Guild Wars 2

Since 2012 we are waiting now on Polymok and lately I got some new inspirations, on how I would like to see Polymok playing out in Guild Wars 2.

Polymok in GW1 was kind of very simple minded by its design.
You had figurines of creatures, that you then could use in a round based battles similar to Pokemon.

However, I would not want it to be returned in this way for GW2.

Polymok should be changed slightly for GW2, to make it more addictive, fun and simpler to implement, while still being complex enough to entertain people for a long time, from casual players, to hardcore collectors and tournament players.

The Gameplay if it should be very simple, so that it is quick to understand, but hard to master and it should be something, that should be easily programmable, without that there needs to be tons over tons of 3D models for all kinds of figurines ect.
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So I searched for inspirations over the last years, for how I would love Polymok to be and lately I got a new one from anew game that I am playing now for some weeks,on a new tablet that I got – simple game, but very easy to understand and still complex enough to entertain for along time and being addictive – so right what I was searching for Polymok did I quickly say to myself – the game is called Terra Battle.

It’s a Smartphone/Tablet Game that is free to play and grows bigger and gets morecontent, so more people download it, coming from a bigger developers that makes usually Console Games and is a result also from a corporation with other people that worked for many known high quality console rpgs and made the music soundtracks for them, or the character designs.

The point is, I want this activity for GW2 not only to be having a good and easy gameplay, I want it to be also to have high quality and participation for the *ART SECTION" of Guild Wars 2, so that this activity becomes something, where the art teams can have alot to do in regard of this and the designs that would be needed for this activity.

Polymock should get turned for GW2 into an collectable Ingame Card Game that should work similar to Terra Battle in regard of Gameplay and Artwork Design, but should have also some own different mechanics and maybe some other good influences from other known good Card Games of other games, like FF8’s TripleTriad, Witcher 3’s Gwent or from the anime YuGiOh (but maybe thats too complex xD).
I always remember myself that Guild Wars in itself was originally being inspired once by Magic: The Gathering, so even this could provide some useful mechanics for this activity as a ingame Card Game

The Basics however, I think should be taken from Terra Battle as it provides this simple gameplay, which could be ported over for Polymock as Ingame Activity which players should be able to play wherever theywant whenever they want either against NPCs or against other players.
The “Polymock Arena” onto which that lone AsuraWorker is working on since 3 years could be turnen then into somekind of “Polymock Tournament Arena” that opens up when Anet starts for Polymock an own Ingame Tournament where players could win then ingame prices

The Basic Gameplay is very simple.
The Game Cards have for the beginning just only, when you look at the TB Concept only for now just 2 Categories.

• Adventurer Cards
• Monster Cards.

Lets call this for GW2 in this case

• Character Cards
• Creature Cards.

Character Cards are more powerful Play Cards that are special heroes/adventurers. Cards with theability to “evolve” as every Character Card has maximum 3 “Jobs”

Creature Cards are simpler, they don’t have Jobs, are often also weaker than Character Cards, but they provide alot of useful effects for utility, that you can’t have with Characters.

All Play Cards underlie a very simple system of “Classes”

Lets say we have following Card Classes:(In TB it are only 4, but I think for us it’s nicer to make 5 classes out of that)

• Fighters > Symbol = Sword
• Archers > Symbol = Bow & Arrow
• Defenders > Symbol = Shield
• Healers > Symbol = Focus
• Mages > Symbol = Staff

The ruleof hand isalsovery simplehere, in which kind of way one type beats the other..

>>Fighters beat Archers, Archers beat Defenders. Defenders beat Healers, Healers beat Mages, Mages beat Fighters <<

The Battle System Mechaniccould be adapted from TB for Polymock that abattle between Cards begins, when two of your Cards from your “Set” pincer a Card from the opposing side.
The player moves his cards then via the mouse byclicking on the card, holdign down the click button and drawing the card then from one field to the field where you want to place your card.

On a tablet this is simpl down by drawing your finger over the tablets surface due to its touchscreen system that wedont have fo GW2, sowe would have to use the typical mouse naturallyfor the movement of cards byclicking and drawing with it instead.

To make it a bit simpler to understand, here a gameplay video from a Terra Battle Combat.
Just think of it, as if 2 sides of players would battle against each other

What are your thoughts about that?
Would you like a Polymock in GW2, that doesn’t work anymore like in GW1 like a kind of poor Pokemon Clone, but instead turns out for GW2 to be a greataddictive kind of complex collectable Card Game with its very own Collection/Activity Achievements thatallows for it also to be played ingame as tournaments against other players in the “Polymock Arena” in Rata Sum?

Acollectable ingame card game, full with alot if nice artworks for all the various Character andCreature Cards to collect, which a player could collect for a “Compendium” to have a more clean and bigger look onto these nice artworks and where you can then read also some nice lore about the characters/creatures.

Maybe we could do it like TB and add to this ingame activity also its very own “Story Mode” where you play the game then very similar like TB against alot of NPCs in some kindof crazy asurabased reality distortion thatsends us onto some kind of “other dimension” that islinked to the thought out world of our “Polymock-Universe”, – so basically a similar mechanic like Super Adventure Box, where as long we play Polymock in story mode aren’t with our playable characters basically in the for the character’s realworld, but in some kind of other “dimension”.

This activity should come then also like TB with its very own integrated RPG elements.

Each Card can get leveled up. When we level up our Cards, they gain more stats and you activate new “Card Abilities” and become able to attach also utility skills to your Cards, thatyoulearn from your other Jobs. for GW2 we can call it “Specializations” ^^
Once your play Card has reached a certain level, you can upgrade it also with something, that is called in TB a “Companion”. Lets call this for GW2 here a “Talisman”, which are in itslef evolveable “Accessoires” for the Cards with that you can add unique effects to the Cards and Abilities, thatCharacters/Creatures normally can’t learn.

The fun and addictive thing of the whole gameplay is, that it is so much fun to beat your enemies in that systme, because the whole gameplay provides so much “strategetic synergy” that comes from all the card effects and the battle system that works vertically and horizontally, as also provides surrounding effects.
The Grid Map makes it easy to navigate and to see, where you can place your cards.

When then Polymock provides also likehundreds of collectable characters and creatures to collect, which youcan then progress further by developing them with rpg elements to expand their abilities so that youcando with them more (or more effective later) on the play field to creat a card deck for your matches with as much as synergy as possible to find your own playstyle with them and your own play strategy, I think somethign like thiscould become really something great.

ANet could make use of this then also for the Gemstore by eventually putting new unique Character/Creature Cards every now and thenfor sale, that you could get then nowhere else in the game (but naturally not with better stats, but just with maybedifferent new skilsl and abilities)

Honestly, I kinda like this idea at a first glance, I’ll have to check it better later and give it a proper read.
As for the gemstore stuff, perhaps foils? If we’re talking ‘card-based’ stuff. I didn’t know polymock was a thing in GW1

I actually opened a thread some time ago about a general idea of stuff like this here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-suggestion-about-the-open-world/first#post5895410
And yes, this would fit in what I’d consider a nice ‘change of pace’ content.

I think it might have a lot of problems in balancing/designing/etc, it sounds like a LOT of work, tho.

tl;dr pls?

Leohart.4610:

tl;dr pls?

Simple said:

• Implement a new Ingame Activity, call it Polymock, as it was already an activity in Guild Wars introduced by the Asura, there it was 250 years ago a kind of Pokemon Clone with figurines that created kind of YuGiOh stylish “holograms” of themself to let them fight against each other in a turn based way
• Use the Polymock Arena that a single Asura NPC is working on since Game Release as a place, where players will be able to play Polymock against each other in Polymock Tournaments
• Change the Play Principle for GW2 from Pokemon Clone to collectible Ingame Card Game
• Use the Gameplay Mechanics from Terra Battle instead of the Pokemon Battle System for the Card Game’s Card Field where players will move their Cards then around on a Grid Field per Mouse Click & Draw to adapt this way th simple mechanic of drawing with a finger on your tablet/smartphone as this is the nearest adaption you can get with this naturally.
• Give us alot of collectible Cards that can be findable/receiveable in various ways – as monster loot, as meta rewards, from boss chests, from the gemstore for the exclusive unique ones.
• Cards can be either creatures from the game, stuff like Shadow Behemoth, Green Slime, Vampire Bat and so on or heroic character cards of the various playable races, which are characters thathave nothing to do with the normal guild wars 2 lore, but are just some thought out heroes that exist only for the “lore” of the Card Game
• Give Polymock similar to Terra Battle some kind of “Story Mode” that you can play, when you find no other players in Tyria to play with, which can be used also as Tutorial for the first Chapters of the “Polymock Story”, which plays in some kind of alternative dimension that you can enter from Rata Sum.
  Lets say Moto returns with a new Game, called “Secrets of Polymock” gg, that he introduces, before he brings back Super Adventure Box.
  —-

@Jarie: Its alot of work, but mostly only for the Art/Character Designers to make the artworks for the Cards of allthe creatures and characters.
But its enough when they begin first with a smallnumber of cards, because later Anet can add always whenever they want additional new cards to the came to collect, just like theydo with Miniatures.

But think of the Collection Achievementsand theActivity Achievements thisalone could provide for the game.

Card Collection Set I, II, III, IV ect.
Simple example. Do it like with the Miniatures. Collect so and so much cards to complete "sets of around 50 cards " and get for each completed set around 40AP

50 Cards could be like 5 Characters of each Race and 25 Creatures, or 7 Characters of each race and 15 Creatures for the beginning.

With more and more Sets coming then with the future will grows the Deck Diversity then more and more slowly, while it continously can grow all year long via the gemstore also.
A project like this could be just anew little playground for the art teams from Anet for nice character designs, which usually wouldn’t find their way into the game, but could end up as card designs then ^^
They dont even have to link the Polymock Lore to the Game Lore, theycould even come up with something completely independent, to give their art team for the character designs more creative freedom, because its just a game in a game that doesn’t need to share the same racial lore and world, but its naturally easier, when under the card designs are humans also part of at least
TB for example has 3 different folks – humen, beastmen and lizardmen. To make naturally now incase of GW2 lore cards for five different folks is naturallymore different and requires more time, than to do that for just only 3 folks.

However, TB is just only the basic idea that Iused here now asinspiration, because I like the gameplayfrom it alot and it would work Ithink very well as a solid foundation to build Polymock for GW2 as a collectible Card Game up this time.

Like kind of Polymock V2.0, the 250 years older new version of it that is more compatible for all races of Tyria as cards does understand everybody… holographic figurines is something else, nothing for Bookahs would an Asura say ^^

Well, we’re still talking about a game, so the cards should have some game mechanics based on them – and even taking into account the inspiration from TB, they would need to make some changes so they don’t get sued. So some balancing/core gameplay would be needed.

I do quite like the idea though, but I would have the tables in various zones, not only in ONE point of ONE area (this is actually one of the points I made in my other post X3).
It might be interesting having certain cards be drops from bosses? Like, shadow behe, and such. Probably a mid-low drop rate, OR, an achievement to get it (possibly not 10k shadow behe killed tho, plz.)

The changes to not get sued are simple:

• Use different terms for specific words like
  (TB) Adventurer Cards > to (for us) Character Cards
  (TB) Monster Cards > to (for us) Creature Cards

• Have completely different content, while just sharing only mechanics.
  Mechanics can’t be really copyrighted, its the “content” that is what may not be the same.

So if Polymock would get also its own Story Mody similar to TB like I suggested, for a Card Game, then that story must naturally be somethign completely different.
But thats naturally total normal that this would be the case,, because we donn’t wanmt a 100% TB Clone, we want that the card game format for Polymock in GW2 is in itself unique. Mechanics is something total free to share, otherwise car developers would have to permanently sue eachother, because their various fifferent cars share countless of the same mechanics xD
However that doesn’t mean that Anet could not modify the mechanics by adding some own new ones to what the TB gameplay offers already as “basics”
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The cards have mechanics. They have RPG elements.
Each Card can be leveled up from Level 1 to Level 100 and its stats Power, Vitality, Toughness and Precision grow, what are in itself already different Stats, than what TB uses (the classical Attack ,Defense, Magic Attack, Magic Defense)

So more a Card progresses further, so more abilities can the Card learn, until the Card learned all of its abilities.
To learn for your Card new Jobs with that it can learn new abilities, you have to play in Story Mode, where you earn from the matches with your enemies required items to let your Cards evolve to new Jobs (Specializations) with that they can learn new abilities, which you can then slot as 1 out of 4 skill slots that each card (Characters) can have.

Skill Slots are the Card’s learned abilities, that your Card either actively or passively uses while it is your turn in the match and you attack with your Cards the Cards of the enemy, move it to an other Gried Field and so on

The Card Skills can be of various types:

Vertical Abilities = Effects, that affect Enemy/Ally Cards that are either layed above, or under your Card on the Grid Field.

Horizontal Abilities = Effects, that affect Enemy/Ally Cards that are either layed left or right besides of your Card on the Gried Field

Diagonal Abilitiies (something that TB for example has not) = Effects, that affect Enemy/Ally Cards diagonally (Cross Shape) on the Grid Field

Ranged Abilities = Effects, that affect automatically the Enemy/Ally Card, that is the furthest away from your layed Card on the Grid Field

Field Abilities = Effects, that affect the whole Gried Field or smaller areas of the Gried Field

Single Abilities = Effects, that affect just single chosen out Grids of the Field, like for example Trap Effects

Combo Abilities = Effects, that automatically happen, when something specific has been done first, that acts as Combo Starter, on what an other Card reacts with its Combo Finisher.

The possiblilities are great and TB is a great gamplasy, that offers in my opinion also great potential to improve it with own unique mechanics to make the matches even more fun.

I will make an explicit example about it, how such a Polymock Card could look and work like based in the TB Basics: (The picture itself is from TB, should be just a placeholder for the example, as I’m pretty sure, anet is able to create same as good, if not better looking Character Designs that will be then used as Card Pictures)

Example Polymock Card

Orpheal, the Black Orchid
https://sketchbookdandy.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/tls-manamia.jpg?w=402&h=631&crop=1
Character Card
Specialization Rank “Omega” (TB has here D,C,B,A,S, (SS), Z, for us we take significant greek letters instead as Rank Equivalents, starting with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Sigma, Omega )
Card Class “Archer”

Attributes at Level 1
Health: 250 (Card is defeated and out of Match, if this reaches 0)
Mana: 100 (Card can’t use Skills anymore, if this reaches 0)
Power 50 (Affects the Damage of your Card’s Skills)
Vitality 50 (Affects Chance to receive negative Conditions
Toughness 50 (Affects the Damage of your Card that it receives from Enemy Attacks)
Precision 50 (Affects Critical Hit Chance and the percentage, with that Skills get used in Combat
Expertise: 0.0% (Increases so more the Card uses its Skills for Bonus Effects that can be unlocked once you have enough Expertise, an Attribute, that doesn’t get increased automatically by Level Ups, you have to play with your Cards to increase their Expertise)
Ranks say nothing out about the Power of Attributes of a Card, but about its Rarity and Efficiency of Skills

Attributes at Level 100

Health: 7500
Mana: 1500
Power: 1000
Vitality: 1250
Toughness: 750
Precision: 1500

Skills of that Card at Level 1

• Sword Strike (50%) Single Grid 1 Tech = Hits Enemy Card(s) that is/are 1 Grid away from your layed Card
• Flanking Shot (30%) Horizontal Grid 2 Tech = Hits Enemy Cards that are layed two Grids besides of your layed Card with a Flanking Shot. Flanking Shot knocks back Enemy Cards to different Grid Fields)

Skills of that Card that it can learn:

at Level 15: Twin Shot (25%) Ranged Tech = Shoot at the furthest away placed two Enemy Cards

at Level 25: Shadow Rejuvenation (Passive) Movement Tech = Heal yourself while moving the Card per Grid that you cross. If you cross Ally Cards on your way, put them under Stealth, making them not targetable for Attacks on the next Enemy Turn.

at Level 50: Heartseeker (30%) Vertical Grid 3 Tech = Attack all Enemy Cards in line of sight of 3 Vertical Grid Fields. Heartseeker causes Bleeding Condition to Enemies with full Healh, while having a Damage Bonus of 20%, when attacking Enemy Cards with lesser than 50% Health. Bleeding causes Enemy Cards to lose Health every turn.

at Level 75: Kiss of Death (15%) Field 1 Grid Tech = Attack all surrounding Enemy Cards that are layed around your Card 1 Grid Field away. Kiss of Death is a poisonous attack,when causes 90% of the time Poison to enemies. But with a 10% chance, it can instantly defeat 1 randomous Enemy Card among those that are affected by the Range of this Skill.

Specializations

Orpheal, the Black Orchid has two Specializations with that you can turn the Card “Orpheal the Black Orchid” to these two different variants:

Orpheal, the Queen of Thieves or Orpheal, the Nightingale Blade

If you use the Specialization Queen of Thieves, you can use instead of the above four Skills as mix and match options additionally also these Skills to slot them for your Skills.

Queen of Thieves-Specialization

lvl 15: Exploitation (50%) Horizontal Grid 3 Tech = Steal additionally from up to maximum 3 Enemy Cards horizontally in line while you attack them. Stealing grants you radomous pisitive Effects from Self Heals to temporary Attribute Increases, while the bestolen Enemies have temporary for two turns decreased Attributes based on what has been stolen

lvl 30: Critical Eye (Passive) Attribute Boost = Increases your Precision by 10%

lvl 45: Cat Reflexes (30%) Self Grid Tech = Perform Cat Reflexes, when being attacked to avoid incoming damage by 30% to mitigate a part of the received damage this way.

lvl 65: Quick Counter (50%) (Passive) = Counterattack incoming Attacks on the Enemie’s Turn randomly with one of your Skills.

Nightingale Blade-Specialization

lvl 15: Sylph Dance (25%) Diagonal 5 Grid Tech = Attack from your layed position diagonally all Enemy Cards that are diagonally 5 grids away from your Position with an Wind Based Attack, that ignores 25% of the Enemy Card’s Toughness and moves yourself then two Grids vertically downwards, while pushing Enemy Cards thosw 2 Grids away down also if there way any in your way.

lvl 30: Shuriken Fan (30%) Vertical Grid 2 Tech = Throw Shurikens at Enemy Cards that are two Vertical Grids from your Card Position either above our belov your Card.
They cause Bleedings also, if you hit at least two Enemy Cards at the same time.

lvl 60: Sonic Arrow (100% on Combo) Horizontal Combo Grid 5 Tech = Shoot horizontally at Enemy Cards that are pinced by two of your Ally Card, when one of them starts a Combo, this card finishes the combo with Sonic Arrow, makign this card a strong combo partner for horizontal attacks on the Grid Field.

lvl 90: Dark Stalker (20%) Self Grid Tech = Have a chance to Stealth yourself after every of your turns, making your card unable to be targeted. When you pincer attack in stealthed state now horizontally an Enemy Card, your attack will get 50% more Damage.
——

This would be my personal Example Card for Polymock, using myself as “Character Card”

That sounds like quite the complicated programming to include…I do like the idea, but probably it’ll have to be streamlined (by quite some extent), especially considering the workforce has to be divided between the main game (with obviously the main focus) and the balancing/programming of this system, along with the art team preparing the cards. I think it’s doable, and I think it’d be good to have something like this, but probably not with 100 lvs and such.

I’d much rather have them devote their time and resources to working on the core game.

I do agree the core game needs some fixing in various parts, but it is also true that we do need some more varied activities. I’ve seen plenty of people going on about how the grinding is awful, how they’ve been burned out on the game due to the direction it took, and so on, and having something different, something to break the pace, I think might be the right direction to at least mitigate the problem a bit.

The problems are stale professions, terrible spvp, dying wvw, atrocious raid, poor reward systems… The game will not be revitalized with more minigames to distract a handful of players, nor generate a holding of players until the next big or meaningful thing comes to pass…

There are also enough activities game wide to keep players busy for now. This game needs more substance, not silliness just to mind trick players.

Sure, it can be streamline with lower numbers, I took just the classical number 100, because I want this minigame to be something, with that pplayers can and will play also in some years later.

There hsould be for the player the feeling of having “progression” with this minigame, like you feel progression when developing your character further and becoming stronger. But it shouldn’t also be way too simply, that players have maxed out their cards in no time, just to land then here in the forums again, because they are bored and demand after new cards and so on, because of the initial system being not complex enough to entertain also long enough and keep players busy.

This is naturally also nothing with super high priority Swagger, naturally other things of the core game always have more priority, like continuing with Living Story Season 3, bringign finally a needed Balance Patch and that in a constant way that doesnt have us to wait every time 6 months or longer before the next one comes and so on…

Sure, there are alot more important things currently. However, it doesn#t change the fact, that polymock is by now a game activity, that was announced over 3 years ago to be initially part of the game at game release and fact is also, we wait still until today on it in vain.

Thats why I came up with this thread to simply show Anet, that theres still interest on polymock, that it is not forgotten, will never be forgotten until its finaly there and how I personally (and maybe other people too) would like to see it getting implemented for GW2 in a more modern way that isn’t like in GW1 that kind of boring Pokemon Clone that it was, but this time a more addictive, more complex and fun collectable Card Game that comes together with its very own Collection and Activity Achievements, while it can provide at the same time for Anet also another great way to get money, by bringing out every now and then some new cards via Gemstore either, or as part of new content for new expansions in the future

Lots of possibilities. All I’m just saying now is, that anet shouldn#t waste such a golden chance to come up with somethign great, that can give especially their Art teams a wonderful pnew platform to shine on with all their nice character and creature artworks they can come up with for this then (which maybe normally wouldnt have found perhaps otherwise into the game) ^^

@ Swagger: oh and thank your for insulting this idea as “silliness” rolleyes.
You know, every new content is “substance” and not just something to mind trick players into thinking theres something worthful to do in the game.
Content, that can simply make players happy and busy by having something new/different to do.
However, basically I can agree with you that the game has other problems, but please, for the love of god, stop please derailing this topic.
That there are other problems of this game IS NOT THE TOPIC HERE now. Thank you

Again, this is not to say this must come INSTEAD of spvp/wvw. And the raids don’t look atrocious to me, to be honest.
The profession are the profession, you can call them stale, but honestly every mmo that’s been around for a while has this problem (Even worse in some cases, see the mmo’s with only one weapon per class, THAT’S what I’d call stale) and with the introduction of elite specs, this can be already on the road to be solved. For example, tempest already plays WAY different than core ele.
About the reward system, these activities can actually be a good step towards having more variety and more uses to what we find. Say you go around, kill mobs, instead of the usual stuff you find a card, that you can use in the game, or you find some other collectable/currency for other activities. Suddenly, loot becomes more rewarding, because you’re not just seeing the same skins/sigils/weapons, but something new AND potentially useful in content that can help break the pace and ‘relax’ between the grind for mats or whatever you might need.

And this is why my idea is that yes, we do have already amazing activities, but them being locked in just festivals/main plaza LA/jungle isn’t really viable anymore. If I’m farming ascalon (to make a silly example) I’d like to be able to go to a charr camp and possibly find something to do there, instead of: waypointing to LA, going to the activity starter, possibly open the instance, do the activity, waypoint back to ascalon, resume farming. You see what I mean? You can call it mind-tricking, but it’s actually just giving options, some different kinds of content, something to vary what you’re doing.