Guild Halls: Taken from the Enemy, Building Your Guild Hall & Rethinking Guilds

[Karizee]

Three large news blogs today, going to combine them in one post:

Guild Halls: Taken From the Enemy
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/g...rom-the-enemy/

Hello, citizens of Tyria! I’m Link Hughes, and today I’m pleased to tell you how your guild can claim a guild hall for its very own. Obtaining a guild hall isn’t as simple as buying one from a merchant; the process of acquiring it is one of the most concrete examples of how we’re making guilds a greater part of the world of Tyria.



Taking Initiative

With the Pact in tatters, Tyria’s governments have had to scramble to figure out new methods to address the continuing threat of the Elder Dragons. In light of the past successes of guilds like Destiny’s Edge against the dragons and their minions, Tyria’s authorities have decided to enlist and mobilize existing guilds against the dragons and other substantial threats.

The Guild Initiative is a new organization that will set up its headquarters in Lion’s Arch and begin registering guilds for the cause. They’ll provide registered guilds with access to their facilities and support staff, as well as assign missions for those guilds to complete to maintain their fitness and contribute to the general welfare of Tyria. Furthermore, the Initiative is conducting active research to find new technologies that will benefit guilds in their efforts, such as a new mobile portal and a powerful assembly device that can assemble tools from raw aether according to schematics. Finally, the Initiative is pursuing large-scale reconnaissance and exploration to identify activity and movement of the dragons’ minions.



Going West

Once your guild is registered with the Guild Initiative, you’ll gain access to their new headquarters in Lion’s Arch. We’ve used new technology to make the Guild Initiative Headquarters an instance that is shared by you and your guild members. While the Initiative Headquarters is not a full guild hall, it will provide access to existing features that we’re moving out of the guild panel for those guilds that do not upgrade to the expansion.

Inside the Guild Initiative Headquarters, you’ll find explorers who have scouted out particularly large infestations of Mordrem in remote ruins in and around the western jungle. Given the incongruous concentration of Mordrem in these locations, they’ve been determined to be of strategic importance to Mordremoth. The explorers are seeking guilds willing and able to mount expeditions to liberate these ruins, and Tyrian world governments have agreed to cede ownership of the ruins to successful guilds so long as they maintain a presence in those places and defend them from recapture by the dragons.

Mounting an expedition to take one of these ruins is an expensive proposition and requires a certain amount of trust from the Initiative. On top of the costs to supply a population of Initiative guards and support staff to help settle the location once it’s been taken, your guild will actually have to reach the ruins, which is an adventure in itself. Once there, you must go in and drive out the Mordrem.

At the heart of the ruins, you’ll discover a strange crystal embedded in the earth that was the focus of the Mordrem’s attentions. The crystal shines with magical energy, and it seems the creatures were drawing power from it to feed to Mordremoth. When one of your guild leaders touches the crystal, they can attune it to your guild and cut off the jungle dragon’s influence.

At that point, you’ve officially taken your guild hall! In the next post, we’ll look at how your guild can go about building up the hall itself once you’ve taken it.


Building Your Guild Hall
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/b...ur-guild-hall/

So you’ve joined the Guild Initiative, spearheaded an expedition into the jungle, and driven the Mordrem out of your guild hall. Congratulations! Now it’s time to start building up your guild hall and, by extension, your guild.

You’ll be able to build six major structures around your central hall. Each is run by a proprietor—an expert from the Guild Initiative who is on loan to your guild indefinitely to help you maintain your presence in the area. Proprietors will have a set of upgrades you can purchase that will add various functionalities and services to your guild hall.



Upgrading Your Hall

These upgrades will cost your guild three resources to purchase. First, you’ll need various crafting materials, specific to each upgrade. Out on the frontier, supplies that can be used in your guild hall or shipped back to Guild Initiative Headquarters to support research are much more valuable than gold. These materials will need to be donated to your guild’s treasury, a special new repository, before they can be used to purchase upgrades.

Second, you’ll need favor, which is earned by running guild missions. Favor is a measure of the Guild Initiative’s trust in your guild, as well as the general goodwill that your guild enjoys from the people of Tyria. We’re changing the way guilds access and run guild missions—you’ll no longer need to unlock them, and they’ll award your guild with favor instead of merits (we’ll cover this in more detail in a future post). Commendations will still be awarded to individual guild members for helping to successfully complete a mission.

Finally, you’ll need aetherium. This is a precious resource that can be mined from one of the main structures you’ll be building—or digging, rather. It’s essentially raw aether that is processed out of deposits from the stone in your guild hall. These deposits are extremely rare in Tyria, making your guild hall a very valuable find! Aetherium will be generated automatically over time by miners working in your guild’s mine. You’ll be able to upgrade the rate at which the aetherium is generated as well as your capacity to store it.

When we examined the current system to see what could be improved, we decided to iterate on the way guild unlocks are handled. Using time to gate unlocks is important to pacing the rate at which the biggest guilds move through progression, but we realized that we could front-load it so that you’re not working for an upgrade, spending the resources, and then delaying gratification for up to three days. Instead you’ll be depositing the relevant materials, saving up favor, and mining aetherium. When you’ve got enough to purchase the upgrade, there is no delay—your guild will have it instantly and permanently.



A Place for Everything

We’re also moving away from the four disciplines and research levels. Each guild hall has an associated guild level that will measure the guild’s progress in building the hall. As you build, you’ll gain levels, and new upgrades will become available for purchase. If your guild has already unlocked the research level that grants access to a given upgrade in the current system, you’ll be grandfathered in so that you keep what you’ve earned under the current live system.

Guild upgrades will be primarily grouped around the six main buildings, each of which is associated with elements of guild gameplay:

• First is the tavern, which is associated with socialization and effects. As a new proprietor, you’ll come here to rest until you’re ready to start constructing buildings. One of the upgrades you’ll be able to unlock through the tavern is the ability to choose an anthem for your guild. This will play for all to hear during moments of triumph, such as when you complete a guild mission or claim an objective in World vs. World.
• Second is the mine, which is the source of aetherium discussed above. All of the upgrades for this structure will relate to the generation and storage of aetherium.
• Third is the workshop, which is associated with crafting and gathering. Here, members of your guild can train in the new guild-specific crafting profession, scribing. We’ll discuss this more in a future post in this series.
• Fourth is the war room, which is associated with WvW. You’ll be able to unlock scribing recipes here for use in the updated guild claiming system.
• Fifth is the market, which is associated with finance and mercantilism. Through this building, you’ll be able to unlock a new tier of guild weapons and armor for your weaponsmith and armorer.
• Sixth is the arena, which is associated with personal combat and Player vs. Player. Once your arena is fully built, you’ll be able to use it as a combat sandbox and customize it with obstacles and traps.

That’s our introduction to building up your guild hall! In the next post in this series, we’ll look more closely at the changes Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ will bring to the guild system as a whole.


Rethinking Guilds
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/rethinking-guilds/

Hi, I’m Link Hughes with the Guilds team, and welcome to the next blog in our guild hall series. As we sat down to work on guild halls, it became clear that this was a good opportunity to reevaluate the entire guild system in Guild Wars 2.

Moving upgrades from the disciplines into the buildings of the guild hall brought into question whether all of the upgrades made sense in the new progression, while influence served so many different purposes that it was creating some strange incentives. Further, we wanted to determine what overall quality-of-life improvements we could make to guilds outside the scope of guild hall specific features. In this post, we’re going to look at the answers we have for those questions and the reasons behind them.



A Question of Upgrades

The introduction of guild halls and the switch from the disciplines to guild hall building progressions offered an opportunity for us to look critically at our existing upgrades. As a result, there are a number of upgrades that won’t be making the transition to the new system. Some, like guild mission upgrades and the various build queue improvements, didn’t make sense any more in light of the changes to systems that guild halls are bringing with them. You’ll learn more about the guild mission overhaul in the next post in this series.

Other upgrades ran counter to goals that we had in designing guild halls. One example is the remote crafting station consumables; we wanted to ensure that guild halls don’t make cities irrelevant, so we’re focusing on crafting for the eight existing disciplines in public maps. Another example is the guild emblem upgrade, which put an unnecessary barrier in the way of groups fully forming their in-game identity—and that’s something we very much want to encourage. Guild emblems will be freely available for all guilds to customize once the expansion launches.

The broad category of guild boosts—upgrades that give a benefit to guild members for a limited period of time—felt invisible and unengaging to the average guild member. We’re replacing these with permanent unlocks. Some, like the waypoint cost reduction, will apply permanently for all guild members without any need for interaction.

Others, like the World vs. World fort enhancements, will apply permanently in the appropriate situation—the fort enhancements will always apply to the region of any WvW objective your guild claims as long as you hold the objective. Those attached to specific modes of play, such as the WXP or magic find boosters, are being replaced by a new guild-effects slot that functions like food and utility effects. Once your guild unlocks them, these effects will be available from a vendor in your tavern. Each guild member can only have one effect active at a time, but they’re free to swap and effectively never expire.

Any consumable upgrades your guild has purchased that fall into the categories being removed will need to be used before the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ or they will disappear. As we approach release, we’ll make sure to issue reminders so that guilds are aware of the impending change.

In the case of other upgrades that are moving to the new system relatively unchanged, such as the guild banners and the guild vault, we’ll be grandfathering access to those upgrades for any guild that unlocked them in the current system. If your guild had obtained the necessary research level and prerequisites to have consumables like banners or Vault Transport unlocked under the current system, you will have them unlocked to craft in the new system.

We also want to celebrate your progress through the disciplines. It takes a lot of time and effort to unlock research levels, and if your guild managed to research all 24, that is seriously impressive! When Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns goes live and the Guild Initiative opens its doors in Lion’s Arch, we’ll have a welcoming NPC just outside the building. Upon one of your guild leaders speaking with that NPC, your guild will receive an exclusive guild hall decoration to commemorate your progress through the disciplines. If you’ve unlocked at least one, you’ll get a basic version, but there will be improved versions for those who were one-third and two-thirds through the total progression, as well as a special version for those guilds that managed to unlock all 24 research levels.



Under the Influence

When we looked at influence, it became clear that it was trying to do too much. The currency is intended to reward you for playing together with your guild, but it can also be purchased for gold. Influence is used to build upgrades and consumables, but it can also be spent at a huge markup to immediately gain access to those things. Furthermore, influence gain is tied to guild representation, which is hard to keep track of outside of the guild panel. It is also earned passively just for being online, and this incentivizes guilds to require full-time representation from their members.

We’re breaking apart influence and assigning its functions to three new currencies: favor, aetherium, and resonance.

• Favor incentivizes guilds to gather and complete missions on a weekly basis. You’ll learn more about the changes coming to guild missions in our next post.
• Aetherium replaces the pacing elements of the current queue system and establishes a baseline rate at which our largest guilds can progress that cannot be circumvented by spending gold.
• Resonance serves the sole purpose of speeding up the assembling of guild items and removes the need to balance other currencies around that. Meanwhile, resonating shards reward small group play with fellow guild members. Keep an eye out for more info on resonance and resonating shards when we talk about our new guild-specific crafting profession, scribing, in a future post.

You’ll no longer be able to gain influence once the new system is live, but we respect that you’ve worked hard to accumulate your guild’s existing influence, so we’re going to offer you a few different ways to spend it. First, when we introduce the final version of the new Lion’s Arch to the game, we’ll raise the cap on all of the guild consumables that will be transferring to the new system to a maximum of 25. This new cap will persist into the new guild system, so feel free to stock up with excess influence right now.

Once you have access to the Guild Initiative Headquarters and your guild hall, we’ll allow you to spend influence to accelerate your initial progress in building up your guild hall in the following ways:

• Each day, you may trade a limited amount of influence for favor.
• Once per day, you may use influence to purchase a small boost to your aetherium production.
• Whenever it suits you, you may convert influence to resonance.

I want to emphasize that these uses for influence will only provide small, limited boosts to progress for guilds with existing stores of influence. We want to provide a useful way to spend that existing influence without unbalancing progression in the new system.

While we’re looking at influence, let’s talk briefly about merits. The primary function of merits was to gate the unlocking of guild missions, and once all of the mission types were unlocked, they could be used to build some of the higher-end guild consumables. This served to make running missions desirable even after a guild had unlocked everything, but merits were balanced in such a way that most guilds now have an excess of them. Since we’re removing barriers to running missions and favor serves the purpose of merits better than they previously did, we’ll be retiring merits once Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns goes live.



Breaking Down Barriers

In the current guild system, there’s tension between being expected to represent a guild 100% of the time so that it can gain the benefits of your representation and having the freedom to use all five of your available guild memberships to socialize with different groups of friends. When we looked for overall improvements we could make to guilds, resolving this conflict stood out as having the greatest potentially positive impact on the social experience for guild members.

As of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, this will no longer be a problem; we’ll be introducing cross-guild chat. From your main guild panel, you’ll be able to assign which guilds you can chat to with new channels, /g1 through /g5. You can then decide which channels will be visible in your chat tabs. The existing guild chat channel, /g, will continue to chat to your currently represented guild.

Whew! That’s a lot of information to digest, but we’re only halfway through this series on new guild features! Keep your eyes peeled for the next post, where we’ll dig into the guild mission overhaul and how your guild will interact with missions in the future.

[carnifex2005]

Cross guild chat!!! As a member of TTS, this is great news.

[Svifnymr]

So until you get a guild hall, you don't have any upgrades in your guild? (grandfathering in old guilds)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Interesting how they claim the guild halls are for all guilds (particularly small guilds), and yet requires running guild missions which aren't exactly that completable by small guilds.

[Lazuli]

I just can't get hyped for GH without GvG. I'd also argue that they are big just for the sake of being big.

It would make sense if this was like Wildstar or Rifts housing system or you could attack other peoples guild halls.

Nice to see it took them years to implement alliance chat from GW1 lel.

[PACOX]

Interesting how they claim the guild halls are for all guilds (particularly small guilds), and yet requires running guild missions which aren't exactly that completable by small guilds.

?

Bounties are the only ones (RNG permitted) that actually give small groups a problem. Even then its only tier 2-3 bounties. I've done challenges, puzzles, and rushes with 5. My guild only had 9 last week. Puzzles tend to be the most iffy because some rooms might require 6 people to do a thing at once.

[Shefu]

So basically if you're not in a GUILD, what does this expansion offer really!? :|

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So basically if you're not in a GUILD, what does this expansion offer really!? :|

Um... a new class (without a new slot for it)... a new zone... and a new spec... and that's it.

[Lazuli]

So basically if you're not in a GUILD, what does this expansion offer really!? :|

Autoattacking the new open world bosses isn't good enough for you!? Entitled much!

Stronkhold may be worth, I wouldn't know, I couldn't test it much during the betas cuz ANet is a retarded as fuck company and would not put it on a separate queue button.

[Karizee]

Autoattacking the new open world bosses isn't good enough for you!? Entitled much!

Stronkhold may be worth, I wouldn't know, I couldn't test it much during the betas cuz ANet is a retarded as fuck company and would not put it on a separate queue button.

This is what you get for telling lies, Lazuli - you start tripping yourself up.
Both Stronghold betas had the Stronghold map exclusively in Unranked, you could not play Unranked for the other maps during the beta testing. You could not play Stronghold in Ranked, it was in a separate queue all by itself in Unranked.

- - - Updated - - -

Um... a new class (without a new slot for it)... a new zone... and a new spec... and that's it.

So far we have the new Mastery system which allows you to progress your character with gliding abilities, lore masteries to learn new languages to find hidden areas in the new region, advance new collections to build precursors for legendaries, making your character stronger against the Mordrem, etc.

Then there's the new region Heart of Maguuma. There's new the new Elite Specializations for our classes. The new class Revenant. The new WvW Borderlands map. New Stronghold game mode.

We haven't got much information yet on the Heart of Maguuma area, all we have is the teasers on the HoT page: Tackle challenging group content, Explore new open world jungle maps, Experience new events and storylines, and Test your mettle in new boss battles. Of course many players are very curious/anxious about what this content is since we haven't seen much of it yet, especially with all the talk of raiding in the last CDI but you are being kind of silly here.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en/

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This is what you get for telling lies, Lazuli - you start tripping yourself up.
Both Stronghold betas had the Stronghold map exclusively in Unranked, you could not play Unranked for the other maps during the beta testing. You could not play Stronghold in Ranked, it was in a separate queue all by itself in Unranked.

- - - Updated - - -



So far we have the new Mastery system which allows you to progress your character with gliding abilities, lore masteries to learn new languages to find hidden areas in the new region, advance new collections to build precursors for legendaries, making your character stronger against the Mordrem, etc.

Then there's the new region Heart of Maguuma. There's new the new Elite Specializations for our classes. The new class Revenant. The new WvW Borderlands map. New Stronghold game mode.

We haven't got much information yet on the Heart of Maguuma area, all we have is the teasers on the HoT page: Tackle challenging group content, Explore new open world jungle maps, Experience new events and storylines, and Test your mettle in new boss battles. Of course many players are very curious/anxious about what this content is since we haven't seen much of it yet, especially with all the talk of raiding in the last CDI but you are being kind of silly here.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en/

True, but going off of what we DO KNOW, it's pretty much Silverwastes ultra, and... that's the new content. That's it. No new dungeon, no continuation of the personal story and so forth. At this moment, your expansion is $50 for a 3 bigger zone. Sure; they added a mastery system and new specs, but those are features, not content.

[Karizee]

True, but going off of what we DO KNOW, it's pretty much Silverwastes ultra, and... that's the new content. That's it. No new dungeon, no continuation of the personal story and so forth. At this moment, your expansion is $50 for a 3 bigger zone. Sure; they added a mastery system and new specs, but those are features, not content.

Absolutely, I agree 100% that they haven't shown us anything yet on the teased "Challenging Group Content" and I absolutely agree that if this is the key deciding factor for anyone that of course they should wait until they see the reveals or footage or w/e they need to see to make them feel excited about it.
But this conversation probably belongs in one of the pre-order discussion threads since this topic is about Guild Halls

Speaking of Guild Halls, they are doing some very cool things with tying it into the story and lore. The taking of your GH will be an amazing event for guilds, and it sounds like there will be some kind of ongoing battles/events/missions to hold it.

Of course the whole inviting other guilds into your Guild Hall to fight in your arena is a great nod to GvG, they said something about building structures in your arena, it sounds very sandboxy.

The War Room with building the airships to attack in WvW and the charr motorcycle transform/mount thingies for WvW is going to be great fun. And choosing your Guild Anthem to play when you take the castle is going to be epic, songs will be written

Guild Halls is one of the things I've been most looking forward to, it really surpasses my expectations.

[Rhywolver]

?

Bounties are the only ones (RNG permitted) that actually give small groups a problem. Even then its only tier 2-3 bounties. I've done challenges, puzzles, and rushes with 5. My guild only had 9 last week. Puzzles tend to be the most iffy because some rooms might require 6 people to do a thing at once.

As far as I know bounties are the only thing small guilds have really access to, and if you aren't able to complete bounties, you won't even get hands on guild merits (which are required for starting missions and further guild progressing).

Question is, will personal guilds / 2-5 person guilds even get guild halls at all?

[Lazuli]

This is what you get for telling lies, Lazuli - you start tripping yourself up.
Both Stronghold betas had the Stronghold map exclusively in Unranked, you could not play Unranked for the other maps during the beta testing. You could not play Stronghold in Ranked, it was in a separate queue all by itself in Unranked.

I had no fucking idea it worked like that so get off my dick, even when I asked in map chat about separate queue no one told me.

Btw I'm curious about my devious lies I've apparently told?

[Rukh]

True, but going off of what we DO KNOW, it's pretty much Silverwastes ultra, and... that's the new content. That's it. No new dungeon, no continuation of the personal story and so forth. At this moment, your expansion is $50 for a 3 bigger zone. Sure; they added a mastery system and new specs, but those are features, not content.

I'm not sure how you jump to the conclusion its silverwastes ultra. They haven't given us enough information to just jump to such a conclusion.

[Fencers]

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- Fencers