5 Steps to Attaining Your Dream Guild Hall

When a baseball player goes up to bat and scores home run after home run breaking the record that's an accomplishment worthy of note. If every player made the hall of fame by being in "X" amount of games, few would immortalize them for their ability.

Being able, as a set group, to best the content of a zone is an accomplishment the first few times. Just like making combines of a crafted item, after you have proven that you can repetitively do that with favorable results, the challenge ends and the long mind numbing grind begins.

The "Old School" mentality (which I come from) of "Grind = Skill" and worthy of big rewards only rewards the gaming company that will occupy those players with a carrot on an endless stick. It does little to attract the many players that put aside the long hours of play as they aged in the gaming world and don't have the time to dedicate to such tasks.

If you were to entice the dedicated, yet time limited players to gain that "shell" (empty guild hall); they would be more likely to stay and work at building it into a more useful hall through amenities and decorating. After investing time into building that hall, they would be less likely to walk away from it and you gain retention of players.

Further enhance the amenities making those the grind and you hook more players into the time sink. At the same time, the more casual players don't give up on the hall without even starting because the tasks are too daunting.

So...anyone seen the easy steps?

Fun fact: It would cost more to buy the fuel to do the shattered heartstone combines than it costs to buy a T4 Freeport/Qeynos hall!

1350p worth of fuel for a T1, and a whopping 1800p spent on fuel for a T2. That's even before you consider the price of the heartstones themselves

Crafters are not asking for it to be made easier They are asking for a CRAFTING WAY not dependent on ADVENTURERS to get the job done they want a challenge using THIER PLAYSTYLE as a way to get as was PROMISED.

oops should not have skimmed through the post she already made the point i was making

This is so very much on the right track to a more balanced and inclusive approach. I truly hope this gets the consideration by the devs that it deserves! (I agree with the person who replied and said it shouldn't just be in high-level areas, though. Better to balance it across levels.)

I still believe that the concept of the offering of this hall is wrong. Instead of the end reward being the actual hall, an empty shell if you will, it should be items that define the hall as being great. For example, for a moment, pretend that the hall required status points, guild level 50, a decent amount of coin plus faction to obtain; not the requirements currently in place:

1) "X" Guild has a good amount well seasoned craft and adventure characters. They quickly gain the required faction by turning in appropriate items, killing required mobs of that faction at their level gaining faction faster and have craft people doing writs for that faction, much like Mara. Coin is not a problem and decorating the hall is not a problem. Since they have a larger guild with more seasoned players, gaining the amenities is not a problem either. Their reward is gaining a fancy hall with less burden on each individual player and thus faster progress.

2) "Y" Guild has less players and are less seasoned. They enjoy crafting and adventuring at their level and capability. Since everyone enjoys playing and doing their part, they kill lesser mobs for less faction, do city tasks at their levels gaining points a slower than Guild "X". Their crafters happen to be high level and gain some momentum with those faction quests for the hall. Since they just happen to be level 50 from working at a steady pace in the past, they can afford the hall, but not all the goodies that go with it yet. They do however, now have a nice (be it somewhat empty) hall to work on advancing as a long term goal.

So where is the reward for guild "X"? Well, that's where your collect the stones would come in. Special amenities that appeal to a high level well seasoned guild that require high level adventurers or craft persons working diligently to obtain those *special* amenity rewards.

Guild "Y" won't be looking at those *special* high level amenities so much since they really don't benefit their more casual style. If they really coveted those amenities they would be building a guild, or joining a guild, or aligning themselves with a guild like guild "X".

Guild "X" also gains something more valuable to them than an empty hall. They gain something that helps them enhance a style of play that they already enjoy and engage in.

SONY gains as well! Both Guild "X" and "Y" are happy with a new style hall and working towards making that hall a better place for their players. That's a time sink for players that enjoy reaching that goal all while keeping them interested in the game. The current method of obtaining the hall means that many players in smaller guilds are unhappy with the grind and simply avoiding it.

Having a big fancy hall should not be the achievement. Having a big fancy well decorated hall with amenities that draw in players is.

Amenities don't really belong in this conversation. We have all there is to have in that respect, with some amenities being more valuable to one play style than another. Guild X and Y can both attain the goal of having the HK Hall. One's just going to take a little more time to reach that goal. The "empty shell", as you call it, is just that. It's a cosmetic luxury. You can already do all you need to do in a tier 1 hall, which already has two fancy designs to choose from. If anything, there should be a different hall, closer to that size that us less adventurous types can work on.

Putting Heartstone access in lower level areas just means everyone's going to mentor down and gravitate towards those lower level areas to more easily obtain the stones, making the whole thing trivial and meaningless, while wasting all the work that went into the zones.

Yes and many players within this thread have stated that. They've also provided great feedback on what they would like changed or to see in the future. These have been reported to the Dev Team. If you have more constructive feedback, please feel free to provide it and I'll pass it along to the team.

It's up to the Dev Team to decide what they want to do with that feedback. Looking into the future, I foresee more opportunities for tradeskillers, but at the moment, the steps provided in the article are the current steps to achieve the guild hall and the article does its initial job of explaining the process.

With all due respect, I think that you are taking the post by Alenna out of context, which is somewhat sad in view of the fact that you seem to be taking that comment to task for not being constructive. I fail to see where they presented the thought that they did not understand that "the steps provided in the article are the current steps to achieve the guild hall and the article does its initial job of explaining the process" in any manner. Most everyone posting to this thread is quite clear on both of those points. It is not that we do not understand it, but rather that we disagree with it. It is also true that the process for earning the hall is contrary to what was originally put forth, so the opinion of some players that the process is slanted to a specific play style is a valid one.
Alenna's latest comment was not put forth with constructive input in mind. It was directed at a specific member who made the oft repeated, and tiresome observation that those who wish to see certain changes "want the game for free." While it is true that the comment did not add directly to the subject at hand, neither did the comment to which they were responding. I can most certainly understand how you wish the forums to remain constructive, but we do have the right of rebuttal, yes?

If anyone on this forum can be considered NON-constructive, it would be that group of sycophants that respond to every suggestion with "You just want the game for free. If you don't like it, why don't you go play something else? Perhaps Build-a-Bear would be more in line with your intellect."

I can understand how SOE would value its die-hard supporters, but some of those supporters are beyond rude, and do not make these forums a welcoming place to discuss ideas and offer suggestions. Where would SOE be if members like Alenna and myself took that advice to heart and moved on to some other game and forum where we would perhaps suffer a little less abuse for daring to express our thoughts and opinions?

Or just implement some more challenging quests for crafters that actually require some effort to be put into them. I did the Far Sea's Trading Company tradeskill quest line in Lavastorm on my provisioner yesterday, with her adventure level 32 but tradeskill level 68 (70 now but 68 when I did the quest line). That quest line, though it put her in the line of fire for agro, was do-able, so long as I was careful, but it posed a challenge for me to do it, making it more enjoyable than the tedious grinding of the same recipe over and over again to level up. Unfortunately, the quest was grey to her, because her tradeskill level was so high, and since you can't mentor down your tradeskill level, she gained little to no xp for completing it, but I did it more for the faction than the xp. I don't see why SOE couldn't implement more tradeskill quests like this, that could be used towards earning a specialized guild hall.

While I understand that people want the ability for low level characters to work towards obtaining these halls as high level characters, I don't think that low level tradeskiller's or adventurer's should be able to complete quests in high level zones. That would be akin to saying that my level 31 necro (lvl 25 jeweler) should be able to go into a level 90 zone and complete level 90 adventurer quests. It's simply not going to happen.

I do think, however, that there could be quests implemented (via dungeons or whatever) that scale to a players level, thereby giving all level of characters an equal opportunity to work towards obtaining one of these guild halls, both for adventurer and tradeskiller's alike. The system is already in place to make something like this work. Look at the Haunted Mansion quest for Night's of the Dead...this is just one example of what's already in place in the game. It scales to the players level, with everyone doing the same quest, just based on their current adventure level. There could be two dungeon options...the tradeskiller's quest line or the adventurer's quest line and the player could choose whichever method they prefer based on their play style. This would not only give everyone an equal opportunity to obtain said hall, but would also put all players on an equal footing with the challenge set before them scaling to their level, thereby all players would put in the same amount of time and effort into obtaining the rewards given upon completion, regardless of their level. This is by no means asking that tradeskiller's be given some easy task of crafting the same item over and over again, but rather, implementing some kind of quest line, similar to the Lavastorm quest line I referenced above, presenting a challenge to the crafter to complete the task at hand. This challenge should require the same amount of time and effort as the challenge to the adventurer.

If the concern is that then high level people will mentor down and complete these quest lines at a lower level and fly through it, well...the solution to that is, that when you enter the dungeon, your level is set to your current adventure level, and if you are mentored down, will return to your mentored level upon leaving the dungeon. Nothing states that you have to be able to mentor down for every quest available in game.

(This is not directed at you, Deveryn) The whole theory that people just want things handed to them is just a crock, as I have not seen a single post here that has asked that this guild hall just be handed over to anyone, and I resent that implication. I simply want to see an equal opportunity given to all play styles, especially for something like a guild hall that is utilized by so many different people working together as a team, yet each person has their own unique play style. I honestly think that limiting something like a guild hall to a certain elite group of players is the wrong direction SOE or any gaming company should take.

Guilds are meant to work together as a team...promoting something like this to one specific group of your player base does not encourage your players to work together as a team. Yet SOE's stance on some of the things they have implemented, such as contested dungeons, is that they want to encourage social interaction with one another. Seems to me the first place that should happen is within the guild, so why not make this something that the guild, as a whole, should work on together?

Something the dev team could keep in mind when designing the tradeskill path to get things: buying from others is not a challenge to the crafter's skill. An extremely long combine is not a challenge to the crafter's skill. However, there are ways to challenge a crafter that are already in-game.

• Very tight time limit - not rush order writ time, more like the Coldain Prayer Shawl summoning crystals time.
• Crafting events that kill if not properly countered.
• Specialized crafting sub-skill that does not benefit from regular bonuses granted by gear, AAs, or racials.
• Combines that lose everything if failed, requiring a person go gather all the resources and start the multi-step crafting process all over again if they're not paying attention (or have really bad luck).
• Instances that auto-scale to 20+ the crafter's adventuring level, that require careful movement, timing, gathering components, finding specialized crafting stations, and creating items that are either quest objects or means of defending themselves from the mobs that can otherwise one-shot them.

I've got 10 90+ crafters, and things like the Earring of the Solstice instances still unnerve me every time. Experimenting on anything except adding a particle effect to an appearance piece makes me sweat, and the more times I've experimented on an item, the worse it gets. Now, if I am paying attention and take a little time to research what I need to do and prepare for it, I rarely fail. But the same can be said for a lot of adventuring quests and instances.

I'd also like to say that it is not too late to correct things with Highkeep. Give us a daily or weekly mission along the lines of the Moors crafting missions. Put them in an instance with hard red-con mobs capable of one-shotting us. Scatter defenses and components in the zone, and let us recover and repair equipment that will help restore/defend Highkeep. Add a time crunch, which will both add an additional difficulty factor and give an incentive for grouping. Have the quest completion reward a heartstone per person. And have the Favor of Innovation event (incredibly rare beneficial crafting event) reward a shattered heartstone if correctly countered.

Lodrelhai most of what you suggested I like, though there are two points I do not like.

First off, I do not see the point of having someone killed because they failed to counter in time. Sometimes there are lag issues that interfere and is not the person's fault for failing to counter in time. Now, maybe they could lose a certain percentage of their health, for a failure, and several failures in a row could result in death, but a single failure should not result in death.

The only other thing I don't like, though I don't completely disagree with it, is the suggestion to offer an incentive to group. As a solo player, I will skip pretty much anything that requires you to group. This being for a guild hall, however, and should be a group effort by the guild, I can see why you would suggest that, and perhaps it could result in additional heartstones being awarded, but I would still like to see this geared towards all play styles, including the solo player. Just because I prefer to solo, doesn't mean I can't still contribute towards the group effort, but if solo players are excluded, they won't be able to contribute in any way.

On your first point, I included counter-failure death because it is something that currently exists in a few different crafting quests, and because the #1 reason I hear people say crafting does not deserve the same rewards as adventuring is the risk/reward factor. We're not risking death and subsequent failure/reset of the encounter. I'm not a huge believer in that one, but I understand the point people make, especially given the number of scripted fights where missing a cure or interrupt at the wrong moment will kill you, if not wipe the whole party. I'm just as willing to have severe-damage failures. Another option might be a sort of scripted event where missing more than X events auto-fails the combine, or slipping in events that will hurt us/our progress if we do counter them, the same way some curses will kill you if cured. But those aren't currently-available mechanics.

On the second, I think we're actually on the same page. I also mostly solo anymore, as a lot of my guild has moved on to other pursuits and I've had some bad burns with PUGS. I do not want the time limit proposal to be impossible solo, but something that will perhaps leave you with a minute or so of leftover time if everything goes perfectly while soloing. So the lone player could definitely do it, and definitely contribute to the guild that way. But if two players are splitting the combines, the tight crunch becomes a comfortable pace. Other ways this might work might be a defense that has to be reset periodically to keep the mobs away (like the sleep smoke for the Earring quest line); a soloer has to remember to stop crafting the quest item and take care of that, but a group can have one person in charge of keeping the defenses set. Incentive via additional reward rather than easier progress works too, of course, and I see no reason it couldn't be done that way.

Of course, this is just crafter solutions. Still don't have a soloer's way to earn these, even at a slow, sporadic rate. I favor the auto-scale instance that also auto-strips mentoring idea I saw earlier in this thread.

Not to distract, but to clarify some things:

Has there ever been a yes or no to the idea of allowing existing halls to have wall and floor option changes like city homes from the dev team?

Has there been discussion on allowing small homes to convert a city or prestige home to a guild hall?

Are more new guild halls in the works?

I think you misinterpreted my post. My post was agreeing with Alenna. O__O Which is why I said, "YES!"

I simply stated I have been compiling feedback and sending it to the Dev Team.

I proceeded to state that my articles intention was to help showcase the steps to attaining this specific guild hall. I've stated already that "easy" was probably not the best word, and in the future, I will avoid it for situations such as this.

Now, to comment about the rest of your post, please continue to provide constructive feedback as I stated in the post that you quoted and were upset about. I meant no ill-will to Aleena's post. I was just agreeing. Sorry, I hope this clarifies things.

Let's keep this thread on topic, but I'll answer quick - I haven't heard any talk about these two questions. You're welcome to discuss these questions in another thread. (I'd suggest breaking up both topics into separate threads. )

Luperza- Could you at least change the title of your thread to 5 Steps to attaining your dream guild hall? Having Easy in it is incredibly misleading and after reading the entire thread it seems you agreed and certainly most others posting here do.

I would add my feedback but its already been covered. I will add that as a Crafter/Decorator/RPer that this was very disappointing and I really hope the dev team listens.

The words challenging and crafting never really went together. There's been danger, but never any real challenge. Even when we ran zones that were scaled up, things were pretty simple once you figured out the pattern of where to go. Even the othmir zombies got to be pretty easy to deal with after a couple runs. We've talked for years about adding some kind of challenge, but there's only so much that can be done with a limited system like crafting. All things considered, it's a pretty tall order. There are a couple of good suggestions for what to do, but nothing will match up with the effort / challenge of the adventure side of acquiring these tokens without being ridiculously tedious. It would likely rival the Unblemished Oeuvre achievement (75,000 pristine combines for a fancy set of crafting tables).

I think time could be better spent on other crafting related endeavors than trying to figure a way into these halls.

Every time I can recall it being requested for homes at SOE Live it was met with negative reaction due to the amount of time it takes to do that (hence why homes beyond Qeynos and FP never got those options).

Done.