Guild Wars 2

That year we shipped a wide variety of things: nine or ten releases that we’d today call a Living World episode, plus updates to systems and content for other parts of the game, plus festivals. So it was the extreme unbundled version of this.

Could you kindly parse this statement for me? I’m not entirely sure I understand, because it sounds like it could be a couple things. I think it means that the next LW update will be one Episode, the same size as a 2013 Episode, plus festivals/feature updates/other content. But with the other context surrounding it it also sounds like a Season 3 LW Episode is the size of 9-10 Season 2 episodes, which I can’t imagine is the case.

Basically, 9-10 singular releases that are equivalent to a singular current release.

vs.

9-10 releases that we could, collectively, call a singular current release.

I imagine it’s the former not the latter. Thanks.

This is great news, but two important questions:

1. If the numbers we see now are final, does that really mean it’s going to take 150 Legendary Insights per armor set? I thought provisioner tokens were bad, but if that’s true then it means that to make a new set from scratch you have to do every single boss, every single week for over 4 months to get enough Insights to make a full set. We were told Insights “wouldn’t be a grind” and that you “should have enough if you raid regularly”. Right now Insights are balanced so that, by the time Legendary Armor actually comes out you’ll barely be able to make one full set if you’ve done every boss every week since launch.

1. We still have no idea how Legendary armor is going to work with runes. Is there another rework for runes/sigils internally that can’t be talked about? Rune swapping, or maybe ascended/legendary runes? The ability to salvage legendary gear for their upgrades with any salvage kit without it being destroyed? Having stat-swappable gear is pretty moot if you can’t also swap runes. This is already a problem with sigils but isn’t as bad.

I’m assuming you can’t talk about internal aesthetics either, but more comments about Legendary armor appearance would be appreciated. The precursor armor obviously hasn’t gone over well. Will the Legendary armor have a different look entirely, or just and upgraded appearance? Right now our best guess is that it not only doesn’t look the part (of being legendary in appearance), but also falls way short of expectations; i.e. not cultural armor, clips with tails on charr and covers their horns, that kind of stuff.

Please do, and please don’t let this happen again. I’m literally begging you at this point.

If anyone recalls, I was the author of the major, old thread about Charr armor that inspired the Lion’s Arch Charr armor protests:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1isd48/i_want_to_share_the_agony_of_charr_armor_and_how/

This was nearly three years ago and the situation has barely improved. This stuff still happens. Clipping, human → Charr armor imports, sizing armors that don’t fit Charr anatomy. It’s never been rectified and it’s really distasteful to me. Reading the thread, you can understand I take this stuff pretty seriously, and while I don’t want to make another huge post here, I do want to reiterate a point I’ve made for a long time: if you don’t have the resources to treat all five races fairly, you shouldn’t have committed to making five races. Doing so is an obligation to your players, your game, and the world both are set in to create an immersive and high-quality universe. Charr deserve as much love as humans, as do every other race. I really get tired of having to bring this up because I know Anet can do better. Players have been begging for years to give Charr armor the attention it deserves. We’re not asking for every armor set to be cultural, we just want to feel like you care.

Also, at the risk of upsetting some people, please kindly ignore the players saying they like the boob plates for feminine Charr. I, and I know the original designers of the Charr would agree, are strongly considerate of the lack of sexual dimorphism in Charr – males and females tend to appear the same. Even NPCs in-game mistake them often. Charr do not make distinctions between masculinity and femininity, and would be repulsed by the idea because it individualizes a Legion-based society. Sacrificing that art direction and world building isn’t worth catering to people who want to make princesses.

Thanks.

Still no superior liver fix, nor e-mail back from support about it

It’s all I need to finish at this point :/

Any news about a fix going out today?

“AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.”

I didn’t say this, nor did I even really imply it. I merely mentioned the fact that Legendaries were an advertised part of HoT and in no way insinuated that the expansion is unfinished because we haven’t gotten them.

I’m just merely asking we get some candid, design-sided discussion about the situation. What portions of Legendary design make them more difficult to implement? What problems did you face and what led to the realization that they couldn’t be completed? These are more questions for artists and designers, really.

Additionally, I asked only that we have something explicit to look forward to. We know five things, essentially: Living World is coming back, an Expansion is in the works, there will be four quarterly patches a year, there’s a Raid wing coming out, and Legendary Weapons will be trickling out. One of those is now gone. Why not replace it with something else, some other piece of attention-grabbing information for players to look forward to?

I think it’s time you tell us what you’re working on instead.

This is a huge part of what players bought HoT for and without Legendaries to look forward to, we have no idea what to expect in the future. I know you’re trying to be very open with the community but this is a time where you need to REALLY be open. I mean, tell us what is going on. What’s happening within the company that’s causing this to be an issue? Was funding cut? Did staff leave? What’s going on? Tell us, and replace the hype we had for legendary weapons with something else: tell us where we’re going in the next expansion or how many new maps you’re working on, or things of that nature.

Legendaries are a really niche item that only a small portion of the playerbase get, but they represent a really important part of the game. This is going to make people quit.

This is also the time to be candid about why the process had to be stopped. Was the Precursor crafting too overwhelming? Tell us. Give us the design-side explanation for why this had to be cut, and not just in vague terms of resource allocation. Let us know what you can and can’t do instead of pretending you can do something and then letting us down – if precursor crafting was going to prevent us from getting new legendaries, it shouldn’t have been done.

Animator? Sure.

• The animation in HoT is incredibly beautiful, but benefits the environment more than the players. When will we see the animating talent put more emotes into the game? They’re long overdue.

• How feasible would it be to see Tengu as a playable race? Barring issues like adjusting existing armor sets or adding a personal story, how difficult would they be to implement merely from a customization and model/animation standpoint?

Same. I’ve done the Blighted Tower twice and both times nobody on the map got the achievement.

Why is there no 25% MS buff?

Because we’re playing Guardians and Guardians don’t get selfish movement speed. All their MS comes from applying swiftness to themselves and allies, which Dragonhunter can do. Asking for everything other classes have dilutes our identity. Part of picking a Guardian is that you don’t get a selfish movement speed trait, just like you don’t get poison or bleeding either. Wings of Resolve already adds a lot of mobility to the otherwise least-mobile class short of Necromancers.

I find it ironic that many people complain that Anet or Karl don’t understand Guardians, then say that what Dragonhunter needs is a selfish movespeed trait. Guardian’s solutions to catching enemies are leaps, immobilizes, and pulls, not movement speed. Between Wings of Resolve, Longbow five, and the new Spear of Justice, Dragonhunter has gotten all three.

Virtues really need a huge rework.

Do you run the Virtues traitline at all? Traited virtues definitely pull their weight. Clearing three conditions from each party member with Resolve and granting AoE stability and stunbreak with Courage, both with no cast time, are no joke. The Radiance trait which refreshes VoJ on kill is also insane. In situations with a lot of trash mobs it’s basically a permablind.

Since you’re looking at the thread, I’ll ask a question I saw posted elsewhere: Why squad UI for raids instead of trying 10-man parties? Two birds with one stone? Is the party UI difficult (or impossible) to change?

Also, will squad UI show boons/conditions in the future? We can see health levels and when players are down, but seeing what boons and conditions are on your allies at a glance is super important.

Thanks for all the hard work you guys are doing. We really do appreciate it.

I know you guys are trying, but can there be a bit of warning? Some of our group went to bed because we were told there would be no raiding. When we were suddenly prompted that there would be raiding, everyone dropped what they were doing to try and organize. Before we even got to squad up it was disabled again.

Maybe say “we’re going to re-enable it in X hours for a test”? Or silently enable it and see if something breaks before announcing that it’s up? We really appreciate the work you’re putting in, and we know it’s not easy, but the off-on is making it stressful for players, too.

Well, some of our members went to bed already because we were told there would be no raids, but we’ll try to scrounge up a party.

Wasn’t tagged up during patch, our Raid party is all tagged up waiting for squads to be enabled. Any ETA?

Had some issues making a squad. When I converted to squad it disbanded the party and I couldn’t invite anyone to the squad. Eventually we got it working with about three of us, and went into the raid. When I left the raid it disbanded the squad and put us all in some kind of ghost party and I couldn’t make a squad anymore.

I really have my doubts that scrapper as a term of endearment can be made to work. Is it nice in theory? Sure. But this completely isolates all non-Scrapper Charr from taking the mantle of the specialization. If you’re one of the far-more-numerous Charr who aren’t insubordinate you can’t use this specialization without demeaning yourself. There are tons of lines of dialogue by NPCs and in events all across Ascalon that will need to be rewritten to accommodate and account for the change in the meaning of scrapper. This is all assuming the Legions would recognize the name; because they mostly likely wouldn’t. And if they did, they would simply call scrappers by a new name, and that also has to be written into the game.

Here’s the thing, using the identifier ‘scrapper’ as a term of endearment has two issues. One, it’s not actually an insult, it’s a job. The “derisive” nature of the term isn’t because being a scrapper is implicitly bad (in fact, scrappers are a necessary part of the Legion), but because it happens to be on the lower rung of society. Scrappers aren’t oppressed any more than someone is oppressed for being suspended from school or sent to jail as a punishment, because it’s for an action they committed and not some inherent trait of their character. Scrappers aren’t oppressed any more than someone who works a blue collar job like construction or waste management are oppressed. So to say you’re proud to be a scrapper is like saying you’re proud to be a blue collar worker. It’s perfectly acceptable and it’d be crass to deride it, but it doesn’t change that fact that blue collar jobs have negative stigmas associated with them just by the nature of the work. Scrappers aren’t universally bad, oppressed members of society, they’re unruly members of the Legions who are looked down upon without consideration for their merits, just like garbage men aren’t bad or oppressed people, but they’re still looked down on (usually unfairly) because most people don’t want to pick up trash for a living.

Which leads to the other problem, the idea that anyone, especially Charr, would show solidarity with using the term as a means of empowerment. Saying “scrappers should unite and take pride in their name” sounds inspiring, but in the context of a consistent narrative it’s so insistently based in social progressivism/justice that it almost makes me gag. The reality is that very few Charr, if any, would ever identify with being proud to be a scrapper. Most Charr are organized, orderly, and obedient. A scrapper that’s actually proud to be a scrapper would be a cause for disgust even in a Charr who’s otherwise indifferent. It takes normal citizens who think of scrappers as a low-ranking but unavoidable part of their culture, who otherwise don’t care, and makes them ask “why would you be proud to be a scrapper?” Again, in this context it’s like someone being proud to be a criminal. Everyone would say “that’s not something to be proud of” and most people would agree because being a criminal is morally objectionable. In Charr society being a scrapper is morally objectionable. I guarantee most, if not all Charr who are assigned scrapper duty don’t actually want to be there, and even fewer still would actually take pride in it, because it goes entirely against what it means to be a Charr. To say that Scrappers should be proud of themselves is a fundamental misunderstanding of Charr culture, and is more a fantasy of empowering a seemingly oppressed minority than actually understanding the context of the lore and culture. So it’s something that’s happened not because it makes sense, but because it flexes progressive muscles. The culture of the scrapper within the Charr shows a fundamental understanding of the way systems of social hierarchies work. Using the scrapper as a source of empowerment is an individualistic ideology that doesn’t apply to a broader culture and fails to understand how systems as complex as societies work.

Scrappers are unruly trash that are so insubordinate within the Legions that they’ve given trash duty, picking up metal and other junk around Ascalon and the Black Citadel. It is not a positive thing and no Charr would ever want to be a scrapper unless they were masochistic or liked being considered garbage. It’s the human equivalent of having a specialization called a “Trash Picker” or “Dumpster Diver”, or it’d be like having an Asura and using a specialization called the word “Bookah.”

Given that the poster character for the Engineer is a Charr I cannot wrap my mind around how this name happened. Either the narrative team wasn’t involved with the naming of the specializations (which I don’t understand), or they’ve forgotten their own lore.

The only excuse I see is that it’s “ironic” and that the scrappers are “rising up” to reclaim their name, but that’s not a good excuse when there could have been dozens of other names that wouldn’t have been internally inconsistent. It also requires rewrites of a ton of dialogue in the Black Citadel and Ascalon.

“didn’t really portray the more selfish dragonhunter nature that likes to hold an advantage over their enemies.”

I know that elite specs are supposed to about ‘alternate presentations’ of the class, but I really did not pick Guardian to have a selfish playstyle. Most of the other specs are taking what the class is already good at and expanding it in some new nuance that’s still aesthetic to their identity. I get the whole ‘zeal’ thing but it’s just so selfish. I would’ve loved to see an offensive-styled spec like this that’s still support-based in nature, like how “Feel My Wrath” is completely offensive, but is still 100% support. You get the offensive nature, without losing the Guardian theme.

I hope we get a supportive playstyle in the future. It’s a real bummer waiting all these years for class upgrades and the one class I love most dearly is essentially getting nothing to expand the reason why I picked it. Not to decry all the work that’s gone into it, it just feels like our namesake was misunderstood.

I like that traps don’t bleed anymore. While I wouldn’t say daze is necessarily a Guardian thing either, it’s sort of thematic to barriers and knockbacks while bleeding has no precedence on Guardian.

I’ve only skimmed so I’m not sure if there’s been any talk of increasing the range on Wings of Resolve. 600 feels really sort, it’d be nice to have sort of a ‘savior from the heavens’ feel of jumping 800, maybe 1200 range to heal an ally, even if that costs the skill in another area. Perhaps making the immobilize only work at 600 or less range, so the long jump is for allies and the short hop is for enemies? Perhaps make it so the heal only triggers if you land close to/on an ally so it’s not overpowered as an escape tool?

Video says it all. Happens pretty much every time you use the skill.

I’m glad the option is there now, but the system still seems excessively clunky. Now you’re not absolutely hard-locked into your gear set, but you are locked into it at the cost of a bunch of gold in ecto and insignias, and in the cost of runes/sigils.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad there’s a system to change now if change is needed, but this is still a very far cry from letting players swap at will to promote build experimentation within and between PvE and WvW.

If there is legendary armor, assuming it isn’t ridiculously expensive, will it also let you choose your runes?

If you’re still looking at the thread:

I, and a couple others I played with tend to find that in close matches, the ones you really want to see win by a lord kill, the game ends anti-climactically by running out of time and ending in a point victory (this was even a problem in the WTS a few months back with the first Stronghold feature match).

I think it’s worth a look at alternatives to ending the game. Either extending the time limit on matches by a couple minutes or, even better, instituting a GW1-type system where, at timeout, the lords come forward to fight each other. Lords could have buffs applied to them based on score so that the leading team goes into sudden death with an advantage, but the lagging team could still win if skilled enough.

I think it’s a much better alternative to having really close, back-and-forth games between equally matched teams just end by an unsatisfying timeout.

Thanks!

Sorry if this has been asked:

Does this new system mean that the existing traitlines are essentially ‘locked in’ in their trait numbers? For example, each trait line has 3 grandmaster traits, coinciding with the current live build’s three GM traits. Given the layout of the page it seems there isn’t much room for expanding that system. Does this mean that, in the future, all expansion to traits and specializations will be in new lines, rather than in old ones? For example, is it likely we won’t be seeing any new Grandmaster fire traits, so there are 4 to choose from? And rather than see ing additional choices from preexisting trait lines we’ll only see new trait lines instead?

While most of the bugs have been sorted through so far, there’s still two things that are bothering me. The loading screen, which has been shrunk down, and the fact that the text in the bubble above player’s heads is green when talking in /say and /party.

Neither of these things were in the patch notes, so I assume they were mistakes? I guess the loading screen isn’t so bad, but the new text color is much harder to see. Can we just get clarification on whether it’s a bug or if it’s intended?

Is there some way we can know what exactly was changed about the camera pre and post-patch? I’ve heard if you click “restore defaults” in the post-patch it sets the camera to pre-patch settings, but it doesn’t look quite the same. I’m playing Charr, if it helps.

Part of the issue is “adjust to character height” inconsistency. While playing Charr, the camera resembles (but not perfectly) how the camera appeared pre-patch only when you have “Adjust Camera to Character Height” enabled. However, for humans, the camera looks like it did pre-patch only if the option is disabled instead.

There are also additional issues that weren’t documented in the patch notes. While some attacks previously had some shake to them, there’s a massively increased shaking post-patch, to the point it’s nauseating. Turning camera shake off also removes environment shake, which was fine before the patch as well. So either something is bugged with current camera shake on attack, or it was increased and we need an option to disable that’s separate from the shaking in the environment.

Okay, this will probably sound weird, but I’m having issues only when I have “Adjust Camera to Character Height” enabled. With that setting on, and everything else default, the game makes me motion sick when I move around. However, when I disable the option and tick the vertical camera position to the right (so that at the same zoom level it simulates adjusting to character height) it seems fine.

I could just be imagining things, I don’t know, but adjusting to character height seems to be doing something that’s making me nauseous.

Some attacks did, like Warrior’s Earthshaker. Most didn’t.

Branden Gee.2150:

Hey all, been reading your feedback. I’m sad to hear that the camera changes are causing you some ‘queasiness’. While the default fov has not changed we have been receiving a few reports on some fps loss as well as an increase in camera shake. This may be a potential cause of said ‘queasiness’.

Disabling camera shake may help.

So is the default option for the camera in this patch literally the exact same as the default camera pre-patch? I just want to know. I feel like the game is giving me a headache even with default options, and shake turned off. It seems like something changed.

Also, can the team look into separate options for camera shake on skills and in the environment? Pre-patch there was environment shake from things like falling rocks, which was fine. Post-patch added the shake on attacks which is nauseating. The problem is the camera shake option disables everything, even the environment shake that was fine.

The patch needs a rollback for more than just the GWAMM exploit.

Green party and /say chat.
Green down state health bars.
Messed up loading screen.
Map-wide voice clips.
Minimap is misaligned.
Various crash bugs.

This patch is a mess.

According to the post-PAX party, the story of Heart of Thorns is going to take place immediately after the latest Living Story. Literally within 24 hours of the destruction of the Pact fleet.

…but the expansion doesn’t come out for at least another month or two, if not more. So far the world seems to be working in real time. How are we handling the discrepancy between launch date and in-game time? Is the fighting in the Silverwastes going to be canonically extended until HoT launches? Is the HoT story going to be “in the past”?

For example, say the pact fleet crashed on 13 Zephyr (January 13th), and the expansion launches on 91 Phoenix (April 1st), does that mean HoT story will have taken place some time between 13 Zephyr and 91 Phoenix, that it was going on in real time we just couldn’t play it until after the fact?

Tengu

Please Anet, they’re the only thing missing from this reveal. We want playable Tengu!

I thought Silverwastes was absolutely jam-packed with content, and it seems these Maguuma zones are going to be even more-so. With multiple levels, tons of events and group content, as well as new methods of traversal, they seem to be shaping up to be the pinnacle of GW2’s open world.

But what does that mean for ‘everyman’ zones? How is Anet going to top Maguuma in future release? And, more importantly I think, what does this mean about releases of future zones? What if Maguuma only has four or five zones (or even less) because of the amount of detail and content in each one? How can we expect to ever explore all of Tyria, let alone go back to the entire continents of Cantha and Elona, if new zones are playing a 1-up game where they’re so packed it only allows Anet to make a few zones per release? Don’t get me wrong, I think quality over quantity is great, but there’s so much quantity of land that it’s hard to imagine ever getting back to unexplored territories and previous contents with only a few zones appearing in each expansion.
And I can’t imagine that every zone is going to be able to have this amount of content without suffering from ‘needing players’.

How will the Silverwaste events get done once people move on? The same goes for Maguuma areas, and future areas. What if we go to Regions like North Ascalon which are free from Dragon influence. Will we return to more peaceful, leveling-type zones, or are all future zones destined to be ‘progression-type’ content made exclusively for level 80s?

Did Jeremy Soule return to score this expansion pack, or is it all by Maclaine Diemer and Leif Chapelle?

Tengu

/15 chars

Erylian.8405:

My old GW1 character.

Probably Pyre Fierceshot (and Kalla Scorchrazor by extension) though Prince Rurik was the first that came to mind.

Summoning your GW1 character (linked through the Hall of Monuments) would be amazingly awesome and probably amazingly hard to implement.

She, not he.

And it’s less of a question and more of a demand for playable Tengu. Heartbreak if we have to wait another three years for them.

Prince Rurik, Master Togo, and Dunkoro are my top three

You should also add a question about playable Tengu. The birds need love and we want to play them

Tengu were the #1 thing I wanted out of this expansion. I’m so glad to finally be getting Guild Halls and GvG and new weapons/skills, but I still feel empty and disappointed that Tengu weren’t a major reveal. I don’t have any hope that they’ll make an appearance as a post-panel reveal.

I really don’t want to have to wait another three years to be able to make a Tengu.

I hope if they’re not in the Expansion they can be worked in through Living Story. I REALLY don’t want to wait another two to three years to make a Tengu. I’ve had a name for one since launch.

Really, really wanted Tengu. Walking away from this reveal disappointed because I love Guild Halls and new skills, but I REALLY wanted Tengu.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We’ve moved away from those, because the in-game scenes are a lot more satisfying, but there’s a trade off.

To a point. I’m much more a fan of the absolutely beautiful artistic cutscenes like the racial intros. They’ve got to be absolutely crushing on your art department, but they’re completely stunning and are far and away the style that most makes this game feel like GW2.

Same. It vanished from my inventory, nothing happened.

Please kindly ignore the comments saying that there was too much GW1 lore in this patch. It’s been far too long since the GW1 players have felt like this game was being made for them. Our game was abandoned after EotN to work on GW2, and this is finally the first patch in a very long time that it really feels like we’re playing the sequel to Guild Wars.

Season One was an ugly, disjointed mess with no cohesion, a thousand unanswered questions, contradictions, and plot holes, little relevance to the GW universe, and one of the most disliked villains in video games. Season Two, especially starting with this patch, is a complete 180 degree turn in the right direction. Whoever was in charge before didn’t understand what GW is and how to craft it, and if what this patch has given us is the direction Leah is taking the narrative, she gets it. This is the GW sequel we’ve been waiting for, and the story updates introduced in the Priory are making people start to believe in the Living Story.

This is the kind of thing that shows Anet has no interest in respecting their players. This is using the guise of ‘simplicity’ to set up a market that is both cumbersome and unfair to players in order to force a marginal amount of players to spend real money on gems when they can’t afford to exchange in denominations with actual gold.

For those who don’t understand what I mean, here’s an example:

A player who doesn’t have a lot of time, but has a lot of money (they have a job) buys gems. They buy 800 gems and purchase a 500 gem item. They have 300 gems left over. Then, they decide they want to purchase a 400 gem item, but they need 100 more gems. On the new system they cannot only convert gold into 100 gems, they need to convert at least 400 gems worth of gold. But they don’t have that much gold, and because they don’t have a lot of time to play, they can’t farm it (and 400 gems isn’t cheap, it’s over 75 gold right now). Thus, this person must spend more real money on actual gems, at a minimum of $10 for 800 gems, even though they only wanted 100 gems.

This kind of practice is not “eliminating confusion”, it’s a practice to squeeze more money out of players and is basically one step below extortion. To make matters worse, it’s being intentionally presented to players as helping them. THAT is truly despicable.

Oh, and by the way, take a look at what’s in the store. Costumes priced at 700 gems, and accessory hats priced at 200 gems. Want them both? That’s 900 gems. But you can’t buy 800 gems and then convert gold for another 100. You need to convert at least 400 gems worth of gold. Can’t convert that much? Then you’re forced to buy another 800 gems. Anet knows EXACTLY what they’re doing.

We’re not stupid. We know how economics and finance work. If you’re reading this, John, you and the marketing team that tries to pull this kind of thing over players under the guise of ‘helping’ them should feel ashamed. You could at least be honest about it. Of course, I can’t imagine you don’t have some metric that said you’ll get more money out of squeezing your players like this than you’ll lose to people who call you out on what you’re pulling. And that makes it worth it, right?

Dehuang.2053:

Fractals are not a good example of a good RNG reward system imo, I know a lot of people who just gave up with fractals, my fractal group disbanded too because it was just not worth the daily 2 hours when we only have around 0.0015% chance to end up with the skin you want

That’s exactly why Fractals are a great RNG system. Same as Dungeons chests in GW1, or getting lodestones from chests in GW2. Don’t mistake me for thinking that Fractal rewards couldn’t be better. They can and should be given the effort they take. But as an RNG system they do exactly what they’re supposed to do: Give just enough of a reward that players go again, believing “if I do one more run maybe I’ll get the skin.”

Of course, people will vocally complain that they quit Fractals, or that they’re so unlucky they can never get the skin they want, but I’ve never met a person who actually ‘quit’ Fractals. They still run them, even if it’s occasionally.

What is this in reference to? RNG rewards from Dungeons and Fractals? The mystic forge?

I don’t want to get too detailed without knowing the context, but obviously human bias plays heavily into these things. Additionally, RNG is often a very good reward distribution system even if players claim to hate it. It’s variable interval reward scheduling. Even if players say they hate it, their brains love it. That’s why people who claim to hate Fractal skins being RNG keep doing Fractals – when they do get a skin it feels great, even if they say they hate it.

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

For a meeting place, and for RP purposes. In GW1 my guild has fallen down to just three active members. We still use our guild hall all the time. In GW2 I manage a small RP guild with only 3-5 active members. We still want a guild hall to RP in. There’s absolutely 0 benefit to excluding small guilds from getting guild halls.

JonPeters.5630:

I wanted to dig into the instanced vs non-instanced debate a bit. Here are 4 questions I’ll pose:

• What do people see as the benefits of instanced?
• What do you see as the benefits of open world guild halls?
• How could we get the benefits of instanced guild halls in a system of open world guild halls?
• How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?

I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but instanced Guild Halls would be a huge boon to Roleplayers. We’ve been really, really desperate for something to help our situation out, and to be honest you guys have really only taken away from us, never given. Uninstanced Guild Halls would be another missed opportunity to help out a very strong community who’s been doing their best to adapt in the face of things like Megaservers. If Guild Halls aren’t instanced to give us a safe place to RP, then other features need to be implemented to help us out.

Can somebody explain the proposals for non-instanced Guild Halls to me? The entire point of the system is to provide an area specifically for your guild removed from the rest of the world. Non-instanced Guild Halls already exist; going somewhere on the map and telling your guild to meet you there. Guild Halls don’t need to exist on the map, and they don’t need to allow random players to stumble upon them. They need to be built specifically to the exclusion of non-guild members.

There are some good ideas in here, but honestly, the Guild Hall system from GW1 is all the game needs, with some GW2 polish. In that respect, I can’t fathom why anyone would want to take up actual space on the map for Guild Halls, let alone have them be accessible to non-members of the guild, with the exception of guesting.

Proposal Overview

Guild Halls, as seen in Guild Wars© .

Goal of Proposal

Give Guilds a private, isolated area for Guild Members to meet, spar, host GvG, Roleplay, and organize.

Proposal Functionality

Open the guild panel and click the “Guild Hall” button to be taken to the private map somewhere in the Mists or the Battle Isles and meet with other members of your guild.

Guild Halls are purchased with a Celestial Sigil, which can be earned in PvP, as a drop from a Champion Bags or World Chest, from the Fractals end reward, or from gaining ranks in WvW. Unused sigils can be sold on the trading post, or consumed to grant Guild Influence.

To Purchase a Guild Hall, speak to the Guild Registrar to preview one of the various halls. Once a desired hall has been selected, trade in the Celestial Sigil to purchase that hall for your guild. Only Guild Leaders may do this. Once purchased, a guild hall may be further upgraded for a gold cost with an armor repairer, crafting stations, a merchant and BLTC representative, and more.

Guild Halls will be about the size of a medium instance. Think Hero’s Canton or Salma district, perhaps slightly larger. Guild Halls include:

Heath of the Ages (Krytan-themed guild hall)
Heritage Courtyard (Divinity’s Reach-themed hall)
Genius’ Laboratory (Rata Sum-themed hall)
Bloodstone’s Call (Maguuma-themed hall)
Dreamer’s Sanctum (Grove-themed hall)
Unseen Ones’ Lair (Tarnished Coast-themed hall)
Swashbuckler’s Outpost (Lion’s Arch-themed hall)
Destiny’s Stand (Airship/Breachmaker-themed hall)
Spirit’s Retreat (Snow/Lodge-themed hall)
Freezing Tundra (Icebrood-themed hall)
Fallen Kingdom (Ascalonian-themed hall)
Legion Forgeworks (Black Citadel-themed hall)

And possibly more.

Associated Risks

People are too happy that GW1 halls are back, and they spontaneously combust.

John Corpening.9847:

John

How does this affect RPers, server identity, and megaserver sorting?

There’s a massive amount of server pride even for the non-WvW crowd on TC. We like being TCers. More important, there’s still the RP community here, who continue to try and group together despite absolutely no help form Anet since the megaserver patch. How does this affect them? If there’s no TC tag to help sort people into proper megaserver shards, you’ll manage to kill RP even more than the Megaserver patch did.