So the Guild Housing CDI is supposed to start tomorrow, and I thought I'd contribute something that I think a lot of the anti-housing people overlook. So guess who gets to read a big, long post?
That's right,
you! Please share any thoughts as I'm kind of trying to polish and fine-tune it.
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Proposal Overview
Guild Neighborhoods & Competitions
Goal of Proposal
One of the repeated concerns with housing systems is that they remove players from cities in favor of private, instanced areas. The goal of this proposal is to alleviate this to some degree.
Proposal Functionality
Due to the sheer number of guilds, it is impractical not to instance them. However, they do not need to be isolated from one another, nor do they
all of them need to be instanced.
My proposal is that Guild Halls be grouped into neighborhoods where four guilds each have their own editable plot set around a central common area that cannot be directly modified. Those guilds then work together to upgrade their neighborhood, adding both aesthetic features (fountains, statues, landscaping) and gameplay features (special harvesting nodes, vendors, etc.) to the common area. A neighborhood of low quality would be a dimly lit area with dead grass and dirt roads, while a neighborhood with attentive residents would have lights and festive banners, musicians and entertainers, manicured gardens and elaborately paved streets.
A score is assigned to each neighborhood, based on the individual guild plots (quality and quantity of furniture, number of trophies, specialized services) and common area. Optionally, points can be awarded for successful completion of Guild Missions, WvW claims and successful dungeon / PVP matches done as a guild.
Each week, the top-ranked neighborhood for each server is placed directly into the world where all players can see it and take advantage of any amenities present. The portal leading into individual guild instances would be placed at the exact center of the neighborhood, creating an area where people gather to both take advantage of services present and to travel into their own instances.
Associated Risks
- Requires the Megaserver system be abandoned inside cities or adjusted to compensate so players only encounter the neighborhood of guilds based on their home server.
- Requires Lion's Arch to be rebuilt before implementation.
- Requires some method of loading large chunks of instanced content into the world (perhaps it requires a reloading of the zone to change).
- Large guilds will obviously dominate based on the number of players contributing. One option is to have several tiers of neighborhoods ("Gold League", "Silver League", etc.), with different parts of the city changing to reflect each;
