Very simple idea here:

Allow guilds a secondary option for getting into fights with other guilds.

I'm not going to pretend that I know the best way to balance this, but at the very least I think it's long overdue that guilds had some way to deal with contests over grind zones without having to jump through all the loopholes of declaring a full-out war. Here's some simple ideas:

-Declaring a Skirmish would take place instantly and would automatically end after 30 minutes or an hour.

-Guilds could only have 1 Skirmish declared at any given time, and could not redeclare a Skirmish on the same guild for a set period of time after it's finish.

-Wars can only be declared after a Skirmish has come to an end.

The idea here is just to give guilds an option for contesting grind spots without being forced to deal with karmabombing. It could also be a nice option for guilds that want to stage a friendly competition. Of course, there would have to be safeguards in place to make sure guilds don't abuse it to bully each other, but I feel some simple limitations would easily fix this. What do you guys think?

Meh, remove the "protected status" for all guilds Medium and over regardless of node owning.  Make Decs be the same process as it is now, but allow for an expedited process by which you can pay an additional 10m silver to lower the wait period down by 5 minutes, 25m silver to lower it by 10, and 50m silver to make it instant.  Remove the max number of guilds that a guild can Dec as long as the guilds are equal size or larger.  Make it so that you can only have 1 "small guild decced unless your guild is small yourself, and make it so that you can only have 4 guilds that are smaller than your guild is decced in total.  Make the initial Dec cost however increase each time by 5m silver, initial Dec 1m silver, 2nd dec 5m, 10m, 15m, 20m and so on with no Cap.  If 2 guilds are decced on each other the guild with the highest K/D ratio gets their funds returned should either guild cancel.    

For dec time waiting period, decs go through instantly if both sides do it to each other currently.  So for skirmishes, there is already no wait time.

I'd like it if guild wars or these skirmishes had a map territory selection.  

For example, "Guild A declares war against Guild B, in the territory of Valencia" and the war would be active in that region, but not others.  

So you could have a fight over a grindspot without worrying about the war bubbling over and impacting other things.  

I don't know if that's useful or valuable though. I am pretty happy with the current war system as well. 

Neither side can cancel for a full hour tho even if both guilds dec.  OP asked for something that was more instant and had a timer of 30 minutes on it.  It also sets a "timer" for the K/D ratio it could even do an announcement that Guild A beat Guild B in a guild skirmish with a score of 35-29.  It could be epic.

I knew this would be another post pretending Arsha doesn't exist while complaining they want an Arsha rule set.

Why didn't you just title it, "I want to bully other players, but not put as much effort into it, but I don't want to be at risk from everyone"

If your clan can't man up and work together to grind on Arsha you should QUIT the GUILD NOW.

I knew this would be another post pretending crashers and griefers don't exist if forced pvp wasn't an option.

Why didn't you just title it, "I want to bully other players, but not get declared war on or flagged on, I don't want to face any consequences for griefing."

If you don't want to be declared war on because you're too lazy to find a free spot, you should QUIT the GUILD NOW.

Retteo, please my dude. I appreciate your concern for the overall state of PvP, but there's no need to be so harsh :) I simply think that having more options for guild battles would be nice, especially for smaller guilds like mine that aren't interested in getting mixed up in the more 'hardcore' side of PvP. And again, if there are reasonable limitations placed on it, could it really do that much harm?

I love a lot of these other suggestions as well. Announcing the score at the end of the 30 minutes would indeed be epic, and restricting skirmishes to the region they're declared in would also make it a much 'safer' alternative to wars as well. On that note, maybe skirmishes could even be restricted to only one channel? That would eliminate the possibility of bullying, while still giving guilds the ability to temporarily defend from karma bombing (unless they are guildless, of course).