Guild Wars 2

In every MMO, one of my favorite activity is to collect mini-pets.

So, first, all mini-pets are being obtained from the Gem Store, a sad fact. That’s not even smart, since if we had most mini-pets through the game, we would be even more ready to pay to complete our collection… even Blizzard knows it…

But let’s pass on, we can still earn mini-pets through the Trading Post. Oh wait, 3 problems…
- Wintersday minis were acquirable via the Gem Store only (okay, even we could spend 300 gold instead of gems… lol).
- Some mini-pets are kitten random/expensive (Oakheart, Karka…).

Which totally wastes the whole collection aspect of the game.

So, ArenaNet, what are your solutions? Will you just continue to brainstorm collectors or will you do something, someday? Yea, take advantage of your position while you can, someday a better and less greedy game will come and that will be your end.

…the ones that you could only buy through the gem store dont count against any tally, except your own, people who have money show off, just dont get any..

Sorry, by buying in my above post i mean 1 time events (wintersday etc)

The mini Karka and mini Karka Hatchlings are random drops off the young karka in Southsun Cove. No clue what the drop rate is, I’m sure it’s pretty rare.

Would be nice to see more random drops of minis

Karizee.8076:

The mini Karka and mini Karka Hatchlings are random drops off the young karka in Southsun Cove. No clue what the drop rate is, I’m sure it’s pretty rare.

Awesome, let’s kill 200.000 karka!

or maybe just change of game
WHY THE HELL is ArcheAge Korean

and yea I’m TIRED of being a fan of ArenaNet since GW, they are just getting so disrespectful with us

I just started looking into minis.. so I am hoping I can get the ones that passed before I decided to work on this collection. I hope they do more with them in the future as well.

I don’t know why you would expect minis to be available out in the world. The precedent set in GW1 is that the main method of obtaining minis is from gifts you would get on your character’s birthday, and that won’t happen until this November at the least.

In Gw1, there were incentives for collecting them. But if there isn’t going to be perks for collecting them, I really don’t see the appeal.

kill 5 different champions in the world to charge up a capture-staff
kill 1 champion and use the charged staff to get a mini of this champion

once killed champions won’t charge the staff every time (20% chance to charge)
first time killed champions always give 1 charge

—> a lot more people would look for champions / play in low level zones

Zeivu.3615:

In Gw1, there were incentives for collecting them. But if there isn’t going to be perks for collecting them, I really don’t see the appeal.

The incentive in GW1 didn’t come until the final expansion and you didn’t even get the reward until this game came out.

Are there any games that do it differently?

It was the same in GW1, except that all the pets were tradeable. But considering you mentioned some of them being expensive on the TP I don’t imagine you’d consider that a solution. A few hundred gold doesn’t seem that bad compared to stacks of armbraces.*

From what I remember from reading the WoW wiki it seems to be much the same there. Some minis are widely available, others are limited to one-time only promotions or special editions of the game. Only thing I’m not sure is if they’re all tradeable.

Aion is the same too. I don’t know which other games have minis but I’d be surprised if they’re the only 3 to do it that way and all the others have all their minis widely available.

Personally I don’t have a problem with it. I’m quite willing to spend a lot of time and money to complete my collection because the challenge of getting them is a big part of the appeal.

The one thing I don’t like is the Winterday chest minis. Paying an unknown (and potentially infinate) amount of real money for a random chance at getting the minis, with no alternative or even a way to exchange duplicates for ones I’m missing is too many down-sides for not enough reward IMO. I decided to save my money and not count them as part of the collection rather than waste money trying and give Anet the false impression that players are happy with the system.

(* For those who didn’t play GW1 an Armbrace of Truth went for about 22 Globs of Ectoplasm if I remember correctly. Ecto was usually about 7,000 gold each. So we’re talking about 38.5mil gold. Or if we assume 1g in GW1 is worth 1c in GW2 that’s 3,850 gold in todays money.)

Zeivu.3615:

In Gw1, there were incentives for collecting them. But if there isn’t going to be perks for collecting them, I really don’t see the appeal.

The appeal for me is having the minis themselves. They’re fun and I always have at least one with me on each of my characters and have it out whenever I remember. Whenever I’m in town I swap them around so I get to use as much of my collection as possible.

Yes they’re purely cosmetic and arguably pointless, but it’s like getting your favourite weapon or armor skins – something cool you like seeing on your character and get a sense of achivement from getting.