Guild Wars 2

After spending more time playing the revenant, I abandoned my attempt to play mace/axe because I found I was way too squishy to be effective anywhere in the game, especially in WvW. Using the hammer gave me more survivability against limited NPCs; but, it was still too weak to pose any threat to another player. I don’t think that the weapon or legend selected is relevant to how much damage this profession takes from other professions. It seems like the support potential of revenants is hobbled by the fact that they don’t pump out as much support as they need to survive.

jgcd.6041:

Keep in mind, fellow players, that ANet isn’t letting us play with the finished product.

Obviously, this is the true idea of a beta test, despite the popular ideal that it is simply an early release of a game for special, selected players.

It’s important for those of us who enjoy the game to give ArenaNet as much informative, constructive criticism as possible so that they can improve our game as much as possible before release.

Without question, the look of the revenant is beautiful.

I may have failed to express that while referring to the profession as “flashy”; but, I do really think all the professions should look so good while they are doing what they do.

After playing the revenant for just under 4 hours, I’ve found the class very flashy; but, weak. I spent my first 90 minutes or so attempting to make a viable build, hobbled by the lack of gem variety available without purchase. My initial tests for base damage came up with 84 second kill time for hammer (auto-attacking a Heavy sparring golem), 64 for staff and 44 for mace/axe. This was with no specializations used (pvp lobby default) and weapons purchased from the lobby weapon smith. As I was attempting to go for damage, without using berserker gear, I chose full rampagers, with specializations that seemed to have synergy with precision and critical damage. Then I locked in Mallyx with no intention to use the Ventari backup I readied.

What I learned was that a fight against a lone sentry, with no humans in sight, proved challenging. My damage was low and my health faltered. I felt like I was playing a level 60 light or medium armor toon.

I usually run a necromancer in wvw, which, as many players know, makes roaming in wvw a cake walk if you aren’t fighting other players. That said, I have a low level necromancer on one of my accounts that could take a sentry without breaking a sweat at level 30, with no wvw points spent to buff him against NPCs. Using the revenant felt much weaker than that level 30 necro.

Once I swapped back to a hammer that fit the gear I was using, I found I could kill a dolyak solo fairly efficiently, with a lot of skills 3, 5 and 9. This was better than the mace/axe combo. Still, it took a lot of dodging and kiting to take a dolyak that was accompanied by a quartermaster and a scout.

Along the way, I played with a few other players who would ask me how the revenant played. I would tell them I hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet and that it would take some hours to figure out. Some players told me they thought the revenant was “broken” and useless in WvW. Although I would, categorize the profession as “a beta offering” rather than “broken”, I do agree that, in it’s current state, it’s fairly useless on its own. In a group of 2-5 players, it’s very obvious that the revenant isn’t excelling at DPS. Generally, health would evaporate the second another player starting hitting one of my chosen targets. It didn’t seem like I assisted much, short of being a distraction. Opposition players could ignore me without much worry.

As a player who does a lot of solo roaming in WvW, capturing camps and towers, with some party and larger group play thrown in for variety, I’ve yet to find a way to make the revenant viable.

I am interested in how others felt about this profession in WvW.

As a necromancer main, I’d like to suggest that the upcoming skill called Rise give players the choice of which minions they spawn to add some creativity, flexibility and diversity to players using the skill. I’m making this suggestion based on Points of Interest episode 21, in which Robert Gee mentions that the minion selection for the skill was not finalized as of Friday, 15 May.

I think you should give us a set of “minion points” which we can spend to select which minions we personally prefer at a given time. I think 60 points would be a good number as the minion point pool. We would then be able to spend these points on minions that cost the following points:

8 Bone Minion
8 Jagged Horror
12 Blood Fiend
12 Bone Fiend
20 Shadow Fiend
36 Flesh Golem
36 Flesh Wurm

With these values a necromancer should be able to summon 3-7 minions of various types based on their build preference.

I think players would love to have this kind of control and that the maths required to make it happen shouldn’t be too challenging for programmers.

What do you think?

Somehow the dates that appear in the bootstrap launcher for game news are a day early than their actually dates. For example, the “Meet the Chronomancer” news blog was released on April 30 and is displayed as such on the main Guild Wars 2 site; yet, the game client displays the date as April 29.

I realize this minor bug doesn’t effect play at all and is a petty annoyance at best.

What concerns me most about this is that the same programmer who absent-mindedly coded the dates for the news displays in the launcher is most likely also absent-mindedly coding other parts of the game and creating bugs every step of the way. Coupling this with the fact that these dates have been wrong for at least a week means that quality assurance hasn’t noticed them, other players have ignored them and developers aren’t paying attention to them. That doesn’t fill me with confidence.

This issue appears on both the Mac and PC clients.

How do these changes support the “what is your story” promise we all bought into before GW2 launch and the infamous Manifesto?

Is having to rework builds that use more than 3 trait lines promoting players creating their own stories and fun within the game, or is it simply limiting players to compensate for the lack of imagination and vision of developers on staff?

Nike.2631:

The people who think there’s only 1-2 way to have fun with a class will still think that after this change – they gain or lose nothing. It’s the other players that are getting their options maimed.

I think this kind of paradigm favors players who didn’t really enjoy GW1.

Does ArenaNet believe that the best way to profit in the future is to abandon the fanbase that made GW2 possible?

After all, the strict build restrictions of GW2 are diametrically opposed to the build freedom of GW1.

Since “Once a specialization has been equipped, a character will be able to select a single trait for each tier to help customize that specialization” has been stated in your blog post, how does limiting the number of traits players have to choose from within any trait tier empower players to make more diverse builds?

Currently players can choose 2 traits within the same tier. Limiting all players to 1 trait per tier to [make] “each choice much more compelling”, as you say in your post, seems like a loquacious way of saying “you’re gonna have to deal with the less I’m gonna give ya.” [I say this as an often loquacious, grandiloquent writer.]

Also, will the large hexagon in the specializations interface, on the left, be used for some type of trait modifier or is it simply an aesthetic placeholder that has no player controlled functionality? (referring to the first image of the Specializations, Part One: A Primer here)

Will the proposed specializations favor the Zerker meta or are they designed to diversify play?

Will specializations give players more build control or further limit the number and types of builds available in the game?

Will the unlocking system for specializations be character or account bound?

I for one, would appreciate account bound unlocking, as I have multiple characters in each of the game’s professions. Repeating unlocking mechanics on a per-character basis gets real tedious, real quick.

eekzie.5640:

I’m thinking it’s a huge overreaction and it’s not that big of deal.

Admittedly, I do think this may be the case; but, as I said in the OP: I don’t trust Anet to make equitable decisions about player rewards anymore; so, my opinions are tainted by that.

The amount of information currently available is sparse. I simply felt a visceral desire to react immediately (which may be unwise at times, I know).

My greatest concern is the apparent lack of vision and foresight that would allow such general information to be released without expecting wild reactions and speculation.

Laraley.7695:

Have you seen the lord room? Have you thought about having 11 people there?

My bad. I took it as obligatory that if the lanes were longer, the entire map, including the lord room, would be scaled to fit more players.

That being said, I didn’t find the visuals too hard to read in the lord room, even with 7+ players in there throwing particles and sprites everywhere because I play on a 27 inch monitor with my view zoomed out all the way. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve tried playing GW2 @ 1080p and I find the HUD too invasive while models are too small. I refuse to play at less than 1440p now; but, I know that’s a luxury.

Jekkt.6045:

another thing that came to my mind was, when inside the lord room defending the gate while the enemy is trying to get the gate down, it felt very useless inside, you can aoe through the gate but it would be nice to have some stairs leading up to the wall (like in wvw towers) so that you can stand on the ledge and fire down.

will also add this to my main post.

It is kind of amazing that while promoting the fact that they improved the gate kill boxes in WvW Arenanet completely dropped the ball on the gate kill boxes in Stronghold.

Unfortunate, that.

rEaPeX.8415:

mechanic could be, that you win if you made the most damage on the lord.

I actually think that since killing the lord is the primary winning strategy, the next win determiner should be amount of damage dealt to lord regardless of score. A win should only be based on score if time runs out and neither team has touch a lord.

That being said, I’d prefer Jekkt’s suggested Victory or Death mechanic, just for the sake of fun, though it might take longer to play.

As to the weakness of the guards. I found that if I ignored players I could kill most guards, door breakers and archers without trouble, especially if the player opposition was solo. This might be because I play necro and necro makes everything easy; but, I think it’s because all the NPCs are too weak.

When I solo camps in WvW it takes me about 30-120 seconds to kill all NPCs if the camp is not upgraded. This is roughly the same amount of time it takes me to take the Lord party in the PvP lobby. In this same time on ChampDu, I could kill both outer guards, a player or two along the way to the inner gate, and at least 2 pairs of guards on the way to the inner gate, if not all 3 pairs and a couple more players.

That’s not much of a challenge.

The only thing that slowed me down was that I couldn’t take the gates myself, otherwise I’d be in the lord’s face in about 120 seconds.

All of the NPCs need to be tougher. The fight for a gate should be like trying to solo a fully upgraded camp in WvW, at least.

Although I initially thought that having a consolidated, in-game voice chat option was essential to keeping up with console PvP games, I’m much less certain of it now.

I often get flack from rude, opinionated “commanders” in WvW for not using Teamspeak and communicating via text chat. What they don’t realize is that I’m ignoring them on purpose because I disagree with their strategies, tactics and use of language.

Having an in-game voice system may be convenient for communicating with folks you like; but, it will never make people you find rude and unsavory suddenly polite and delightful. The added encumbrances of bandwidth and hard drive space that come with an in-game option, though they wouldn’t effect me personally, would exclude a lot of otherwise happy players.

What I realized about console gaming voice comms is that they differ in PC gaming comms in that they are provided by a console producer such as Sony or Microsoft rather than from a game developer like Arenanet or Bethesda. It makes sense for Sony to provide comms to all their developers because it adds value to all the games on their console. Arenanet doesn’t produce a platform for hundreds of games; so, it’s not fiscally responsible for them to act like Sony and provide that kind of enterprise-wide capability.

My lame, obvious solution: use Skype, Mumble, Vent, Teamspeak, whatever as a client, with people you like. That way, you don’t have to hear the random annoyances that sprout from the mouths of strangers.

Good luck, and have fun out there

Jekkt.6045:

you would lose these moments if you just teleported everybody.

Fair enough. I can see the value in it, as long as it didn’t take more than 90-120 seconds for the NPCs to get into fighting positions.

I don’t think it would be fair if a team were able to kill 2-4 players just before the NPCs engaged each other unless the NPCs were made invulnerable to all player attacks until all players were present. An unfair advantage would automatically go to any team with the ability to gank stragglers before the VoD event began otherwise, I think.

Hexin.5603:

i’m reading you wrong (then my bad).

I’m not saying that anything gets reset to where it was at the beginning of the match.

I’m saying that all of your team’s surviving NPCs get teleported with your team to center for a final battle, balanced by not having reduced health or skills in cool-down when you spawn from the teleportation.

The teleportation saves time and gets everyone on the same page immediately.

I’d guess that a vulnerable lord party of NPCs walking to a central fighting position would be easily taken by a dominating team while the opposition team was elsewhere on the map doing what put them in the losing position to begin with.

Most of the matches I played also ended with a Lord kill. In fact, I only had 2 matches time out. I think a general length of 20-30 minutes is fine, with a 45 minute maximum cap. I think that’s analogous to a typical football game (soccer for Americans) if you just count play time.

Having a “sudden death” mechanic kick in after 15-30 minutes would add excitement to matches and keep play interesting; but, I would probably teleport the lords to center rather than make them invulnerable as they meander into the fight.

If all the lord room NPCs were moved to the center for a game ending battle, I’d prefer if players got to choose what kind of lord represented their team, in anticipation of the potential fight, as outlined in my other post Here.

As most of the games I played were unevenly scored, with the majority of points going to the team that took the outer gate first and eventually killed the lord, I wouldn’t want that already dominating team to get a buff to their damage. Instead, I’d want all players and NPCs to spawn simultaneously in the Victory or Death round, in preset positions, at full health, with reset skills. This would make player skill the determining factor in the final battle.

Replacing the archers and door breakers with players might solve some issues with the mechanics of those NPCs; but, replacing all NPCs with players might not be a complete solution.

If the lanes were longer and the number of players per team were increased to compensate (7, 9, or 11 players per team), I’d be happy to lose the heroes and lord room NPCs completely for a traditional capture the flag game type. Although, I’d move the spawn points to center and make the 3 current lanes viable for flag running.

Optionally, the lord room NPCs could simply be replaced with a capture point (which might be easier to code than the flag).

Jekkt.6045:

you’re mistaken on that one, the pvp team is maybe 5 devs big and i don’t know how many 3d artists can assist them but if they don’t increase the size of the pvp dev team we will maybe get 1 new map per year; and balance patches every 4-6 months.

Naturally, I was referring not to the PvP team size; but, the size of the company as a whole, which is over 300 employees. Even if they only had a single map designer for PvP, that designer should be able to crank out 4 maps a year using existing assets and play mechanics. What we’ve gotten over 3 years is Courtyard and the removal of water (mechanics based changes), not iterative layout variety for the conquest game mode via map creation.

If 5 people can’t create more than 1 map layout a year, they should be fired for incompetence. [Granted, novel mechanics can take years to perfect. I’m not asking for novel mechanics.]

What I suspect the PvP team has been doing is iterating on novel mechanics (on existing and new maps) rather than taking a quarter or two out of the year to give us some solid maps for the mechanics that already exist in the game.

Using the GvG maps from GW1 as a foundation might be a place to start if Arenanet’s map designers were feeling lazy.

Having built a generally functional Unreal Ed map in a day, with 1-7 weeks of polish, using existing assets only, myself: I think the 300+ developers at Arenanet could find their way to building 5-10 PvP maps a year if they got out of the novel mechanics business and into layout variety.

What do you think?

One of the game mechanics that keeps most MOBA play fresh is that players get to choose their heroes. These makes every match a unique mix of known quantities.

To this end, I suggest that team Lords on Stronghold maps should be unique bosses, with unique skill sets, chosen by players at the beginning of each match, with team assets changing according to selected Lord. There should be 2-3 Lords available per profession in the game, each with unique gear and skills. The types of additional NPCs that spawn should be dependent on and thematically synchronized to the selected Lord.

For example:
If Talon Silverwing were selected as the Lord he would play as a ranger with no pets. Archers would remain as tengu rangers while door breakers might become tengu engineers or some other tengu-friendly/avian themed adversary. Guards would also become tengu guardians and warriors. NPCs around Talon would have professions and skills that have synergy with Talon.

By contrast, if Pyre Fierceshot were selected as a Lord he would play as a ranger with one or more devourer pets. Archers would become vile mandragors. Door breakers would become siege devourers. Guards would be charr warriors and engineers. NPCs around Pyre would have professions and skills that compliment Pyre.

Using races and characters from PvE would be a great way of extending lore into PvP while providing an excellent basis for strategy. Having each Lord provide a fully themed host of NPCs gives players an opportunity to craft builds to compliment their preferred Lords. A large selection of Lords could make having a single map for the Stronghold game type bearable over the long term.

Just some thoughts.

The lack of novelty in GW2 PvP is a much talked about subject. It occurs to me that the real cause here is that Arenanet has chosen to focus on creating, from whole cloth, new mechanics for each map (providing mechanics diversity) rather than doing what most competitive games do by providing new aesthetics and layouts to proven mechanics (layout variety).

Other games are able to push 5-20 maps per game type out quickly because each of those maps use identical mechanics and only change area, assets used and paths available. Players enjoy these games because the variety of layout keeps them from being bored by the same tactics played repeatedly over 5-7 maps (as we have in GW2).

With the introduction of the Stronghold game type Arenanet has spent over a year producing novel game mechanics. As a long term GW player (1 & 2) I unfortunately have little hope that the company spent over a year creating 5-10 maps for this new game type because experience points to a lack of focus on experience variety over novel mechanics.

Admittedly, there are plenty of games out there that have a single map and are wildly popular: Chess, Go, Monopoly. But all of those games provide more strategic options than the 3 PvP game types currently offered by GW2: Conquest (capture points), Stronghold (MOBA) and Courtyard (team deathmatch).

As other games with MOD communities are capable of cranking out packs of 10+ maps in a 1-2 year cycle, I expect Arenanet to meet or exceed that standard, which has been common since the 90’s in the competitive shooter genres. I’m sure other players would agree with this.

Some great points made on this post.

I can’t find any of these suggestions as negative, though I might modify them or skip them if better options where available. All in all, the most important points that leapt out at me were that a single map gets real old real quick and that building on GW1 GvG is a good place to start.

I find it baffling and frustrating that GW2’s attempts to reinvent the wheel, in all aspects of the game, at all times, often fails to provide gameplay that is as rewarding as the 5-10 year old wheels they are reinventing. Evolution should be the goal, rather than invention, in most instances.

The only suggestions I would add to the original post would be to give players more ways to control the flavor of their teams so that they can better mount unique offense/defense.

I think having designated offense and defense would help the mode significantly. Team Fortress 2 uses this kind of play brilliantly, with quality matchmaking too.

Then again, that old game does so much right in PvP that GW2 gets wrong, it’s kind of unfair to compare them (unfortunately).

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

what happens then?

game drags on forever?
supply depot becomes more competitive?

I think this points to the fact that the mechanics of the game need better attention to design. The fact that successful PvP MOBAs existed before Stronghold points to the fact that they can be done well. The problem isn’t in the game type, it’s in the changes ArenaNet has chosen to make in their implementation of an otherwise proven model.

Looking to RTS games for ways to avoid long matches should yield plenty of examples, otherwise Starcraft and League of Legends wouldn’t be profitable games that are popular on the professional gaming circuit. Neither of those games have a huge problem with match length (and that’s not by mistake).

It seems to me that the problem with Champion’s Dusk is that nothing that can be destroyed can be repaired or built. This creates a cascade effect: once a gate goes down, there’s nothing you can do but hope you can defend the next gate. If your team doesn’t work well together and adapt to challengers, this cascade overtakes you quickly.

The game boils down to a race to see which team takes the gates down first. There isn’t a lot of thought required, you simply have to keep supplying NPCs to break the gates. Since no defenses, save players, are mobile, any breach brings you closer to victory/defeat.

I wonder, do players see this sort of play as strategic and engaging or generally underwhelming?

Personally, the map is easier to play than any MOBA I’ve ever tried; but, not in a fun way. Player combat makes it interesting, to a degree. It’s just not significantly different from Conquest for me to care. Admittedly, I don’t enjoy MOBAs, though I do love RTS and TBS games.

What do you think?

Having a separate queue for each PvP game type is so obvious it’s ridiculous. For a good example, see Unreal Tournament, circa 1995.

Although the “Golf” meta can be annoying, it can be countered with stability or smart positioning. It is also an equal opportunity obstacle to avoid. Conversely, the cannon allows a single player to deal major damage to multiple opponents, enabling a single, skilled player to hold a point against an entire team. There are no counters or evasive moves that change that fact.

If every keep and tower on an Ehmry Bay map had its outer door breached simultaneously our server would be unable to counter or recover quickly, due to our limited numbers.

I realize this isn’t a problem on other, more populated servers; but, it is a reality for mid to low population servers in WvW.

I play WvW on Ehmry Bay and Jade Quarry servers. On Ehmry Bay it is often the case that once we start losing due to lack of numbers there is no way to catch up. Reportedly, the upcoming Desert Borderlands map addresses this issue by using a giant cannon mechanic in the center of the map, similar to the sPvP Skyhammer map. Like many players, I play many parts of the the game, including sPVP. It’s been my experience in hot-join sPvP matches that a room full of happy players tends to lose 25-50% of its population when Skyhammer shuffles into the rotation [I’m sure Arenanet has more accurate metrics for this kind of behavior]. My feeling is that this happens because the mega-laser imbalances combat and discourages many otherwise happy players. Given that:

How do you think a server like Ehmry Bay will fare when they are already losing a Desert Borderlands match and need to compete for control of a Skyhammer that will decimate their already compromised defenses?

Do you believe that an under-populated server will be able to fend off 1 or more servers that have greater populations in an item collection race (as required by the Desert Borderlands map)?

Do you think Arenanet made the decision to use the Skyhammer mechanic in WvW because the map is “more popular than other sPvP maps” or rather that it was an expedient mechanic to implement in the time given for design?

The most remarkable element here is that it took Anet a mere 5 days to respond to a well articulated criticism of their system despite having planned on taking 60 days to even consider which changes to make.

Surely, this nimble response would never have been attempted if the criticism hadn’t come directly from a member of a tournament winning PvP team. I could be wrong; but, I doubt it.

This situation would seem to emphasize a lack of decisiveness in design and programming leadership coupled with an inability/unwillingness to truthfully analyze game issues and act accordingly. I say this because the discrepancies described by Chaith in his “The Reality of New Leaderboard Algorithm” thread were quite obvious to anyone reading the numbers on the leaderboards.

It would be striking if Arenanet would begin to reward players, in all areas of the game, for effort expended during play (skill) rather than frequency of play (grinding/zerging).

Replay value of all parts of the game would increase if overcoming great odds was rewarded more than repeatedly rushing through specific elements of the game according to a “meta recipe” ad-nausem. It seems that this is all that high MMR players are asking for.

I’ve played minion master for over 2 years in all parts of the game with great success. It takes a lot of finesse. Unlike GW1, you can’t put your minions on a target and take a nap while they handle it: you have to keep fighting and managing.

It’s true that minions will stand around useless sometimes, especially the flesh golem. It’s also true that good players may ignore them and focus on you. Both of these facts exist for all “pets” in the game. Ranger pets, mesmer clones, engineer turrets, guardian spirit weapons, elementalist elementals all suffer from the same AI lameness and player exploitation. The difference is that you have more minions; so, the problem is more visible.

While playing MM necro, I’ve joined many a dungeon party that complained about my minions all the way up to that part in the dungeon where they failed and I had to rez them all. WvW experiences are similar. sPvP is the only outlier because I don’t play meta and I don’t meet other’s expectations of being a bunker (although I can solo all NPCs and take down most players).

The key is: explore your options, then do what is the most fun for you. Ignore what other’s tell you is “the best.”

Although I tend to agree most with MFoy: “Just play the game and have fun,” I’d also add to that what I usually tell folks in chat: if you want to level quickly, with challenging gameplay you should keep foes 3-5 levels above your character, constantly explore new maps/areas and do as many events as you can find.

I say this with one caveat: having played since beta, the trend I see most with folks who are in a hurry to get to maximum level and get the highest stat gear is that they tend to grind themselves into a stupor and quit the game in 6-18 months.

Role playing games are marathons, not sprints.

Take your time. Feed your curiosity. Exercise your whimsy. Be helpful to as many people as you can. That’s how I’ve managed to play GW2 after playing GW1 for 5 years, without getting bored. Your mileage may vary.

Have fun out there.

Xeyron.5267:

Quote Edited for Space

Proposal Overview
Being able to see your other Characters as NPC in the Guild Hall.

I think this is a brilliant idea, especially if the guild hall is to be populated in the same way a city or town is. Having player characters appear as NPCs when they are are not actually being played, with NPC style text, could add a nice, personal dimension to the space.

There goes 2 hours I’m never getting back

Forgive my loquaciousness: couldn’t communicate clearly with less blather.

Overview
Detail functionality of previously posted cartography system

Goal
Detail functionality of Guild Chart: Submission, Publication, Collection and Use

Functionality
Submit Guild Chart
Players who have purchased Cartographer’s Scrolls and used them to create Master Charts can submit their completed Master Charts to guild leaders for approval. Once a guild leader reviews and accepts a Master Chart an approved copy becomes available from the Guild Cartographer in the form of a Guild Chart. This is an unlock of sorts, placing guild specific indicia on the guild version of the chart and preparing it for publication. Guild leaders can opt to accept, reject or block submissions. The interface allows any player to submit a chart, whether they belong to a guild or not, in order to maximize the number of charts available and give leaders the choice of whether or not to include non-guild member work.

Publish Guild Chart
Once a Master Chart has been submitted and approved it becomes available within a guild as a Guild Chart. Authors can then opt to publish their Guild Charts. Publishing gives authors control over the number of copies of a chart are available. It also gives authors first priority in designating whether a chart they create should be available to guild members only, friends only, alliance members only, guild guests or all players. Guild leaders can decrease availability of any Guild Chart as they see fit; but, they can not increase availability beyond that set by the author. Authors also can set the base price for their charts at each level of availability. Guild leaders can set a flat transaction fee for each chart they publish, expressed as a percentage of retail price. Again, the coin traded to purchase Guild Charts is routed to guilds via a conversion algorithm in the form of influence. Guild Charts appear in inventory as stackable items that can be double clicked to open. They can be annotated; but, they can not be edited in any other way. Player annotations will be displayed in a green text/icon scheme to differentiate them from original author annotations. When publishing a Guild Chart, the author set the number of uses the chart will be available for before it wears out. The base number of uses should be reasonable, such as 15 or 25, with incrementally greater options available up to the “unlimited use” option.

Collect Guild Chart
To purchase a Guild Chart created by another player you must give the Guild Cartographer an amount of gold, karma or skill points (calculated as a combination of author retail price plus publishing guild fees plus Arenanet transaction fees (if applicable). Purchased Guild Charts appear in inventory and can be used at will, anywhere in the game, for the number of uses designated by the publishing author. This built in obsolescence keeps Guild Charts viable in the game as a commodity. Guild Charts are not soul or account bound. They can be freely traded in the Black Lion Trading Company and all other modes of trade in the game. Once a player has collected a Guild Chart and used it to depletion he/she can order more simply by double clicking the icon of the depleted chart. Again, Guild Charts that share the same name and identification information stack. Double clicking a Guild Chart that is not depleted will consume 1 of that item’s uses and display the standard Cartographer’s Scroll window, modified to only display data useful when not editing a map.

Use Guild Chart
This is a redundant interface option that will display a dialog box that allows players to select a Guild Chart to use from a list of all Guild Charts the current character has in inventory. It duplicates the functionality of double clicking a Guild Chart so that players can always access their charts intuitively.

Risks
Same as previously stated in earlier post, which see.

Overview
Detail functionality of previously posted cartography system

Goal
Detail functionality of Guild Cartographer, Guild Maps, Cartographer’s Scrolls and Master Charts

Functionality
View Guild Map
This will bring up a window that is about 40% the size of the current game window which can be moved and sized to the player’s preference. Within this window a special version of the world map will be shown that shows a yellow dot for each guild member currently playing the game. When opened in pve the map shows the entire Tyria world. When opened in wvw it displays only the wvw portion of the mists (possibly with guild hall maps appended). This map has a display bar at the top that indicates active guild members, total guild members, number of guild parties in the world, guild leaders in the game at the moment, guild events at the moment and number of charts currently available. View zooming controls also appear. Guild leader dots appear larger than all other member dots so that they can be easily identified (perhaps taking the form of the icon chosen in the guild window). Guild events will be indicated on this map by special icons in standard event orange. It would be nice if guild members in parties were displayed with white lines linking each member in a circuit pattern (though this might prove an unnecessary drain on server resources). Guild road markers will appear on this map with their current icon. This map is windowed so that it can remain visible while traveling, like the minimap; but, also while looking at the standard world map, for comparison purposes). The guild map will exist as an amalgam of all player maps within the guild, in terms of the fog of war. Thus, once a single guild member attains world map completion all guild maps will have no fogged areas. New guilds made up of new players will have to complete their guild map either together or by having a single player undertake the task. This will give new players something to work together on if they choose.

Purchase Cartographer’s Scroll
A Cartographer’s Scroll is an inventory item purchased with gold, karma or skill points from a Guild Cartographer. The currency accepted would be converted to guild influence upon acceptance at a rate equivalent to the current coin to influence rate in the game. The availability of this scroll would be controlled according to the guild leader’s preference. This allows scrolls to be guild exclusive, open to guests or limited to guild leaders only, according to guild policies. Scrolls are not bound to accounts, characters or servers; but, they are bound to guilds in so much that any trading of scrolls pays a royalty to the originating guild. Any player that has a scroll can double click it to begin editing a version of the world map. Editing options are limited to 250 character annotations (displayed as icons), event markers, road markers, directional arrows, reward markers and prioritized targets. Zoom level can be set and locked by players. The server saves 3 versions of each scroll: the blank default state, the current edited state and a backup state of the edited version before the most recent edits. Once a player begins editing a scroll it changes into an account bound Master Chart, requiring players to assign a chart name, identification number and author (character name) to the chart. Players can use Master Charts for their own devices or publish them as Guild Charts for credit and profit. Master charts are always editable by the players who created them. Ownership of a Master Chart always remains, ultimately, with the account of the player who created the chart and is guild independent. Cartographer’s Scrolls appear in inventory as stackable items.

Risks
Same as previously stated in earlier post, which see.

Guild Cartography System

Overview
Means to allow guilds to organize through use of maps

Goal
Establish new game mechanics to leverage current map in game to benefit guilds through the implementation of guild hall functions that address group dynamics and global mapping

Functionality
A “Guild Cartographer” NPC would be the core interface for this system. The NPC needs to be unlocked through the guild hall rewards track or purchased through guild influence. Once the Cartographer is placed in the guild hall by a guild leader anyone in the hall can interact with it to access cartography functions. A “Legendary Cartographer” would be a supplemental NPC that would be visible in major cities and WvW citadels only to players representing guilds that have Cartographers in their halls.

The cartography functions initially available would be as follows (these will be further detailed in a later post, due to space constraints):

View Guild Map
Purchase Cartographer’s Scroll
Submit Guild Chart
Publish Guild Chart
Collect Guild Chart
Use Guild Chart

Funds collected on authors’ behaves would be posted to the Black Lion Trading Company interface as coin from a sale. Players can be encouraged to author charts by providing an achievement track, with associated rewards, for publishing and selling successful charts (with audiences of 1200+ unique players or more).

It might be interesting to allow authors to include “passcode recipes” as prefaces to their charts. These recipes would require specific materials to be consumed by the chart, from the user’s inventory or stats, before the map could be viewed. The purpose of this would be to either limit access by available materials (rather than by number of views) or provide some form of role playable use tax. An example might be that you have to combine 30 apples with 5 charr carvings to read “Tibalt’s Great Pie Cabal” Chart or that you would have to sacrifice 75% of your health each time you opened a “Necromancer’s Vow” Chart.

Risks
It is possible that a robust cartography system in the game could bog the server down with excess traffic, especially during peak times such as living story episode launches. Nefarious players might use the annotation features of charts to distribute hate speech, slander or other unethical material within the game. The currency system, as outlined here, may have unknown effects on the economy of the game. Guilds with popular bloggers or social media personalities might be able to flood the market with charts, making it hard for others to compete. There will be a great deal of duplication of information, especially in the early days of the feature’s introduction, which may strain servers. This can be mitigated my keeping a centralized chart library that will automatically reject submissions that are too similar to previously archived charts (increasing the value of annotations above other forms of map editing). Role players may seize on the concept as a means of publishing their personal exploits in game (which might be a good thing for fostering play in that niche). Inventory slots filled with Cartographer’s Scrolls and Master Charts and Guild Charts won’t be available for other items (possibly pushing a tiny percentage of players to buy more storage space). Failing to include a searchable interface for all charts in the game could hamper distribution and trade of charts unnecessarily, making the system seem underwhelming. Guild Maps would have to be handled delicately so that player privacy could be maintained: invisible and offline players should not appear on guild maps. Some confusion might arise from the visibility of Guild Cartographers being tied to currently represented guild, though a bit of trust in the intelligence of the audience should mitigate concerns there.

Admittedly, I think the discussion about progression is a bit off topic; but, I couldn’t fight the urge to blather on a bit about it anyway.

Arbitrary hierarchical systems in games do not make them more fun, they make them more tedious. For example, there is no weapon type progression in GW2; but, there is weapon skill progression (recently changed to make it more accessible). Weapon types need no progression because they serve as a foundation for game mechanics. Many of the features of guild halls should be akin to weapon types: foundations for game mechanics that do not require progression. Other features may require progression.

At this stage in the discussion (considering what guild halls should be) the question of whether or not specific aspects are part of specific progression schemes is a bit premature. Perhaps we would be better served by focusing on the specific types of features and functions we want included in guild halls and why we want them.

Although I understand that many players here are very enthusiastic about guild halls as being arenas for GvG play, I think it would be better if guilds were given more choice than that. When playing GW1 I was always disappointed that once the guild hall was chosen it became the one and only home map a guild could play on (until a new map was chosen to replace it). I really would hate to see this kind of arbitrary limitation imposed in GW2.

I think the guild hall instance should be separate from the roster of GvG maps that the guild prefers to play on. This, obviously, would require Arenanet to produce more than a small number of GvG maps. I’d suggest 20-30 maps of various sizes, from dueling compatible small maps to vehicle compatible large maps, akin to the initial roll out in old shooters like Unreal Tournament 3. This would allow each guild to select 3-7 preferred GvG maps into a play roster. Each guild’s roster could be combined with an opposition guild’s roster to complete a map list for competition. This would give guilds a chance to master a set of maps while also affording enough variety to keep players interested and challenged. It would also help to avoid the greatest failing of GW2 spvp: lack of map variety.

The idea that the guild hall map would be used as a battleground may seem great, until you’ve played in that single arena for a month and the monotony of it sets in. Even in GW1, I believe the actual match arena was a separate instance from the communal meeting place instance, to allow guild members to congregate before, during and after each match. So, expanding the potential of that separate instance from a single map to a roster of many guild favored maps should only enhance the play experience.

As a bonus, the metrics collected from favored maps would give Arenanet a great sense of what kinds of mechanics pvp gamers in general and gvg players in specific enjoy.

To this end, I’d launch guild halls completely separately from GvG play so that competition could be done right. I’d introduce GvG maps is sets of 5 over a period of time to allow tuning as maps were released. Then I’d address alliances only after I’d gathered sufficient data about guild hall and GvG activity.

Retro.6831:

timmyf.1490:

I’m okay with private rooms in guild halls, but those should be designed for guild officers or certain ranks, not for individuals. Guild Halls should not be a poor man’s player housing.

Because of the way guild halls pretty much have to work to keep them from being insane grinds and to allow smaller guilds access, private banking guilds pretty much would be player housing. I don’t think there’s any way around it because some guilds are literally two or three people. While I don’t believe guild halls should be built specifically for those tiny guilds, we also can’t fairly set arbitrary limits on how many people qualifies as a ‘guild’.

Giving guild leaders full latitude with customization options while allowing them to assign proxies who can also edit the hall at different levels is important. If I were leading guild hall design I would make optimal customization options for guild leaders a requirement. Part of such customization would be allowing guild leaders to define the rules for how members can congregate in specific areas of the hall: leaders only, parties doing dungeons, role players, et cetera.

Naturally, my views are based on my earlier proposal to make guild hall real estate elastic. I believe that even a guild of 1 should be able to earn a certain amount of guild hall functionality, based on how often and how well that player plays. Greater rewards and functionality should be available to guilds larger than a single player based on how active and accomplished those guilds are. I don’t believe guilds should be rewarded simply for having large rosters of members that don’t participate with the guild. Also, I don’t think guilds should be based on oligarchical ideals that limit them to luxuries afforded to players who happen to have a lot of gold or gems. Rather, if a single player takes 3 years to earn enough rewards to fill a large guild hall I see that as a reward for loyal play, not an obstruction that reduces the value of larger guilds.

I would consider private guild hall rooms to be more akin to voice chat channels: established by leaders for specific purposes to serve the greater good of the guild community. I don’t think it would be a great benefit to allow players who are not guild leaders to impulsively create private guild hall rooms that persist until the guild dissolves; but, the option should be available to leaders to empower such things (if server space and bandwidth allow).

timmyf.1490:

QUOTE EDITED FOR SPACE
This also includes recognizing member achievements. It feels GREAT when a colleague takes the time to thank you for your work or congratulate you on an effort you made. This same thing works for guilds. When I see my members doing good things – learning how to command in WvW, scouting or upgrading, mentoring new members, teaching new players dungeon paths, etc – I try to take the time to thank them both privately and publicly.

This also sets an example for my guild of the kind of behavior for which we strive. If the guild leader is constantly saying “so-and-so did this, thank you, you’ve done a great job” then it can help motivate others to do the same.
All of that is to say: sometimes personal achievements improve the guild just as much as group achievements and it’s totally appropriate to recognize individuals for their efforts.

I agree that good leaders do the sorts of things you mention, as a matter of course, to inspire and reward their followers. What I disagree with is the view that every member in a guild needs to have all of their personal achievements represented within a guild space.

When a guild leader is able to single out a member or a party and draw the entire guild’s attention to any form of exceptional or desired behavior, morale can be bolstered wonderfully. My real point is that the value of such recognition is diluted to the point of irrelevance if everything done is given this type of attention.

For example, I think it would be great for a guild leader to be able to erect a statue that publicly recognizes a member or party fostering good play through mentorship in some part of the game. What I wholeheartedly disagree with is the notion that a guild hall has an automated system that displays even the most banal and mundane personal achievements, without leader input, in the guild’s communal space. This is to say that guild hall recognition should focus on fostering the kind of ideals and play that the guild leader envisions as best for the guild as a whole, rather than simply advertising individual activity.

My opinion is also based on the fact that I don’t see a guild hall as a “city” made up of home instances; but, I see halls as portals to and from home instances, the eye of the north, major cities and specialized portions of the game such as fractals and wvw. Thus, I want guild leaders to be able to select and customize “player of the month/day/week/et cetera” features within the guild’s hall. I don’t want any automated system cluttering a leader’s message with things like “player X bought a legendary” or “player Y has completed daily achievements N times.” Those latter types of displays belong in a player’s home instance, not in a guild hall’s communal space. If guild halls encompass a new form of home instance for members, there should always be a clear delineation between communal and personal player space that allows leaders to recognize members in a way that helps guide member participation.

Guild halls should be places where guild leaders share their vision for the guild with members, in a constant dialogue. They should provide access to member home instances so that players can share their experiences together; but, they shouldn’t be dump sites where every individual action taken by members is collected and displayed. They are not echo chambers for braggadocio. They are curated galleries of services and activities that enhance group dynamics and player experiences.

For those who are concerned that their personal achievements aren’t celebrated in a guild hall or that that they don’t want to be subject to the choices of a single guild leader, I have to say “A guild, being an organization of many people, lead by a small sampling of those people, is meant to be a team, not a representation of any single team member.” If you feel that your personal achievements are more important than those of your guild as a whole or you don’t want to follow your guild’s leadership, you should leave that guild. It may even be the case that being part of any guild is not really your thing and that’s okay too.

Guild halls should bring people together. They can’t do that by providing monuments to individualism. They do it by offering and promoting group achievements. Guild leaders do impose their own points of view, because sharing vision towards a common goal is what leaders do. If you don’t want to opt into that dynamic, it is easy enough to opt out.

I think basing any guild progression on random drops of anything, blueprints or other items, is completely counter productive. Player efforts are already hampered by random number generators and a loot system that is happy to remove earned rewards simply because a player hasn’t noticed them or is too busy trying not to die to pick said rewards up. It would be greatly demoralizing, especially for smaller guilds, to be forced to rely on random numbers when consistently good effort has been put forth.

Basing guild rewards on random number generators would be equivalent to asking guild leaders to throw their members into the mystic forge in the hopes that every 4 members in could potentially yield 1 quality member out. I don’t think any worthy leader would take such a gamble, especially after taking the time to carefully craft a guild of quality members who work well together. I say that in full knowledge that many large guilds simply rely on member churn to pad their numbers rather than paying much attention to what kind of people they have recruited. Making guild hall features more like legendary weapons than team arena rewards splits the community unnecessarily.

Another way of putting this, for those who love the game, might be: If the possibility of your soul mate marrying you was based on a slot machine rather than whether or not you loved each other, would you bother asking your soul mate to marry you?

You know what a messy relationship a guild can be. Maybe guild rewards should help simplify that relationship rather than complicating it.

Overview
Guild Hall real estate and functionality elasticity system that adjusts as guild activity fluctuates

Goal
Provide a penalty free system that allows even the smallest guild to build a hall it can be proud of while also giving large guilds services relative to their cooperative efforts

Functionality
All Guild Halls begin as small instances, themed according to guild leader preferences. The size of these instances is initially based on the total achievement points of the guild’s founder. The potential size of a Guild Hall is elastic in the sense that it expands and contracts in direct proportion to its active membership. The types and quantities of services available to a specific Guild Hall are based on the amount of real estate that guild has coupled with the options the guild leader selects and guild rewards earned by guild members. The system should only count members who have logged in and represented the guild within a 2-3 week period. Each counted member would have their achievement points added to a “Guild Achievement” tally. A specific amount of real estate would be awarded to the guild based on the Guild Achievement tally, within a tiered system. Thus, any member joining or leaving the guild could change the amount of real estate available to a guild. Additional real estate could be purchased with guild influence by leaders.

Guild Hall services would be unlocked via a reward system similar to the spvp reward system, allowing leaders to select the upgrades they want to unlock in any order. Although services would be permanently unlocked, a guild could only place a number of services within their hall that fit within their earned real estate. Thus, although a small guild could conceivably unlock all services, it could only use a limited number due to its small size. The Guild Hall Reward Track would also include special events, activities and challenges that would give all guilds a means to earn additional real estate and service unlocks.

As players earn achievement points, they earn real estate for all of the guilds they are active in simultaneously. This way, guild real estate only shrinks due to inactive members. As unlocks are permanent, guilds that go dormant for long periods of time can regain their lost real estate within a 2-3 week period simply by playing the game normally (easy for small guilds, hard for larger guilds that bleed members). The fact that real estate is based on achievement points makes the quality of players in a guild more relevant than the quantity of members. It should be possible for medium sized guilds that play together often to actually have more lavish Guild Halls than large guilds that rely on member churn.

Reward tracks and services are themed by play type (pve, wvw, spvp) and limited subgroups (such as dungeons, world bosses and dynamic events for pve). This will help with recruiting, as guilds will have unlocked rewards relevant to the prevailing play of their members. It also allows guilds to evolve over time without losing potential to change focus with agility.

This system does not directly rely on any farming of crafting materials or gold. It is also tax free. Although it could be enhanced by including Karma as part of the real estate calculation, influence would seem to be sufficient.

It should be noted that this suggestion allows gems to be used to improve Guild Halls; but, it limits the extent of such improvements relative to the achievements of active members. This allows Arenanet to capitalize on player impatience while preventing abuse of the system by players or Arenanet accountants. The goal here is to avoid a braggadocio tax like that associated with commander tags (which don’t intrinsically change gameplay) while still giving players options on how they wish to expand their Halls. The monetization need here is really to allow Arenanet to offset the costs of bandwidth and server space for hosting over a million instances of varying sizes (obviously, in an ideal world, such costs should already be covered by the BLT and new game sales).

Risks
As influence can be bought with gold and gold can be bought with gems, it may be possible for any guild to buy a huge amount of influence to leverage Guild Hall potential. This should be mitigated by tying available real estate to achievement points, which can only be earned through actual play. Guilds that experience mass member losses could quickly lose real estate and associated services over time. This is mitigated by permanently unlocking services and allowing failing guilds to course correct via recruiting and keeping active members. Complications to the system may arise if an alliance system is introduced into the game. This could be addressed by calculating a shared alliance tally, based on involved guild achievement tallies, then applying this new value toward a unique alliance hall instance.

Overview
Guild Identification System that integrates guild access, globally.

Goal
Address the issues associated with guild visibility in the game and guild hall access in a simple design that doesn’t break the current interface or introduce an inordinate amount of new game mechanics

Functionality
All major cities in the game and a limited number of strategically selected explorable maps should include a “Guild Cryer” NPC that appears next to a billboard model which lists 5 guilds. These 2 elements would always appear together: the Cryer to provide text information and direct access to a player’s represented guild, the billboard to provide in-game information that is up to date and usable for players seeking guilds or interested in guild versus guild competition. This couplet should also be accessible via home instances.

When spoken to, the Guild Cryer will offer a menu that allows players to: Enter my currently represented Guild Hall, Edit My Guild Hall (for leaders only), Review Recruiting Guilds (as a list in-game), Read Leaderboards, or Open Guild Window (recursive option for convenience only). Players who have been granted guest status for any guild can enter that guild’s hall if they are currently representing the guild. As with spvp NPC barkers, the cryer would be a recursive interface for a hot-key selectable menu option that would give players access to the same options window.

The Billboard would be readable text projected onto an in-game model. This text would consist of a “top 5 list” that would have several possible guild related subjects, such most active, most wealthy or most populated. These subjects would use currently available metadata to generate new lists every 3-4 hours. The goal here is to not only provide players usable information; but, also to promote some friendly competition. Players should be able to find new ways to engage the game through comparing their own guild’s successes to those listed on the billboard. Possibly, the billboard model is a static prop that displays a more functional dialog window upon interaction.

Both of these systems (cryer and billboard) assume that Guild Halls are not open world affairs; but, that they exist in some form of instance. This allows guild halls to be as big or small as their associated guilds without disrupting living story, personal story or dynamic event systems that already exist. It would also give an in-game system for recruiting and advertising guilds a chance to develop. As a couplet, the cryer and billboard could have a single map icon. They could also appear in the spvp lobby and in wvw citadels. The airship proposal that is popular as of this writing would be less relevant, as this system centralizes all guild access with no individualized guild representation.

Guild recruiting would be empowered by giving the Cryer the ability to display a list of guilds that are currently recruiting. This list should be filtered by players to suit their play styles according to such things as total members, weekly influence spent, weekly influence earned, guild upgrades, hall upgrades, preferred race, server, et cetera. Inclusion in this list would be via a checkbox in the guild window (off by default) that would allow guild leaders to opt in or out of the program at will. An advancement of this system would push guilds that match a player’s specific play style to appropriate guilds based on actual, recorded data.

Associated Risks
A limited number of maps will have to be redesigned to insert these elements into the game. The Billboard might require some optimizations to prevent data calculation bottlenecks and loading time increases. The Billboard system would require a “backend” to be built that could support in-game leaderboard calculation, server side. It is possible that the Cryer NPCs could be crowded in well populated areas and thus become had to select via the mouse (this should be ameliorated by the recursive hot-key and menu button option).

This idea seems so obvious that it should have been in the game in beta. Of course, having a home instance that players could actually have some lasting affect on and personalize (as advertised) would have been nice too.