Guild Wars 2

So, what ever happened to these guys?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Collector

I know there’s some deep seated pathological issue that makes the dev team pretend that GW1 never existed, but the item collectors were an excellent idea.

In context of GW2, they’d be looking for stacks of junk – your broken claws, broken lockpicks, porous bones, etc.

It could be that in Queensdale, there’s an NPC who hangs out near the thieve’s cave, and collects broken lockpicks (with the intention of reforging them into usable lockpicks, presumably) and will trade themed gear for a stack of them. Say, a bandit’s kerchief, and themed skins.

They could even use this mechanic to re-introduce some of the skins from GW1

Say, for 50 porous bones, you’d get an individual skin piece, for a stack, you’d receive a set, for, say 5 stacks, you’d get a complete set of one of the old 15k armour skins.

I miss my Elite Drakescale and Luxon armours for my Ranger, the Scar Pattern and Elite Necrotic for my Necro, and this could be a mechanism that isn’t tied to the gem store that brings these skins back.

In the Postern Ward of Lion’s Arch, you’ll find these NPCs that you can turn your dungeon tokens into unique armor sets and weapons.

Historian Symon
Seraph Outfitter Eva
Valiant Saeraquel
Morro
Officer Veros
Ulof Sindersson
Peacemaker Skrimm
Officer Hetja

Junk items, not so much

Yeah, Karizee, I’m well aware of the dungeon tokens (been playing since the beta weekends). What I’m talking about is adding more things to the game, without the need for adding another new currency. Just something to give the junk items a use. (Seriously, without a use, why do these even exist?)

Also, looking for a possibility of new skins being added to the game without them being tied directly to the gemstore, but instead being something that you can get in-game. For GW2 this would be revolutionary act at this point.

Besides, collectors, like guild halls, gvg, multiple pvp modes, elite missions(dungeons) are just some of the truly excellent things that existed in GW1 that have been ignored by the current dev team – bringing them back would;

-give hope to the nostalgia driven folks, who miss the excellence that was gw1
-give a use to some of the random stuff that clogs our inventories
-give a lore friendly, easy to implement delivery means for some new(old) skins to come into the game.
-add incentive beyond the gift of exploration to actually get out in the world

There is are some changes to collecting and trading coming in the feature patch, maybe this is one of them.

I don’t know. I feel like 90% of the collectors ended up ignored, except for Nicolas of Course. What they really need to do is bring back the ghost of the traveler.

Let me ask you then, stale – how many junk items do you think should generate a unique piece of armor? 100? 250? 250,000?

Too few and you have a fairly meaningless, completely mediocre method of acquiring unique sets. They wouldn’t be unique because everyone would have them.

Too many and it would be a grind. A grind for JUNK.

Karizee, like I said in my OP – for the old, 15k armour sets, a stack per armour piece doesn’t seem unreasonable. For non prestige armour skins, far, far less, obviously.

I’m also not chasing unique here – not at all. I don’t need to be a unique snoflake – I’m chasing variety, while pointing out the old armour designs were far superior to 99%+ of what’s available in this game – especially when you start looking at the medium armours (trenchcoat anyone) and then look at the old ranger skins.

Vayne, I know lots of builds that worked best when using collector weapons – it was the most reasonable way to get the ideal stats. Since in GW2, stats aren’t the goal, I’d like to tie them to aesthetics instead.

Also, like I mentioned, it’d be another way to bring people out into the world, instead of the same boss train/LS deal wherein the entire game population is concentrated into one zone at a time.

I remember having the experience of “Wait, I can get that for these??? I have a bunch of these!!! AWESOME!” a bunch of times when finding a collector in GW1.

There’s also the thought that more variety in the ways you can get things would simply add to the “Play the way you want.” that is, in theory, this game’s approach to fun.

This is a very nice suggestion!

Right now most people go to a merchant and click “sell junk” to get rid of these items.
Why not give them a reason to be in this game instead of being just “junk”.

It will however turn into a grindfest if the armor is unique and it will only be unique for about 1 week. After that everyone could have farmed it. They could also give another option like: bandits drop lockpicks — lockpick collector lives near the mountains and his normal job is mining — He needs alot broken lockpicks and is willing to trade ore for it. 10 broken lockpicks is 4 copper ore or 2 iron ore.

What they could also do is that the lockpick collectors wife needs lockpicks to buy clothes to make linen or wool or cotton. The collector doesn’t have enough time to gather those lockpicks and is willing to trade this crafting material for the lockpicks. This way the price of wool and cotton can go down to a normal price.

Just an idea… but i love the idea of not getting “junk” but potential better items/gear.

A junk recycler! Give things that are obvious broken metal, like lock picks and what not and they recycle in to the ore as nightly suggested.

At the risk of being a bit racist, maybe the ability to trade with the few friendly grawl tribes some broken claws and fangs in exchange for mats. The grawl are obvious references to native americans after all. Broken clumps of ore can be traded with jotun or ettins for chef materials.
Busted shinies can be traded with skritt for certain types of ore.

An alternative currency, item for item swaps, could liven up the scene a bit. However, there would be obvious repercussions on the in game economy so should something like this come to pass, Anet would have to do some serious thinking about it