Guild Wars 2

I have the wierdest ideas while brushing my teeth.

What follows is not in Suggestions because it is not a serious suggestion, just a concept I would like advice/criticism on. It is also a concept that I feel would further set GW2 apart from other MMOs.

Those of us with several alts know the story. You make a new character and you grind all of the POIs, Vistas, WPs, SPs, RKs in each area and it gets same-ish and dull. Character levelling is boring. Also, this should give the feeling that your characters are working as a team, a warband or whatever, rather than alone.

This is the idea. You can choose (note: choose, this would be a UI’d optional mode) to put some or all of your alts in ‘Retinue’, that is Retainers for your main character. Of course you could change your main character using Retinue also.

This would/could bring some or all of the following benefits:

1. Follow me: Wherever your main goes, your Retinue follows. You go to Diessa, you change Main, and your character changes to the second, while the former Main goes to Retinue. Thus you can carry some/all of your party with you at all times for (reasonably) quick switching.

2. Graded levelling: The Retinue would level up Exp and money as the Main does, but at 25% of the rate of the Main. The Retinue would unlock Waypoints, and complete Reknown Hearts just as the Main does, but would NOT unlock Skill Points, POIs or Vistas. See note below.

3. Drops: Appear for the Main only. Your Retinue gets nothing to prevent farming of valuable goods. All the Retinue gets while selected is the 25% Exp and money.

4. Visible Retinue: If the Retinue is visible, then they would appear to follow and use their basic attack #1, but will do, and receive no damage. This is for appearances only. For game coding reasons, they may not be visible at all in Story mode, and would definitely not be visible at all in WvWvW or PvP. Sorry folks, this is PvE only where they can have no game-changing ability.

Note: While the Retinue would complete Reknown Hearts and unlock Waypoints and they would be marked upon their map as such, Vistas, Skill Points and POIs would NOT be completed unless the character was physically selected upon reaching it. This would prevent you from being able to map or world complete on the Main, change to Retinue, BAM you suddenly have a Gift of Exploration! While your Retinue gets some levelling from kills and RK completion, this is not a replacement for actual MC, just a way to ‘kickstart’ their development.

Likewise, as the Retinue’s Exp gain is at a lower rate than the Main’s, you change to Retinue in Arah and you might only be level 30 or so. Time to go back and get those POIs, Vistas and SPs!

Is this a good enough suggestion to put forwards? Would you support/agree with such a mode? Can you see any holes in the concept that my coffee deprived brain hasn’t spotted?

Criticism welcome. Thanks for reading.

So…you want to be able to use all the abilities on all your characters without going to the character select screen. Change toons like you switch weapons in other words? Yeah….nothing game changing about that.

No, this would gain reduced rate XP/money and WP unlocking only. Thats all.

Weapon skills would still have to be unlocked by each character individually. Skill points and Trait points would be unlocked at their normal character level rates only. THis is why open world Skill Points would NOT be unlocked as the Main completes them. Only the things they get from normal character levelling up would appear.

If at a waypoint, yes you could ‘hot switch’ Main and Retinue… but as this is PvE only, where is the harm? If you can see one, please tell me.

Thanks for your input/criticism.

Edit:
This is intended to be a device to prevent the repetitive completion of RKs, and unlocking WPs only, plus giving a SMALL amount of Exp levelling. That’s all this is about.

If it is only at waypoints that you could switch characters, then to me it would be ok. The thing about it is though that it will cut down on overall playtime for everyone, and mmo devs don’t like that.

The original idea was being able to switch at any point, but yes I had thought about switching at waypoints only. Or maybe even have waypoints at entry/exits portals of map areas be designated as Hubs or Camps, which would be the only place Main/Retinue were switchable.

Part of this concept could of course be averted, by simply going back to the chara select screen and select your Retinue character. So, I guess the Retinue characters would have to be locked from that screen, or would travel to the nearest ‘Camp’.

Part of what made me think of this is, I used to play a game on ZX Spectrum which allowed switching between characters. Transformers on ZX Spectrum allowed you to switch at certain hub points. Yet, a game created nearly 30 years later does not? Seems odd to me!

If you just unlock account wide wp’s as they are discovered this would effectively do the same thing as your suggestion. Without all the coding required to have 4+ extra graphic renditions.

Well, yes. But the main part of the idea is to have it so you don’t feel alone in the world while preventing the repetitive RK completing.

Charr talk about Warbands, Asura have Krewes, Norn have tribes (I guess) etc. This would allow you to build such a squad.

Good point on the 4+ renditions. They could or could not be visible anyway, since I don’t know if the game coding would allow them to be visible or not.

Lets say, a limit of 2 on the Retinue?