Guild Wars 2

Rather than add player housing/guild halls lets consider another more interesting idea.

After Personal Story, which most probably have done by now, we retook Claw Island and its fate was left unknown.

Well I believe, having defeated Zhaitan, and thwarted Scarlet, we deserve a reward.

Que my idea:

Claw Island, The Players Reward.

With the retaking of Claw Island, the defeat of Zhaitan and of Scarlet, the Lionguard reward the player with the entirety of Claw Island, to restore and rebuild as they desire.

The player then has to reconstruct the island to make it into a new, dependable outpost for Lions Arch and for all Tyria and the Pact.

This is how it will work:

Slot System (Sorry, limited customization but hear me out!)

Basically, restoring Claw Island and enhancing it to its full glory, requires the player to improvise by using the tech they’ve accumulated over the last living story season and personal story.

Using this, they have to spend quantities of Gold, as well as Karma, in order to restore the fullness of Claw Island and even enhance it’s current presence in GW2.

Guild Housing

While representing your guild, you are automatically sent to your guild leaders version of Claw Island, thus allowing the leader to customize the guilds base at whim, when not representing, the island is returned to the players own customized form.

This also works when you are invited to a party by another player, while unrepresented, allowing the leading member of the party to bring people to their version of Claw Island.

An Island of Opportunity

Rebuilding the Island isn’t just about Karma and Gold though, its also about progression, and having new ways to customize it.

For starters, you’d be given the ability to choose a “theme” for the island, this allows the players to decide what kind of visual appearance the buildings around the island style themselves from, for example, Sylvari Architecture? Or perhaps Vigil? Or maybe you want something else like an Aetherblade Island?

The options are endless, but the requirement is effort.

In order to unlock themes, the player must continue to advance their living story, with each living story season and between major events leading to unlocking new themes for the island and new buildings and small features to decorate it.

Incentive For The Guild

So whats to stop players from just doing all the achievements and just leaving their guild in the dirt? Well…

If the guild leader unlocks a season achievement, then anyone that participated during that term that the guild leader achieved it, will automatically unlock those themes and buildings as well, allowing guilds to work together to help their leaders and themselves.

This way, there’s a stronger sense of Guild Community, when your guild leader achieves something, you gain from that and feel motivated to help each other more often.

But wait, there’s more

In addition to buildings, and theme’s the player can build water pumps to extract quantities of oceanic mass and increase the size of the island, allowing for even more buildings and industrialization.

What about People that don’t like Living Story?

Don’t worry, there would be similar themes that require people to participate in WvW seasons, and PvP in order to unlock those too! Unique to each persons preference.

I believe, this could be the first real step in giving proper Guild Customization to the game, as well as player housing, all in one!

Thoughts?

A great idea. But I’d rather it be indavidual. As much as I like my guild I may not like my guilds idea of what claw island looks like. Also it should not be guild sentric. As you can not keep everyone happy. I know they can have there own. But guild housing. Should be separate entirely. I just wish we could do more with our home instances. Unless you have nodes in them. There is no resin to go there after the PS steps. Something needs to be done with that first.

It’d be interesting to use Claw Island this way. However, I’d strongly resist being able to visit my “home” only when not in my guild. I happen to enjoy my guild chat banter! Plus what about people that want a cold weather home?

I could see this work, something a la Hearthfire for Skyrim. You get the space to build on with some options to what goes here or there, but still within parameters of several possible layouts. That way it’s similar for many but still individual based on choice of decor.

I really /love/ this idea, but agree with BrotherBelial that it should be regularly individual. BUT I think you should still have the option to possibly invite large groups over to perhaps make it a part-time meeting hall or party-place or whatnot. And hopefully it could include great perks like a personal crafting hall, TP, bank, multiple merchant types or a mystic forge!

Also, maybe it could be a place to show what your character has done and who they are to show off (which the personal home instance sadly kind of failed to do). Maybe an achievement trophy room. Maybe various old artifacts you found scattered around Tyria could be used to decorate. Maybe trophies from hard bosses you killed could be hung on walls. Or perhaps you could even do things like allow refugees from the streets in and dedicate a housing place to them on the island, or maybe you’d want to invite a large group of nobles over to live there and keep a sophisticated party going in the main lobby. The possibilities are really endless.

This is very unlikely. I like the idea yes, but claw island is a strong military strategic place for the Lion Guard, they won’t give it to the player for free.
And don’t forget that we alredy have a (highly useless) home instance. Before making any new home, ANet should improve the existing ones AND implement guild halls.

I would rather have my own choice of Guild Hall, just like GW1, as for player housing the best place for that is in everyone’s personal instance.

Instances suck. I would love to see open world guild halls. There’s plenty of real estate in the world for small guilds, medium guilds and huge guilds. Make upkeep for the bigger and better positioned guild halls large enough so only active and large guilds can have those.

Creating areas that only specific guilds have access to would be incredibly elitist and confining to the community as a whole.

Simply put: it’d be counter productive to new guilds to have a system where only old veteran guilds can ever benefit from it.

So I don’t agree with that Tom.

Regarding the instancing of Claw Island itself:

I think people are making the assumption that this would essentially be an instanced area rather than an entire zone devoted to a guild.

So, if my explanation wasn’t clear enough:

The Player Island becomes a Guild Island

The acting guild leaders version of the island is used as the default guild hall, so that everyone that goes there at any given time, regardless of being in the guild leaders party or not, can enter the guild leaders version of the instance.

Also, Johnny, that’s exactly what I’m saying, so for example.

If you complete a Living Story with your guild, then you and your entire guild unlock say, a new building or a new feature unique to that Living Story that can remain displayable for all time.

New theme’s would be unlocked by achieving Living Story, to allow for more customization.

And regarding the crisis of snow based Claw Island? No problem, thanks to the wonders of Asura technology, the islands sky ground, and landscape can be drastically re-formed depending on the persons preferential climate.

Regarding GW1 style Guild Halls:

I loved those! I really did, but in Gw2 I don’t think that system would be applicable because they have already established their use of personal story hubs, like the Heroes Canton, Salma District, etc etc.

I think this is the more likely option they will go for one way or another, because essentially its easier to implement for them and requires less effort to remodel an existing piece of content than to add new ones.

Regarding existing home instances:

I don’t know if they will ever truly bother to add the ability to customize these such as the personal story home hub, it sounds interesting in theory but in practice I feel that the districts are more smaller instances better suited to a single person than an entire guild.

Also, you’d think after becoming commander of the pact and defeating Zhaitan, being given an entire island would be the smallest reward the people of Tyria could repay you with :p.

My idea for the story of this is that again, after defeating Zhaitan you unlock this as a reward from the people of LA, and can regularly visit and upgrade it over time as part of a goal to “re-establish” Claw Islands presence in the world of Tyria.

However, the manner and format in which one does this is entirely up to them.