Guild Wars 2

munkiman.3068:

Devata.6589:

munkiman.3068:

While i think it would be a good place to run around in, a lot of those sandbox type elements tend to be difficult to maintain. Population changes a lot in MMOs what happens when we run out of space with a ton of inactive houses?

Anyway, i think we could address player housing in another discussion. I’d personally love to see the home instance get a make-over, including being able to allow your friends to check it out whenever they want.

Suggestions to solve this problems have already been made.

Simply lose your plot / place in the world if the guild go’s inactive. But don’t lose the guild-hall itself. When the guild is back spawn it again at a new plot. With air-ships despawn and spawn back again much like players do in the world but now at the moment the last guild-member logs out and the first logs back in again.

I’m not a fan of the idea of open world guild halls, there is already enough trolling going around, not to mention the amount of real-estate you would need to add to the game to support the thousands of guilds. I think if the game was more designed around the sandbox, it would be a cool feature though. I think we could focus on instance based halls and have similar utility without the complication and overhead.

Well being in favor or against it is another question. I just showed one way the problem you talked about there could be solved.

In all honestly you seem to be against because of mainly technical difficulties (just as most people who are against that). However for nearly all (some you can’t without knowing the code.. nor do you know if it’s really a problem) technical difficulties solutions have been offered in this thread.

Like what you talk about here. “There is already enough trolling going around” so your technical difficulty here is to prevent the trolling, not the idea of open world guild-halls itself. (btw what type of trolling do you mean?) Also “the amount of real-estate you would need to add to the game” is a technical difficulty not really something against open world halls. And for that one also multiple suggestions have been giving. Like the sky-maps (that work with over-flows) and dynamical increasing / decreasing ground-maps and a few other solutions.

I think if the game was more designed around the sandbox, it would be a cool feature though.
Well that is one of the things.. To me GW2 always have seemed as if it wanted to be more sandbox but wasn’t. The whole idea with a living breading world and so on.

Dynamic events don’t do much for that and also the ‘living world patches’ don’t help that much for it. A little more sandbox however would do exactly that. People building there own houses or guild-halls. Stuff changes, it’s dynamic, it’s a living world.
So that alone would be a reason and a time to go a little more sandbox with this imho. Especially if Anet want to keep talking about a living world.

Yes that brings technical difficulties with it and many of those have an easy fix (instance) but the technical difficulties can be solved.

munkiman.3068:

Prophet.6257:

AlienMenace.7516:

Prophet.6257:

Housing:

In GW1 my friends and I use to pretend we owned houses in our Guild Hall. It was just a bit of RP but would be AMAZING if we could actually do that in GW2. It would take a lot to make enough houses to actually allow everyone a place but would be an amazing living city to actually see.

If they just made it so a housing instance could be accessed from within the Guild Hall (maybe a door you could use to be transported to the customizable interior of your home) space would not be an issue. Just like using a doorway that took guild members to their specific guild hall instance (if they had their instance at that location) would work.

All of this could use the already-existing technology that sends people to their Home Instance (remember those?) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Home_instance

So I think it might be possible and reasonable to see your idea come to life, without the problem of there needing to be one separate house for each and every person in your guild (could you imagine what a full-capacity guild would look like if it needed that many actual houses in the Guild Hall? lol).

Your suggestion is likely to be the one incorporated if they do housing b/c it is a bit easier to incorporate into the game as it is now.

However, I would love to see full “Guild Zones” with that many homes in it. It would be beautiful. Full of NPCs and special guild merchants. Making all those instance portals shouldn’t be too much trouble. As far as home variety goes it could be kept to a pretty minimal palette with a more robust texture and asset placement options.

Guild Farms
Personalized Guild Enemies
Guild NPCs
etc, etc, etc

It would end up being a lot of work but the end result would be a place I think people would love to spend time in.

While i think it would be a good place to run around in, a lot of those sandbox type elements tend to be difficult to maintain. Population changes a lot in MMOs what happens when we run out of space with a ton of inactive houses?

Anyway, i think we could address player housing in another discussion. I’d personally love to see the home instance get a make-over, including being able to allow your friends to check it out whenever they want.

Suggestions to solve this problems have already been made.

Simply lose your plot / place in the world if the guild go’s inactive. But don’t lose the guild-hall itself. When the guild is back spawn it again at a new plot. With air-ships despawn and spawn back again much like players do in the world but now at the moment the last guild-member logs out and the first logs back in again.

VodCom.6924:

Conski Deshan.2057:

VodCom.6924:

- graphical costs : these are the costs of acquiring visual and prestige updates for the guild hall. Anything that does not provide an ingame advantage goes in this category.
These costs should scale with the number of players with an increasing coefficient : large guilds that already attract lots of players should have a harder time acquiring these. It should also be an incentive for players to band together and form small guilds to get these.

Have to say that sounds like you’re actively trying to punish large guilds in that part, form a smaller guild to get it?

I’m fine with functional upgrades scaling with guild size in some manner. But graphical ones should be flat unlocks, even a 500 man guild is not going to pay 300g for a basic chair.

I understand the objection. I’ll try to refine the idea:

Eg : I’d like my guild hall to have “foefire glowing tables” in it. What should I do ?

Step 1 : unlock the possibility to purchase the chair in the first place. => Complete all AC paths with a team of five members once. [Does NOT scale with size]

Step 2 : Purchase the “foefire glowing tables” at an NPC with AC tokens (could scale with size, not sure about this one), influence and merits (DOES scale with size)

I think it makes sense since larger guild earn more influence than smaller ones because of more members doing stuff in the game. Moreover, larger guilds have access to more guild activities increasing even further the amount of merits earned. Hence the higher scaling.

I’m not eager to punish large guilds, I’m just trying to level the playing field and make it fun for everyone.

Step one.. No does not scale but is very much doable for bigger and smaller guilds. Imho if you are not able to ever get a group of guild-members together to do a dungeon (also not for special things like this.. not talking about a random request in the guild—chat) then you are to small to consider yourself a guild. But with a group of a few friends as guild this is already very doable.

Step two makes it a currency grind what is boring and we already have way to much of that in the game.

So step two is boring and not to mention it is unfair towards bigger guilds if it would scale.. Why would they have to pay more for exactly the same?. only because they earn more? Thats just wrong.

Step one is fun and works for all guilds.

And there is no need to level the playing field. Bigger guilds can and should be able to do more as long as small guilds also can have a shot at everything.. Just as in the step one option.

Roybe.5896:

I would like to ask if it would be possible for the community to suggest how the funding of Guild Halls would occur? If it would be possible to discuss what would be distressing about purchasing with in game gold, gem store purchases, etc. If this topic is a problem feel free to delete this. I am not wanting to derail the issue, but it might lead to better releases of this if you have ideas on what we find upsetting.

There has been talk about it and I would be against both. Simply unlocking things in the game. If we talk about your basic guild-hall it would likely be influence but after that blue-prints for model (or in what other form it may come) should be unlocked from stiff you do in the game. Bigger more important things I would say as unlocks for doing something specific (completing a dungeons with guild-members and so on) while smaller things might have some rng in them. The unlock can drop in a dungeon or from a mob and so on.

This is in short one of the things that has been talked about. Have a read back in the thread for more details.

Gold makes it yet another grind. Gems is or gold-grind or buying (what is not playing).

Elrey.5472:

For the joy of brainstorms! has anyone though on themes?
Example:

• The leader could choose “mordremoth” and the entire walls would be decorated with thorns.
• He could also choose “Ice” and the ground would be replaced by ice.
• Other possible themes could be Halloween, Fire, Snow, Swamp, Desert, Fog, Asura, Ascalonian, Charr, Metal, Grass…

I think the way to Unlock themes could be fun. Some of thems should be rewarded in an specific area/guild mission. Other themes could be maybe sold in the gemstore.

Yeah we did think of that. When building your guild-hall there can be many type of walls (and other materials like decoration) so you can theme guild guild-hall the way you want. Of course you would need the blue-prints for those things. (or unlock it in some other way)

JonPeters.5630:

Sarrs.4831:

JonPeters.5630:

I don’t remember saying locked. I said how would you change some of the current functionality to be more integrated with guild halls? I don’t think functionality has to go away to do this and I’d like to see what value you all might envision a guild hall could bring to things like Guild Missions, the current Guild upgrade system, etc.

Jon

Let’s go all the way.

Your guild instance map is seperated into four sections: Politics, economics, art of war and architecture. As you upgrade these things through the I-VI lines, the sections will get grander; for example, if you have level 0 politics, you have no building on that section, if you have level 1, you have a basic lodge, all the way up to a palace at level 6.

The other smaller upgrades have smaller effects on the plot. For example, if you build a guild workshop, you have an actual workshop on your architecture plot. If you have Outsource Asuran Contracting, an Asura hangs out in your Politics building and you can talk to him. If those upgrades are actually doing something then they’re doing something in the guild hall; for example if you’re building something at the workshop, the machinery is running and you have a few NPCs running about working, if you have the Asuran Contractor working, he’s fiddling about on one of those computer things they have. Every upgrade should have something along these lines actually happening in the guild hall to correlate with it.

Also a few upgrades could have added functionality, or new upgrades that come out of them. For example, you can upgrade your Guild Workshop to have crafting tables.

This is a great start and since I said I would try and break down a single thing lets do it with this topic during the week. I think your proposal is great but it really only 1 step of the way. I hope we can take this a lot further and look forward to doing that on Monday.

Jon

This is the most basic idea of guild-halls. Taking it a lot further is what happened during the last 15 pages I would think?

Now about locking out content. You will be always locking something out for people who don’t join guilds as this is a guild-feature. What is important that guild off all sizes are able to participate. And that is give them things to do in the game.. Things that might not all be new or guild-related.

The examples of dungeons rewarding portals to city’s for example. The content ‘dungeons’ is already availing for people. Whats new is the reward and the ability to use that in the guild-hall.

Sarrs.4831:

JonPeters.5630:

I don’t remember saying locked. I said how would you change some of the current functionality to be more integrated with guild halls? I don’t think functionality has to go away to do this and I’d like to see what value you all might envision a guild hall could bring to things like Guild Missions, the current Guild upgrade system, etc.

Jon

Let’s go all the way.

Your guild instance map is seperated into four sections: Politics, economics, art of war and architecture. As you upgrade these things through the I-VI lines, the sections will get grander; for example, if you have level 0 politics, you have no building on that section, if you have level 1, you have a basic lodge, all the way up to a palace at level 6.

The other smaller upgrades have smaller effects on the plot. For example, if you build a guild workshop, you have an actual workshop on your architecture plot. If you have Outsource Asuran Contracting, an Asura hangs out in your Politics building and you can talk to him. If those upgrades are actually doing something then they’re doing something in the guild hall; for example if you’re building something at the workshop, the machinery is running and you have a few NPCs running about working, if you have the Asuran Contractor working, he’s fiddling about on one of those computer things they have. Every upgrade should have something along these lines actually happening in the guild hall to correlate with it.

Also a few upgrades could have added functionality, or new upgrades that come out of them. For example, you can upgrade your Guild Workshop to have crafting tables.

That seems a little boring don’t you think.

And instance and upgrades (in your guild menu?) that unlock another tier of your guild-hall. Much like a WvW keep. It’s the most basic idea for a guild hall while you can do so much more with it.

Looking at the many suggestions here including building your own guild-hall, open world guild-halls, hunts in the real world for blue-prints that would be much much much more exiting and ad much more value to the game imho.

“if you’re building something at the workshop, the machinery is running” That sort of stuff I would like to see indeed but that are more details.

Ohoni.6057:

10 people spending 10 minutes gather 50 wood
1 guy spending 10 minutes gathers 5 wood

unfair? How so?

It’s not “unfair,” but it does mean that any goal that takes a decent amount of time for a massive guild would be effectively impossible for a smaller guild, unless some sort fo offsetting mechanisms are in place.

I think the key would just be to make it so that the unlocking mechanism maxes out at a certain point, such that 5 players can unlock it in a certain amount of time, 10 players can unlock it slightly faster, but 20, 30, 40 can’t unlock it any faster than 10 can.

To a certain degree that is already the case. But as long as they both get what they really need and the process beyond that becomes harder for smaller guilds then for bigger guilds I do not see that as a problem.

Smaller guilds would then just have to be a little more selective and efficient.
What do we want? What additional functions? A portal to every city is a little to hard to get so lets settle to a portal to LA (for now).

And what theme we want our guild-hall in? Well then lets focus on getting those blue-prints.

While bigger guilds could say. We want portals to all city’s and lets try to get as many blue-prints as we can..

Vayne.8563:

@Devata

Case 1. Product purchased changes and you didn’t get the changes.
Case 2. Anet gave a bonus for a purchase that was already made…they didn’t change the original purchase.

It’s called a promotion and many companies do it. The two cases have nothing at all to do with each other.

And at least one of the times they gave gem item bonuses it was because you bought gems between certain dates. People who didn’t buy them before that date didn’t qualify. That’s not theory. You had to buy gems during a certain period to qualify for the purchase.

There may have been another instance, but I can’t say for sure that everyone who ever bought gems got that bonus. In any event, it’s still not remotely the same.

In one case, you bought and object and that object changed and you’re asking for more. It’s like when the game goes on sale now, do you expect a refund for the difference from what you paid? Because that’s the same situation.

A bonus item given on a purchase is the companies choice. It’s a nice thing for them to do. (Of course they do it for the good will, not just out of the goodness of their hearts) but again, no one is entitled to those gems. That’s what makes it a bonus.

Well you see them adding goodies as a change of the object and he does see adding goodies as giving an extra bonus for buying the object (just like they did with people who did buy gems).

Also you seem to forget that he talks about the CE while your example is more like talking about the normal version.

So with the CE it becomes more like. Paying more to get more and to support the company. In a way buying additional gems could be seen the same. Both going the extra mile. However in the one occasion they did say “you did go the extra mile so here are even more extra goodies for it” and in the other occasion they did not.

And based on that information you may.. or may not think that they should have given that to those CE buyers.

Maybe they should have said “We did give gem-buyers extra items (you buy with gems) to thank them for there extra support and now we give CE buyers extra items you now get with buying the game for thanking them for there extra support.” Maybe not.

But I do think it’s relevant information to the discussion. And thats really all I wanted to add to this discussion.. just that information.

Do with it what you want.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Alethia.3597:

The first option encourages guilds to tell their members not to play or rep each key week, the second encourages kicking out people who may be away studying or whatever simply because an upgrade cannot be built while they are in the guild even if they plan to be back.
I’m not convinced this is a fair way to go.

Fair enough, but there’s still the problem:

Small guilds (1-4 man) can’t upgrade in a reasonable amount of time
Huge guilds (100 players +) get everything instantly.

Do we really need time-gates and a maximum amount you can spend each day/week?

Furthermore, the scaling of my first suggestion… why do you think it would make people to tell others to stop playing? The more players play, the more ressources they gather.

“Small guilds (1-4 man) can’t upgrade in a reasonable amount of time” What upgrades are you talking about? They way I said it the basic guild-hall with all the basic elements should be easy available for every guild. So also for the small guild, and yes the big guild would have that near instantly.

It’s after that where things go different. While I would not design a system where a guild can have everything instantly (there might be many many many blue-prints scattered of many places in the world.. also big guilds might take months to collect them all and then by that time new blue-prints get added) it would be true that bigger guilds would get more blue-prints (or what type of unlock it might be) sooner or get more of them.

Both guilds can keep on building (and increasing the size) but yes a bigger guild would here be able to build faster or get some blue-prints sooner. While smaller guilds might need to be forced to think about.. what do we want to build? Where do we get the blue-prints / materials for that and focus more on that leaving out what they don’t need.

You see I am all for also giving access to small guilds and letting them make just as much use of the guild-hall as big guilds. The only element I disagree with is that it would have to be an even playing-field. Bigger guilds have more and can do more. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s even how it should be imho.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

why would this be unfair??

10 people spending 10 minutes gather 50 wood
1 guy spending 10 minutes gathers 5 wood

unfair? How so?

That is not unfair. Then those 10 people together have 50 wood and the 1 guy has 5.
That is indeed completely fair. The 10 together do have more here.

Oow and 10 people spending 10 minutes is 100 minutes total. I guess thats why it is fair.

Vayne.8563:

@ Devata

This is exactly what you said:

“Not that I feel the need for those skins but it does show that Anet indeed does indeed reward for previous purchases (while here they say they don’t) but there priority is different. There priority is gem sales, not game / expansion sales.”

Here’s the quote from Anet:

“Sure, it’d be nice to continue to get free stuff for a purchase made in the past. I could see why you would want to get these things for free, but I hope you understand why that isn’t going to happen.”

Now what you’re doing is equating buying something that you knew what you were getting and getting something when the product changes with giving someone a reward for buying something.

Anet added value to the game by adding stuff with the purchase. They added value to buying gems by giving you something for buying gems. They didn’t go back and give that bonus to everyone that’s ever bought gems. That’s what makes it a promotion.

Comparing these two things is just ridiculous. Anet basically gave people a bonus for buying something. They didn’t give it to everyone that ever bought something. You had to qualify for it. Some people got it, and some people didn’t. If you bought it in the date range you got it and if you bought it out of the date range you didn’t.

On top of that, Anet has gone back and given people added value to stuff that they bought a long time ago, like commander tags…but they didn’t buy commander tags from the cash shop.

The bottom line is a company CAN give people a bonus for supporting them, but they aren’t obligated to and to expect it seems a bit entitled.

Do you feel the OP has a reasonable take on this or not? And if so, how do you compare it to what other businesses do? Why is it a fair take?

Thats a very long way of saying you think it´s different simply because is had a date range.

What is not even completely correct. Basically everybody who did buy gems (before the last time they did this) got something extra. They just didn’t keep giving extras to people they had already gave extras to so once you did get something extra the timer went back to 0.

But all this does not even matter. They did give stuff for free purely based on the fact that people did purchase something else in the past, and in this statement that persons gets as reason why he would not get that they basically say that this would be strange and something a company would not do.

You see “Sure, it’d be nice to continue to get free stuff for a purchase made in the past. I could see why you would want to get these things for free, but I hope you understand why that isn’t going to happen.” the problem here.. It did happen! (If you did buy gems that is)

—

If the OP has a fair take on it?

Yes and No. I would not care for them not giving it.. However the problem here is that in other cases (gem sales) Anet did do that. And then it might become a little unfair.

This person did spend additional money for additional stuff (CE, not normal version) exactly as the gem-buyer did! Then that gem-buyer got free additional stuff to thank him for doing so (or to get him to buy again) but the other guy who also spend extra money to get extra did not get another addition of goodies on top of the extra goodies he did buy. Like the gem-buyer did.

So looking it from that perspective I think he has a reason to complain while it would be more based on the extra goodies the gems-buyers got then for the existence of the heroic edition.

But all I said here (adding information to your thread) was simply that there statement did not hold up because they did that with gem-buyers. Now what that means for this discussion may everybody decide for himself.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

JonPeters.5630:

What current aspects of guilds would you change to integrate them more with guild halls? If you would change something, how would you change it to work more with a physical Guild Hall?

Jon

• 1.) I would change the costs of upgrades. I think it should scale based on the size of the guild. A problem I can see here would be inactive players or players who don’t have too much time during a week to play GW2, so these guys shouldn’t hurt their own guild. What if the costs of upgrades scale on the average number of players online each week (at least 60min a week).

example: 5-man guild.
Max (20min this week)
Jon (300min this week)
Peter (50min this week)
Dave (450min this week)
Matt (350min this week)
—> this guild will scale to 3 active players a week. They will have to pay 300 resscources for upgrade A. A guild which scales to 50 “active” players a week will have to pay 50×100 ressources for the same upgrade.

Alternative suggestion
80% of the guild’s members will have to donate on a specific upgrade to start this upgrade. The amount would be a certain percentage of the full-costs (which scales on the number of players in the guild).

This way small guilds (3-5man guilds) have a fair chance to get to the bigger upgrades with the same amount of work for each member involved.

Seems extremely unfair to me what you come up with here. (no offence meant) Some guilds have to pay more to get exactly the same.

Is it really so bad that bigger guilds have easier access (because of the more people they have) to bigger guild-halls with more in it? As long as every guild can have at least a guild-hall with all the basics in it?

Gwenryth.9450:

I’d like to see any costs for Guild Hall related things scaled by members. It’s the only possibility to keep it fair to all guild sizes.
This should have happened also to guild upgrades since the beginning…

Scaling means bigger guilds have to pay more for the same just because they are bigger? That is now how I would define fair.

I would say you would need to set a minimum you want every guild to be able to have (and then define what you expect a guild to be) and then give the ability to work on from there.

Then everybody can have a guild-hall but bigger guilds can likely have more stuff (added to it, done with it) then a smaller guild. Seems fair to me that way?

munkiman.3068:

I’ve actually gotten free items for purchases prior.

That is exactly what I was talking about. (But according to some that’s irrelevant in this topic) and thats go’s directly into the statement given here as an answer to that persons questions.

Just wanted to point that out.

Baltzenger.2467:

Devata.6589:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

The only request I have is: please give small guilds (2-5 people) something to strive for, too.

Your post did me realize something.. What are people talking about when they talk about small guilds?

I am talking about 15 active (So online at least once every 2 weeks) people.

In all honestly I personally would think 2 – 5 is so little that would be the same as making it available to every-body’s personal guild what I would think as undesirable.

But what are other people talking about when they talk about small guilds?

In my opinion, 5 people should be considered a small guild.
That is the minimum required for dungeons to be completed, to tPvP teams, is the max pop. of a group, etc.
When we talk small guilds, we speak about groups of friends that do stuff together, and the minimum required for that is 5.

15-60 people is a medium guild, and over 60 active, is a big guild. I think most guilds in the game must be medium guilds, and very few compared to that, are big guilds. Then 5-15 is a small guild, less than that, and we are talking about personal guilds.

Well doing a dungeon with 5 people is also what I had in mind. (And the way I talked about unlocking things for the most part also required 5 people) But thats why I see it as a guild of 15 (who are online at least once every 2 weeks) because in a guild of 5 people it might get hard to get them all online at the same time to do that 5 man content. But in theory 5 would then indeed be the minimum. I agree.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You can read the Devs response to this matter over in the Account Issues sub-forum.

Here is one such response:

I asked about this today at a Business Team meeting. Those who purchased the Collector’s Edition are valued customers, for sure! But remember, there were a lot of goodies in that box, and it’s not customary, even if necessarily good business, to continue to give free items for a purchase made a year ago. I can’t think of any other business that would do that, that would say “I see you purchased a mixer a year ago. We’ve developed a handy new accessory and we’re sending it to you for free.”

And by the way, I’m proud to say that at the time it was released, our CE was hailed as “the best in the industry” with having so many nice in-game and physical features.

Sure, it’d be nice to continue to get free stuff for a purchase made in the past. I could see why you would want to get these things for free, but I hope you understand why that isn’t going to happen. Keep in mind that the items are available in the Gem Store or on the Trading Post, so you can get them for in-game gems, in any case I can think of.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/I-bought-the-CE-I-d-like-the-Heroic-items/first#post2706527

Would you be willing to give up 2 years worth of play and rewards for a set of armor and a skin of the same armor? Because that is what those that purchase the Heroic Edition today give up. It would not be worth it to me. /shrug

However they did give free stuff to people who did buy gems in the past. (I once made a thread about that).

Not that I feel the need for those skins but it does show that Anet indeed does indeed reward for previous purchases (while here they say they don’t) but there priority is different. There priority is gem sales, not game / expansion sales.

That was the reason I made a thread about that back then as I did see and still see there focus on the cash-shop in stead of game-sales as a much bigger problem.

On a side note: The CE is sure great however I would have liked it if there would have been one truly unique item in game.. unique to the CE edition only (so not in the Deluxe). That was the only negative I had about it. Something to remember for a future expansion CE.

Anet didn’t say they don’t EVER rewards for previous purchases. Everyone who bought a commander tag at 100 gold got updated functionality. People who bought cash shop picks at 800 gold when they were soulbound, enjoyed them account bound at the same price.

What’s being said it’s not reasonable to expect most stuff from a one or two year old purchase. As far as I can tell the cash shop rewards were rewarded a month or so after spending the money.

Honestly your obsessing with the cash shop is infiltrating way too many other threads…unrelated threads at that.

And maybe your thread post here gets to much influenced by Inculpatus cedo as my post was not about the cash-shop influence. It was only about showing that the statement is strange when they in fact DO give things away for older purchases while in there statement they act as if that would be strange and something companies would not do. And because of that is completely related / relevant in this topic.

It was not about the cash-shop itself. All I said about that was that they do it for the things where there priority is what is indeed the cash-shop. But this post was not about how and why the cash-shop is a bad influence for the game.

I think I said enough about that in the past, and by now most people seem to notice / agree so don’t really say much about that anymore. But it can get mentioned because it does touch many things yeah.

Also your examples are completely off. They are about changes to the game that made something better of worse. Not rewarding new (unrelated) goodies purely based on an old purchase. What the two examples here are about.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

That’s totally off-topic and just another excuse to post the ‘cash shop is evil’ mantra.

You don’t really need any (new) excuse for that as it is still going on. And it’s 100% on topic with a statement as this:

“But remember, there were a lot of goodies in that box, and it’s not customary, even if necessarily good business, to continue to give free items for a purchase made a year ago.”

People did get there gems (just like the CE people got there goodies) and it where purchases mybe not over a year ago but for sure months ago.

So that statement made is 100% on topic.

Also I did not go into / started the whole ‘cash shop is evil’ mantra. I only gave that as reason why I made the topic, thats all. You did bring that up now.

I also have some blanks on the building process and I was wondering how other people did think about that.

Let me first explain how I personally see the beginning. You unlock your guild-hall (likely with influence or with some other mechanic) this is a basic guild-hall that can have all the things you really need including the stuff to expand it.

Then you unlock blue-prints for items (from walls to chairs, to decoration in the world) by doing dungeons or members unlock it for you because the unlock come basically as a drop or whatever. There has much been said about that. But one this is sure, this is where your long-term investment and progression is, getting those blue-prints.

Personally after this I would not want to see a massive grind or time-game but I would only not like to just be able to start placing those objects without any further actions.. It are only blue-prints.

So I would think in your basic guild-hall there is place where you can go to get the blue-print this would give the same animation as having siege in your hand in WvW. You then walk to the place where you want it and have a little extra help of seeing a preview, an optional 3D grid for alignment and the ability to move it a little easier then just walking. You place it and get a construction side just as in WvW when you place siege. (while it would scale to the size of the object).

But then.. Then you have the unlock and the build-side but then it gets a little vague.

How do we now build? Just as in WvW you need to get supply there. First of all I would like a little animation, not just an icon as in WvW. But where does that supply come from?

1 Maybe your basic guild-hall has the supply-plot you have in WvW as well. You go there, take supply and start building. Supply just spawns there at the same rate as a normal WvW camp would do.

This would create a very small time-gate. If you need 1000 supply and the max is 100 you will need to do some waiting when you are there with multiple members while 1 or 2 persons might be able to go on because there walk and build time are enough for new supply to spawn.

Or 2 we need to manually full up this supply? But where does that then come from? You need to create supply packages with a (new) craft? Or do they drop in the world? And would that not create a new grind what we would not like?

Or 3 maybe we only need mats, possible even mats (and maybe basic crafting elements like boards) based on the blue-print.. (on the build-site you would see how much of any material you still need) You only need wood for a wooden wall right? This might make things a little more complex but also more realistic. It however also might create a new grind we don’t want. Except if the mats requirements are pretty low.
Another problem here is that you don’t really see the action of building. Well one guy yes but he gets all the needed material in his inventory and go’s there and build. While 1 and 2 would show the action of (multiple) member walking there with supply and then building and then getting more supply (again, like in WvW).

Or 4. That is a mix of 2 and 3. You bring different supply to the supply-plot, there you take what you need but that is limited (just as in WvW where you can have only a limited amount of supply) and maybe you can even limit it to one type of material. Based on the material you have you also see the character carrying something else and even your building animation could be different.
This would look the best and make the most sense but does make it a little more complex.

Maybe there are also other options..? (Personally from the ones I listed I would go for 1 or 4 if the requirements would be low enough to prevent a grind for mats)

How so you guys (like to) see this process?

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

The only request I have is: please give small guilds (2-5 people) something to strive for, too.

Your post did me realize something.. What are people talking about when they talk about small guilds?

I am talking about 15 active (So online at least once every 2 weeks) people.

In all honestly I personally would think 2 – 5 is so little that would be the same as making it available to every-body’s personal guild what I would think as undesirable.

But what are other people talking about when they talk about small guilds?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You can read the Devs response to this matter over in the Account Issues sub-forum.

Here is one such response:

I asked about this today at a Business Team meeting. Those who purchased the Collector’s Edition are valued customers, for sure! But remember, there were a lot of goodies in that box, and it’s not customary, even if necessarily good business, to continue to give free items for a purchase made a year ago. I can’t think of any other business that would do that, that would say “I see you purchased a mixer a year ago. We’ve developed a handy new accessory and we’re sending it to you for free.”

And by the way, I’m proud to say that at the time it was released, our CE was hailed as “the best in the industry” with having so many nice in-game and physical features.

Sure, it’d be nice to continue to get free stuff for a purchase made in the past. I could see why you would want to get these things for free, but I hope you understand why that isn’t going to happen. Keep in mind that the items are available in the Gem Store or on the Trading Post, so you can get them for in-game gems, in any case I can think of.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/I-bought-the-CE-I-d-like-the-Heroic-items/first#post2706527

Would you be willing to give up 2 years worth of play and rewards for a set of armor and a skin of the same armor? Because that is what those that purchase the Heroic Edition today give up. It would not be worth it to me. /shrug

However they did give free stuff to people who did buy gems in the past. (I once made a thread about that).

Not that I feel the need for those skins but it does show that Anet indeed does indeed reward for previous purchases (while here they say they don’t) but there priority is different. There priority is gem sales, not game / expansion sales.

That was the reason I made a thread about that back then as I did see and still see there focus on the cash-shop in stead of game-sales as a much bigger problem.

On a side note: The CE is sure great however I would have liked it if there would have been one truly unique item in game.. unique to the CE edition only (so not in the Deluxe). That was the only negative I had about it. Something to remember for a future expansion CE.

Retro.6831:

JonPeters.5630:

On the editing topic I’ve seen a few things listed.
. . .
Assuming everything has a cost:

What kind of thing would you be ok with static placement?

• NPCs, such as merchants, banks, trading post vendors, etc. There should be pre-established locations for these NPCs as they are unlocked that cannot be edited. Otherwise…
  • Players will move these NPCs to potentially inaccessible areas.
  • Visitors will have to search for wherever a guild has hidden them.
  • I’m actually in favor of NPCs being located outside of the guild hall lot, in a common area shared with other guilds in a neighborhood.
• External walls (should always appear at the edge of the property).

While I agree with your 3 post points there. (why would I put them where no guild-member can reach them?:S If I would allow a visitor in I would show him where and they are already outside of guild-halls.

However I would think a ever guild would at least be able to unlock a basic-guild hall with all the most important things in it. So in that basic guild-hall they might be at fixed location. That said, when building upon that I would imagine you can place them or at least copies of them anywhere you want.

While it would not have to be NPC’s. Maybe it are closets

Rambodacious.7495:

Mr. Peters, I have to categorically disagree with you here. Guild Halls cannot be a bandaid for you guys. They simply can’t. You’re bleeding players and we both know it (NA and EU). If you burn massive amounts of development time on things that will be interesting for a couple of weeks and neglect the vast majority of other areas of your game, you will continue to bleed players. You’ll get the initial spike of everyone coming back to check things out, they’ll be excited for 2-3 weeks, and then the forum posts start and players start to leave again. I speak as though this is fact because by looking at the past, we can accurately predict the future. No more bandaid patches.

I’m suggesting that Guild Halls are a glue that not only ties game modes together, but would also have ways to occupy a player’s time unique to Guild Halls. Abandon spending any time on trying to make players see them from the game world, or having some scavenger hunt for GH unlocks that requires loot tables coded in and other nonsense. Unnecessary man hours, just keep it simple.

They’re airships (seems to be the consensus). They’re customizable (also unanimous). Beyond this, it gets rocky.

You know what, if I’m going to tell you to stray from this idea, I’ll give you things that will not only get players to come back to your game, but keep them as well. Just remember this when you’re looking at my resume for the designer position you have listed.

Here is a way to revamp all dungeons, make them replayable with endless variety, challenging enough to break the “zerker meta” yet not bring the “trinity” into the game AND do it all with minimal development hours:

Each type of mob in each dungeon is given 4 abilities. Whenever a group enters the dungeon and the instance is spawned, each of the mob types is randomly assigned 2 of the 4 abilities. Further, there are walls that prevent players from skipping past many sections. For the players to continue, they must kill the mobs present.

Now, the mobs have say, knock-downs and AOE bleeds. Maybe instead, it’s poison and boon corruption. Always something new. Sometimes, 5 zerks work. Sometimes they don’t.

To prevent frustration from the added time now needed to complete a dungeon, these much more difficult mobs now drop a silver each. There you go, it’s rewarding, challenging and infinitely replayable because it’s always something different to prepare for. These are what dev time needs to be spent on, not a massive scavenger hunt for GH unlocks that is a temporary time-sink designed to mask the problems that the game suffers from.

(P.S. To prevent players from killing mobs near the dungeon over and over and not killing a boss to allow themselves to farm high cash dropping mobs over and over, make mobs deeper in the dungeon, near the end drop 3-4 silver per mob (with great loot tables) and the ones by the door drop 25 coppers etc.)

“You’ll get the initial spike of everyone coming back to check things out, they’ll be excited for 2-3 weeks, and then the forum posts start and players start to leave again.”

“Abandon spending any time on trying to make players see them from the game world, or having some scavenger hunt for GH unlocks that requires loot tables coded in and other nonsense.”

You do understand that having it in the open world is what give people more reason to build / work on there guild-hall and those items (adding items to a loot table takes a lot of code time.. whut?) in the world is exactly what keep people busy for much longer as 2-3 weeks.

Also “No more bandaid patches.” This go’s in against what you just said. A new big thing, no you say we need to just make things to keep people here.. That is bandaid patches. and then you say, no more bandaid patches.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I don’t like the editor-suggestions, the focus of the game should still be mainly on the gameplay imho, not some creation-sim.

Take a look at a informative preview from WoW’s garrisons (A beta player had the chance to record it in its multiple stages) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5s3E4Gs9_o

Now imagine this in GW2, each race would have it’s own “garrison” – it’s own unique flair. Whole guilds could work on upgrading their guild hall in multiple stages like in WoW’s garrisons.

Garrisons in WoW are for solo players if I got it right. I would love to see this concept as a replacement of our home instance instead of guild halls if I’m honest,… I can’t see how it is fun for every player when only the guild leader or some officers can create and upgrade the buildings.

A good guild would do this with it’s members.

But maybe players housing can be done as well at some stage. At this moment however we are talking about guild-halls, not player housing.

CureForLiving.5360:

Guild Halls as airship is fine just as long as they aren’t all airships… sorry but I just don’t see myself falling in love with a floating rust bucket. Unless by airship you mean air-fortress. How about we get that whoever made the Wizards Tower to franchise a bit? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wizard's_Tower

Yeah that was indeed the idea of what you could possible build as air-ship.
Two examples of air-ships in GW2 (how it could look like) is the Wizards Tower and the Zephyr Sanctum. So basically everything you can think of.

AlienMenace.7516:

There are some posts here suggesting that the Guild Halls actually occupy (non-instanced) space in existing zones (airships in the sky floating above, or buildings in the zone). This is a problematic idea when looking at the large scale.

If each guild had their own airship, how long would it be until the sky in every zone was littered with an array of airships?

I think you missed a part here. There would be sky-maps. This would be separate maps, while they would send information to a linked ground-maps to the ground-map could visualize the air-ships, the air-ships would not really be in those maps.

That means there could also be a max of number of air-ships in an airmap (just as there is now a max number of players) and multiple overflow-servers of those airmaps. Solving those problems you talk about here.

Korossive.7085:

An upcoming Snow outfit (datamined by that_shaman) should soon hit the Gem Store along with other items (sickle, magic carpet, another outfit, …).

This outfit is 1 of 2 already in the downloaded patch and should be unisex. Would look great on characters fighting in the middle of Mount Maelstrom by the lava.

Man someone make a female Ygritte dyed and dressed up with this looking for John Snow near Jormag…. yeah.

The gem-store? One would hope you could earn it ingame with Wintersday.

This is not supposed to be a F2P game where you buy all your nice stuff.

But it’s a nice skin.

Iason Evan.3806:

• An Open world Guild Hall would have to have no loading screen but still have permissions on who enters.

• It would have to be seamless entry too. That’s if you wanted to do it right.

• No fixed or grid placement. They are terrible when compared to the freedom that free placement offers you.

• You’d also have to implement junk drops from mobs in the world as things to use to decorate with.

As a side note Jon, the people who are really going to spend time with this are the same type of people that Carbine totally took for granted when they were designing WildStar. They were so rigidly clinging to the raid system in that game that they lost sight of the people that just wanted to level to 14 and then play house. The bulk of the design should be around them. Why? Because the dude(me) that gets a “Fractal Guild Hall Drop” will put it in the hall and then just head straight back into the Fractals. Holly Homemaker will spend hours finding the perfect spot to place that item. That’s who it should be for.

If you are going to actually design a guild hall system, do it for the Holly Homemakers. Designing an open world guild hall system for people like me that spend 90% of our time in combat wastes what the guild hall is aesthetically. Design it for the people that want to spend 90% of their time in the guild hall.

Take that idea you had about guilds controlling points out of the guild hall system if it’s open world. Ultimately the Guild Hall has nothing to do with control points.

But in this case if you are part from a guild there only have to be a few Holly Homemakers in the guild and everybody in the guild who likes a nice guild-halls (builders or not) will be thankfully to you for unlocking the that blue-print. Just as you are now also earning influence for the guild while doing your thing.

Gulesave.5073:

It would be more feasible to just have some random airships fly across the sky, (high above, in simplified low-res). Making them match specific guild ships allegedly flying across at that time seems like a lot of unnecessary work when players won’t be able to tell the difference.

Airships don’t even have to be the standard, here. They could just as well be in addition to grounded and even underwater bases, depending on what we plan to do with them. Airships aren’t everybody’s cup of tea.

That could be a way to make it easier but it would also be a little dull don’t you think? Guild-member on the ground in guild-chat.. Heey guys I see you over Cursed Shore, uhhm, we are hovering somewhere above Mount Maelstrom. I think the other option would just be nicer. And you would be able to tell the difference while with your solution you would indeed have a better vision of them. And when mixing it in with the ability to indeed dock in a map you would still have the visible effect from close by.

Torsailr.8456:

Gulesave.5073:

GvG as airship battles? Well, then. Color me intrigued.

inb4 jetpacks & adding aerial combat to ground and underwater

Too late, aerial combat was brought up pages ago.

Also, everything is better with jetpacks. Especially with bobblehead jetpacks.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And not to forget jet-packs have been in the game for over 1,5 year now. Not that I really envisioned jet-pack usage (yet I was not sure how members would jump form one ship to the other.. would they have to be touching each other? You know maybe those jet-packs can come in handy after all) but it is a nice little fact to throw in here

Vix.6730:

What do people see as the benefits of instanced?

Instanced guild halls would bring exclusivity to members. Celebrations and events could happen without outside grievance. Meetings can be held in relative tranquility.

Not to tackle you personally but to me most of those negatives seem technical difficulties. So I figured I would use this as an example.

If you can build a guild-hall the way you want you can make it as closed as you want. Doors (like in WvW) would only let guild-members in and then add the function to keep chat inside, and map-chat outside and you would have your exclusivity also with open world guild-halls, not?

Gulesave.5073:

GvG as airship battles? Well, then. Color me intrigued.

inb4 jetpacks & adding aerial combat to ground and underwater

Well it could be one of the GvG modes. But GvG is the next subject.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

At the bottom (so looking from the ground) there is the guild-emblem.
So this is what you would always see from the ground and for the most basic guild-hall it would be everything you would see from the ground. When building (basically around this basic part) you can make any shape you want. From the ground you would see that shape (and the colors). You would not see the full model.

From the distance that you’re talking about, a guild ship would have to be absolutely MASSIVE to distinguish a guild emblem from the ground, without it appearing as just a dot in the sky. I think your mental sense of scale here is a bit off.

As I said, I’d rather just have the guild airship docked in the zone itself, close enough that you can actually see the the details and all of the customizations you’ve made, and where you can actually show off your guild hall/ship to anybody — as this would be an open-world area, anyone could enter the zone and see your airship without having to be in a guild and specifically floating around in the sky zone just to see other guild airships.

Well guild-halls are pretty big yeah. Here an image just to get the idea of the size you might see from the ground and how the emblem would be distinguishable.

[img]http://oi62.tinypic.com/24l27hh.jpg[/img]
(just for the record, this image is just to show the size, It would all look a litter better in the game itself)

Well the sky-map is an open world map and maybe the two could mix together. Docking in a normal map.

Well, the pic you have from “what it would look like from the ground” doesn’t mean much without comparable scale. Do you have an image of how big you would expect the guild hall airship itself to be?

As for what’s limiting the network, you can’t use “network bubble” as a way around things — you have to construct the servers with the assumption that everyone in the instance could potentially be in the exact same spot at the exact same time. Because it will happen at some point, and if your server isn’t capable of supporting that even under limited load, you’re going to have issues.

My assumption is that reason right there is why there is a cap of players allowed in any particular instance at a time. I don’t think it’s possible to have more than a few guilds worth of people on a map at any given time. Heck, maybe even not that many if the guilds in question have a full 250 roster.

Yes then you are going to have lag issues (just as you now have if zergs collide in WvW). Thats something you can never completely get rid of but it’s good enough for most games out there so why not for GW2. I really think map-size limit has to do with something else. Not because they are afraid to many people would end up in the same place. Maybe they do not have a network buble at all, or more likely the stuff going on in one map (events, NPC, mobs and so on) needs to be controlled by one server, it can not be split up. Now in that case the sky-map might be possible anyway because there is much less of that.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

Oow no I would not think you would have the different modes in the same map. You see there will be multiple instances of the sky-maps anyway. (and what you see from the ground would only be one of them.. what ever sky-map that ground map get’s linked to).

But that also means you could decide if you would want to go to a PvP or WvW, or GvG or PvE sky-map and the stuff to do there would be depending on that.

So now, that’s a bare minimum of at least four different sky map zones, all the size of the entirety of Tyria, with possibly dozens or hundreds of guilds and their custom airships all mingling around together? I’m sorry, but that just sounds like an incredible strain on resources to me. Considering how small the zones have to be now before being split, and the limited player population allowed in them, I just don’t see this being feasible at all. :-/ I understand Jon/Chris saying go for the stars, but even in an ideal situation this seems impossible to me, unless I’m missing something huge here.

Uhhm you did see it feasibly before but now with multiple instances (what was always the idea) not anymore. You do understand that multiple instances mean less stress per instance? Not more.

I do not know what is limiting the map size. It’s something I talked about before. But if it’s the stuff in it then don’t forget the sky-map does not have a lot of things in it. Those dozens or hundreds of guilds and the events would be all in it. And information from players only has to be send to you when they are near you (network bubble). So also that should be very doable. But the big question here is, what is limiting map-size in GW2. Only if I you know that you know if this would be a problem and how you would be able to solve it.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

At the bottom (so looking from the ground) there is the guild-emblem.
So this is what you would always see from the ground and for the most basic guild-hall it would be everything you would see from the ground. When building (basically around this basic part) you can make any shape you want. From the ground you would see that shape (and the colors). You would not see the full model.

From the distance that you’re talking about, a guild ship would have to be absolutely MASSIVE to distinguish a guild emblem from the ground, without it appearing as just a dot in the sky. I think your mental sense of scale here is a bit off.

As I said, I’d rather just have the guild airship docked in the zone itself, close enough that you can actually see the the details and all of the customizations you’ve made, and where you can actually show off your guild hall/ship to anybody — as this would be an open-world area, anyone could enter the zone and see your airship without having to be in a guild and specifically floating around in the sky zone just to see other guild airships.

Well guild-halls are pretty big yeah. Here an image just to get the idea of the size you might see from the ground and how the emblem would be distinguishable.

[img]http://oi62.tinypic.com/24l27hh.jpg[/img]
(just for the record, this image is just to show the size, It would all look a litter better in the game itself)

Well the sky-map is an open world map and maybe the two could mix together. Docking in a normal map.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

daft inquisitor.1605:

Torsailr.8456:

daft inquisitor.1605:

~

I don’t really see it as an either or scenario.

Why can’t you have Airship docks in a zone and a Sky map for free roaming/travel between maps? Then let guilds sort themselves out.

I was thinking about that myself. I just personally don’t see the merit of the “sky map” for travel. I mean, what purpose would it have?

I could see it being a warzone for GvG battles, yeah, but at the same time, I couldn’t imagine that would span the breadth of all of Tyria like was suggested. This is just my personal opinion of course. I’m not saying there’s no merit to it whatsoever, I just don’t see it myself.

From my perspective on this — where is there to travel? It’s just a bunch of open air and clouds, and some other guild ships. That’s not exciting to me. The only noticable feature would be the terrain below us, but even then, it would pretty much just be the world map, which is precisely as interesting to me as opening the “M” menu on a character. There just isn’t anything worth seeing there.

So, what’s the purpose of it? What can you do on this air map that you can’t do elsewhere, and why? That’s what a lot of the Guild Hall discussion has boiled down to, so I think it’s a good question.

It can have many purposes. But one of the nice things is that you see other ships fly by even if you fly without direct goal.

Also you could make dynamic events in that sky-map. Dragons that come up would come to mind. (those events might then reward you a place on the real map if they would do a mix of both systems) Or maybe you like PvP and like to fight each other on the ship.

With you alliance guilds you could fly in (or form) a formation. It would give more possibilities as a guild-hall stuck in one place on the ground don’t you think? And where else would you expect those air-ships to be? I would think, in the air. Just flying around.

While those are some interesting ideas, I don’t think it would be possible for one single map zone to be able to do “all of that”. I mean, the reason we have segregated PvP and WvW maps is because, I’d imagine, the “zone type” itself has to be set up to be that way. You have to assign players to colors so that they’re distinguishable from one another, and then set it up so that all colors see other colors as enemies.

Now, you could very well make it so that it automatically is set up that way, with each guild being assigned a color. However, then how do you stop larger guilds from continuously preying upon smaller guilds? Not only would you “wreck” the guild-hall experience for players, but you’d also force them into a PvP scenario any time they visited their guild hall.

For “aimlessly flying around”, I don’t see why there is a reason for that in this game. Yes, you can “Mindlessly wander around” in zones already, but that’s simply you avoiding (or not aimfully going towards) other goals that are already present. In a “sky map” like this, it would either have to have content which could be difficult to manage (as you said, random dragon attack events, but again that would take people away from their “guild hall as a refuge”, and turn it into “guild hall as a battleground”, and there would be no way for you, the player, to control that), or it would be a completely wide open space with literally nothing going on ever.

Neither situation sounds like a good solution to me.

Oow no I would not think you would have the different modes in the same map. You see there will be multiple instances of the sky-maps anyway. (and what you see from the ground would only be one of them.. what ever sky-map that ground map get’s linked to).

But that also means you could decide if you would want to go to a PvP or WvW, or GvG or PvE sky-map and the stuff to do there would be depending on that.

About the guild-hall as battleground.. You attack the dragon, not the other way around so if you are not interested you just ignore the event just as you would be able to do on the ground now. And go mind your own business inside the guild-hall or watch how another guild is taking on the dragon.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Torsailr.8456:

daft inquisitor.1605:

Well, it looks like there’s a relatively large split here about what we envision for how airships will be linked to ground areas.

Devata just wants a large air zone with tons of guilds in it that essentially has a map of Tyria below it. Whereas I want airships physically in the zone, seeable from the ground, providing its own instance for players to do events and map exploration “with their guild”, so to speak. (Forgot to mention, I’m Shadow, just switched accounts. :p)

The airship combat is a different discussion itself, which is why I haven’t gone into it too deeply here. That’s related far more closely to the GvG discussion than the Guild Hall discussion. As stated earlier, let’s get the current topic discussed and settled before moving on to the next.

Whatever happens with the guild halls, there will be a way to make it work with GvG. People will make it work somehow if it needs to.

I don’t really see it as an either or scenario.

Why can’t you have Airship docks in a zone and a Sky map for free roaming/travel between maps? Then let guilds sort themselves out.

I was thinking about that myself. I just personally don’t see the merit of the “sky map” for travel. I mean, what purpose would it have?

I could see it being a warzone for GvG battles, yeah, but at the same time, I couldn’t imagine that would span the breadth of all of Tyria like was suggested. This is just my personal opinion of course. I’m not saying there’s no merit to it whatsoever, I just don’t see it myself.

From my perspective on this — where is there to travel? It’s just a bunch of open air and clouds, and some other guild ships. That’s not exciting to me. The only noticable feature would be the terrain below us, but even then, it would pretty much just be the world map, which is precisely as interesting to me as opening the “M” menu on a character. There just isn’t anything worth seeing there.

So, what’s the purpose of it? What can you do on this air map that you can’t do elsewhere, and why? That’s what a lot of the Guild Hall discussion has boiled down to, so I think it’s a good question.

It can have many purposes. But one of the nice things is that you see other ships fly by even if you fly without direct goal.

Also you could make dynamic events in that sky-map. Dragons that come up would come to mind. (those events might then reward you a place on the real map if they would do a mix of both systems) Or maybe you like PvP and like to fight each other on the ship.

With you alliance guilds you could fly in (or form) a formation. It would give more possibilities as a guild-hall stuck in one place on the ground don’t you think? And where else would you expect those air-ships to be? I would think, in the air. Just flying around.

daft inquisitor.1605:

As you said, it’s an issue of height. I would rather see the Airships themselves be distinguishable from the ground. I mean, Guilds want their presence to be seen in the world, right? If your airship is miles up, how are you going to be able to even tell its your guild’s airship?

I see the ships being much lower to the ground — maybe on par or just a tad higher than some of the climable mountains in zones. I would want to be able to see details — heck, I would want to be able to wave to other players (from the ground/nearby cliff) if they’re standing on the deck of the ship.

“how are you going to be able to even tell its your guild’s airship?” How I envisioned it: As guild you would start with unlocking your basic guild-hall airship. This has everything you need including things to expand your guild-hall.

At the bottom (so looking from the ground) there is the guild-emblem.
So this is what you would always see from the ground and for the most basic guild-hall it would be everything you would see from the ground. When building (basically around this basic part) you can make any shape you want. From the ground you would see that shape (and the colors). You would not see the full model.

Shape and emblem shows it’s your ship.

But guild-halls are still completely visible in the sky-map itself.

In your interpretation they would also only be visible if you would be in that same map.

So from a presence viewpoint that would not change, in fact it would be visible for more people in the way I envisioned it.

Not to say there can not be some mix of the two. Maybe you can sometimes dock into a map? there has been talk about that. then you ix the two interpretations.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

It should not be so hard really. It’s similar to having a party-member. If you look at the map you see where he is on the map even while he is in another instance. Now add the model information to it and you got all the information you would need here.

Except, if you actually want to have details show up, you’re going to have to poll everything that’s happening in that map. All the players, all the enemies/events that are going on, etc. Because I think that would be a big thing, people would want to look down from the airship and actually see what’s happening in real-time.

Which, again, is why it would make more sense to just have it in the same instance as the map itself. I personally don’t see a reason to make this magical “high atmosphere” zone just for airships — It would be a big resource burden all on its own, especially if it’s supposed to bridge the entirety of the continent all at the same time. That would be insanity.

I think we have a misunderstanding on the hight.
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/thumbnail.php?img=media/2011_AF6_FF_F11_10387PR_1267828237_6919.jpg&size=a

This is sort of how Tyria would look like below. Everything happening on the ground would simply be to small to see. So because of that there is no need to send all the information. And the other way around. Guildhalls would be very big so you would see them but still see them very small (so no need for a full 3D model to be rendered).

“Which, again, is why it would make more sense to just have it in the same instance as the map itself.” That would in fact create much more problems because now all the information needs to be communicated ver that map. Now there really are multiple new models in the sky (the air-ships but also the players on it) and you would have a problem with the available space what would be way more limited this way.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

You have not followed the whole thread? One of the popular suggestions was guild-halls as air-ships. And those would then be placed in sky-maps high above Tyria.

Oh, I have. I think it’s a terrible idea. Okay, to be fair it’s not entirely terrible, but some of the implications are . . . questionable, in my mind.

You would see Tyria below you (representation of the map) and the information (model and location air-ship_ from a sky-map are being send to normal maps so on the ground so you would see guild-ships high high really high in the sky.

Sort of like this. One of my big oppositions to mounts any time it comes up (and if anyone decides to start talking about mounts off this, I will find you) is how it could negatively affect performance. I think a couple hundred guild ships parked over Cursed Shore would be just the sort of negative impact on performance I’d be scared of.

So the inside of your guild-hall would be instanced and the outside would not

But then what is ‘inside’. If I build it my self I would be able to not build any walls so basically do not have an inside.

And exhibit A on how the players will break any idea within four hours no matter how you intend it to be. (No, that’s not necessarily a shot at you – I think a ‘glade’ type guild hall might be interesting, but it would sorta kinda break the idea of a guild hall as . . . well . . . a hall.)

As for exhibit B . . . airships so far have been largely lighter-than-air craft when larger than a fishing boat in size, and have had a relatively sparse size even on the Glory of Tyria from the end of the game. I can’t imagine guild ships would be that much bigger . . .

And before someone brings up the Breachmaker, remember the interior was largely there as part of a mechanism to keep it running. And there’s no idea exactly how it was designed in the first place. With highly limited mobility, from the implications of its design and only two uses.

About the air-ships.

They would not litteraly be in the sky, it would be a seperate sky-map (that covers the hole of Tyria not just one map). That sky map would then send information to a ground-map it get’s linked to and all it has to do is send a model of the ship (this can be extremely optimized, only giving the information needed so would you would see from below and it could even be 2D so like a texture.) and the location.

The ground-map then shows those high in the sky (like how you would see a air-plain in the sky in real-life.. when not living next to a airfield).

That should really not be so much information that it would cause for lag or other performance issues. Even with well over 100 of them.

“a ‘glade’ type guild hall might be interesting, but it would sorta kinda break the idea of a guild hall as” It’s what you have to think of when people can create there own guild-halls. You can not force them to have a true / hidden inside.

“airships so far have been largely lighter-than-air craft when larger than a fishing boat in size, and have had a relatively sparse size even on the Glory of Tyria from the end of the game.”

When I think of GW2 air-ships there are two things that come to mind (for me) the Zephyr Sanctum and the air-castle in Kessex Hills. So it looks like size and gravity don’t matter that much in Tyria. Meaning guild-halls could be huge and heavy.

daft inquisitor.1605:

Devata.6589:

You would see Tyria below you (representation of the map) and the information (model and location air-ship_ from a sky-map are being send to normal maps so on the ground so you would see guild-ships high high really high in the sky.

(not that you could jump of and land on the map or anything like that)

In that case it would make sense your air-ship would be able to fly in that sky-map.

I see this as being much less feasible than having a guild airship “parked” in the sky on a map. It’s much easier to have an airship be a part of a map than to constantly pull an update an “image” of the map — especially going two ways (both having the guild hall pull the image of the zone, and then having the zone pull the image of the guild hall).

It should not be so hard really. It’s similar to having a party-member. If you look at the map you see where he is on the map even while he is in another instance. Now add the model information to it and you got all the information you would need here.

Also the sky map would not need much information from the ground map, it just shows a map of Tyria far below so don’t need any of that information. Maybe the weather from the map to show correct clouds and so on but it’s possible that the weather system is done by another server / part of the server software. Not by the map. (in that case the ground map would not need to send any information to the sky-map)

All the sky-map would need to send to the linked ground-map would be the models of the air-ships and the location of them on the world-map.

With that information the ground map would then be able to visualize the air-ships high in the sky. (there are optimizations possible like not sending the whole model but only what you would see from below).

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m playing devils advocate and list some thoughts about why airships would be a bad idea (actually I like the idea, but I see some problems):

• no open world events around the airships (unless your ship is docked somewhere in a open world zone) —> non-guild players would have little interaction with the airships. (?!)
• difficult to show off your “guild hall” since the airships will probably be only visible when docked (?!).
• no wide open areas but tight spaces (which would be bad when thinking about GW2’s current camera-problems).
• little nature surroundings but mostly techy stuff – little room for non-hall like areas like clearings. (and I’m not talking about flying Sylvari tree ships).
• race specific Sylvari and airships don’t go well together. Not every race is tech-themed. Ground Halls on the other hand can have a huge variety of looks.

Let my try to tackle your reservations.

• no open world events around the airships (unless your ship is docked somewhere in a open world zone).

Why not. If I’m correct the PS ends with a events where you attack a dragon from a zeppelin (that is an air-ship) and if we would have PvP / WvW air-maps guilds might fight each other. It would require new type of open world events (in the air) but it would be possible.

-non-guild players would have little interaction with the airships. True, they would only see them high above them in the sky. Maybe that gets them to join a guild and be part of it. You are playing Guild Wars so..

- * difficult to show off your “guild hall” since the airships will probably be only visible when docked (?!).

No, you are in a sky-map I would think you would be able to fly your air-ship so fly by other guild-halls (air-ships) meaning you see many many air-hips / guild-halls. In addition people on the ground maps would be able to see the bottom of your air-ship. That would be less interesting but you could give it a nice shape and have the guild-emblem there. (on the bottom of you basic guild-hall every guild starts with).

- no wide open areas but tight spaces (which would be bad when thinking about GW2’s current camera-problems).

Air-ships could be pretty huge. Much bigger then guild-halls on the ground (if open world). You have a lot of space in the air you see. And because you are very very high up what people on the ground would see is still small.

• little nature surroundings but mostly techy stuff – little room for non-hall like areas like clearings. (and I’m not talking about flying Sylvari tree ships).

You are already gave your own answer. It would be very possible to have nature. The castle in Kessex Hills in on a huge rock with grass on it. There could be tree’s and mobs and whatever you place there. Make it indeed more Sylvari style.

• race specific Sylvari and airships don’t go well together. Not every race is tech-themed. Ground Halls on the other hand can have a huge variety of looks.

Like I said before you can build it exactly the way you want. No race is really linked to airships. And in Caledon forest there are floating rocks so that might fit after-all. Also we did came across a group of people who did use airships. Story-wise you could easily say that the races from Tyria did look at that and decided they would also start building air-ships..

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

(3/4) Fairly simple; you splice the two together. Let there be an exterior Hall Grounds, and an interior Hall Chambers. The Grounds can be public areas for people to visit in, but the interior is instanced and only available via permissions granted. There, now you have both open world and instanced world and can plan accordingly.

I did think of this before but then dismissed it again because if you would build your guild-hall that means you could have garden, your whole guild-hall could be a garden.
So people walking / flying by can look in your guild-hall.

. . . flying by? What? We have flight now?

But you have misunderstood my intent. Have you played Morrowind? For the sake of discussion let me paint the picture of what I mean. There is, in that game, places like fortresses which have an interior ‘cell/instance’ and an exterior which is on the world map. The exterior can be climbed, walked on, and at least one of them has a courtyard where guards mill about. The interior is where most of the merchants and such are.

So that’s more what I was envisioning; there’s a guild hall outside which can be visited with permissions (for instance: Guild > Guild Hall > Allow Access > Exterior > All) but the inside is only available to members (Guild > Guild Hall > Allow Access > Interior > Members). Or in some cases, only officers . . . why stop at letting the permissions be half-done?

But then it would be strange that you never see any people in it.

If it’s like my experiences in WvW, you never see people in it either, said people are usually busy training around capturing paper towers or trying to ninja the keeps.

. . . flying by? What? We have flight now?

You have not followed the whole thread? One of the popular suggestions was guild-halls as air-ships. And those would then be placed in sky-maps high above Tyria.

You would see Tyria below you (representation of the map) and the information (model and location air-ship_ from a sky-map are being send to normal maps so on the ground so you would see guild-ships high high really high in the sky.

(not that you could jump of and land on the map or anything like that)

In that case it would make sense your air-ship would be able to fly in that sky-map.

—

So the inside of your guild-hall would be instanced and the outside would not

But then what is ‘inside’. If I build it my self I would be able to not build any walls so basically do not have an inside.

In WvW I see people inside castle (on the walls) and in keeps all the time. And thats with a wall blocking half of my view what would not have to be the case if I would build a guild-hall myself. Or maybe with glass walls.

Because I did feel most of the negatives for instances would be more of technical difficulty I did read up all the post.

The valid pro’s (from a game perspective, not technically) for instanced guild-halls that I came across where the following.

Instanced halls would keep the open world from being cluttered with them.

While it would not have to be true for the sky-maps if we would have ground maps those maps with guild-halls would likely indeed be cluttered with them.

- Allows for much larger structures, I can’t imaging vigil keep/claw island sized structures being placed everywhere in the open world.

Just true, Open world guild-halls would be limited. Even while airships could be massive they will be limited while instanced would not really have to be limited in sice.

Your guild could control permissions on the map.
Easily coordinated zone theme.

Yes, but then again, you could set permissions for you plot / guildhall so I do not know how that would change a lot.

- Allow guilds to summon world bosses to their map using the system developed for Teq/Wurm/Karka. Expand the system for all world bosses.

While I think this would also be hard to instanced guild-halls the unlimited size (mentioned before) would possible allow for this sort of things.

- Map theme.
Yeah you could pick a instance in a theme and so everything (how far you look) would be in that theme. Open world would not allow that but would allow your guild-hall to still be build in any theme you like.

If anybody feels like I ‘ignored’ his positive for instanced guild-halls (of none technical reason) just react on this post. Maybe I read over it or else I can explain why I did not see it as a positive for instanced guild-hall.

Iason Evan.3806:

• No fixed or grid placement. They are terrible when compared to the freedom that free placement offers you.

No requirement to use a grid but the grid as option I would think is good. Just to lint up things better.

JonPeters.5630:

Torsailr.8456:

Hi Chris,
I have a bit of a tangential question.

How feasible would it be for Anet to develop an editor for players to develop their own guild hall layouts? Is it beyond the scope of things you want to consider?

What you expect to be able to edit?

I would expect to be able to build the guild-hall with predefined building block. Just like if you would walk over the outer wall of Stone Mist the hole wall is based on basically 4 (out of my head) different blocks.

Place such blocks on top / behind (whatever) each other. Building would be much like placing siege in WvW but it would be needed to see a preview (partly transparent) before placing and move that around a little, preferably with the help of a (3D) grind for easy alignment. (imagine placing two arrow cards in WvW next to each other with the wheels perfectly against each other. The current system makes that nearly impossible, the additions I gave here should make that possible.. And of course it should also be able to break down a block again.

Those blocks or models could be anything, from a wall to a plant to a door to a chair to a visual guild-calendar, to a portal, to a water-bucket and so on and so on.

So in that way you would be able to edit the space you have to build your own guild-hall.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

(3/4) Fairly simple; you splice the two together. Let there be an exterior Hall Grounds, and an interior Hall Chambers. The Grounds can be public areas for people to visit in, but the interior is instanced and only available via permissions granted. There, now you have both open world and instanced world and can plan accordingly.

I did think of this before but then dismissed it again because if you would build your guild-hall that means you could have garden, your hole guild-hall could be a garden.
So people walking / flying by can look in your guild-hall.
But then it would be strange that you never see any people in it. And even if Anet would design the guild-hall this would also force them to basically build a closed structure to prevent this. It would basically be like a WvW keep but as soon as you walk into the door you get in an instance. That means no interaction both ways. You can’t see people standing on the wall in the keep.

JonPeters.5630:

I wanted to dig into the instanced vs non-instanced debate a bit.
~

• What do people see as the benefits of instanced?

Personally I don’t see any from a game-play perspective but I think the most hearth reason for instanced guild-halls is to prevent technical difficulty that come with open world guild-halls. It would be an easy solution to solve space issues, privacy (blocking out map-chat), max number player per map, mega-server issues, ghost-towns and would because of that speed up development time a lot meaning a faster release of guild-halls.

• What do you see as the benefits of open world guild halls?

-Immersion, you would walk to your guild-hall or at least see it in the open world in stead of loading to it and never really see it in the game itself.

-With guild-halls in the open world you also give guilds more a place in the game. Now they are this separate entity but with guild-halls in the open world you would visually see “Guilds are a part of this game”.

-Guild-halls would be much more a representation of the guild. When in an instance it might still be personalized to the guild but it’s not really representing the guild because representing to who? Nobody sees it (except if you invite people).

-Prestige, Because people see it it would be more reason and more rewarding for guilds to make the best looking guild-hall out there.

-Because of the above it would also be more of an incentive and a goal for guild and to keep working on. Sure it’s nice to have a guild-hall in an instance but if nobody sees it why bother much when you have all the convenience stuff unlock.

• How could we get the benefits of instanced guild halls in a system of open world guild halls?

I think for many of the problems that come with open world guild-halls (and so are a benefit for instanced guild-halls because you don’t have those problem) there are solutions. Most have already been given in this thread. I will use some of them with the examples I gave as benefits of instanced.

- Space issues: Saving space on the world map and then dynamically creating new maps when needed. Sky-maps for air-ship guild-halls that represent the sky over Tyria, technically those maps might be able to be much bigger because there is less in them (I don’t know what is technically limiting map space.) and there could be multiple instances of those sky-maps. A guild-hall would then be in an instance just as a player is not in an instance of a map.

- Privacy: Being able to block map-chat in the guild-hall. (Same for keeping normal chat inside)

- Max number player per map: Here the question is if number of players are a problem and if they are why? Without that information I would not be able to come up with an easy solution. However technically I would think it’s possible that different ‘servers / objects / threads’ would handle the information about players. In that way number of players would not have to be a problem for a map.

- Mega-server issues: Sky maps would not have this issue, you would simply also load into the instance of the map where your guild-hall is. Because you fly and the guild-hall changes instance once in a while (because a map gets to empty or it spawns in a new instance when guild-members get online) you would still be able to come across all different guild-halls of all different guilds.

For ground-maps this would be a little more of a problem but it would be possible to also load a player in based on the instance where his guild-hall is. However because this would be much less likely to change you would always see the same guild-halls (of other guilds) and not come across all the guild-halls. So it would be more like a guild-hall neighborhood instance then an real open world idea.
So the sky-maps would give a better idea of real open world guild-halls.

- Ghost-towns In sky-maps your space-ship guild-hall simply despawns whenever there is no guild-member online and spawns again as soon as a members of the guild logs in again.
For ground maps, you would lose your plot (not the guild-hall) if a guild go’s inactive.

Speed: I guess open-world maps will always take some extra work while I do think the sky-maps would not have to take extreme much more work then building a normal instance. The extra would would be to send some information from the sky-map to the normal map and the other way around.

• How could we get the benefits of open world guild halls in a system where guild halls are instanced?

Well I did try to find things that where pretty unique to open-world guild-halls so I would almost say, not. However there have been suggestions to have guild-halls in instances but sometimes spawn them in the open world. This would get back much of those benefits because in that case your guild-hall might be in the open-world.

Vix.6730:

Iason Evan.3806:

Trent.5201:

We saved up 2 million influence just to spend on guild halls!!!

This is exactly why Influence or being in a big guild shouldn’t be the “gate” for building or upgrading a guild hall.

Exactly. This type of carrot would either 1) Kill smaller guilds or 2) Force smaller guilds to merge. With Anet these days you never know, but this is an obvious pitfall to avoid.

Gathering blueprints to form guild halls is a good idea. It shouldn’t be based on chance, rather a reward for killing a boss or completing a meta-event.

For the more important ones I agree it should be a reward / unlock for doing something specific like killing a boss or completing a dungeons and so on. But I can imagine there are many many many different type of walls and doors and windows and chairs and decorations and so on available. Imho they would be fine to just randomly (so rng) drop.

That would however still then drop in specific places! so if you want a specific one you know you can do that specific content and should be able to get that soon enough. No general world drops that means you can’t work directly towards them.

Torsailr.8456:

I’m not sold on the idea of blueprints being drops but if they are the most likely method of handling them would be the same way things like Letters of Commendation are handled. They drop as soul/account bound and you use them on whatever guild you’re currently repping.

In theory you could run a dungeon with Guild A, get a blueprint and use it on Guild B. But if you did that I’m sure others in Guild A would be quite unhappy with you. I believe anyone running a guild dungeon would use any blueprints found on it with that guild.

Thats exactly how I envisioned them. Unlocks directly send to the guild where that would make sense (like how achievements work) and when it are item drops they would work as how now Letters of Commendation work. Those ones would be the ones that would not require guild specific things.

Indeed the negative is that people would then be able to use it on another guild when going to rep another guild (maybe not a huge problem but it might also mean the blue-prints become not special anymore). What I would try to do however (if the loot system allows it) was to only drop something for your guild if it’s not unlocked yet. This should not increase the drop change (if Blueprint x would have dropped but it’s already unlocked you just get nothing.. not blue-print Y or another roll) . Doing it this way would prevent having a lot of blue-prints and repping other guilds for a moment to unlock it for them (because your main guild already has it) and so making blue-prints nothing special because everybody has a lot of them. I just don’t know if the loot system allows for that.

It might be even better if you don’t get it as a item but it unlocks directly for the guild you now represent. This would also prevent that blue-prints would not be special because everybody gets them and gives them to guilds who need them.