things. It was in short a disaster, levelling a guild to 25 (which was max level) took a lot of members a lot of effort, and the perks given were very good (such as reputation gain, gold gain and dungeon badge gain). This led to smaller guilds more or less being demolished and left in ruins, no one joined a guild that weren’t level 25 and had all the perks and the smaller guilds just went out because they couldn’t recruit new members. On the other hand, the larger guilds became filled up, and maxed out the number of people it could hold (900 ish) and making them unmanageable. Blizzard realized their folly in this and have since removed guild levels and guild perks.

So having a balance in perks given to guilds is and will always be a tricky balance. If the guild hall is in such a nature that it becomes impossible for smaller guilds to get it and maintain it, then there’s an issue at hand. Especially if what the guild hall provides is something that the guild members want. What we get is the same situation as with Blizzard’s Guild levels.

I don’t think the small guilds (which are still seeking for growth) are what we are discussing here, I think the small guilds in discussions are guilds that intentionally restrict themselves to a specific social circles like families, real life friends and etc.

Don’t agree on that one, a small guild is a small guild, and there are a whole lot more of the small guilds that try to grow and keep afloat than small guilds restricted to a specific social circle.

And as such, any restrictions that hinders a guild to live up to expectations is inadvertently damaging the creation of new guilds. The big builds will one day crash so it’s important that there are new guilds to pick things up.

However, how many posters here are talking about upcoming small guilds and not guilds that restricted to specific social circle?

In many other threads, a lot of discussions about small guilds are about guilds that restrict to specific social circle and not growing small guilds. I think this must be made clearly because both have different rate of progression. A growing small guild will never remain small forever, they will eventually pick up speed. However, a small guild that restrict to specific social circle will remain in that circle size for a very long time. So, is the guild hall’s cost going to adapt to a growing speed of a guild or a guild that will remain small for very long term? Yea, I am talking about the details now, not the general overview of things.

I’m referring to the OP though which specifically mentions the predicament in which I’m also addressing.

A small guild won’t eventually grow big if the restrictions are as they are in futures the Guild members are looking for. I’ve been on both sides of the fence in WoW, in 2006 I was part of the officer ranks that worked to expand a fairly small guild on a rather dead server (WoW doesn’t have a mega server structure). We managed to grown quite some throughout the time. Then some years later (2011-2012 I think it was), the Guild levels were introduced. At that time I was on another server, helping on establishing another guild. This server was fairly active and had a lot of potential members. However the guild didn’t manage to grow at all, all the members asked for was the Guild level, and when told the guild was newly started, refused to join. This because the guild levels came with some significant perks. We kept at it for around a year or so, with no visible progression in guild recruitment.

So a small guild won’t eventually grow bigger, if what the members are looking for is unobtainable by a smaller guild.

If the case is that people are looking for a guild with a guild hall and won’t join a smaller guild, then the guild hall and its progression is in fact having a detrimental effect on guild recruitment for smaller guilds.

So, basically, you think that new guilds will have difficulty recruiting because players will prefer a fully upgraded guild. I can understand that worries but you also forgoten this is gw2, not wow. New guild very first problem is not the lack of upgrades but rather, the lack of activeness. Now, o create a guild at this point of time (3 years into the game) will require the help of several very active players to ensure the guild to be active at the specific prime time, simply because there are more people who join and stay in a guild because of the activeness than people who join for upgrades. Honestly, why do you want people who join for upgrades to be part of a important stage of the guild?

I have seen a lot of posts about the costs being too high, but I haven’t see tons of good alternatives proposed.

• If they are too easy to upgrade, people take them for granted and steam roll through the process, and get bored.
• If the costs scale to guild size, some guilds will abuse that (most easily by creating a sister guild of smaller size, to build it up until it’s big enough, then move everyone over).

I don’t actually think the current costs are too high. I like the fact that it takes time for even a large guild to make progress. What I think would be useful to everyone (small & large guilds) is to offer the option of, let’s say, 3-4 functional upgrades that are cheap.

For example, each guild could choose 4 upgrades of a list of 20 that would be cheap to start with, while the other 16 would remain at their current prices. A personal guild bank might choose to add the guild banker, regular bank, regular merchant, and a scribe. While a large guild might add the mine sooner.

This way, everyone gets something they can use (at their choice), while the overall process remains something to aspire towards, rather than something anyone can buy off the rack.

As I said in a lot of similar posts, the costs are indeed insane.
But not all of them, I think the 100 gold to claim the hall is okay.
And the costs for First part of restorations are fine as well (arena is not expensive, but time consuming).
The problem are Second and Third part of Restorations,
the costs increase at such a huge rate that it becomes impossible for small guild.

RacoonLord.5016:

What did you have before the HoT release? Nothing, right? No place for your guild to gather outside of any instance. Now you have a guild hall – if you captured it.
You didn’t before – no you do.

The endless whining about this expansion is nauseating. It’s been 10-11 days since the release? Who the KITTEN expects major change to a release in that short of a time frame?

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

RacoonLord.5016:

What did you have before the HoT release? Nothing, right? No place for your guild to gather outside of any instance. Now you have a guild hall – if you captured it.
You didn’t before – no you do.

The endless whining about this expansion is nauseating. It’s been 10-11 days since the release? Who the KITTEN expects major change to a release in that short of a time frame?

Whoa there tiger. Although it’s easy to cross the line into ‘too whiny’ having feedback is necessary for Anet to make changes. Public opinion got the Hero Spec from 400→250, so why not let our opinions be known?

I think, for the most part, this thread has been alright. We’ve made our cases, what we don’t like, what we do, and what we’d like to see done. I don’t recall anyone saying they’re gonna quit the game cause wah wah too hard.

Either way, a lot of good ideas have been posted here,, and I hope Anet takes a look. This isn’t to say that I want them to be EASY and accept all of them; guild halls should be a challenge. But there is a difference between challenging, and prohibitively daunting, and it would be nice if they took a look.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I have seen a lot of posts about the costs being too high, but I haven’t see tons of good alternatives proposed.

• If they are too easy to upgrade, people take them for granted and steam roll through the process, and get bored.
• If the costs scale to guild size, some guilds will abuse that (most easily by creating a sister guild of smaller size, to build it up until it’s big enough, then move everyone over).

I don’t actually think the current costs are too high. I like the fact that it takes time for even a large guild to make progress. What I think would be useful to everyone (small & large guilds) is to offer the option of, let’s say, 3-4 functional upgrades that are cheap.

For example, each guild could choose 4 upgrades of a list of 20 that would be cheap to start with, while the other 16 would remain at their current prices. A personal guild bank might choose to add the guild banker, regular bank, regular merchant, and a scribe. While a large guild might add the mine sooner.

This way, everyone gets something they can use (at their choice), while the overall process remains something to aspire towards, rather than something anyone can buy off the rack.

Great ideas. A boost in the beginning could make a lot of things easier. I also wouldn’t mind seeing alternate paths (as mentioned earlier in the thread) to procuring a lot of the upgrades, and some incentive to bring the guild together on events.

In regards to your comment on potential scaling workaround using a sister guild; if it was tied to the Charter size, it could solve that issue. Once you’ve begun upgrading the guild hall, expanding your charter costs the difference in mats between upgrading your small guild and the larger guild. This would clearly delineate when costs change, prohibit a workaround of a large guild powering a smaller guild up and then shifting over, allow small guilds to actually have an option, and would allow a small guild to change their mind if they wanted to grow.