Guild Wars 2

This popped into my head a couple days ago and I decided to flesh it out. If ANet are still throwing ideas around the table for the scavenger hunt, I’d like to throw mine at them as well. The short version comes first for people without much time to read a wall of text.

TL;DR SHORT VERSION:
1) Craft “Shards of Legend” in MF.
2) Once per day, bet a player-chosen number of Shards of Legend on a mission.
3) Player has to complete that many randomly-chosen missions within a time limit.
4) Completion rewards “Fragments of Legend”, 1 per Shard the player bids.
5) X number of Fragments of Legend can be spent on unlocking an instance themed around a Legendary weapon, which can be attempted until successful.
6) Completing that instance rewards the related precursor, once per character.

Full Version:

New crafted item (Mystic Forge) “Shard of Legend” (costs, say, around 50 silver to 1 gold to make). Shards of Legend are used to activate scavenger hunt missions; players may activate scavenger hunt missions once per day using any number of Shards of Legend. Scavenger hunt missions work like bounty hunts – the player is given a list of missions and a timer to complete them in, one mission per Shard of Legend used. The time given is dependant on how many missions the player has to complete.

Missions are intended to be solo-able, but take the form of dynamic events that other players can join in with and scale up. As they’re intended to be solo-able, missions which have specific targets may be marked on the map for players, while missions that may involve searching just have a general area marked. Scavenger Hunt events are activated similarly to bounty hunts (a player with the event as a target can start it when they reach the location)

For each mission successfully completed, the player gains one “Fragment of Legend”. Alternately, Fragments are rewarded if and only if all active missions are completed. Hence,

- Player may activate missions once per day using X Shards of Legend
- Player must complete X missions to receive X reward
- It would be wise for a player to choose a number they believe they can achieve, because activating the missions consumes the Shards of Legend, and missions can only be started once per day

Other players in the party when a mission is activated are given the choice to join in; to do so they must agree to spend the same amount of Shards of Legend. All players in the party that join in receive the same mission set. The missions in this regard may function like a guild bounty, such that each party member could tackle separate missions, or possibly each player must be present to get credit from a specific mission (which may result in the party completing a given mission more than once if they split up)

Missions may include:

- Boss fights/Communes similar to skill challenges
- Searching an area for a Fragment of Legend
- Defending/attacking a location
- Collection events
- Escort events

Some flavor for it: The hero throws several Shard of Legend into the Font of Legend, a mystical fountain found at a certain hidden location. The Shards are charged with the power of Legend, and are thrown out into the world as Fragments of Legend. The hero must locate and stabilise each Fragment of Legend before the energy disappears, leaving them as little more than shiny rocks. However, this may be difficult; some Fragments have been found and taken by powerful creatures. Some have been picked up by strangers who may only give them up in exchange for our services. Some have ended up in locations suffused with magical energy which could make them difficult to track. Only once the hero has claimed them once more will their power become stable.

Balancing: Missions should be completable solo, but be around as difficult as a combat skill challenge in Orr, or slightly harder. Mission time should be assigned with the assumption of around 5 minutes to reach each mission, and 5 minutes to complete it (10 minutes per mission) but give slightly less time for each additional mission.

(Cont’d; hit the character limit)

Some number of Fragments of Legend, for example 100, can be traded into a certain vendor in exchange for a “Prelude to [Legend]” (e.g. “Prelude to Twilight”). The Prelude is a consumable that when consumed unlocks a personal story-style instance which a player has to complete in order to receive the precursor for their legend. Within that instance the player should be given some level of information on the actual background of the legend they’re working towards. This instance is available continously until the player completes it, at which point it closes. A character may complete any given Prelude mission for rewards once only (Prelude consumables may have a red line of text saying “You have already completed this Prelude” similar to dyes saying “You have already unlocked this dye”). Like any personal story instance, the player can bring friends, but only those who’ve unlocked the instance will receive a precursor.

The final step is intended to give the legends some in-game lore, as right now there is very little about them. Alternately, some of the random missions may include bits of lore about specific legends, or something, and the player just flat-out buys/crafts the precursor with the fragments.

The overall idea is to have something that requires gameplay, some level of skill and no full RNG dependency to obtain a precursor, while being interesting to do. In this scenario a player can make concrete progress towards earning a precursor, but the less-skilled may still be able to buy/mystic forge their own if the missions are too hard, or choose to do a single mission each day (which should be relatively easy compared to doing, say, 5 or 10)