Guild Wars 2

Two people have talked about how they disliked the confines of Kaineng, and were so glad to escape it. . . but I thought that was part of what made it great. The atmosphere was so claustrophobic and oppressive I felt more immersed than anywhere else. It was wonderful.

That being said, I have two replies to this general thread:

First; IMO, GW2 has been a more progressive game; they have worked to release content over time more than GW1 did; Between living story and the trait revamps, GW2 has been constantly changing and expanding. That being said, it is my hope that HoT is just a milestone in that; what has been released now isn’t The Expansion, but rather the START of the expansion, if that makes any sense.

Second; while I’ve enjoyed most of what they have released with HoT, I do feel like they have shipped an incomplete product which has done more to reduce my enjoyment of the game than anything else.

The story was fantastic but so brief; meeting, trusting, and helping the Exalted took 2 missions. People raved about how playing a sylvari changed the story. . .but it really didn’t. a couple extra growls in my head. Minor alterations to the final fight. And I think it knocked me over once or twice. As much as I disliked aspects of the Vanilla Story (mainly Trahearne and the letdown of a boss fight at the end), the story itself was abundantly complex, and I STILL haven’t finished all of the branches and options (racial or otherwise). HoT story seemed so rushed, and not in the ‘urgent to save the world’ way. And then you get to play Bug Roulette to see if you can actually continue the story.

Guild Halls / Scribing where parts were literally broken; scribing which finally got a basic material added yesterday in a patch (Bag of Mortar). Some guild hall upgrades that required an item that they pretty much took out of the game (Heavy Supply Bags) which they re-added a week or two ago. Countless bugs and missing items.

Elite specs just randomly happened; you have Marjory as a necro with a greatsword and Braham as a guardian with a bow. . .but what about the rest?

TD Meta was broken until last night; Chak Gerent scaled so aggressively I’d never heard of one succeeding.

PvP is extremely unbalanced, and then they started a tournament.

TL;DR; I have hope for GW2 / HoT, but right now it feels like EA published it.

Zwolf.2386:

So I made a Sylvari. Started playing through the starting zone and started my first personal story mission at level 10. I never finished it. I picked the “Green Knight” dream during the character selection. I don’t remember my exact reason for the sudden disgust towards the game when I played through that mission, but the quest was so lifeless. The only thought going through my head is: “They’re making me run around and talk to this person and that person just because some dude in armor is bullying people.” It felt like a bad sitcom or something. My Sylvari, which has a vision called The Dream that tells him of his future and his purpose, is to stop a high school bully on the playground? Where are the town guards? Where’s Caithe? This guy is killing people and Caithe just stands there. And you DO kill him. Three times. And he just keeps getting back up. Which makes it even worse! Now he’s not this super powerful knight wearing invincible armor, he’s just an arrogant snob with a cheat-death mechanic. The end result are both the same, but the way the fight is carried out makes all the difference. If he did have magic armor, I shouldn’t have even been able to hurt him, or lower his HP bar at all. While that might be confusing for a player, it SHOULD be confusing. What gives? I’ve been killing dudes all the way up to level 10 and now this guy doesn’t take any damage. Instead, you made it frustrating. I killed him, and had to kill him again and again. It didn’t FEEL rewarding, because I clearly could kill that NPC without much difficulty, but it was just the game TELLING me that I couldn’t kill him, instead of feeling that myself. And then he just runs away and the game forces me to go on a scavenger hunt to find some magical way to actually kill him. A truly rewarding fight would have powerful NPC (without just adding the invulnerable boon to him), and have the story progress when the player lost too much health during the fight. Not only does the player himself feel just how powerful that this Green Knight is, now it gives them a true motivation to find a way to beat him. Because he was “actually” beatable, as in, the game didn’t just make him invulnerable or make him come back to life in the first encounter. It’s a really minor point, but it drastically changes the way a player perceives the game.

I actually loved this fight as it was a twist on an Arthurian legend; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It’s been told many ways, but, basically, a Faerie knight shows up and challenges Gawain to a strange duel: Gawain will get one swing with an axe at the Green Knight if , a year and a day later, Gawain will allow the Green Knight a swing at him. Gawain decapitates the Knight. . . who then picks up his own head, reminds Gawain of the time and location of their next meeting, and rides off. While they could have told the story a little better, I still very much enjoyed it.

If you pay attention, there are other references to Arthurian lore:
The White Stag was another famous story, Caliburn (an alternate spelling of Caladbolg) was one of the names for Excalibur. Possibly more, but I can’t think of them atm.

PopeUrban.2578:

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

-I really really really miss the mechanic where questing together (with other guild mates) produced guild currency. I don’t see why this side of Influence needed to be taken out. Why not let us earn some influence that we can use for that little boost? Let us by Guild Upgrade mats with commendations? In general, the upgrade has forced guilds to work together, but has stopped rewarding having FUN together.

This still exists in the form of resonance.

Basically, resonance is a very limited version of the old influence system than can only be used to speed up production at the fabricator.

When doing any content with tagged guild members, resonance crystals go on your drop table. If you get them as loot you can donate them to an NPC in the guild hall to provide the guild 100 resonance. The same NPC also sells 100 resonance for 25s.

The time required to construct consumables/furniture is pretty drastic, and in many cases you have prerequisites that you have to wait to craft (for example, you need both a 5% xp banner and a 5% karma banner to craft a 10% karma/xp banner) so resonance helps you get through your massive fabrication backlog and pump out banners faster.

On average, a dedicated scribe with a guild feeding him weekly crystals from guild missions (and harvesting a few plants to craft dyes to break down for pigments) can pretty easily generate more banners/furniture per week than the fabricator can actually produce without really spending any money on them (normal mats income for everything other than pigments/shards is pretty sufficient from one character, and trivial if multiple members are kicking over a few dust or logs your way) so resonance, as an optional currency fills the gap by helping speed up that production. Guild members can either kick in gold or toss in the crystals to provide resonance so that production can actually meet the speed of scribing.

In my experience resonance seems a little too rare as a drop, however, often I’ve been grouped and playing all day with a full party of guild members and among the whole party only see 2-3 resonance crystals, which is only worth 2-3 hours acceleration on the fabricator. It’d be nice if resonance dropped more frequently as it doesn’t actually change anything from an economic standpoint, just from a production time standpoint.

That’s pretty cool and I didn’t know it was added to Loot tables (I’ve only received the resonance crystals during Guild Missions (Also, yes i know the crystals and slivers are different)). Personally though, I’ve found resonance to be the least difficult guild currency or material to get and use.

Sorry, i must have misunderstood the ‘you made this happen’ and ‘. . . people like him.’ Either way, doesn’t matter much to me.

I’m not suggesting it’s a GOOD thing, just saying that it is currently the most successful business model, and a lot of companies are subscribing to it. F2p, P2W. GW2, IMO, has been very good about keeping the cash shop out of the competition. (just came from Archeage so. . .)

Either way, I agree that it’s hard, if not impossible, to tell where the game is headed. HoT has a huge amount of potential for the game to become Fashion Wars (P2W edition), Grind Wars, or the best game on the market.

I’m enjoying the new content and challenges in the mean time, and I’m willing to wait to see where it goes. If people don’t like the challenge, it can be THEIR time to take a break.

ReaverKane.7598:

OP, give me a call when you start needing scribes in your guild hall. then we’ll see how “balanced” and fair the system is.

tluv.5821:

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

The only problem I have with this is that I was able to contribute to my guild by PLAYING the game. It didn’t matter what I did, whether it was PVE or WvW events, running dungeons or doing guild missions, influence grew from PLAYING the way we wanted to PLAY.

That is out now. Now you have to grind, grind, grind. Grind mats and gold for upgrades. Grind mats and gold for scribing. Grind, grind, grind for masteries. Grind grind grind the new zones hoping for a successful meta to get a pittance of new materials needed for hall upgrades. Grind for ley line tools, grind for kegs, grind for glass mugs, grind for sand, grind for flax.

And I am in an extremely large PVx guild, I can only imagine what it is like for a small WvW focused guild who just saw their net worth plummet and their operating costs skyrocket. These guilds typically don’t touch PVE areas, but now they have to grind grind grind them just to get some rudimentary WvW upgrades from their hall.

I don’t see the grind. We all get the materials we need from natural play throughs of the game. get every resource node you see. There is no grind.

Except you need a TON of materials that only exist in a few mats (ie coarse sand and flax seeds/linseed oil) and its a ton, its not 1, its not 10, its thousands. I just converted 1000+ flax seeds into oil, and still short of what is required for the tier 1 decorations vendor which i need to unlock so our scribe can learn some stuffs, instead of just making book covers on end. So yes, its obstructive to game play, you NEED to grind, and you need to grind in disproportionate amounts to the reward. NOT TO MENTION that consumables for WvW and banners, are ridiculously overpriced.

What i see is fanboy speak, which honestly is not conducive to a better quality game. It simply sets the game back years, because the devs get sidetracked from what’s effectively a biased and unfounded feedback. And honestly, they’ll value more any feedback that seems to validate their current status (because it reflects better on them, and requires less work to address) then calls to change.

General ‘this sucks’ moaning and whining don’t help either. (not saying you are, just saying). A lot of people love it, a lot hate it, some are in the middle. Either way, some people don’t find this to be too much of a grind (I don’t, but then again, I just came back from a Korean MMO). Some people think it’s the worst thing to happen to GW2. That’s their opinion. Singling someone out though is just as meaningless as fanboying or wine-and-cheesing.

Personally, while expensive, I don’t find the upgrades to be too high. I do think there should be other options. Maybe scale it so the earlier ‘necessities’ are cheaper but higher tier stuff is more expensive. Maybe add in temporary unlocks for cheaper.

Essentially; the Guild Hall is supposed to be the end game Guild Achievement, and I love it like that. BUT what about in the meantime?

Eeeeh i’m not really going to go either way. I wanna see how it goes when everything settles before making assumptions. Singling people out as a cause of the business model change is a little silly though. Microtransactions are THE thing nowadays. If you wanna blame someone, blame candy crush.

I’m not sure what you’re referring to with ‘multiple content got nerfed and gem-items did stay coming’.

I think there is a lot of potential in GW2, especially with the new releases. Whether the potential is for good or bad is yet to be seen, in my opinion.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Yes I agree that guilds can take a lot of hard work getting it to where you want it. Hard work just like what all the small guilds did to gain influence pre HoT, yet Andy took all that time and hard work and gave them all the middle finger.

What’s to say that when more guild halls are introduced, that the same hard work will once again be required as knowing anet, you will get a barebones hall for sure…

They already made it so you can switch Guild Halls without resetting upgrades. You do, however, have to pay the exploration fee and complete the mission again.

Henley, I am of mixed feelings towards the way they handled old guilds moving into new ones. Personally, I am struggling because the official leader is gone (has been for 11 months, can’t contact her, no word if she’s returning) and since, technically, I wasn’t in the leadership rank (although I had full permissions) I did not receive the ability to claim a guild hall. This meant I had to make a clone guild with no influence at all.

Either way; I do think they should add some kind of replacement for the boosts lost, in the short term, while guilds are rebuilt.

masterJP.5048:

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Didn’t they turn the in game chest to an achievement style chest (above the mini map)? I didn’t do many missions before HoT so I don’t know if you got the chests before the expac

For missions and rushes, you always received a wiggly chest along with a chest to open at the end (a cute cheese shaped chest at the end of Proxemics lab, two chests in Langmar estate). All the chests at the end have been eliminated and you need to cross your fingers to get the wiggly chest.

They changed it so you get the chest when the timer expires instead of when YOU finish. Or its suppose to , if you didn’t get it when the timer expired and your guild suceeded you either didn’t participate or its bugged

They then supposedly fixed it so you get it immediately. we’ll see.

Devata, I was just bored at work and talking not making any claims about your statements or anything.
I understand the annoyance if you thought it was pay once and they snuck (sneaked) in extra charges, I personally am not bothered, though.

I agree with your points about Guild Halls. Tweaks, definitely

Serophous.9085:

I haven’t salvaged any ascended gear, but if someone can confirm that they drop ascended mats rather than the basic and the dark matter, that would be great. If they don’t they should, since then people running fractals (when the update hopefully comes in december) can add some supply back into the game.

But if people want to make some easy gold and don’t care about ascended, then yeah, you can make a good bit simply playing and making one ascended piece. The price will drop down eventually once guilds start to finish up the big projects, but until then, the lower end mats and stuff are the best ways to make gold

You can check the drops on the wiki, and insignias, inscriptions, and vision crystals (reg and lesser) are listed for armor and weapons. Damask, Elonian Leather, Spiritwood, and Deldrimor Steel are not listed.

I don’t understand your second part. Do you mean you can make a good bit by crafting a piece of gear, or the ascended mat (damask etc)? Either way, the issue I had was that they increased the demand for ascended (said it was necessary, or just about) for raids, while adding extra cost to the crafting req (each inscription requires 3 elonian leather squares as well as damask). They (apparently) reduced drop rates in Fractals as well.

@Devata Honestly, the biggest reason I see for the cash shop being so big. . .is because it’s so popular. They wouldn’t spend so much time developing the cash shop items if they weren’t selling. Is it annoying, sure, but it’s not nearly as bad as most other games I’ve ever played. Most items are QoL or Cosmetic only, which alone sets it above most of my experiences.

As for the Cash → Gold, people are going to do that regardless. At least this way Anet is making money. Even so, those who spend cash on this game really don’t get that much more powerful than others. Ascended: 5% stat boost over Exotic. Legendary: pretty skin and you can switch stats for free! Other than this, you’re just looking at more QoL and Cosmetics.

The Guild Halls are, of course, one of the few useful (and even necessary) expensive items in the game, but they are still time gated to prevent people just buying a full guild hall.

The only real beef I have is the current state of Ascended. The intent to make them necessary for Raids, but so expensive (or difficult) to get, is the first real restriction on content based on economics, that I have seen.

Didn’t they turn the in game chest to an achievement style chest (above the mini map)? I didn’t do many missions before HoT so I don’t know if you got the chests before the expac

sorudo.9054:

what about getting a hall in the first place?
and no, i am not gonna do something impossible solo, it should be like GW1, a sigl you can buy and then claim your hall.
it’s already a poor thing that there are just 2 halls while GW1 had 6 from the start, the way it’s handled is nothing less from pitiful.

As a Guild Event, requiring more than one person makes a lot of sense. Besides the fact that (supposedly) lead devs said they didn’t consider guilds of less than five to be real guilds.

In regards to the number of guild halls; these halls are a lot more detailed and extensive than GW1. Would I like to see more? Sure. But I’m pretty happy with what they’ve got.

Also, if you farm SW, you can open the bags on a 20-50 character for those low level mats.

Absconditus.6804:

To gather say 1000 Flax, all you need to do, is set aside a bit of time each day to run together and collect some Flax nodes in one or more Magus Falls maps. Let’s say you set a goal of gaining 15 Flax per person, per day, as that’s reasonable and rather fast to do, in less than 30 minutes.

Just as a note: there is (in verdant brink) a flax farm that produces 10-20 flax per day per character. Just need to go there. I get over 100 flax per day by farming on my toons.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Serophous.9085:

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Coyote.7031:

I haven’t bothered crafting ascended gear because it costs as much or nearly a precursor at this point. Not very fun.

This is probably my biggest issue with the expansion: Lets DOUBLE the cost of ascended. . . and make it necessary for Raids! woohooo!

Currently the best way to get ascended (cheapest / guaranteed) is to farm the raid. Can’t farm the raid without ascended.

The other part because of ascended mats getting expensive is there is more of a demand. Guild halls needs ascended mats, and precursor crafting, plus ascended weapons and armor.

The problem is, the increased demand greatly, but didn’t improve supply at all. This needs to change somehow.

I find it hilarious that people are complaining things are to expensive and they don’t have enough gold and then screaming that they should nerf the biggest source of free gold for poor players in the game. It’s like a kid who wants to run around with scissors and then throws a tantrum when the parents save the kids life.

Just curious. . .what’s the biggest source of free gold?

I actually really agree with OP on this. Prejudgment and the resulting action is a large part of some peoples problem. I’m not saying everybody, or even a lot of people, are suffering from this, nor am I saying that Anet / HoT is perfect. But, I have known several people who have quit, or complained, without giving it a chance. I’ve had similar experiences with PvP, WvW, and any number of other things. Heck, even my guild! I’ve had 5 people quit my guild because I mandated that they sign up for the Guild Website. This is the ONLY requirement to be in my guild. We ASK that you check it once per week, that you participate in missions, and donate what you can. But all we require is that you sign up for the website so you can access the guild upgrade, mission, and event calendar.

In my experiences, people are hesitant to change, and will often avoid something on pure prejudice (I’m guilty of it myself in many occasions). Although I think OP did not adequately make himself (or herself) clear (which they already addressed), I think their idea (or at least what I took their idea to be) has merit.

Vayne.8563:

eldrin.6471:

so people you ask in games opinions matter more to you than the thousands of posts on these forums?well each to there own.

There are not a thosuand people complaining on the forums. There are likely less than a hundred. Several of them complain constantly in every thread, so you don’t have hundreds of people actually complaining.

And in most complaint threads, not all but most, half the posts are saying something other than what the thread is saying. Saying there are thousands of people complaining on the forums is very likely inaccurate.

Just wanted to say; I’ve seen your name pop up on a lot of posts and always with very reasonable, thought out and decent replies. Just wanted to say thanks for bringing some rationality to the boards.

Serophous.9085:

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Coyote.7031:

I haven’t bothered crafting ascended gear because it costs as much or nearly a precursor at this point. Not very fun.

This is probably my biggest issue with the expansion: Lets DOUBLE the cost of ascended. . . and make it necessary for Raids! woohooo!

Currently the best way to get ascended (cheapest / guaranteed) is to farm the raid. Can’t farm the raid without ascended.

The other part because of ascended mats getting expensive is there is more of a demand. Guild halls needs ascended mats, and precursor crafting, plus ascended weapons and armor.

The problem is, the increased demand greatly, but didn’t improve supply at all. This needs to change somehow.

Definitely a good point. I just had to drop 50 elonian squares into my guild hall for the Workshop 2 upgrade I’m buying tomorrow morning.

I was lucky that several of my members had been hoarding, and were willing to donate.

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

I was very enthusiastic about heart of thorn and as a matter of fact I bought the ultimate Edition the very first day it came out! I was so hyped I give HOT a score of 10 out of 10 without even playing it. Now after 3 weeks and after getting my feet wet in raids I have to say. " boy I am wrong and boy I’m I dis-pointed!" Now I give the game a 1 out of the 10. But don’t get me wrong, I still love the base game guild war 2 I just simply don’t like the expansion!

Here are what I think is currently wrong with Heart of Thorn.

1) mastery system, to be very honest I was hyped when I first learned to fly around and started leveling my mastery points, but after a while I ask myself the simple question, what do I get for putting all this hard work into leveling my mastery? Do i get more powerful? no! Do I get better ways to farm for gold so I can save up for another legendary item? No! Do I get to unlock secret location? Yes, and its disappointing because most of the time there are no reward and I am the only one there! I just simply don’t see a point with the mastery system and as a matter of fact I have stopped leveling it and I just simply don’t care!

2) disappointed wvw, and as a matter of fact many people have stopped playing wvw, this is mainly due to the new zones being created.

3) Raid, I am very hyped about raid, but after getting my feet wet I see many problem with the current state of raid!

A) no looking for raid group on the group finder! This is just stupid because even WOW allows you to atomically look for people via the Dungeon Finder!

B) the raid mechanic are stupidly easy compared to WOW, as a matter of fact the only difficulty with the raid comes from the enrage timer, I have spend over 30 hours with various pick up group and guild trying to down the very first boss Vail Guardian and we couldn’t do it. Now I am not against hard content, what I am against is only releasing hard content and not having a similar easier difficulty. The great game developer side meier said you need at least two difficulty hard and normal. Now world of warcraft made their raid difficulty correct, they have normal difficulty, heroic and mythic! I mean come on guild war 2 development team how can you kitten this up? And is very simple to have a easier difficulty just give us more time!
Hence I suggest for raid there should be 3 difficulty
Normal engage timer goes off after 15 minute
Heroic enrage timer goes off after 12 minute
Hard enrage timer goes off after 8 minute
and to make everyone happy each difficulty give different reward, for example on hard difficulty the raid give you more guild and more crafting material for your legendary, and their should be a leader board on who can beat the raid faster!

4) Dungeons got destroyed, Dungeons use to be one of my favorite activities in Guild War two and it has always been a nice extra to get the gold and mats. Now they have nerfed dungeons down to nothing, I mean why would you nerf a fantstic content like Dungeons? WHy would you destroy the best part of guild war 2? now for people who crave 5 man dungeon content they will have to run Fractals over and over again! But they haven’t even added anything new to fractals! Its basically the same thing!

Personally, I love HoT and it is the only reason I have returned to GW2 from a fairly lengthy break. However, I do agree with some statements:

Namely, the Raids. I love the difficulty of the Raid. Learning the mechanics, working as a team rather than a ragtag group of DPS’ers, it’s great. But the enrage timer kinda sucks, and I would love to see tiered difficulties like you suggested. (Or even just make it like in GW1 where you got Bonuses for completing it in time). Also, the Enrage timer makes it seriously difficult (if not impossible) to utilize the ‘varied builds’ that Anet touted pre-release. You want to be a mildly tanky dps? Sorry, we’ve already got our one tank: gotta go zerker. I will grant that they have added a use for tank and healer, though.

Coyote.7031:

I haven’t bothered crafting ascended gear because it costs as much or nearly a precursor at this point. Not very fun.

This is probably my biggest issue with the expansion: Lets DOUBLE the cost of ascended. . . and make it necessary for Raids! woohooo!

Currently the best way to get ascended (cheapest / guaranteed) is to farm the raid. Can’t farm the raid without ascended.

Honestly, I love the upgrade to the guild system. My contribution (and those of my guild members) give us tangible, and permanent, rewards. Sure it’s a lot of work, trying to organize and fund it all; but I honestly think that it’s worth it.

That being said, there are a couple of things I think should be added:

-I really really really miss the mechanic where questing together (with other guild mates) produced guild currency. I don’t see why this side of Influence needed to be taken out. Why not let us earn some influence that we can use for that little boost? Let us by Guild Upgrade mats with commendations? In general, the upgrade has forced guilds to work together, but has stopped rewarding having FUN together.

-Upgrades really are expensive and take time. To me, this is fine as you’re investing in something permanent. BUT, I do think there should be other options.
My personal belief, in this respect, is a temporary version of the final upgrade. This would be a cheaper version than the permanent one, but would last per use or for a limited time. This (in my opinion) would allow smaller guilds (or less focused PvX guilds) to have access to an important mechanic while working towards the permanent upgrade.

-Aetherium / Favor cap & rush. Again, I’m fine with how everything takes time. It’s turned my guild hall into a project that, when I upgrade it, I am really excited for. However, there are several downsides. Namely, when my aetherium reaches Cap. . .I HAVE to buy something or I lose aetherium. To me, this poses several problems.
First is just general timing; I have had to wake up at 3 and 4 am to press the approve upgrade button, or sneak on while at work to do the same. I have some members who are on at odd hours and can help. . . but not always.
Second, the mad scramble for mats to meet the upgrade at Aetherium Cap. I need this upgrade, and I have the aetherium for it, but I’m missing a handful of Linseed oil. Sure, i’ll have it by reset, but that’s 4 hours of aetherium loss. I can either, take the loss. Or, I can drop cash on the TP to get those final mats I need in time. This also provides a huge portion (again in my opinion) to smaller guilds who, for not being able to purchase an upgrade are losing days and weeks of production and getting pushed back even further.
Finally, it also affects missions; My guild used to do most of our missions on Sundays. We can’t anymore, because Mission reset is 1am for most of us Monday morning, and we need favor throughout the week. We’ve managed due to very carefully scheduling upgrades to cost more aetherium than favor, leaving us a surplus of favor at the end of the week, allowing missions to be pushed back. It was a pain in the rear, and lead to some weird upgrades.

We can’t get rid of the Aetherium Cap; that’s half of the Mine’s purpose. However, we could modify it.
A partial solution would be a small increase in the Cap, just to have some wiggle room (aetherium cap is generally around the same as the big upgrades you’re currently working on).
Another option would be a Queuing system. You add the upgrade to your queue, when all mats are earned, it automatically is purchased.

A larger change could be alter the aetherium cap from how much you can hold, to how much you can spend at once. This would still gate the upgrades; you can’t buy the larger ones until you upgrade the mine, but wouldn’t punish those who want (or have) to take their time.

Some random thoughts:
A lot of people mention they want to tie upgrade cost to guild size. Personally, I don’t like this idea. I have a lot of guildies that are casual; they work two jobs or are at college and have other priorities. I wouldn’t want to kick them just because they can’t pull their weight. They give when they can but life has limited what they can give to GW2.
Despite my misgivings; a potential solution would be to tie upgrade cost to license size. License size is (for those who don’t know) the maximum amount of people allowed in your guild. This would provide a tangible level for upgrades to exist at, and limit growth after: To increase your license size, you have to pay for the upgrade cost difference.

Scribing: IMO, this should be entirely guild bound. It doesn’t make sense in anyway as a personal crafting profession. Regardless of cost; 90% of what you make requires access to guild stores for mats or the produced item goes directly to the guild. at level 139, I’ve unlocked 2 types of personal consumables; one is a personal upgrade, one is a ‘banquet’ version of the personal upgrade.

Guild Achievements: tying into the EXP of the guild, it would be fun to see an activity based way to improve guilds. This could include challenges that provide rewards directly to the guild based on what the challenge was. I.E. a guild group capturing (not claiming) a Keep would provide materials into the treasury for Keep Claiming. These could be one time rewards or weekly, just some way for guild members to work together to directly benefit the guild. This would allow smaller guilds a way to earn some extra mats, as well as letting specifically oriented guilds earn mats by doing what they focus on.

Treasury Organization. My guild is at 23ish now. We have unlocked Tier 2 of everything but the Workshop. The number of mats in the treasury are STAGGERING. There are over 82 types of materials needed for the guild hall, but some of them are for upgrades my guild doesn’t want. Further, we’ve got an upgrade that won’t unlock for another level or two that we want to start collecting mats for. . . but can’t put into the treasury yet. I’ve purchased a guild site subscription just so that I can keep my members up to date on what the guild actually needs.

Cost / Return scaling. Some of the upgrades are horrendously expensive, and give jack for returns. Some of this, of course, is just due to the market fluctuations. But. . 100 linseed oil, 100 Extra Coarse Sandpaper, 500 Elder Wood Planks, 5 Dragonite ingots for Decoration Merchant one: which lets you access the Basket, Bookshelf, Chair, Crate, and Table. Don’t get me wrong; upgrades shouldn’t be easy. But some of the early upgrades are astounding in cost, and some have absolutely no worth, except as a prereq for another upgrade.

Trading Post. Please. I understand Anet doesn’t want to make towns obsolete, but adding a trading post to the guild hall isn’t going to break the game.

Anyway, sorry ‘bout the long post. . . I’m at work and suffering GW2 withdrawal.

+1 all the way.

Have they added Fragments/Core’s in? Or do you mean that side projects still require them?

And yeah, I elected not to bother leveling up scribing. With what I can make, to get from 139 → 150 alone would cost over 100g, and I don’t see any real benefit to it if everything I can craft requires mats either not in game, or schematics unlocked later by my guild

quietscribe.1573:

As of the patch notes today

Shimmering blotting powder no longer requires resonating fragments to craft.
Luminous blotting powder no longer requires resonating cores to craft.
All tiers of scribe-crafted paper are no longer account bound.

This should help a little, but it really doesn’t go far enough to sort the problems I have been encountering with the system unfortunately.

Especially because there are still things that use Resonating Fragments, and there are still mats not in game (Tub of Wood Glue, Bolt of Embroidered Silk).

BearJada.3295:

I’ll admit, I’m pretty puzzled by the requirement to use crystalline ore to purchase the basic decorations to be upgraded, especially as it’s a currency that’s account bound and the decorations themselves are account bound. So, besides that it’s difficult to get for things that are the very basic, no one can help you. The entire idea behind the halls (I thought) was for your guildmates to work together for upgrading. With this requirement, no one else can help me with materials.

This might be something that should be revisited in the future.

Hey Bear,

Just a quick note: The decorations are NOT account bound, they are GUILD bound. So, when you purchase a decoration from the guild decorations vendor, it is immediately added to the guild’s decoration storage. Any scribe (with permissions) can access this storage to upgrade the decorations which then go to the guild processing unit, and back to the guild storage.

Hope this clears things up (although it’s still a pain in the tush with the rarity of crystalline ore.)

There is a JP in Gilded Hollow in the NE corner. PM me in game if you would like tips or a guide.

The Pirate Ship Djahlat refers to is not associated with the JP. It is just a crashed pirate ship underneath the spawn point. You can reach it by heading south from the main WP, dropping down into the water, and swimming north through the Waterfall there. Or PM’ing me in game for a guide.

Kasumi; I would love to see the Lost Precipice JP. I get off work in about 2 hours and will hit you up, if that’s kosher.

+1 for username relevance. I agree with most, if not all, of your points.

Also, just a note; in both guild halls a portion is not accessible until you reach guild level 40 and purchase the ‘further exploration’ upgrade. Hopefully, this will provide more information in regards to the history and lore of the halls.

Tom Gore.4035:

Nah half the fun is finding it myself. Will look for it, thanks

I like the way you think. If you want any hints or tips, just let me know.

Tom Gore.4035:

Wait, there are JPs in the guild hall maps?

And I mean pre-existing ones and not ones you “craft” yourself?

IDK about Precipice; but there is definitely one in Gilded Hallows. PM me if you want and I can show you (I’m available anytime after ~3pm EST and sporadically throughout the day before that).

Wanze.8410:

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Sobin.5947:

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

Hey Sobin,

First, you can get some free linseed from completing an achievement in the Torn from the Sky story mission. There are also 2 flax farms (one in Tangled Depths, The Great Tree, and the other in Verdant Brink north of the Jaka Itzel WP)

Second, did you play ArcheAge recently on Kyrios?

If you have to complete achievements or farm mats, its not free stuff but a reward.

Crap my bad. I’ll demand compensation with Sobin then.

DEMAND, I say!

Just marking for future reference.

Gracias.

I imagine prices will settle moving forward, though I do think it should be opened up to guild access rather than a per character basis.

Also really hoping for word on implementation of recipes and items to continue progression.

So, in all honesty, I have read all the posts and I can no longer tell if OP is trolling or stupid.

Scribing is broken; literally mats are missing from the game. You’re arguing over 100-150 levels in scribing that can be used for:
Placeable Thesis that is broken (all recipes give same stat bonus)
Consumable Writ (also broken, all give power bonus)
Putting arms on your chair.
Elongating your table.
Best part: I can make a giant keg

TL:DR: who cares what the costs are right now because you can’t do anything with it anyway.

Sobin.5947:

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

Hey Sobin,

First, you can get some free linseed from completing an achievement in the Torn from the Sky story mission. There are also 2 flax farms (one in Tangled Depths, The Great Tree, and the other in Verdant Brink north of the Jaka Itzel WP)

Second, did you play ArcheAge recently on Kyrios?

Tried to run PvE missions (races) last night with my guild. Credit for both members and for the guild was sporadic. Ended up having to do a race (the quaggan one, too) 4 times to get credit for the guild. Luckily, this did give us time to get all individuals their rewards. . .

I find myself wanting to specify WvW or PvP missions because the PvE missions are very broken.

I’m hoping this gets addressed in future HoT releases (Raids, maybe).

I do think it has something to do with Destiny’s Edge 2.0:
Marjory picking up her sisters great sword
Braham inherits his mom’s longbow

Either way, I would love to see more on this.

Addition: Upgrade Queue.

I have lost track of the number of times I’ve had to wake up early to just press the ‘approve upgrade’ button. Just this morning I woke up at 5am to upgrade my mine. Could also be addressed by adding some lee-way to the aetherium. 90% of my current upgrades are at the aetherium cap. If I do not upgrade them immediately. . . I’m losing production time. Even just 50-100 runoff storage would be phenomenal.

I also remember hearing that any placed decorations would be lost.

If you are referring to Lost Precipice; this was a bug. The wall behind the crystals are the portion of the guild hall unlocked by the level 40 upgrade ‘Further Exploration.’ LP had a bug where purchasing ANY upgrade would temporarily disable the wall, allowing access to the restricted area.

Bug was fixed Oct 28th
“Fixed a bug that caused the path to the upper plaza in the Lost Precipice to open every time a guild built an upgrade. The path will now correctly appear only when a guild purchases the Further Exploration upgrade.”

I have a guild of 150 (not huge, but fairly large). If we want everyone to get their personal reward we would have to do PvP missions 30 times. They should set it up like the races (when they aren’t bugging): the mission lasts for the entire timer. Everyone who participates during that time gets a personal reward. For treks, you can have multiple people tag the same spot. PvP: anyone in a guild team who earns points can get credit. Etc Etc.

In regards to guild races; there is something buggy about the finish lines. About half my players have trouble reverting back to human form, but we managed by having them run around circles past and back through the finish line, eventually giving them credit.

Theoretically, it’s possible. Decoration purchases deposit the decoration into the guild storage of whatever guild you are currently repping. However, I wouldn’t expect much money in return as, in all honesty, the prepurchase decorations are the most plentiful atm.

The main thing I’d like to see is details on upgrades. With the cost in time and resources for the majority of these upgrades, it’d be really nice to KNOW what you’re getting.

I also think you should get more from the T1 unlocks; unlock a tavern. . .and get some dude with an awning who doesn’t even sell beer. At least let me drink to forget the hundreds of flax I just dropped . . .

Wanze.8410:

Not that i want to defend the way that they implemented scribing, I actually think its utterly broken.
If it was meant to be leveled by pooling ressources from many guild members, they should have implemented a system like for guild hall upgrades, where people could donate mats.

But the reason why brown pigment is so expensive now is the patch they launched on October 29th, which made pigment, beside other things, depositable in the material storage.

The mayority of pigments is created by regular players and casuals, that just harvest away on plants and get random drops. Before the 29th, pigment was just clogging their precious bag space, so they disposed of it by selling it on the tp.

But now, most players just deposit whatever pigment they get into their storage and basically forget about it, so supply on the tp dried up.
Most players dont even know what pigment is for and certainly dont know what value it actually holds, otherwise they would put it on the tp.

And you cant really say that Anet didnt add more dyes to the market. With Hot release, prices for dyes plummeted by 50%.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it LITERALLY utterly broken? Or have they added in the mats to get above 150 now?

@Ohoni. . . do you realize that Wanze is like THE economics dude for GW2 Forums? Look him up.

In a more general response, I do not want any ‘free’ handouts, personally I don’t think it’s a good trend to set. HOWEVER, Anet did do something similar for flax/linseed by releasing the location of a Flax Farm and introducing a fairly simple Story Achievement that dropped 10 Linseed Oils (equal to 200 Flax). Something like this could provide a potential boost to initial scribes willing to put in some effort, without making it a hand out or breaking the economy.

Tenebrous weapons is my assumption. search Tenebrous in the wardrobe and they’re some new guild weapons.

Are any of the baskets placed? (when you look in your decoration storage; how many owned / how many placed?

No, you’re right. It’s really not very clear.

Just to clarify / make sure you know; the Basic Decoration Vendor (first unlock) only unlocks Chairs, Tables, Baskets, Crates, and Bookshelves. These cost 50 silver and 2 Crystalline ore.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t think you need to be in the same guild to be part of the claiming mission, but you will need to round up a total of probably ~20 players to help out, maybe less, but probably at least 10?

Even after that, you might struggle to upgrade it, as you need plenty of Favor, and lots of materials that would be tricky to accumulate, some accountbound stuff so you can’t TP it.

I’m thinking of getting a one-man hall myself, my guild has one, but I wanted to explore the other one, so I figured I’d run it with my banking guild. If I ever get around to it, I hope my main guild’s players will help out.

The Guild Hall Claim mission scales with participation. 1-9 spawns 1 Maw per, 10-19 spawns 2, and I believe this goes up (at least) to 50 spawning 5 as Dulfy reported.

There are some small group Guild Missions; the easy ones and PvP ones often recommend / require 3 people which shouldn’t be too hard. As for Guild hall Claiming, you don’t have to have them in the guild. You just need to party up with people, then they can join your Claim off of you.

Another point; Apparently one of the Devs claimed that guilds less than 4 people aren’t guilds in their eyes.

Yo: Did you check your Decorations Tab? Guild Storage → Decorations → Bottom row.

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.