Guild Wars 2

Summary: Guild hall decorating is a new type of gameplay introduced with Heart of Thorns that is gated behind large sums of gold. This makes it different than other types of gameplay, including fashion, which are available to all. I recommend giving everyone access to a good supply of basic decorations, which will let everyone play.

Guild Wars 2 has always had a core philosophy towards how content is gated. The core gameplay is available to all. Everyone gets a competitive character in sPvP. Raids proudly have no attunement process. Specific content within this gameplay can be reasonably gated (masteries block parts of the jungle, a large time investment is required for legendary weapons), but everyone can play.

Let’s look at the current types of gameplay in Guild Wars 2 and see how they’re gated.

• 5 man instances (dungeons, fractals) – Requires only appropriate level and good leveling gear to participate.

• 10 man instances (raids) – Requires standard level 80 gear gear (exotic) and some very reasonable masteries to participate

• Open world (events, map completion, etc.) – Requires only appropriate level and masteries in the maguuma jungle (which, let’s not forget, are earned just like levels) to participate.

• WvW – Requires only appropriate level and good leveling gear to participate.

• sPvP – Requires only appropriate level to participate.

• Fashion – Anyone can participate. Players naturally acquire skins and dyes during gameplay. A level 80 character will have plenty to work with, and plenty more within reach.

• Guild hall decorating – Only guilds with a large amount of gold can participate.

I may have lost you with the last two, but I sincerely believe that both fashion and decorating are genuine types of gameplay. Some players spend hours customizing their appearance, and it’s just as fun as combat for them. Many people would do the same with decorating their guild hall.

There’s a precedent for entire games being built around building and decorating, after all.

This leaves guild hall decorating as the only type of gameplay in Guild Wars 2 that is gated behind gold. My small guild has poured hundreds into upgrading, and we have a few wooden tables, chairs, and shelves to our name. That’s like buying a lego set with 15 pieces. It’s barely even worth using.

I’m fine with really cool decorations being gated behind large sums of gold. But I don’t think it’s right that the entire gameplay type of decorating is gated behind gold.

To rectify this situation, I suggest that we make the decorations merchant trivial to obtain, and give all guilds plenty of basic decorations to get started with. Give us that set of 200 legos so we can make our primary colored castle. Give us enough to get started with, and we’ll have a foundation on which goals can grow.

Thanks for reading. I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s opinions.

First priority: remove the gate that prevents small guilds being able to enjoy this content.

Kraggy.4169:

First priority: remove the gate that prevents small guilds being able to enjoy this content.

This.

There shouldn’t be such heavy restrictions to participate in said ‘gameplay’.

Anet probably hope you will buy gem to decorate your guild hall.

Or your whole guild will go broke, so they need to use credit card when they want to buy gem store item.

On the plus side, guild hall is pretty useless, just like legendary.

Yes it’s gameplay i known ppl in other games -EQ2- that only played a crafter never went out to fight just decorated houses and guild halls

Sadly gw2 decorations are more gold/item sinks than fun game play even the
crafting profession is locked be hind guilds that don’t bold well for housing so so later on

If the company is series about guild hall decor and housing later they should really go play some eq2 housing/guild halls

Valky.2574:

Yes it’s gameplay i known ppl in other games -EQ2- that only played a crafter never went out to fight just decorated houses and guild halls

Sadly gw2 decorations are more gold/item sinks than fun game play even the
crafting profession is locked be hind guilds that don’t bold well for housing so so later on

If the company is series about guild hall decor and housing later they should really go play some eq2 housing/guild halls

I agree with this. Decorations are just a annoying material/gold sink but I don’t know why they did this so complicated. In fact I would have spend the same amount of gold or even more to decorate the guildhall even if every single decoration would cost 100 times less then they do now. The result would just have been more fun, cooler jumping puzzels and a more interessting guildhall. Now I didn’t even start doing much I only bought a lot of snow because that’s the only resonable price for a decoration.

Actually it and scribe are gathering gameplay. If you don’t LOVE gathering expect to pay lots of gold to those that do.

Here’s an idea — add some new, boring, decorations that are super common and drop all over the world. It would give everyone something simple to decorate their hall with, but would keep scribe-crafted items unique and valuable. These new decorations could be salvaged into scribing materials, bumping the prices down a little and making scribing slightly cheaper.

I’m one of those players who loves to buy character slots and play fashion wars on them, Ive stopped due to HoT Elite grind involved (3/17 elites finished, got heaps of notarary scrolls but no badges left.) but after capturing my guild hall yesterday for my 7 man WvW guild I have done nothing but decorate the hall with my 2 choppers and 1 statue, made myself a little man cave on the gliding hall map.

Justine.6351:

Actually it and scribe are gathering gameplay. If you don’t LOVE gathering expect to pay lots of gold to those that do.

There is really no way to gather enough stuff (just by walking around and gather everything) to build any of those higher tier decorations. I’m gathering my stuff in my bank since launch and I wasn’t able to get anywhere with scribe. It is just rediculous that you need lower tier of decoration to build the next one.

Ever walked up to a craftsmen and you were like here I have a small ugly old column use it to build a elegant wall panel and I want you to start with a pattern how you want to build it and don’t you dare to take your old pen I want you to use a new one and you better take a ton of coarse paper to build better coarse paper (wtf really how is this supposed to work). Then you finish it with a finishing kit build of lower finishing kits because kitten not equal pen and ink is not equal ink no because we are here in GW2 where a funny content needs to cost a fortune.
A fortune to build something so small that you just won’t even bother building it. In a game world where they said they don’t want any grind because grind is just not fun and I have to agree.
I was so thrilled by the Idea of building funny things in the guildhall, of making new cool places to show others but instead I get a huge material cost to everything so expensitve that I just can’t afford it even though I have an account (based on efficency) at top 10% of the players.
I get it you want to control your market but you could have gotten the same result by making them low cost, people would just have builded more of the decorations to build cooler stuff. Instead a lot of people just don’t touch it because it’s just not worth the cost and time.

But things at ANet are different they develop systems to completly remove and change them again they don’t build on their old systems they invent new ones. They are doing the same thing car companies did long ago invent the wheel over and over again instead of building up on it. I expect them to abbandon decorations in the future or overhaul it completly instead if fixing the problem. I really love this game but ANet making it more and more hard to do so.
They introduce more and more grind, more and more annoying awful tasks to do I don’t know where they lost their focus to build a game that is “JUST FUN TO PLAY” but they need to get it back!

Valfaros.6908:

Justine.6351:

Actually it and scribe are gathering gameplay. If you don’t LOVE gathering expect to pay lots of gold to those that do.

There is really no way to gather enough stuff (just by walking around and gather everything) to build any of those higher tier decorations. I’m gathering my stuff in my bank since launch and I wasn’t able to get anywhere with scribe. It is just rediculous that you need lower tier of decoration to build the next one.

Ever walked up to a craftsmen and you were like here I have a small ugly old column use it to build a elegant wall panel and I want you to start with a pattern how you want to build it and don’t you dare to take your old pen I want you to use a new one and you better take a ton of coarse paper to build better coarse paper (wtf really how is this supposed to work). Then you finish it with a finishing kit build of lower finishing kits because kitten not equal pen and ink is not equal ink no because we are here in GW2 where a funny content needs to cost a fortune.
A fortune to build something so small that you just won’t even bother building it. In a game world where they said they don’t want any grind because grind is just not fun and I have to agree.
I was so thrilled by the Idea of building funny things in the guildhall, of making new cool places to show others but instead I get a huge material cost to everything so expensitve that I just can’t afford it even though I have an account (based on efficency) at top 10% of the players.
I get it you want to control your market but you could have gotten the same result by making them low cost, people would just have builded more of the decorations to build cooler stuff. Instead a lot of people just don’t touch it because it’s just not worth the cost and time.

But things at ANet are different they develop systems to completly remove and change them again they don’t build on their old systems they invent new ones. They are doing the same thing car companies did long ago invent the wheel over and over again instead of building up on it. I expect them to abbandon decorations in the future or overhaul it completly instead if fixing the problem. I really love this game but ANet making it more and more hard to do so.
They introduce more and more grind, more and more annoying awful tasks to do I don’t know where they lost their focus to build a game that is “JUST FUN TO PLAY” but they need to get it back!

tl:dr

but for your first few sentances, yes you can gather much of the stuff for decorations. And that which you cant really focus grind (resonating slivers/sand) well, its called a GUILD hall for a reason.

Ya needing “precursor” decorations is kinda sucky.

Ya they could introduce deco that isn’t so grindy to get guild halls rolling better than just wyrven statues,pumpkins,snow,chairs.

Clearly the person who designed scribe and decorations was thinking on the monetization side of this feature and not the fun side, because there is nothing fun and/or enjoyable about scribing and making cool things to decorate your guild hall. And that equates to alot of HoT, they removed the fun and maximised the liquid wealth you need to obtain that next shiny thing, well even the dull and crappy things too.

The calculations of prices for some of the items are just – wow. I mean a snow maker costs in materials 25g. And most of it is tied into the time-gated kitten that players can get once a week from missions or spend ridiculous gold amounts, or waste commendations. Something like this could be easily remedied by using existing currencies like Spirit shards, we all have thousands of those. Make this currency like mystic crystals, 3 shard = 5 resonating slivers or something.

Decorations should drop from world bosses, trash mobs in parts of Tyria, from harvesting e.g. (Wood Cores, Saplings to be used in plant decos from trees and gathering, Boulders from mining.) and why not some of the numerous karma/heart vendors, meta chain merchants across the game. Even rarer drops from jumping puzzles etc.

Also quantities need to be adjusted severely, 9 logs = 1 sheet of paper then 20 piles of coarse sand +1 paper =1 sandpaper. I have to ask HOW BIG IS THIS PAPER THAT IT NEEDS 9 LOGS, lol. These sort of things should be made in bulk lots, you want it to cost 9 logs fine, make it come in lots of 10 paper. 1 paper + ONE coarse sand = 1 sandpaper. Flax, my lord Flax. 20 flax should equal 5 linseed oil. not 1. I could go on but I am sure it’s been done to death.

Guild hall decorating is probably the most honest fun you can have in the game right now.

Kraggy.4169:

First priority: remove the gate that prevents small guilds being able to enjoy this content.

How small of a guild are you in and how far have you progressed?

Currently I’m in a 4 man guild and we just hit level 29 tonight. I don’t know how fast or slow other guilds of a similar size are progressing so I have nothing to compare it to.

I certainly don’t feel left out of this content.

Reso slivers are actually ok for now, the worst offender is the sand, tons of wood and brown pigments. Outside of a few decorations that need like 20 resonating lodestones, the requirements are kinda reasonable.

Sernius Alathar.6538:

I mean a snow maker costs in materials 25g.

Actually its 40 gold if you need to buy order all the materials from the tradingpost today (45 gold if you just direct buy them), including 4 gold(order) or 5 gold(direct buy) for the resonating slivers…. so lets not even start about the costs of the reindeer statue which requires 3 of them to craft.

On higher levels it gets even worse, sandpaper requires 10 more piles of sand for every tier (60 sand for 1 lv 400 related sand paper, and then i’m not even talking about the ancient wood you need for the paper). So yes its expensive, when comparing, leveling a scribe becomes cheap ( which would currently cost 870 gold (order) – 990 gold (direct buy) using the guide we now have), which is less then the cost of crafting 10 lv 400 decorations.

Currenty however, you kind of have easy acces to decorations though as you only need a guidhall. If you have a hall you can trade 100 Flawless Snowflakes for a decoration (pile of snow). With that you can at least decorate (and its actually pretty good to build jumping puzzles with, something which many players also seem to enjoy to do with decorations). When wintersday is over however, you can’t do this anymore and you will need to have the following upgrades to get acces to any decoration (besides flagpoles that you can get from the commendation trader):
Tavern tier 1, (~100 gold in buyable material cost)
mine excavation 1, (~27 gold in buyable material cost)
storage capacity 1, (~14 gold in buyable material cost)
workshop, market, (~90 gold in buyable material cost)
Guild Hall Decorations Merchant 1. (~176 gold in buyable material cost)
which gives you 5 basic decorations for 50 silver each: basic chair, -table, -bookshelf, -crate and basket) These unlocks in total cost 460 gold in total (prices of Today, direct buy on the Trading post). if we add to that the 100 gold it costs to start the guidhall expedition to claim the hall and (depending on old unlocks) perhaps a few more unlocks to level your guild to lv 6 (required for the decoration merchant 1), it gets to ~600 gold.

Considering that guildhalls are meant as something to work on with multiple players (the balance is based on 10 players contributing ) its only 60 gold each to get it. However even if you would solo it, its “only” 2 times as much as a commander tag (which is 300 gold, and could also be considered content)… (also so far the material cost overall are still getting lower over time so the longer you wait the cheaper it gets, until prices hit a balance).

The bigger problem is likely to get enough favor to buy the upgrades and to get the actuall claiming mission done when you are solo or a duo, as thats something that is not easy (is it even possible?? ) to solo/duo. However you can always try to ask for some players to help out using the LFG tool, its fine to beat with 5 players, though you might need an extra try perhaps to learn the event.

Given the cost for the legendary weapons and even accended weapons/armor, the gold cost required for the basic vendor unlock is not even that bad. However if you then look at the cost involved to actually (level and) use a scribe to make better versions out of the (ugly) basic versions… , than it starts to add up fast. And since there is no shared storage for scribes, its mainly costs that fall to 1 players. Perhaps that is the thing were most players who just want to decorate with nice things really start to have (gold related/cost related) problems…..

Rin of Rivvinda.4971:

Sernius Alathar.6538:

I mean a snow maker costs in materials 25g.

Given the cost for the legendary weapons and even accended weapons/armor, the gold cost required for the basic vendor unlock is not even that bad. However if you then look at the cost involved to actually (level and) use a scribe to make better versions out of the (ugly) basic versions… , than it starts to add up fast. And since there is no shared storage for scribes, its mainly costs that fall to 1 players. Perhaps that is the thing were most players who just want to decorate with nice things really start to have (gold related/cost related) problems…..

I feel you, I am in a good position to waste gold on this stuff since I have every Legendary made except HOPE so far, but there is alot of crazy costs. I think the recipes are not even that bad it’s all mostly a case of quantities, Take flags as an e.g. Most need 25 resonating fragments, or multiple finishing kits, I mean where does the justification come from for that. Paper/Sandpaper, Linseed are also on my hit list for unnecessary quantities. Our small guild has made amazing progress currently Level 35, but I honestly wouldn’t blame any of them for not donating extra on top of what they already have for decos.

Also again a big thanks to your guild for the scribing assist, maxxed my scribe the other day