Guild Wars 2

Well judging from past CDIs it’s quite realistic, we talked about horizontal progression and zone progression before we got DryTop, a map that realised many ideas from that thread.

looking at the guild CDIs I’d assume they are working on more guild-content and content for larger groups (as they recently hired a raid designer).

Mike said:

when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

would it be against the policy to talk about what you think is important for the game and the community? Your priorities?

I mean, even if there may be some cancelled development, we could be sure that it’s still important for Anet and that they are probably working on it.

DDCarvalho.2071:

But I agree with your idea that the design decision of the game is that people do focused content to get specific rewards (as much as World drops don’t fit the bill).
Maybe, instead of those tracks being fed by level-80 level ups, they would be content-specific (but I still want to use my level-80 level ups to something :P)
Like, you only progress on the Teq track if you kill Teq (and maybe some neighbouring events?), only get Kryta progress while completing events on Kryta, and so on.

Now, while I like the tracks, I have never completed one… Do they give a “choice” of reward on the end? Or is it RNG-based?
For example, in the AC track, in the end you get a choice of equipment, like the Ascended boxes, or a random ascalonian equipment?

You get some champion boxes during the track (here in sPvP magic find works on these boxes but I heard some disappointed voices that it doesn’t make a huge difference) and at certain intervalls you get a weapon box from that dungeon and at the end an armor box from that dungeon. From the wiki:

“Every two tiers of a reward track, players may choose a weapon and will be given 60 dungeon tokens. Completing a reward track gives a total of 240 dungeon tokens. At the end of a reward track a player may choose a single piece of armor associated with the dungeon.”

I like the idea about reward tracks only working when you’re in the zone for that track. It would be very similar to a zone currency like the geodes in DryTop. The geodes have the advantage that you can choose what to spend your currency on, contrary to reward tracks where the rewards are a given.

That’s why I’m a supporter of zone/region currency in each zone – with specific rewards. You could also let some dungeon-tokens drop from events. This would give people access to dungeon-weapons and armors who don’t like to play with 4 other people. Now that we have reward tracks for dungeon gear in sPvP I have no problem getting them from doing open world events in the specific zones. People who get 1-2 tokens per gold-event would also feel an incentive to get the rest of the tokens by doing dungeon-runs.

Meglobob.8620:

I have played 1,500-2,000 hrs of GW2, NEVER HAD A PRECURSOR DROP, you should be ashamed of yourself John Smith for such a crap reward system.

Talking like this to a dev who takes the time to discuss with us a concept is NOT OK. They have far more variables to consider than we would know, so keep your respect and talk like a grown up.

Harper.4173:

My opinion is that the 2.5 system is the best one. A token system allows players to track their own progress thus creating incentive to keep going. Even if it’s slow and hard to get to it’s still better than just waiting with nothing going for you.

After I saw the “Extra Credits” clip linked above I’m not so sure anymore. Token drops would feel really underwhelming and the progress would just feel like a huge grind.

I’m have no idea about a good alternative, but this one seems to be one which doesn’t feel very rewarding.

We have to ask ourselves: Whad does feel rewarding? Well, if you accomplish something that you can’t do easily, then you feel rewarded for living up to the challenge. Does this mean that we should only fight champions to get the good loot-drops? I don’t think so. What if the medal system (for events) would have more shades and would recognize “good play”? What if a better medal would reward you with drops at a higher temporary magic find value? How could we measure good play?

Ohoni.6057:

I think if more zones had their own currency though it would just spread the players too thinly, and most zones would not be as fun to play in for the time necessary to build up the currencies.

I don’t think this would happen with Megaservers. Quite the contrary I believe: instead of having 6 or 7 versions/Megaserver-maps of Orr, where everyone farms the best stuff, people would go from Orr to the other zones which would get more crowded and Orr would still have enough players for 1-2 full maps.

Kamikae.9536:

if the gem->gold and gold->gem systems are eliminated which I believe needs to be done

The trading post’s items are generated with the idea in mind that people turn their gold into gems. Imagine the outcry if every armorset in the gemstore can only be bought for real money. Horrific.

Wheatty.1892:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4

This is a great video that every developer should see. It describes also the feeling I have about dragonite ore and all the salvageable items in the game you get 99% of the time something drops.

Just because it might be better for us players it doesn’t have to feel better for us. Getting the epic sword feels just much better than getting some crafting mats over time to craft the epic sword.

On the other hand it contraticts the common voice here which wants tokens in order to craft the precursor with those after a while. I’m not so sure anymore if this would be a good thing. Personally I’d prefer a fleshed out scavenger hunt which let’s you have various such “I got a great reward” moments.

I would be interested in the priority ranking Anet has. What are their top priorities currently?

It would have probably been less toxic if they had announced that their top priority is the new player experience… months ago. We players would have also had the chance to give suggestions, maybe a CDI on this topic… We would have known what to expect with the next feature patch.

If they are currently focussing on Guild Halls, Raids and GvG it’s exactly the way I imagine… because those CDIs are happening currently (and will happen soon) and devs can collect a lot of our ideas and things they don’t like in those CDIs.

Anet could say: it’s very likely that you will see one of the 3 topics currently talked about in the CDIs adressed in our next 2 feature-patches. Other top priorities are X, Y and Z and these might take the place if our schedule shifts. We will keep you informed about our priority shifts and the reasons about those.

Zaxares.5419:

I don’t mind the general idea, but I REALLY don’t want yet more currency tokens to fill my bank with. >.>

well, we have the account-wallet for that

DDCarvalho.2071:

A mechanic like I suggested (leveling up while 80 leading to rolls with ever-increasing luck) would give back some of the sense of achievement.

Well it would happen wether you actively work on getting that profession or not – it would feel like the WvW-reward chests. I don’t like this fact. Imho progression should be only made when you decide to actively work on something, else everyone gets one for free for just playing long enough.

DDCarvalho.2071:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I like the “reward tracks” we got with DryTop: Geodes from zone-wide events that unlock new vendor-stuff.

I also like the scheme we have with Dry Top, that rewards participation of the individual and organization of the zerg. Still, don’t know how it could be applied to world drops like precursors…

What if you have a zone-currency like geodes in every zone. You get the zone currency for completing events in that zone. A precursor could require 6 different zone currencies, e.g. you need the clay pot from dry top, the “item xy” from another zone, etc.

This way it would feel a bit like Mawdrey II (collecting parts in various places in order to put them together to the precursor), maybe without the time gating (but making the parts non-tradeable and having some parts well hidden in a few random locations, like the scavenger hunt we had during one of the season 1 events),…

I like the “reward tracks” we got with DryTop: Geodes from zone-wide events that unlock new vendor-stuff.

daft inquisitor.1605:

What good would it really do?

Much more frequent exciting and relevant drops compared to ascended drops.
Also it adds a small progression for people who care. You can work on something that doesn’t take ages or tons of money.

sometimes I wish there would be exotics with stats between exotic- and ascended level, which drop exclusively in the world/wvw and are untradeable and accountbound. Not with standardised stats but more varied stats-distribution – and of course new skins. This small vertical progression would make loot much more interesting if you ask me, and the loot-table would be significantly bigger.

Alternatively there could be exotics with standardised lv.80 stats but exclusive characteristics (like salvageable weapon-effects that can be applied to other weapons, like dripping water, a bit smoke,…) which are untradeable and only drop from world-drops. Something that makes you look forward to get an exotic via world-drop, instead of selling it for 1-2gold.

Why? Because I think there needs to be more relevant loot for long-time lv.80 players who are working on their ascended gear/legendary. Almost everything I get as drop equals a bit of more silver for me…

when I’m thinking about new rewards, I don’t want anything that adds a bit of coin to my wallet. I want something I can use on myself.

“magicfind makes a huge difference”

I’d like to add that the feeling of being rewarded by a higher MF depends. Open world drops are rarely interesting imho. You get blues/greens/yellows which are mostly salvage-fodder for lv.80 players and exotics are quite rare and not that interesting for a long-time lv.80 player who has his crafted exotic-set since week 2 of being lv.80. The interesting drops are ascended boxes (too rare) and precursors. Both you’ll probably never see in your first year playing GW2 casually, even with 300+ MF.

The more interesting drops – interesting skins like the champion box weapons etc. aren’t open world drops. These drop from champion boxes which don’t work with magic find. (and I don’t count crafting mats to “interesting drops”)

TL;DR: better MagicFind won’t make players feel more rewarded. That’s my honest opinion, but others migth feel very different.

Labjax.2465:

I’m curious, what’s the reasoning behind MF only applying to monster drops?

me too, why does it apply to champion boxes in sPvP but not to boxes in PvE?

It may make a huge difference in numbers when you look at statistics, but it hardly feels like that for single players (at least for me)… imho.

contrary to munkiman I love the ambrite drops compared to the mystic forge. You get something while actually doing something in the world. The drops aren’t too bad either, got my first one after a few chests. Even if the droprate would be bad, you’d still have to play the game to get the keys in order to unlock the chests. This is imho good game design.

The mystic forge on the other hand is just a playground for (mostly) players who already play little open world vs. trading post. If you have tons of money you can buy tons of stuff which you throw in the mystic forge. I rarely get enough rare greatswords in a short time in order to try my luck on dusk/dawn. It takes time to get 4 of the same rare weapons in the world, in the trading post… not so much.

What I don’t like is the part the trading post plays in this.

Take for example champion loot weapons. These are so rare that you rarely see one of them drop yourself. If you want one, it’s much more realistic to farm the money to buy it on the trading post than to fight monsters.

I imagine: IF those weapons would be account-bound, we would see much more drops of these weapons from monsters. —> you feel more rewarded for doing specific game-content instead of farming the most efficient content to buy it. There might be a problem that would come up with account bound drops: you get weapons you don’t want/need. A possible solution would be to make these account-bound weapons salvageable into mats that could create the desired weapon with the right components.

in short: the tradeable nature of drops might change the fun we have in aquiring those drops. Not sure if I’m right with this hypothesis.

Edit: LordHogFred beat me to it, I totally support him.

top 3

• new playable content should be also accessible to non-guild members. Not everyone likes to be part of a big guild, some enjoy playing with random people. Guild Missions currently alsmost get it right imho – but players who participate get no guild-currency out of it. I’m thinking in terms of guild-guesting. Become a temporary guild-member for a short time and earn your guild-merits etc.

• Available to any guild-size – including 1man-guilds. I’m tinking of making content scaleable. The more members enter an area, the more parts are added to the guild-mission. Some missions might get easier this way, but the reward should mirror this difficulty.

• scaling of requirements according to guildsize/average active members. I’m not happy that being in a 100man guild makes getting upgrades trivial. Everybody should have the feeling of meeningful contribution. Not necessarily for all the others but maybe for personal services in the guild.

Shinzan.2908:

2 week release schedule doesn’t work as an excuse when they keep taking months long breaks.

the months are great for polish the content, too many bugs and too thin content without the additional work. I’m happy to see quality content like current season 2, it’s just a bit too much of the same (only missions and a map) compared to season 1 (world boss, dungeon, story mission, jumping puzzle, map, …)

…but it’s not over yet.

Ohoni.6057:

If they want to incentivize players to run various content, they should do so in a way that does not involve traits.

I disagree, they did this in GW1 (whole skills were locked behind bosses in the world) and it worked great as horizontal progression.

It was just executed badly, lower tier traits unlockable in higher level areas… not so ideal. Personal story requirement… not so ideal. etc. Unlocking traits for the whole account would have also been nice, since playing alts is something a lot of people (have to) do nowadays.

hmm Colin suggested a kind of sticky where devs post their updates about ongoing thoughts/changes… not sure anymore. Are there any updates about this, Gaile?

this would probably help getting such infos in sight of everyone

edit: found the post/thread:

Colin Johanson:

This is a thread to discuss the idea of adding a sticky to the top of each of the big forum threads (PvP, dungeons, WvW, General discussions, etc.) where we help provide a very high level list of stuff the Gw2 Dev team is aware of with the game, and what questions/thoughts we’re giving those areas to help guide your discussions – and provide visibility into the very top tier stuff we’re aware of.

Feedback on just the idea itself as a concept please, thank you!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Brainstorm-Key-Discussion-Points/first#post4328508

The community is pretty in unison with the idea about transparency as I can see from the posts here and in older reddit posts. Now it looks like it would be the easiest thing to change: just talk.

There has to be a reason why Anet has decided to stay in secrecy, and I’m not sure if it’s “only” because of earlier announcements that couldn’t fit into the schedule and the resulting community-feedback (mostly the outcry of the vocal minority).

I know they can’t spoiler the story, but I think talking about design-choices is kind of another beast.

I really love what they do with the CDIs and I’m an active contributer there (it’s really fun and constructive nowadays) but not knowing about future plans drains a bit of motivation for me personally.

Building hype isn’t always a good thing, but imho sometimes it’s needed. Especially during longer breaks. We just need more things to talk about, long for and dream about, guys.

I love the implementation of the first set of champion weapons (those which drop rarely from champion bags/boxes,…).

Some people (me for example) think that there could be more reward in the open world, since most of the time drops are quite underwhelming. What if Anet “simply” (sorry) introduces set 2 of those champion weapons. The chance to get one of those would be doubled (as there are twice as many in the loottable) and we would have a higher variety in weapons available.

so this posts goal was to give a feedback about the champion-weapons. I really loved the first set. Having non-set weapons as drops with specific names also increases the “personality” of those weapons if you ask me (see the Legendary weapons like Glamdring, Narsil, etc. in the Lord of the Rings series).

What do you think?

I think the issue about precursor-crafting could have been handeled with transparency. It’s not a story-spoiler and people are already waiting for it, because the rng is a problem for many who don’t have the cash/time to gather those huge amounts of gold.

I liked how Anet stated that it had to be delayed because of the new wardrobe, but why not be a bit more specific? Why not state some problems that came up during development? Why not state (if that was the case) that the final version just wasn’t fun enough and has been completely scratched? Mawdrey II and collections look like these could be a part of a precursor scavenger hunt, why not discuss this with the players a bit?

Personally I think that the secrecy about this topic drains hope about ever getting precursor crafting. Naysayers repost the old posts where we heard about precursor crafting and sell it as "Anet isn’t listening / is breaking promises / …) which could be avoided imho.

My suspicion (as I heard about communication problems inside the team) would be that a single dev. is working on this, but didn’t get the memo about all the general changes to the item system… so the wardrobe, collections, etc. interfered with the development on p.c. and that’s why we haven’t seen any of it until now. I might be totally wrong.

(what would be fine for me: just announce that p.c. has been canceled and a new way to aquire precursors for the next new legendaries is been worked on. At least it would be something.)

Artemis Thuras.8795:

no idea if this was bought up yet.
Testing dummies. I’m bored of having to test in the heart of the mists, where there is so many people competing for a spot on a dummy.

Yeah, I brought this up when I was talking about Alts as npcs for sparring. Either every player would have all his alts in his personal instance as sparring-partners or something like the top-players (in terms of sPvP achievements) would have their Alts as sparring-npcs for everyone in an open guild-area.

It’s like having a little competition amongst the sPvP players in a guild… who has more sPvP achievement-points? Reward: “look at me”

Baltzenger.2467:

Other than that, why don’t you tell us what kind of benefits you would like to se, that are not necessarily focused on the group, but rather on the single player perspective?

Well to break it down I guess I would like to see progress that I as a player have achieved, not having 100people who do this for me.

I like the idea of having a place you call home that really shows this progress unlike our current home instance. I would feel redundant when I’m not doing anything but the progress-bar still grows (because of all the people who make this happen).

I also feel that there has to be a gameplay-outcome of most of the upgrades. I don’t see this when another upgrade unlocks guild-curtains for my guild which will be placed by our guild leaders and co. What would a crafting npc inside the halls be good for other than making cities empty? It’s just convenience and not good enough (imho) for an meaningful upgrade to guildhalls.

The more I think of it, the less appealing seem customizable guild halls to me. Think about a 100man+ guild, or even multiple guilds forming alliances with one common guild hall… and then there’s you, a non-guildleader who has little to no way to customize anything.

Compared to the concept of housing (taking WoW’s garrisons as example) with heavy customization opions, tons of personal things to do in those areas and directly driving your game-progress (even storywise and the higher level progression) guild halls just seem lacking tons of things.

so my question to the guild hall supporters: what specific thing would make you want to be in a guild hall other than hanging around with friends? Why would I care about some crafting NPCs in there, when I’m not interested in looking at people while I’m crafting stuff. Why would you care about some tables, curtains,… that someone from your guild might have put at certain locations? What gameplay value is there?

I love the results of an early Anet appearance on reddit:

http://mmo.blakey.co/detailed

We grew into the second most popular MMO subreddit! Gratulations to Anet and their devs and thanks to their contribution!

would be fun to have a job in the guild-hall, to customize someone elses look… including the dyes on armor and hair/skin color and cut.

BilboBaggins.5620:

I honestly believe that if you don’t want to make it impossible for small guilds to expand, all quality of life components should be fairly easy to get for all guild sizes. Like with the game itself, big coffers and long time spent grinding should be rewarded with cosmetic items.

Large guilds should be able to build large expanses with statuaries and other grand decorations, but the functions of a guild hall should be found in any size guild.

I think only cosmetic rewards for very heavy long-term commitment would feel a bit like a waste of time.

Take the example I posted earlier (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Guild-Halls/page/20#post4470884):

• a upgrade (guild expeditions) would have it’s basic functions early on (npc creates portals to event-locations to many known places every 15 minutes – do event or kill number of enemies to get a “mission completed” and earn guild-ressources)
• players can unlock new locations added to those portals by simply finding and completing them in the world when being in a party with at least 1 other guild member
• higher level unlocks would be more rewarding events / meta events (you get more guild currency for doing the balthasar-chain by using the portal)

You see? Basically unlock a bigger variety of missions/expeditions on higher levels. The activities may be known from normal play (or may not, some portals would lead to less-known / less-frequented events) but offer new rewards by doing them “as a guild” by using the portal in the guild-hall. Long time commitment would see “new” content as rewards.

Doing the Lyssa event through guild-portals may also offer new cosmetic rewards for the guild-members. The expedition-npc could create portals based on Anets metrics of events that haven’t seen many people in the last weeks. I think that rewarding ONLY cosmetics wouldn’t feel as a very fresh experience for people though, just give them something “new” to do here and then.

Veteran xxKILLZORxx may have played since beta and achieved everything, but he may have had no reason to do a Kessex Hills event with a full group until now (e.g. for a new cosmetic, for guild ressources,…)

… to unlock higher level event-portals sooner, people can find rare portal drops by doing these events. Example: A guy finds a blueprint at the Lyssa event, so the guild-adventurer adds the Lyssa event to the portal-collection. This portal may be active randomly in one of the every-15-min-portals and completing the Lyssa event chain when going through the guild-portal may wield new cosmetic rewards as well.

just an idea that came to my mind: “expeditions-category”

GW2’s world is huge and has tons of content already, but how do you bring people from your guild together as easy as possible without losing yourself in too much organisation? What about this:

• An adventurer npc in your guild hall launches “expeditions” every fifteen minutes. He just spawns a portal to a random event-location in Tyria. This might be a bigger event chain, a meta-event chain but also a jumping puzzle (talking to an npc next to the final chest the next half hour = complete, debuff which hinders the use of portals, etc.
• Events in the game are dynamic, so the timing should be right… alternatively there should be some “mission” for you that can also be completed when no event is running (e.g. decimate the grawl population in that area and kill 2 of their leaders (champions/veterans).
• doing these missions (you go through the current portal and kill stuff (either event-stuff or non-event stuff if no event is running) will yield guild-currency you can spend personally as well as another currency you can spend for the guild for upgrades.

This could be a “PvE expeditions” category.
Possible upgrades:

• you start with portals to smaller events / lower level areas
• as you progress you unlock a bigger variety of destinations
• as you progress you unlock buffs which are active for the guild in the destination-areas (like +200% magicfind, enemies hit harder but drop more gold, hardmode scaling (a second portal next to the normal portal which is red)
• as you progress you unlock headhunter missions, a new personal collection which adds named bosses (events spawn named bosses (champions with names) when a guild is around, those named bosses could also be killed by non-guildies alike).

This is stuff for small guilds as well as big guilds. If guilds are huge (300+ players) there could also be an unlock to add a second, third,… portal to the adventurer, so that population spreads better.

JonPeters.5630:

My box is guild upgrades. I want us to brainstorm how we could revamp the upgrade system given the introduction of a feature such as guild halls.

1.) Something that comes to my mind would be a system where you have a specific number of free slots and you have to choose which things you’d put into them – just like the skill-system (3 utility slots but many choices to put into those). This would make guilds relatively unique vs. others.

The bigger the guild – the more variety is available for them via more slots. Small guilds may have only 2 slots (e.g. they specialize on dungeons and sPvP) but it’s not too hard for them to reach the higher tiers in these categories, since their chosen slot-options are designed for small groups.

2.) What if each player could choose 1-2 occupations in the guild hall? He would gain personal reputation and would unlock stuff only specialists on that area could get. This way the huge guild-group would be split into multiple sub-groups which work together for their sub-goals. (e.g. the dungeon-specialists would unlock dungeon portals for their guild, but only on higher level tiers in their sub-paths. Players who play a lot of GvG could unlock new GvG-maps for their guild. They also unlock personal prestige rewards (like costumes) but also stuff for everyone in the guild. etc.)

Not everyone can unlock everything, which would make smaller groups within the guild more meaningful. You would have to specialize, which would be important so that more people are involved in the upgrade-process instead of only a few hardcore players who unlock everything and make the others feel redundant.

(something like TF2’s classes – the more you play with one, the more you can customize your character and the more you can help your team in a variety of ways).

This could go even further: The dungeon team could also have multiple sub-categories, where players can and should specialize. Players who play very supporty (revive a lot, heal a lot) could unlock exotic gear with support-stats for everyone to purchase, while they unlock personal things as well (skins which show off the support-role).

The TLDR here would be: give every player something to specialize in so that this player would feel special in a guild while he unlocks stuff for himself (prestige-items) as well as for the whole group (useful items).

/hugs to Chris

Take all the time you need, Chris! I’m sure we’ll help you get back on track here once you’re back.

The only alternative I can think of is that every player has to get enough reputation in order to use the unlocked upgrades.

I would hate if big guilds have 80% of the members who haven’t done anything to upgrade their guild and small guilds would need effort to upgrade it that takes years.

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.

why would this be unfair??

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

unfair? How so?

I think the most important thing for me personally is that guild halls won’t introduce content which is ONLY available for guilds. I like the current aspect of guild-missions that every player can participate in the guild-event.

I would hate if people would have to join a guild (even though they can’t stand other people) just to experience new content.

Options would be fine. A guild-raid dungeon which can be entirely done by guilds (with the guild-related rewards) as well as the same dungeon open for pugs as well. It’s easy to realize for raids (since those are just dungeons for more people) but it gets tricky when looking at different stuff:

• GvG. How could we implement these battles for solo players as well? Perhaps a player vs. npc szenario on the same map somewhere in the open world? I imagine this working like the breakout events in WvW: 10 – 12 players gather around a npc for 1 minute in order to start the “GvG battle” (=PvNPC battle). You could easily gather people via mapchat or lfg (lf players PvNPC in Magus Falls at 10:30 – 10:40cest).

Why would this be different to events? Because the NPCs here mimic the sparring NPCs in the heart of the mists (don’t know the limitations of this AI, would it be possible to send such npcs on capture/hold events?).

• housing stuff in guild halls: possible for 1man guilds – effort needs to scale on the amount of (active) players in the guild.

GW2s biggest strength so far (imho) is that grouping isn’t needed for most of it’s content. You don’t need to group for Tequatl, just be there when you can. You don’t cripple the group by not being there because the event scales. No need to play on schedule.

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.

• 2.) A bigger variety of guild missions which include a lot of guild missions that are perfect for small party sizes and even solo players (1-5 players). Some people might want to level their own guild without any other players / just their best friends involved, but there is little to do for these guys.

Why not make a 1-player version of the guild bounty where you have to find 1 boss in the world (with much more time available) and can realistically kill the boss on your own?

One of the problems I see with guild halls would be that personal effort could have little impact on the whole guild. The BIG COLLECTIVE gets all the stuff, all the ressources and you – as a player – get everything for “free”.

Proposal Overview
The guild unlocks the “buildings/activities” but the player has to put in effort to make them work for him.

Goal of Proposal
You as a guild member should have an increased feeling of accomplishment and enough to do. The guild might be big enough so that you haven’t done anything in order to create all the upgrades in your guild. Earn the reputation in your guild in order to use the unlocked possibilities.

Proposal Functionality
So your guild unlocked a defense-bunker including some juggernaut-armor which can be worn in close proximity of the hall in order to fight off invading enemies (events). This armor (costume) provides a good bonus to your defensive stats without decreasing your offensive stats, but reduces your stamina regeneration. You can man free turrets and bunkers in your halls.

BUT you can’t access it from the get go. The defense-NPCs won’t let you – you haven’t proven yourself yet. There are a lot of defensive events where you have to be successful in order to earn your reputation to unlock this feature for you.

Associated Risks
Unlocking everything might be too fast, so that it’s really not that satisfying to unlock things in the first place. Each personal unlock should have things you desire. A bad example would be Southsun, where you get Settler’s Gear but everyone who isn’t interested in this gear won’t find much else.

By making it very difficult to unlock stuff for you personally there could be specific roles in the guild for players. A few could become defenders (among a few other things) which would specialize in keeping your halls safe (e.g).

Aidyn.9783:

1. Make Guild Halls expandable, so you can build on them and upgrade them.

2. Allow guilds to pick a “pack” of NPCs, so that all-charr guilds, for example, could pick charr NPCs for their Guild Hall. This also benefits the RP community.

3. Unlock unique, themed decoration packs by completing all-guild runs of each dungeon.

4. Guild Story Quests. This would work like Personal Story Quests, except with your guild. Your guild gets to help out with various problems, maybe even up to fighting an Elder Dragon. It’d be like a new type of Guild Mission.

1.) awesome, I support this. Progress should be visible, halls becoming bigger and have more “slots” for new buildings/activities.

2.) give those NPCs functions too, so that you get a different experience depending on the family of npcs you choose. Charr are very battle-oriented folks, so a warband could go out on an event to hunt down oppressors. An event where every non-guild member could participate but guild members would earn some ressources needed for the fortification of the halls. Humans could start trade-route events etc.

3.) all-guild party rewards: I don’t like that because it punishes non-guild players. LFG… oh, quite an empty queue today. Guild players are the “better” party member. Meh.

4.) I like that one. It’s better than 3.) because you don’t have to have a full party in order to complete a story mission – it scales. Most people, I imagine, do story missions on their own or with just a friend, many forget that you can do them with a whole party. It would be a great incentive to do repeatable story missions (season 2 missions so far) with a full party in order to unlock new stuff for your guild.

CureForLiving.5360:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

Creating a static instance with some nice art pieces scattered about that you can teleport into by clicking a button is the bare minimum, and would frankly just be another home instance (which if not for the resource nodes I wouldn’t ever visit). It being a guild hall the appeal would be to get players working together, create new shared goals etc.

I think you missed some things. Garrisons aren’t like the home instance but they are a big hotspot for new missions/events as well as something that evolves. A small camp will gradually grow into a small town, depending on your doings. You can also find new blueprints for new buildings which all have an effect on gameplay and loot you receive, as well as followers.

Take a look at the posted clip, a lot of things going on in there opposed to our GW2-home instance where basically nothing goes on.

Just an idea that came to my mind when reading about followers in WoD:

When in your personal instance in a guild hall, your Alts will run around as NPCs.

• they can craft for you the things they can.
• you can trade with them player-npc without the need to log off.
• you can take 4 of them with you on your solo missions (like the living story missions)
• you can send them out to gather ressources or complete certain missions which brings you loot.
  etc.

to adapt this for guild-halls:

• the alt of any player (or the top 5) with the highest crafting-achievements will wander around as an npc and will craft things for you, even if you don’t have the profession. (But only if one of your alts has the appropriate crafting level)
• the alt of any player (or the top 5 players) who has the highest points of pvp/wvw achievements will wait as npc in an arena for you to spar with. (the owner can set the traits and weapons for this npc).
• you can choose one alt of your own which follows you around in the guild halls as npc (only visible for yourself and your party!) to trade with and spar with.

This way it could get really fun to create alts in order to immortalize them in your guild-halls.

You could take out the competitive aspect as well and instead of only spawning alts in the top 5 of a category they need a certain requirement to spawn (like mastercrafter, has at least 3 crafting professions active and 100g once).

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.

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.

Kootje.9271:

I just wanna put one concern up regarding guild-sizes. There’s lots of casual players in the game that have a place in a guild. The guild can have 300+ members, of which maybe 50 are active daily players.
Scaling based on the total members would mean, the 50 daily actives would need to pay for having 250 less active/inactive players. Something I would like to see avoided.
Otherwise this could end up meaning less active/temporary inactive players would get kicked…

well it would get a huge problem if a 200-man guild will have to pay the same for upgrades as a two man guild, because it’s horribly unfair towards small sized guilds imho. Maybe a scaling based on the daily/weekly average of logged in players?!

I really like the idea that many zones have 2-3 slots for a guildhall. You can build your guildhall on this spot; when someone occupies that space already you still can, but you can only see your own hall when it’s built. Others see a random guild’s hall. You can set favourites though, so that you’ll always see that specific guild’s hall when you enter the map.

What I’d also like to see is the prices proportional to the size of the guild. A wooden hall would cost 2000 pieces of wood logs for a one player guild and 2000×100 = 200000 pieces of wood for a 100man guild. Bigger guilds will have bigger halls though.

The advantage of this open world guild hall: other players can participate in events, even if not member of that guild. If the hall got damaged from npc-enemies, every player around can donate materials / do events in order to repair the halls. Fully repaired halls and other done objectives might start meta-events on open world bosses etc.