Guild Wars 2

Jalefor.5362:

I’m going to do a post that is just a once-over of some ideas for building/room upgrades, including what existing upgrades might fit in to each building, how they might manifest and be represented, and what aspects might be modifiable for additional upgrades or customization.

Afterward, I’ll start up another post for the latter two points, about influence/progression and building in more customization to a progression track than the current system. Otherwise this post is just going to get out of hand. And become a case of TL;DR.

Sorry Jon. Life got in the way. I’ll be back another time and might be able to devote the intended time to going into details!

Before I dig into Jon’s requested conversation topic about upgrades, I wanted to take a moment to spill my thoughts on maintenance costs / degradation of assets in a guild hall.

Many players balk at the idea of there being recurring maintenance costs and a backward creep in progress. While I initially was in this boat, the more I thought about it the more I think it’s a good idea, and I’ll go into why. But the crux of the issue is that it rewards activity, and provides a metric for judging when a guild hall is “dead” and no longer needs to be hosted by ArenaNet actively.

Rewarding activity is obviously always going to be a goal of any system implemented in a game. The more you play, the better off you are, the more lively the community, the more revenue the game generates, and the longer the game will survive and entertain.

That said, maintenance costs are often viewed as a “drain” on players’ perceived gains they acquire while playing. The influence system made this a little less of an issue by segregating the currency used for guild development from the currency players see themselves gaining regularly. Still the situation exists where players are consistently pressured by their guild to join in activities that generate influence at the expense of whatever else they were doing – instead of just rewarding players for whatever they choose to do while wearing the guild’s colors.

But considerations about the need to adjust the balance and means of generating influence aside, the regular costs are not a bad thing. It gives players minor goals to aim for, and encourages collaboration constantly with other guild members.

Consumable effects like the “+5% gold for kills for 24 hours” upgrade, effectively amount to be the same as a recurring maintenance cost of 3 merits and 300 influence per 24hrs for a permanent effect, but with a little more flexibility in when you choose to and choose not to “pay the bills”. Additionally they take up a build slot for 24 hours as well, which means in order to keep the lights on, you can’t do anything else with that build slot.

Adding in a “maintenance” cost to a feature that provides a constant effect (with some initial investment up front but then no build-time required after that), allows more flexibility with what your guild chooses to spend resources on, while simultaneously allowing you to have those lasting effects with a reasonable expectation of continued activity required to maintain them.

The institution of guild halls, especially instanced and customized, provides a good opportunity to revisit some of those effects. It would be easy to add an “administration fee” or “rent” figure to upgrades to the building (as well as the construction of a building on a particular piece of realestate) that makes sense within the lore of the game. Build on a huge plot of land near a great landmark, and construct 52 rooms, all custom decorated? You’re going to be paying taxes on the property, and paying wages of administrators and workers to populate all of your guild hall.

What penalty for not paying? While the most realistic solution would require far too much complexity, as you chose what to and what not to pay for, a simpler solution would be to provide a simple interface for guild officers to check and uncheck various features they have built. If they uncheck a feature, that wing of the hall may have a door closed or be boarded up until reactivated, but the cost of running the upgrade will not be included in the accumulation of ‘fees’ the guild is required to pay (monthly?).

At the end of each month, an amount of accumulated fees is deducted from the guild’s resource pool (whatever that resource is). If the fees are not paid, the hall goes into default. If after another month the fees are still not paid, the guild hall instance gets turned off. The guild hall still exists with all of its features and customization in data, but Anet no longer has to host an instance for it or serve it to players whose entire guild are inactive currently.

To turn the lights back on, a guild member just has to log in and start accumulating influence for the guild again, pay off the fees, and move on.

The fees should be such that a Greatly reduced number of players can still support a guild hall with all of its features intact, but a completely inactive guild will eventually “turn off” their guild hall from the world, so only active guilds are seen in guildhall-town (or whatever the guild halls get represented as)

JonPeters.5630:

I’m definitely pushing to have us work on some detailed brainstorming of the guild upgrade system. Here is a very short summary of discussion thus far:

• Someone suggested that the upgrades be tied to buildings which I think has some very clear potential.
• People have suggested a few ways to break those upgrades down but none too specific.
• We need to discuss how the building system would incorporate old upgrades but also provide new ones.
• What kind of new upgrades would be possible because of the system turning into buildings?
• What changes to influence and guild progression should happen to make it more intuitive if we went with buildings?
• How do we build customization into this upgrade system where there currently is none? Someone suggested this and there were some talk of separating clear core functionality from the unique customized features, but that is sort of where we stopped.

I’d love to see people just blue sky take a crack and fleshing out some of these ideas and then I would be happy to summarize which ones I think gel well together and try to combine them into a more cohesive design that we could then begin discussing the pros and cons of.

Jon

I’ll take a crack at some of these bullets and see what I can come up with. =]

JonPeters.5630:

• Someone suggested that the upgrades be tied to buildings which I think has some very clear potential.

Hmm. Maybe a bullet-by-bullet approach isn’t the best. This one’s not got any substance to it

I’m going to do a post that is just a once-over of some ideas for building/room upgrades, including what existing upgrades might fit in to each building, how they might manifest and be represented, and what aspects might be modifiable for additional upgrades or customization.

Afterward, I’ll start up another post for the latter two points, about influence/progression and building in more customization to a progression track than the current system. Otherwise this post is just going to get out of hand. And become a case of TL;DR.

Jalefor.5362:

Limit one hall per zone per guild (and not all zones will have plots), but a guild could establish, with enough time and effort, a presence in every zone – that would either randomly be displayed to passersby (not always the same one to every passerby, as it should be determined at login to the zone), or be displayed more often and prominently when your guild has more presence in that zone on that server.

I didn’t express clearly why only one hall per zone would be a good idea. In particular, this allows a large guild to buy the large plot and display their hall there; but if they do so, they will not push out the smaller guild who wants to display their hall in one of the smaller plots in the area. At minimum you’ll see 3-5 guilds represented on as many plots, with more active ones seen more often and larger ones more prominent (as they’re larger and will probably be on more prominent landscape)

Darmikau.9413:

People are suggesting that a 1 or 2 person guild should have access to a guild hall as well, but my question is “why would they need a guild hall?”

For a meeting place, and for RP purposes. In GW1my guild has fallen down to just three active members. We still use out guild hall all the time. In GW2 I manage a small RP guild with only 3-5 active members. We still want a guild hall to RP in. There’s absolutely 0 benefit to excluding small guilds from getting guild halls.

And perhaps more prominently… instead of asking “why would they need a guild hall?” how about “why shouldn’t they have a guild hall?”

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So of course carry on discussing progession with Jon and any other ideas, discussion points you might have.

But for those interested can we look at these two problems/opportunities:

1: Issues around Alliances and Guild Halls
2: Beacon mechanics in instanced environments

Chris

As I’ve unloaded quite a bit on the ideas surrounding Alliances, I’m going to give those a moment to be discussed and address the second point here.

If we instance, how can we maintain the feel of open-world GW2, and allow guilds to express their achievements and character in an open and available way in character with the game?

I think an ideal situation (limitations aside, since this is brainstorming I’ll leave the technical judgements for someone else) would be to have guild halls of guilds of all sizes visible in various locations to be seen by casual observers in the world as they explore and go about their gameplay. That said, we obviously can’t do a purely open-world guild hall with megaserver functionality, as there are simply too many guilds that want their halls, and entire zones would be overrun with obtuse guild halls jutting up out of every orifice. I also dislike the idea of “plot claiming” as proposed early on, as it means that not everyone can have the guildhall they want where they want it, which is another discouragement.

I like the idea of logging into a zone: upon entering, my megaserver instance is determined and then there are 3-5 “guild hall” anchors or plots in that zone, scattered about. At the time of my entering the zone, a poll checks what guilds are prominent in active players there at the time, and prioritizes those guild halls to be displayed in those plots if that guild has built one there; otherwise they’re populated with pseudo-random guild halls that have been built in those plots (could even have some cookiecutter fake halls for atmosphere to fill in places that have no active players if preferred). Plots could run a variety of sizes, some more affordable to smaller guilds and some grandiose ones for large guilds to show their colors.

Limit one hall per zone per guild (and not all zones will have plots), but a guild could establish, with enough time and effort, a presence in every zone – that would either randomly be displayed to passersby (not always the same one to every passerby, as it should be determined at login to the zone), or be displayed more often and prominently when your guild has more presence in that zone on that server.

Alternately, having a central “guild hall” zone for browsing various halls, and just having guild “outposts” or camps scattered about as per above, instead of entire guild halls.

Either way, the importance is on a combination of persistence (Have you seen our castle on the side of a mountain in Lornar’s Pass?) and accessibility to all (We just built on the plot right outside Caudecus’ place. You guys have a hall there too, right?)

Players could toggle perhaps always seeing their own guild hall in places where it exists, or being able to see others’ halls that have been built there as well. The former allows for a better sense of “permanence” to their own guild assets while the other halls may change as guilds come in and out of prominence in an area.

EDIT: I forgot a major point… the guild halls that appear to everyone would be facades and exteriors with at most a “lobby” or “grand hall” accessible through the open front door of the guild hall that may have within trophies, plaques, statues, a book showing the roster, a guest book for visitors to sign in after having viewed your place, maybe a vendor associated with the guild or an asuran waypoint if the right upgrades have been purchased.

But the “instance” of the guild hall would be through locked doors (or an unlocked open door at the guild’s discretion), that leads to the hall interior for the guild.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

All the Alliance accrued points or cost ideas are a bit complicated though don’t we think? My main concern is inaccessibility leading to frustration.

If two alliances break apart my opinion is that each alliance should keep an instance of the original one and can carry on from there separately.

If a guild leaves an alliance the above solution is completely unworkable as it will lead to cloning and gaming of the systems we are brainstorming.

The harsh design would be if a guild leaves or is kicked it is back to square on or the more complex solution would be total number of pertinent progression points are available to spend on a new Guild Hall that belongs to the guild or can be spent on a Guild Hall of an existing or new alliance.

Chris

I’m not sure I follow, or perhaps we’re just on different wavelengths. My idea would be more along the lines that a guild doesn’t “progress” the alliance. All progression is guild-centric and as part of the guild would carry with the guild if they go to a different alliance or are removed, etc.

Eg: Guild 1 builds the upgrade of “Alliance Black Lion Trader”
Guild 2 builds the upgrade of “Tailoring Shop”

If they ally, both get both, if that alliance splits, they keep their own pertinent upgrades wherever they go (and can still access them as an “alliance of one” if they don’t re-ally with anyone). The motivation for redundant development within an alliance is two fold:
1 – If both develop a tailor then if the alliance splits noone loses access to a tailor
2 – if both develop a tailor the overall “income” or benefit of the perk is increased if they stay allied

Perhaps most relevantly: all “income” or currency toward upgrades are guild-specific, not alliance-specific. You get some benefit on income from being allied, but the income is always and will forever be for your own guild, toward your own guild’s progression, and cannot be transfered or lost by allying or splitting up.

Guild Currency, Maintenance
As with all things guild related, it’s always a challenge to find something that both is accessible to small guilds and rewarding to large guilds. To that end, I think I have a basic model that would suit both in many cases.

As I was on a diatribe about alliance functionality to address as Chris was asking how to make them viable, I will constrain this to primarily a discussion of the basic premise of a currency system and how it ties to an alliance and guild halls, rather than a detailed dive into the pros and cons of its utilization as a replacement for (or modification of) the influence system.

It makes sense that the larger an organization gets, the harder it is to organize. Administration is more difficult the more facets or departments or silos that emerge in an organization. As such, I think a good way to keep small guilds participating and accessing but large guilds rewarded for their organization is in an ascending-cost model for development. This would be much easier to explain through demonstration:

[Numbers are arbitrary to demonstrate an idea]

First upgrade (regardless of what it is): 100gp (arbitrary currency) administration fee, 10/wk after that
Second upgrade: 150, 15/wk
Third: 300, 30/wk
…
Tenth: 10,000 , 1000/wk
Eleventh: 100,000, 10000/wk
etc.

This combined with the alliance system allows for guilds to get access to features cheaper through collaboration (3 guilds with 3 unique features each gets 9 features for only 55/wk vs potentially 500/wk if only one guild). While at the same time, the big guild that wants it all and can generate resources faster can get a lot more access on their own. Combined with the “community income” idea from my previous post, even a giant guild could benefit from allying just for the increased income allowing them to support more features on their own.

Now, the idea of maintenance fees irk some people, so I’ll be addressing that in my next post just for my own thought experiment and getting some ideas going.

”Community Income”
First off, the idea of a community or alliance income. I’m working from an imagined point where an alliance forms a “guild forum” instance of sorts. A ring of guild halls, customized as they may be, with some open shared space for effectively a small development of a sort of town. An Asuran gate to Lions arch in one corner, run by a small squad of Asura, a bustling market with a handful of basic npc vendors and a few crafting stations embedded in NPC shops in a cluster, a small amphitheater with displayed trophies and plaques of the allied guilds denoting their achievements.
This alliance community would be something that drew income to a region from a roleplay perspective. As such, there would be an expectation that the guilds that formed and protected a community received some portion of that influx as a tax. To give an oversimplified example of how this might work and why it would provide motivation to larger guilds as well:

-Each feature (redundant or not) brought into an alliance by a guild generates an amount of “taxable income.” Duplicates of a feature increase that amount more.

-Each guild’s overall contribution, relative to the other member guilds, determines their “split” of the income

-The income could be “influence”, or any of a variety of other currencies. A discussion for another post.

Example:
Guild A(lpha and omega): 200 active members. Develops half of every possible “alliance feature” for themselves, generating a total of 1000gp/week (gp is an arbitrary currency at this point). As they are not allied with anyone, they receive 1000gp.

Guild B(iggies anonymous): 50 active members. Develops a 25% of the possible “alliance features” for themselves, generating a total of 500gp/week. Also unallied.

It turns out, evert feature Guild B developed was also developed by Guild A. Why purpose would Guild A have in allying?

If they ally, the total available features remain unchanged. However, they now have two “tailor shops”. They don’t manifest separately, but the effect is that the tailor shop has “twice the employees”, and produces 2.5 times as much income for the region. Same for a few other twice-developed features. Guild A contributes more to the overall community, so they get more of the gains. (1000/1500, so 2/3 of the total goes to Guild A) The end result?

Unallied: Guild A: *1000*gp/wk, Guild B: *500*gp/wk

Allied: Total: 1750/wk, Guild A: *1167*gp/wk, Guild B: *583*gp/wk

Why does Guild A want currency? That’s the next discussion.

II: Small Guild Motivations
Alliances existing in the sort of “shared space” model with each guild able to contribute features/development to the alliance serves to allow small guilds to contribute smaller amounts, maintain their identity, but still have access to the full range of features made available by an alliance. For instance:
Guild 1, 10 people, develops a trader market (BL, some vendors), and a smithy
Guild 2, 2 people, develops a tailor
Guild 3, 25 people, develops a huntsman workshop, and an asuran gate to LA
Nothing contributed is lost to a guild, but they still benefit from joining up with other small to mid sized guilds. The result is an area that has a few useful conveniences, and all of the allied guilds’ guild halls.

III: Large Guild Motivations
As a larger guild, the motivation to ally with others is understandably lower. If you have 100 active members, then you reasonably don’t really need to ally with other smaller guilds (or even large guilds) to gain access to things you can develop yourselves. That said, I thought I’d discuss a couple potential motivations for a larger guild to decide to Ally:
1: Showing off your guild hall in all its customized splendor.
2: Potentially a “community income” of some sort that will help support the larger guild’s development and maintenance. (I’ll discuss my concept of the community income in more detail in a second)
3: To fill in features that might be too costly to maintain, or too out of the way down a different development tree to quickly access for yourselves.

There are a couple points embedded in the large guild motivations that I’d like to delve a little deeper into. These are largely just mechanics / functionality I’ve mused about myself that might help keep things rewarding and interesting.

1: Community Income – what is it? Why is it?
2: Guild Maintenance and currency considerations – how to keep it interesting but simple and motivating

I: Division of Features among Guilds
This is mostly a topic to address the issues with alliances forming and separating over time. I think Yalora had an elegant solution mentioned above: Each guild brings features to the alliance, developed by their guild, stays with their guild if they leave, and is available to any alliance they’re a part of. This allows members of an alliance to contribute to the alliance through their own guild, while not losing any of their own contribution if the alliance were to separate or reform or add others, etc.
This alliance construct could manifest in a few different ways:

1: a hall of it’s own, distinct from each member guild’s guild hall.
2: the “only” form of guild hall (I’ll elaborate in a moment)
3: a “guild forum” of sorts, with alliance-based features in a shared space, and access to each guild’s hall (instance) accessible (or better, each guild’s hall fully realized in the shared space)

The second bullet may not be very clear, so I figured I’d elaborate a moment separate from the list. It would effectively exist such that all members of an alliance contribute to a single large hall (with different features being contributed and decorated by different guilds). If your guild is not part of an alliance, then only features your guild develops will be accessible in the “alliance hall”. “An alliance of one.” Perfectly viable, but would take considerably more time to get access to all features. Otherwise, features developed by each member guild are accessible in the alliance hall so long as at least one guild has developed them. If a guild leaves, then any features they developed that no other member guild has goes with them to any other alliance they join, etc.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yeah this is a real problem. This could completely preclude Alliance functionality on our Guild Halls discussion. Can we have some ideas to beat this problem please and see if we can solve it?

Chris

I’m only now joining in the conversation, but I have a lot of ideas to contribute. I figured I’d start with this point, since Chris asked so nicely (and directly) for input. =]

Personally, I like something I read in here about each guild being able to bring in some feature for an alliance. I think the idea of developing an alliance-owned guild hall of their very own is just not going to work for all the very valid reasons mentioned (not the least of which is splitting of guilds within an alliance). That said, I think there’re some good options that could be implemented to make alliances viable.

There are a few major points that will bear discussion, so I’ll separate them out here and discuss each in more detail afterward in separate posts. They include:
I: Division of Features among Guilds
II: Small Guild Motivations
III: Large Guild Motivations