Guild Wars 2

TL;DR: Open world PvP combined with PvE, Bandits, and Backstabbing love for all, with a separate section for Guild Competition

This a new game mode idea I had with GW2 which combines PvE, PvP, and the use of maps and exploring that most people usually don’t go to.

The great hunts requires little time to create assets and what not. Many of the things this mode utilizes already exist in the game, and require no special spawns of anything.

Here is how you play “The Great Hunters”:

1) Get in a party, or not at all. Solo works perfectly fine if you can pull it off.

2) Go to any major city or Lion’s Arch, and locate a “Great Hunter NPC”.

3) Sign up! As soon as you do, you and your party will receive a buff called “Great Hunters”. Here’s what it does:

(TL;DR: PvP flag: ON!)

- Your names are disabled to anyone except those in your party.

- Your chat cannot be heard by those outside of your party, and vice versa.

- Using a waypoint removes the buff, and thus eliminated from the great hunt.

- A new event is enabled for you and your party, which allows you to obtain a “Trophy Item” by killing a randomly selected mobs based on your starting location. The mob types range from easy and close, to hard and far away, giving players a choice. Explained a little bit later.

- You and your party are now considered hostile to other parties or solo players with the same buff.

- People without the buff cannot physically interact with you. No reviving, rezzing, buff, damage, anything. You cannot use portals made by mesmers outside your party, you cannot receive stealth from people outside your party, etc.

- For every trophy you obtain, you gain a buff (or the buff itself is a trophy rather than an actual item, this may work better). This buff stacks per trophy, to a limit.

- If you die, a “loot bag” object will appear on your corpse. This will allow people to take half of whatever trophies you had, friendly or not. You lose all your trophies. Sort of like how Spirit Watch has that orb objective thing.

(Note: Rounded down. Three trophies translates into one on death. The half system is to always make it more profitable to just do it yourself rather than stealing, and killing people with only two trophies or less is worth nothing.)

- You cannot use any item you couldn’t use in WvW. Same reasons why they are not allowed in WvW.

- Using teleportation items such as Royal Passes, Home Instance Waypoints, will remove your buff as well.

- You cannot be attacked in major cities, small towns/villages/bases, or near portals per map. This prevents camping to a certain extent and provides some safe zone coverage.

- Losing this buff by forfeit(death to WP, WP, etc) prevents you from getting it again for a certain time period. Logging out or disconnecting will not remove the buffs, but leaving the party or getting kicked will. Losing the buff because you are successful does not create a timer, discouraging “selective choice by rerolling”, similar to how people keep rerolling fractals if they get swamp or something.
(Note: Losing the buff from Death to WP is extremely important to combat bandits.)

-Your damage scaling to both players and enemies will also be lowered the lower level area you are in. This is explained later, concerning damage scaling already presented in the game.

The trophy items/buff, however it is implemented, can only be obtained a limited number of times. There are three types: Minor, Major, Superior. The better the trophy, the better the payout. Once you obtain a certain grade of trophy, you cannot get another type (no mixing). So pick one and get on your way. This means when your hunt starts, you get three mob choices of different trophy grade types.

4) Once you obtain your trophy items/buffs, you must go all the way back on foot to the same NPC to receive a raw gold reward or tokens for skins or something cool.

(Note: The reward is tripled the first time every day. After that, its normal. This is to encourage players to engage in other aspects of the hunt: By being bandits, killing bandits, guarding those trying to do their daily, etc.)

5) Bandits are players who take up the great hunt only to take from other players, with mercenaries being those who take up the great hunt to protect others and to pick up lost trophies. A specific playstyle, but not a forced one.

*Notes: *
-Large guilds who take up multiple hunts will not have a huge advantage, due to the party limit. It is possible to team up, but you have to remember that these parties are still considered hostile to each other and they cannot see names or guild affiliation. These same parties will also have different objectives, which may collide with others.

-Those who do not participate in it will not be affected much, aside from higher activity in all areas. Remember, they cannot touch you, you cannot touch them.

-If you leave the PvE world (going into dungeons, HotM, WvW, etc), you lose the buffs as well. So take any route you desire.

-In terms of rewards, more Trophy Space and “Great Hunt specific items” such as Smoke Bombs and Stealth Disruption could be included rather than just skins.

-Trophies can be turned in for a hard gold amount. This should rival the best farming methods of PvE due to the element of loss.

-While this does not require new mob spawns and stuff to be used, having such things would make it a lot more awesome.

-Ties with the living story a bit too, with all the bandit activity stuff and what not I guess

-Replayable content forever. Imagine having a hunt into Orr… sheesh! But imagine the payout…

- The damage you take from players, both physical and condition damage, is reduced in the lower level areas. This is to prevent the insane damage you can pull out compared the amount of HP and armor you have.

So here’s the layout for the cities and what hunts they may put you into:

Divinty’s Reach:
-All over Kryta, fairly easy to do, short, low but constant payouts.

The Grove, Metrica Province:
-They share the same. A huge range of payout, as you have the Maguuma Wastes to account for.

Black Citadel:
-Large areas covering all the way north and the Fields of Ruin, which could make it relatively safe since there’s so many ways to get around and hide.

Hoelbrak:
-Areas from Frostgorge Sound to all the way south the Mount Maelstrom. Since its really kind of just north to south, it can be easy ganking areas for bandits.

Lion’s Arch:
-The hardest of them all but with the highest payout, since there is only one path you pretty much take.

Straight south all the way to Orr. Good luck brave adventurers!

Payout does change depending on starting location, and type of trophy. A payout to Divinity’s Reach for Superior Trophies are worth much less than a payout to Lion’s Arch.

This mode can extend as we get more zones and cities. For example, if we get the Dominion of Winds, Cantha, or the Crystal Desert… the possibilities further add on.

*This mode could also get extended so it could have an extra side mode for guilds, as a tradition hearkening to the great Guild Wars centuries ago. *

This side mode enables “The Great Guild Hunt”, which allows up to a number of members from your guild decided by the one who started it, to sign up. For example, let’s say your a pretty small guild, and you still want to participate. No matter! Just set the limit to 2 parties and your challengers can only have 2 party maximum as well. What if your a massive blob lover? 10 parties should be enough.

Using Mega Servers, it is entirely possible for these great guild hunts to have their own separate instances for much larger groupings to prevent congestion in popular maps, such as Sparkfly Fen for Tequatl events, while regular hunters would share the same maps. It is entirely possible for people to dodge bandits by entering a different instance of the same map just by sheer luck, which does anything but take away from the experience of adventure, as anything can go.

Rewards for Great Guild Hunts could include prizes and “Guild Crest Trophies” from other guilds you have defeated for Guild Halls if they are implemented later.

This great guild hunt works in leagues. For example:

2 Parties
5 Parties
10 Parties

These leagues cannot interact with each other. Only people within the same leagues can. Smaller guilds within the 2 party leagues facing a 10 party league coming at them can breathe a sigh of relief.

This also brings up Guild Alliances, utilizing the fact that one account may share guilds, allowing many smaller guilds to ally up and enter bigger leagues.

These hunts work the same way as regular hunts do, with minor differences:

1) The trophies are only superior grade, and are shared for everyone in the league, thus highly increasing your chances of meeting enemy guilds. This means anyone starting from Lion’s Arch will inevitably end up traveling to Orr. The mob type for the superior grade changes daily, and cannot be used by regular hunters (for example, let’s say its a specific type of Centaurs. Regular hunters will never get those Centaurs for a superior grade trophy for the day).

2) Access to different and better rewards. Gold Reward stays the same though, so if you are in it for just money, regular mode works too.

3) Names include Guild Tag. You must represent the guild you wish the be in the league with to participate, though to prevent losing alliance to your own guild if you are the one merging, the rewards are for whatever guild you want (like how Guild Rep Letters work, they are consumables depending on the guild you are repping at the moment), if there are such rewards.

Story wise… would need an expert to make it all make sense, maybe something to do with preparing and utilizing adventurers against the dragon threat or something in a “friendly” competition that would help the nations supply up and stuff or something.
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In conclusion:

This provides yet another thing to do in GW2 that offers an experience that is in between the PvE realm and WvW.

Why have something like this instead of WvW? The question of why we don’t have more guild related things come to mind. WvW is great for a community as a whole related to PvP to get together and claim land, but don’t want anything to do with PvE. This has both PvP and PvE implemented, a hole that has yet to be filled.

The amount of work required of this should require far less than most content these days. It uses existing lands, areas, mobs, and a whole bunch of other stuff, yet adds an entire new realm to Tyria. I’m pretty sure if the team at ANet put their efforts into something like this, they could get it working within a month easy.

BANDITS. Nuff said. The best part of this is that if you don’t like open world PvP or anything like that, you are completely unaffected except higher traffic of people in every area, which is always great to see in a game like Guild Wars 2.

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If there’s any inconsistencies, errors, or nonsense, please say so!

A more specific TL;DR: You go out into the world on foot in a party or solo, kill a specific mob of limited choice, go back, all without getting killed by players or getting robbed, without affecting the PvE world, or go rob players yourself.

Edit: Posted here because Suggestions section is closed for some reason?