Guild Wars 2

daft inquisitor.1605:

timmyf.1490:

I think the point is that airships are not a particularly creative guild hall option.

You can do as much with an airship guild hall as you could do with a ground guild hall. The only thing limiting it is your imagination.

Personally, I would love a floatilla, a whole fleet of airships tethered together, acting as a guild hall. Each airship would have something different. One could be your crafting stations, one could be a meeting hall, one could be private quarters…

See? I’ve just taken the “boring airship idea”, and did something different with it.

Totally understand what you’re saying, but saying “it’s not just an airship, it could be SEVERAL airships” still doesn’t get me excited.

When Fractals came out, they could have just been unrelated mini-dungeons. Instead, they gave us peeks into semi-historic events, some seen, some yet to be seen. Why shouldn’t guild halls do the same?

This game is best when it brings up that sense of adventure and intrigue. Sure, airships are neat, but we had airships at launch with the Pact. Been there, done that. Guild Halls give us the opportunity to go somewhere new or strange or perplexing. We should be embracing that opportunity!

And sure, airships can be part of it. But if it’s airships and only airships, I’ll be horribly disappointed.

I think the point is that airships are not a particularly creative guild hall option. No offense to people who like airships. Super Adventure Box Guild Hall? Awesome. How about a hall in the hollowed-out body of an Elder Dragon? Awesome. In a volcano? Amazing. Underwater in a dome? That sounds cool. In the catacombs below Divinity’s Reach? Sign me up! Why not a Guild Hall that’s also a huge jumping puzzle? (I hate jumping puzzles, but that’d still be cool.)

The thing that’s irritated me about “airships that float” is that it’s crowded out a lot of really interesting discussion we could be having about other types of guild halls, things that could happen in them (transformed models or armor, effects, SAB-ization, etc).

Varakkys.2490:

Are new classes coming? Don’t know
New abilities/weapons? Don’t know
How long will season 2 last? Don’t know
Will there be a break in season 2 for Xmas/New Year? Probably, don’t know
Will the break be another 3 months? Don’t know
Is the trait revamp being worked on in response to feedback? Don’t know
What happened to the ‘expansion worth of content’ that the Living Story was supposed to deliver? Don’t know
What happened to the super secret project that was being worked on by another team around the time that Living Story’s two week cadence was announced? Don’t know
I could go on and on with this…

I can help you with these. Note that I have absolutely no inside information, I’m just taking a few pot shots. You’re welcome to think otherwise, but I feel pretty confident about these answers.

Probably not. They almost certainly have ideas, but it’s low priority to implement them.
Probably. Expect to see a small number of these that will likely disappoint you with the expansion.
Almost certainly 4 more releases leading up to Christmas. November 4th and 18th, December 2nd and 16th.
Yes. ArenaNet’s last patch will be December 16th because the hard-working folks there deserve a break for the holidays.
I would expect the break to last at least until February, perhaps March.
Yes. Traits have already seen some updates and you can expect some additional small changes (like removing the map completion ones).
It came out. Sorry that you didn’t feel it was enough content.
It’s an expansion. They’re still working on it. It’ll be released When It’s Done™.

Zietlogik.6208:

I vote that Super Adventure Box is an upgrade available for guild halls as well!

Maybe even a super adventure themed Guild Halls as well

>.>

Would pay 2000 gems for SAB guild hall.

Guild Hall/Alliance Hall and separation idea:

What if an Alliance Hall connects the guild halls together? I’ll call it the Main Hall. When you form an Alliance, the Main Hall is free and selectable. Guild Halls are “rooms” that attach to the Main Hall. Unallied guilds can choose their own Main Hall.

Depending on the style of Guild Hall, the room could be either

1) Directly attached to the Main Hall as a room for GHs where this makes sense
2) Floating above the Main Hall as an airship with a ladder or ramp below for airship-style Guild Halls/rooms
3) Accessible through an Asura gate for GHs that aren’t “attachable” to the Main Hall, e.g. GHs in the Mists

When you leave an Alliance, you keep your same Guild Hall/room and get to choose your own Main Hall.

(Obviously the Guild Halls/rooms could have subrooms, it doesn’t need to just be a single room.)

Edit: for fun, examples of Main Halls…

• Main Hall of the Mists – think floating island design… Guild Halls exist on floating islands as well
• Cathedral-styled gigantic hall
• Vexa’s Hall, a version of the Escher-inspired alternating gravity room from Vexa’s Lab
• Tree Hall, a Pale Tree-inspired hall with Guild Halls existing off gigantic branches

I don’t consider Guild Halls which exist within an instance except for a common entrance in the open world to be “open world guild halls,” but those would be acceptable to me so long as their locations are fixed with logical entrance points.

Floating airship guild halls which may be placed throughout the world are not acceptable to me. Floating airship guild halls docked at Fort Trinity or Claw Island would be okay.

(On that note, there really should be a Claw Island guild hall.)

insanemaniac.2456:

guild puzzle is better than challenge at handling large vs small. its perfectly reasonable for a 6 man group to do a puzzle (well… i have to admit i would hate to try the icicle room in the snowden drifts puzzle with only 6). thus, no disparity for that commendation.

Langmar Estate’s picture room called and wants to beat you over the head with player-count gating. :-/

It is rather obnoxious to try to do Guild Missions with 8 or 9 people. You make a good point: there isn’t a consistent “You Must Be This Tall to Ride” with guild activities and that moving target can make it tough for small guilds.

If I need to turn out 8, I can do that. If I need to turn out 15, I need to recruit some more. Player-count gating, if used, should at least be consistent.

I would be shocked if ArenaNet would allow the beautiful landscapes they’ve created to be destroyed by open-world guild halls. That would basically destroy my interest in ever completing open-world PvE content ever again. (Because the primary reason I do open-world content is to game casually while appreciating the aesthetics.) I’ll stick to instances/WvW if that happens, but please: no thanks.

JonPeters.5630:

timmyf.1490:

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

Ok. I think as a good exercise, try and be more specific. If you give specific examples in each category it is a lot easier to extrapolate than if you try and generally describe the categories.

This is sort of difficult because I don’t know what functionality will be coming to Guild Halls, but I’ll try to give a few examples.

Things that small guilds need to be able to access with relative ease (i.e. time-bound):

• Waypoint in Guild Hall/Automatic teleport to GH
• Merchants and other services
• Any content (GvG, for example, or combat practice areas) tied to Halls
• Buffs or boosts tied to Guild Halls

Things that small guilds can put on the “long term” list safely (i.e. cost-bound):

• Additional rooms or larger guild halls
• Guild Halls as an automated Guild Mission launchpad (for example, meet in hall, move all members to new map)
• Any “show off in the open world” functionality of Guild Halls

I think this list covers most of the ideas people have for Halls, but if you think there’s something I forgot, let me know.

Jon-

As the leader of a smallish (5-15 active/day) guild, my primary concern would be gating off access to content or increased rewards. For example, it’s not a big deal if larger guilds have bigger, cooler guild halls. My members will be fine. But if guild halls bring extra/better buffs or rewards, that makes it harder to recruit and retain members.

I think the core functionality should be time-gated, higher-end cosmetics cost-gated and/or activity-gated.

Proposal Overview

Visitor’s Area or Public Room of Guild Halls openly accessible to all players once built/enabled for purposes of recruiting, showing off, etc.

Goal of Proposal

Guilds don’t have a good way to recruit players in-game apart from mapchat. Players who wish to join a guild may not have an easy way to evaluate a guild apart from joining the guild first. Having a Public Room in guild halls could ease the recruiting process for both parties.

Proposal Functionality

The Public Room would be attached to the Guild Hall, though a door with guards would prevent non-representing members from entering (similar to the Royal Terrace guards). The Public Room would contain statues/trophies for the guild to display as well as information about recruiting: a recruiting plaque, perhaps, that players could read.

Guild Halls should incorporate a chat channel which allows for communication with players who are not guild members who visit the Public Room.

The Public Room should be an optional add-on which can be enabled and disabled as the guild leader desires.

There must be kick and block functionality for the Public Room similar to custom PvP arenas.

Associated Risks

Trolling and spamming are the greatest risks, especially between WvW guilds. For that reason, it will be essential for these rooms to be turned off and on as needed. Perhaps a better design would be to allow communication between Visitors and Guild Members only, i.e. block Visitor A from seeing chat from Visitor B.

In for a staff for my Elementalist. Hope you guys who dislike them find something more to your taste in the next set.

Torsailr.8456:

I suppose the questions to ask are, Is the initial build cost important? And why?

This is a great question! Personally, I love the idea of having a guild hall that’s easily within reach for everybody. Perhaps a basic guild hall that you can then upgrade for a cost.

I think the idea of having there be a charge is two-fold: 1) prestige and 2) to limit the number of guild halls for single-man guilds.

Guild Halls might not have a huge performance impact sitting out there empty, but imagine every player has one or two personal guilds, each with a guild hall. That does add up.

Having some sort of minimum player count would help, though you could also potentially invite a bunch of people, get your hall, and kick them. That’s probably not behavior Anet wishes to incentivize.

This always comes to mind. Attached for convenience, linked because I’m not a dirty thief. http://xkcd.com/1425/

Devata.6589:

Lets just stop telling people to not suggest things because they think they can not be done

If Chris thinks it’s productive, then who am I to suggest otherwise? But I would like to clarify – because I think it’s important – that I never personally told people they couldn’t suggest something, merely that I found it unproductive, frustrating, and a waste of time.

But by all means, have at it!

Devata.6589:

“These proposals are the kind that make sense for an MMO 2-3 years from release with a full development team working on them. Not as an add-on for a mature game.”

Well a team is never working on one thing and about it being something for a 2 – 3 years plan.. Well these things have been suggested here on the forums for over 2 years. So that is not really an argument. One would hope and should expect that Anet did pay attention also back then not only at a CDI and so by now they have had time to make much of the elements needed for this. And now that they hopefully already have much of those building blocks a more detailed idea’s can be given here in the CDI for the eventual implementation or changes to what they already have in the background.

People should tell here what they want and expect. Not what they think Anet might be able to create within a few months.

You sure “hope” a lot. Hope is nice, but unless they’ve built a significant codebase for this already – and we’ve seen ABSOLUTELY no indication they have – we’re talking about features here that would take 2, 3, 4 years to develop.

I don’t think that’s the scope ArenaNet intends. But I could be wrong. All the same, you’re welcome to your ideas, and you’re welcome to share them, but if you’re expecting super-customizable halls + player housing, prepare to be disappointed.

The thing you described previously, Devata, the thing you think will disappoint everybody? That’s what I expect we’ll get, more or less.

Ben K.6238:

timmyf.1490:

I get frustrated with the overreaching – Guild Halls as player housing, really? – because making these threads significantly longer and harder to read hurts the discussion and limits the ability for others to participate. When contributors drop 12,000 characters of a proposal that WILL. NEVER. HAPPEN., it just pushes away people with good, small, workable ideas.

Keeping ideas brief and realistic shows respect for the dozens or hundreds of individuals trying to participate.

That’s what the proposal overviews are for – if it doesn’t sound good to you, skip to the next post after that.

- Writers: make sure your overview is a good (hopefully attractive too) introduction.

Look, that’s why I’m still here. I read “guild cities!” and skip to the next one. Saves me enough time that I can keep up without needing 3-4 hours a day. But how many dozens of other people see 10 pages of thousand-word essays and just quit?

These proposals are the kind that make sense for an MMO 2-3 years from release with a full development team working on them. Not as an add-on for a mature game.

That’s not to say they aren’t cool ideas, though!

I get frustrated with the overreaching – Guild Halls as player housing, really? – because making these threads significantly longer and harder to read hurts the discussion and limits the ability for others to participate. When contributors drop 12,000 characters of a proposal that WILL. NEVER. HAPPEN., it just pushes away people with good, small, workable ideas.

Keeping ideas brief and realistic shows respect for the dozens or hundreds of individuals trying to participate.

What’s hilarious is watching them play innocent like it’s not completely obvious what they’re doing.

As a small guild leader, I’m already dropping 2g/day for a Custom PvP Arena for my guild. I’d rather not also have to pay for Guild Halls on a daily basis.

Please don’t charge a daily fee for guild halls. Thanks.

Countess Aire.9410:

It is a sad state when players are trying to finish living story and get abused by the event farmers. I have not tried that section yet, but will be doing it shortly. I pretty much disregard the chat for that reason. Hopefully this won’t sour other people from enjoying the living story and game in general.

That’s not exactly what’s happened here.

There are a couple players who repeatedly find these farms that they consider “wrong” (they are correct – these farms are bad for the game and economy and should be fixed) and try to “fix” them by completing the events.

They don’t do it to “get the Living Story,” they do it to harass people. They do it repeatedly. They do it on characters with names that let everybody know what they are doing. Then they come to the forums and pretend to be innocent, posting screenshots of the in-game harassment they get (which is wrong and should also lead to bans.)

This is trolling or griefing. I’m fine with either term.

The first time I saw them post, I thought they were innocent too. Then I researched one of the players and realized that she’s done it over. And over. And over. And here they are again.

In another couple weeks, when the next fail-farm is found, watch. You’ll see those same names in chat, along with a “guild member” who was along for the ride.

Glad to see the event timer has been updated. Wish the griefers would also be “fixed.”

Please do not force members to spend personal laurels or commendations on guild halls, hall upkeep, or hall features. Guild Halls should be unlocked and kept up using shared guild currencies: influence and merits.

I think you’re all wrong. I hope you get banned for griefing them just like I hope they get banned for threatening you.

I just know better than to think you’re innocent. You’re just as wrong as they are. Being diametrically opposed to a wrong does not necessarily make you right.

But please, keep making these posts thinking we’ll forget it is the same handful of trolls every time.

Sawnic.6795:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

CDI – Collaborative Discussion Initiative

I was thinking content developer interview.

It’s actually Collaborative Development Initiative.

fellyn.5083:

timmyf.1490:

fellyn.5083:

DeWolfe.2174:

This is still a design issue when one or two antisocial players can ruin the game for an entire map. Obviously if a large group starts reporting you, odds are you’ve done something to warrant it.

What makes them anti social?

The fact that they don’t want to stand around in a ball and spam 1 for hours on end?

That they’d rather finish an event?

Confusing argument is confusing.

I have no problems with them finishing the event. I have problems with them finishing the event while openly trolling the rest of the players by naming themselves some variant of “griefer.”

It’s not half as clever as they think it is and it should get them banned.

AND I HATE THE FAIL EVENT TO WIN META AND REFUSE TO TAKE PART.

If the people who agree with you think your actions should get you banned, it’s a pretty good sign you’re doing something wrong.

Still doesn’t explain how they’re anti social.

That’s a really odd accusation to make.

I didn’t make it, so I can’t say. They are mean-spirited people who get excitement out of ruining things for other people. That tells me everything I need to know about them.

warduke.1780:

timmyf.1490:

fellyn.5083:

DeWolfe.2174:

This is still a design issue when one or two antisocial players can ruin the game for an entire map. Obviously if a large group starts reporting you, odds are you’ve done something to warrant it.

What makes them anti social?

The fact that they don’t want to stand around in a ball and spam 1 for hours on end?

That they’d rather finish an event?

Confusing argument is confusing.

I have no problems with them finishing the event. I have problems with them finishing the event while openly trolling the rest of the players by naming themselves some variant of “griefer.”

It’s not half as clever as they think it is and it should get them banned.

AND I HATE THE FAIL EVENT TO WIN META AND REFUSE TO TAKE PART.

If the people who agree with you think your actions should get you banned, it’s a pretty good sign you’re doing something wrong.

These “trolls” are merely completing an event. Their names are irrelevant. ALL the abuse I’ve seen has been from the players exploiting the event and trying to make it fail.

I think you’re a farmer yourself, masquerading as an anti-farm player in order to try and get players banned. As has been stated in this thread, that’s not going to happen.

Definitely not a farmer. You’re welcome to read through my post history to get an idea of who I am as a player.

Their names are relevant. That’s the part of the troll. They appear again and again doing the same thing. They’ve named themselves to match their activity of choice: griefing.

Griefing, if it is not already, should be considered an abuse of the terms of service and these two players should be temporarily, and then permanently, banned. End of story.

What’s funny is that the player in question is so well known at this point, she has to have other people post the screenshots who don’t have her post history. Otherwise you’d be able to see the many, many threads in which she’s done exactly this same thing.

This post itself is merely an attempt to troll. I’m sure Ms. Birthday Girl is laughing her head off. Cheers!

fellyn.5083:

DeWolfe.2174:

This is still a design issue when one or two antisocial players can ruin the game for an entire map. Obviously if a large group starts reporting you, odds are you’ve done something to warrant it.

What makes them anti social?

The fact that they don’t want to stand around in a ball and spam 1 for hours on end?

That they’d rather finish an event?

Confusing argument is confusing.

I have no problems with them finishing the event. I have problems with them finishing the event while openly trolling the rest of the players by naming themselves some variant of “griefer.”

It’s not half as clever as they think it is and it should get them banned.

AND I HATE THE FAIL EVENT TO WIN META AND REFUSE TO TAKE PART.

If the people who agree with you think your actions should get you banned, it’s a pretty good sign you’re doing something wrong.

Proposal Overview

Guild Hall of Heroes

Goal of Proposal

Guild Halls should allow guild leaders/officers to recognize the contribution of guild members. This could be done through either automatic or manually-awarded statues or portraits.

Proposal Functionality

Guild Statues would be one tier of guild hall unlocks. Statues would recognize players by creating a “statue” version of their character model in the guild hall. There would be a limited number of statues, but GH functionality would allow guild leadership to choose between a variety of automatic (most influence earned, most influence purchased, most gold donated to bank) and manual (you set toon and description manually) statues.

Guild Portraits would work the same, but instead of a 3D model of the character, you get a portrait on the wall. Portraits would likely be a lower level unlock, but more portrait spaces would be available than statues.

Think 8 portraits, 3 statues.

Associated Risks

This is a large hit in regards to development time and there’s always the concern players may “game” the automatic rewards. Also, consideration needs to be taken in regards to how players pose their statues. Statues and Portraits could also be used by guild leadership to call out members in a negative way, potentially increasing intra-guild toxicity.

If the player names themselves Greefa or The Griefer, I think it’s pretty obvious what the intent is.

I think fail farming is wrong and it should be nerfed, but in no way is making characters called Greefa or The Griefer and trolling people acceptable.

Trolling the wrong doesn’t make you right.

Man, wouldn’t it be cool if there were an MMO based in the Lord of the Rings universe that you could play or something? And then, instead of talking about it in the GW2 forums, people could talk about it in that game’s forums. I dunno.

Sometimes the cheesy lines are the memorable lines. If you played GW1, which bits of dialogue do you remember and love? I bet it’s the cheesy ones.

“Scared the fluff out of me.” “Uh huh.” “18 Kasmeers.” These are good, memorable lines. Quotable, even. If I were more invested in the personal story, I’d appreciate them even more. (Why am I not invested? I don’t find achievement point grinding to equal replayability. I tend to do the content once on launch day and do other things until the next patch. These breaks are killing me.)

titanlectro.5029:

This thread is plagued by a lot of people who do not understand what the developer is proposing. Please read that entire dev post until you are sure you understand it!

This is not my understanding of what John is proposing, but if it is, I’m not in favor of it. Perhaps John can clarify on some of the specifics for us when he has time.

nexxe.7081:

At this point, server pride doesn’t really matter anymore. WvW population on some servers are so low, it’s just not worth it. They should’ve merged a long time ago.

I hope you don’t mind me using you as an example. This attitude is precisely why server mergers won’t work. Whatever server you’re on won’t mesh with the folks on SoR. We still have pride in our server. Buckets of it.

If we were merged with your server – assuming they feel the same way you do – there’d be endless conflict.

Mergers should only happen on a by-player-choice basis. Alliances could be built to do that.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Take a look at this weeks scores, think about why everyone of these matches is a blowout.

It’s because of the Swiss style system. Next week should be better matchups. It has nothing to do with systemic problems in WvW rankings.

SoR checking in. We placed 3rd in every matchup for over 6 months when we fell. Good luck, Maguuma.

BlackGhostz.2483:

Look at the comparable zone in guild wars. Queensdale when you enter the zone you notice it’s an all out war between humans and centaurs. And most of the quests involve the two but it’s just mindless killing and skirmishes. There is no, resolution for the player to the zone. The dungeon in the area has a story of it’s own but it has more to do with political battles than the centaurs. And the end of the dungeon is “Oh, ill keep my eye on the guy who obviously set all this up!”

Maybe it’s just me but the dungeons in GW2 have always just had this pointless and empty feeling aside from getting tokens and gold. And where I’m getting with all this is that WoW would take all those experiences from the zones and dungeons and lead them up to the end game content.

This game sort of does this with Destiny’s Edge but it was just poorly executed and intrusive on the player experience in my opinion.

The Story dungeons integrate well into the Personal Story, I think, but the explorables all follow a slightly weird theme. “We’re doing these things in the same area as the story dungeon that are of dubious connection to the story.”

Anyway, the new Living Story stuff gets a few things right. It’s instanced, repeatable content that combines combat and story. While I’m sure ArenaNet wants to show off that fancy new Story Journal, I think putting more LS content into dungeon form has some advantages, especially for those of us who enjoy playing with 4 guildmates a lot more than dynamic event grinding with a mass of auto-attacking Ranger Strangers.

Jim Hunter.6821:

timmyf.1490:

Samis, Kovu, and Jim Hunter are all talking about weighting PPT based on population. I’m pretty confident that this is a terrible idea. Why?

Elitist guilds trying to bully people out of WvW because they aren’t efficient enough.

Any change to the scoring system should ensure that it’s always better to have more players. There should never be a case where you can attain a higher score by having fewer players.

The current scoring system ensures that the server with the most players wins. This is a big chunk of why WvW is so damaged at the moment.

It shouldn’t be the case that a server can lose every fight but still win the match.

I don’t know why it is you think you can be aware of whether a server is winning or losing every fight in a 168 hour long battle with four maps in which you can only play on one.

I think it’s more important to balance for timezone discrepancy than it is player-count discrepancy. Holding a 100 PPT lead in NA prime (for NA servers) requires a lot more people than holding the same lead off-prime. It should be more rewarding because of it.

This is why I think that the scoring system should remain roughly the same, but the tick should adjust based on population. The more players on the map, the more frequent the tick. This system, as best as I can tell, meets most logical requirements (“should encourage rather than discourage additional players” for example) and is easy to tweak over time.

I suggested on Reddit a system which scales the tick from 8:00 (above 80% max population) to 24:00 (less than 10% max population) per map. Those times can obviously be adjusted, but they help make high-population times more important.

Samis, Kovu, and Jim Hunter are all talking about weighting PPT based on population. I’m pretty confident that this is a terrible idea. Why?

Elitist guilds trying to bully people out of WvW because they aren’t efficient enough.

Any change to the scoring system should ensure that it’s always better to have more players. There should never be a case where you can attain a higher score by having fewer players.

SkyShroud.2865:

If people want the server pride or don’t want to begin from square one again even though population issue is resolved, then, don’t complain about population imbalance.

For the record, I didn’t complain about population imbalance.

Neither did I. I just seem to see a lot of folks on the top tiers suggesting that lower tier servers be closed down and a lot of folks on the lower tiers suggesting lower caps to spur transfers.

Neither of these are good ideas. Getting people to join together or spread out should be based on PLAYER CHOICE and not due to ArenaNet forcing people together/apart.

SkyShroud.2865:

The suggestions are so vague. What is alliance? How does this alliance gonna behave in this WvW context? What is worlds?

TBH, I still believe closing 9 servers is the better way to go. The large list of servers to choose from is one of the reasons why the population base is spread thin.

Do you think Crystal Desert should be closed?

BrunoBRS.5178:

Plus, there’s a psychological difference between “I’m defending my team (alliance)” and “I’m defending my home (server)”. I think the latter is more impactful and interesting.

Take a moment and consider this from the perspective of somebody new to the game or who has maybe only played PvE… why do you care to fight for that thing you picked right when you got the game that doesn’t seem to make a difference at all?

Here’s an idea out of left field, but what if they extended the idea of the Evon/Ellen voting system (if you pure WvWers aren’t familiar, let me know, I can explain) to Alliances/server merging? Here’s how it might work…

NPC in your home BL has a token you can buy for X badges. Something easily reachable for regular WvW players, maybe 500? This token allows you to “propose an alliance” (by double-clicking it) with another server. This action is, at this point, just recorded.

Once enough players (let’s say 25% of the active weekly playerbase) propose the same alliance on BOTH servers, a vote would take place. (What I mean by this is that SoR would need 25% to propose to merge with Darkhaven and DH would need 25% to propose to merge with SoR).

There are two ways the vote could happen: 1 vote per player or vote tokens which drop when playing WvW. I tend to lean toward the latter.

Anyway, for X weeks (suggestion: two weeks), players can “vote” by using tokens to merge or not merge. If both servers clear either a majority or perhaps supermajority, the alliance is created.

Now, the problem is that you need multiples of three, so the alliance doesn’t take effect until enough mergers happen for there to be a multiple of three servers out there.

For these votes to succeed, there would need to be a SIGNIFICANT level of cooperation between servers – you would have to coordinate the alliance proposal and get your people in to vote. The system is designed to force servers to show the ability to work together before the alliance is created.

Meaning, if SoR and DH want to merge badly enough, they’ll find ways to work with each other to make the merger happen. If they can’t, they probably shouldn’t be allies anyway.

(Darkhaven, I’m just using you as an example, don’t get all worked up about it. <3 )

Altie.4571:

Can someone clarify for me (I guess I’m slow) what we mean with the term “Alliances”.

Is it an alliance for specific color and then we just become… 3 alliances. Or alliances of X amount of servers to create a smaller group of competitors (say 24 worlds, become 12 alliances)?

Almost certainly it will not be just three alliances. It could potentially be 24 worlds → 12 alliances.

I’m actually interested how this would tie in to the idea of Guild Alliances, something that’s a hot topic as well. Could a Guild Alliance be a “child” alliance of a larger “World Alliance?”

The problem with combining servers is that you’re forcing people together who may not want to be together. I wouldn’t mind combining with Server A, for example, they mostly seem alright. But a merger with Server B? Those guys drive me crazy!

By allowing alliances, you let individuals/guilds choose their side. Perhaps you could “force” mergers by having less Alliances than Worlds, but I tend to prefer keeping them the same. So many guilds have taken their names from their servers, I think it’d be rather disruptive to force guilds to change to an Alliance with a different name.

Cross.6437:

You see, organization is always going to trump randomness. An alliance focused on WvW with sheer numbers and centralized locations both in-game and out of game will trump individual competence every single time.

Wait, is this is bad thing? Shouldn’t this game mode reward players who organize and work together toward a common goal? I can only speak for Sanctum of Rall, but we’re happy to have roamers, individuals, and small groups. They’re all welcome on our server Teamspeak – in fact, we provide any guild on the server with a room of their own on our server TS.

I don’t see why an Alliance system (which I think of similar to a World except transfer costs are reduced/free/based on WvW population instead of PvE population and have their own chat channel hopefully) would change the value of roamers and small groups.

Dayra.7405:

timmyf.1490:

I will say that Darya’s interpretation of how alliances work is not the same as my interpretation and I consider it a very troubling interpretation.

Of course it is only my imagination how it could be, neither yours nor johns nor ANets nor …
I try to describe my imagination, such that others can see it and can like or dislike parts of it. And describe your own imagination maybe using parts of it.

At the end john and ANet will implement their picture of it, and it may or may not contains parts of each imagination.

John spent the time to lay out a proposal and immediately afterward you began discussing a system by the same name that bears no resemblance to the goals of his proposal. Or the specifics.

You’re certainly welcome to your “imagination,” but let’s be honest: you’re asking for an expansion of EOTM into WvW. That’s very different from Alliances in the manner that John has suggested.

(As I interpret it, anyway.)

I will say that Darya’s interpretation of how alliances work is not the same as my interpretation and I consider it a very troubling interpretation. I would not want new WvWvW “world comps” every week and John’s insistence that they have no intention of destroying server communities makes me think Darya is wrong.

Edit: and if you look at it, John even mentions it being “every few months.” So every few months you can think of it as being a free transfer period for groups to switch alliances after the most recent tournament.

Shadow.3475:

The why i believe is make ppt depend on how many players are on map, if you tick like 50points / tick if you own everything have everything max upgraded when no players on then it will give litle, and give 0 reward for capping paper places. then if you cap a fully upgraded Keep you get 100% reward if it is defended, if no defense you gain like 20% reward.

…you don’t see the problem with this?

“No! Stop building siege! Don’t defend! They’ll get more points if you defend! NOBODY PLACE SIEGE IN THIS KEEP! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THE POINT SYSTEM WORKS?

LOOK, IT’S EASY, EVERY ARROW CART YOU PLACE MEANS THEY GAIN 1 EXTRA POINT PER TICK WHEN YOU PLACE IT, MORANS! OH FOR DWAYNA’S SAKE!"

And so on.

Wanze.8410:

I am a bit confused here what this topic is about.
The title is misleading and the OP was already deleted, so it might be a good idea to change the title and maybe explain in a new OP what you are trying to achieve here.

As I understand it, Gaile was just chatting with us and asking us our opinions about what endgame for GW2 should be.