To begin I’d just like to say that this suggestion might be a little lengthy, I put a lot of thought into it. So I’ll summaries it to start things off.
TL;DR
I was thinking about a new quest system that allows players to help out NPC’s and in reward you will receive a small amount coin or an item. More on how this will work below. I separated my suggestion into sections just so it’d be easier to read.
Detailed Suggestion:
After finishing your Personal Story and all the Renown Hearts, all that’s left pretty much are the Dynamic Events (I know there are other stuff to do, but I’m specifically talking about quest-wise) and even these Dynamic Events can become somewhat repetitive/stale after doing them over and over. So I’m here to suggest something that will hopefully extend the games content; small quests given out by vendors, important NPCs or maybe even ALL NPCs.
How this will function:
How I imagine this would work is as follows: You go up to a NPC and interact with it as you normally would; however as an extra option there is something along the lines of “Do you need any help?” or “Anything I can do for you?” The NPC will then respond something like “Ah yes, can you collect 3x [Item 1], 5 [Item 2] and 1x [Item 3]” or “The [Monster name] is over running the farm! Please help me take out 10 of them!” and other trivial quests. These quests of course will be relative to what is around the area. So if you were in Harathi Hinderlands, it would be like “Take out 10x Harathi Lancers.”
“Happiness” System and Rewards:
When the quest is completed you get some exp and a small exp reward or an item (For those of you who are level 80 and don’t need exp). You might be asking “Why have this extra system if we can just do events?” Well, these rewards are not the main reason to complete these quests. Each time a NPC is helped, they will gain “Happiness”, a bar that is displayed underneath their Health, think of it like another health bar that slowly drains. Once their Happiness reaches max (I’m thinking after around 10-20? It will vary depending whether the area is usually heavily populated or not), they will begin to sell things that they normally don’t. This is especially for those random Karma vendors that just sell ginger root :| Now they will sell rarer items that you normally wouldn’t be able to vendor; obviously items native to the zone though. As for the non-vendor NPCs such as Soldiers, they can give you a small buff or stat bonus of some sort.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, their happiness will only stay at max for a small amount of time, lets say an hour, until it will start to fall back down to zero, where you will need to help them again.
Okay, that’s the end of the main functionality of my suggestion. The following will just outline some ideas to help balance out my suggestion so it won’t be exploited. Don’t feel obliged to read it if you are not interested in that stuff.
Balancing:
Firstly, I want to say that these quests should have little to do with the established lore of Guild Wars so that players who wish to ignore these quest can do so if they wish. To help prevent people from just botting these quests (or whatever they do these days), each character can help out the same NPC a maximum of maybe 2/3 times a day. After helping out 2/3 times, the NPC will exclaim “Oh no, you’ve already helped me so much! I can’t ask for anything more from you.” Also, once an NPC reaches maximum happiness, no one can help it any further until their Happiness falls back to 50-75%.
To prevent people helping out specific NPCs to farm items that are they are known to sell, make it so that the items they sell are randomly selected from a large list of possible items that they may sell. Also so that NPCs that are located far away in lower player dense areas are not neglected, make it so that NPCs in the areas that are least dense have the best chance of selling better items through happiness. This may even encourage players to travel or return to areas that they have little interest in. Another bonus is that this can introduce a new range of unique items and equipment that some players seem to be craving (me).
Conclusion:
Wow, wall of text… That took a while. Hopefully that wasn’t confusing or anything. I really think this suggestion could bring a lot of content to the game. If you are reading this, I really appreciate you taking the time to read all of that, thank you.
So, what do you guys think?