Guild Wars 2

I quite like the cooking profession, I’ll say that first. I think it’s the most interesting profession simply because of the complexity of the discovery involved. It used to be a bit of chore back when you had to drag everything to your inventory, but now that’s fixed, it’s much better. That said, how we obtain our ingredients — or some of them at least — could use a bit more of the dynamic spirit that so much of the rest of the game has.

So first the positives:

- cool that you can “farm” some ingredients, and often in real farms in the world. That’s cool for so many reasons. It feels authentic, it’s cool that they take time to grow back, etc.

- also nice that you can buy certain ingredients from karma vendors.

- thirdly of course you can get some ingredients — like walnuts — from trees, and I think that also gives some realism and immersion to gathering which is great.

The negative(s):

- all of these things, perhaps barring the walnut drops from trees, feel very static, in an otherwise rich and dynamic mmo.

- some ingredients are rare in the wrong kind of way — meaning they are just mathematically rare to come by (I’m looking at YOU vanilla beans), and not rare in a fun kind of way.

An idea to address both of these things:

- like so many systems in the game, I see so much potential to build on what’s there. While karma vendors with ingredients for cooking is nice, I would love to see some of these put into motion… literally. Karma vendors often feel to me like traveling salesmen, which are out in the world, but often in static or predictable places. This is fine some of the time, as they are predictable and you just alt-tab over to your favorite website, find out exactly where everything is while you’re powerleveling your profession (as some people do), and get what you need.

I would love to see, as a variation to this:

- karma vendors (or just vendors) who traveled across zones with their pack mules mounded with stuff, carrying rare ingredients from far away lands. A Norn down from the snowy peaks, packed with goods he’s bringing down to sell at Lion’s Arch, for example. Maybe he would have a little problem you could solve first, which would unlock his store, whatever. Basically, put these guys in motion across the map. Give them a little back story. Maybe even give them a random pool of things to sell (seasonal!). Coming across stuff like this in the world just gives it more life. Maybe it’s a little detail, but I think it would be fun and add to immersion.

- also I love it when you talk to NPCs in a town and suddenly they become the start of an event (or at least give you those 1 of 3 dialog response choices). It’s great to have systems in place which encourage you to talk to NPCs, as it gives life to the location they’re in as well as giving lore-delivery opportunities. What I’d love to see is the same sort of thing — expand upon these “hidden” NPC to have some dialog choices open up shops, which sell a small (even limited) set of goods/ingredients. Give us even more reasons to talk to these people!

I just wanted to say I absolutely love these ideas!

Eivene.9127:

I just wanted to say I absolutely love these ideas!

Thanks

Wonderful ideas. While I’ve started having some fun with armorcrafting now that I am finally seeing new skins, cooking’s been fun from the start with just a brief hiatus awaiting the discover-from-bank fix. I’ve even managed to discover recipes by using real world cooking knowledge as to what things might go together.

Roaming merchants with mini-events to get their items would be awesome, assuming they don’t become the only way to get staple ingredients needed in a lot of recipes. Possibly they should have predictable endpoints to their travels once unlocked, so if I wanted Norn Snow Honey for instance I could wait for the vendor to wander into Lion’s Arch if I didn’t want to chase all over the trade route hoping to find him or her to get that sweetener for the special cake recipe (example totally made up off the top of my head, I have read no guides as I am having too much fun finding the recipes on my own).

I don’t see a problem with the cooking profession, at least not how you have described it (I tend to buy mats on the TP and go after events, instead of farming specific areas — I really hate doing the same thing twice in a row.)

However, I think your ideas have great merit on their own.

I love the idea of traveling merchants, that maybe follow a specific route. Perhaps they carry Vanilla Beans from the East and return from LA carrying Elonian Rice Wine. Perhaps it takes them more time to traverse the continent when WPs are contested or the roads are held by foes (perhaps some foes trade with them, too). Perhaps their offerings vary depending on what sorts of things players sell to them.

Or perhaps when the trader arrives in Queensdale, the local merchants have exotic items to sell (various new consumables) that aren’t available most of the time. Perhaps their arrival coincides with a festival or other event.

Donari.5237:

Roaming merchants with mini-events to get their items would be awesome, assuming they don’t become the only way to get staple ingredients needed in a lot of recipes.

Agreed, I think that would be a little too frustrating

Rather it would be nice if they are “luxury” cooking items. Things that you can make useful stuff with, but not completely staple. It wouldn’t work well if they carried ingredients for Omnomberry bars, for example :P

I’d love for these merchants to carry different kinds of recipes too, perhaps some long forgotten Canthan or Elonian dishes, or traditional dishes from all the different races (like you have some recipes from certain skritt, hylek etc karma vendors now)

I like the idea of some predictability, like them showing up in Lion’s Arch as you mentioned, but I also love the idea of adding some randomness to what these merchants carry.

I’d agree, it would have to be balanced with existing supplies and not be the only source.

Actually some of your points give me another related idea — I suppose it could be a really cool way for the devs to balance the existing supply/demand of certain materials. For example, if Vanilla beans were just crazy expensive and in very low supply (like they are right now), then “far away merchants could hear about it” and they could spawn and start working their way towards Lion’s Arch, etc. helping to bring new supply into the mix.

Would be nice if the whole supply system for cooking mats was something a little more dynamic like this. Even taking it a step further and working it into mini events… raids on spice wagons by centaurs etc. Would make the world come alive in little ways. If you weren’t interested in cooking, you could still participate in those events and sell the proceeds on the TP.