Guild Wars 2

Before you take out your pitchforks and torches – no, I don’t mean literal pokemon running around Tyria and people keeping them in small objects against their will.
What I have in mind is something a little different, but similar when you really think about it.
Right now, one of the few things that Guild Wars 2 lacks, is the amount of things you can do in the open world. By that, I don’t mean lack of events on the map, nor heart quests or people to talk to on maps. We always had amazing jumping puzzles, which are still one of my favourite activities after these 3 years. Now we even have bounties for shining blades, which are very nice, but not very rewarding. Players can also spend some time hunting down monsters and doing other things for their legendary collections. There are also achievements, for people who are interested in them. The problem is, I think the way things are set up right now, it’s either a race to make a lot of gold to buy things, or to get a specific achievement. That’s a very good thing for people who enjoy grinding or going out of the way to get a few achievement points, but it can get a bit boring for some other players.
My idea is directed more towards casual players. Mostly for people who actually enjoy ‘adventures’ and such. Currently there’s no fishing in the game, which is a shame, but I can’t really imagine it to be too exciting. There’s no real housing outside of guild hall and you need to spend a lot of gold to buy decorations for it. Roleplay was never a very strong part of GW2 and I feel like that’s a shame. Thankfully lately we received some more emoticons, which I’m personally very happy about.

Anyway, my idea isn’t an original one, but it’s definitely something that this game needs, at least to a degree. It’s basically a “pet hunt”. People looking for pets around the world. Pets that can’t be bought for 10 gold coins on the trading post, pets who are mostly randomly found.
I realise that we already have pets. Rangers use them as companions in battle, even though there’s no real interaction between player and the animal. There are also mini-pets which don’t really do anything aside from looking cute.
They don’t have to be pets, they can be some sort of spirits, or fairies or whatever else fits well into the Guild Wars lore. I just want them to be things you can interact with, that give some very minor bonuses. Not big enough to make a huge difference, but big enough for players to want to hunt for them.
For example, one creature could offer a 20% magic find boost. It may sound huge but from personal experience I know that even 300% doesn’t make a huge difference. Another creature could offer additional 3% bonus experience from kills, allow to heal other players faster or even add a bit of stamina for people who just started to glide around the world. These creatures could offer mining bonuses, small defence bonuses, running speed bonuses. It would be really exciting to catch a creature that decreases your weapon cooldowns by 10%, or one that makes your weapon shine with a certain colour. There are many possibilities for this kind of mechanic.
To be honest, PvE as it is, isn’t very challenging for any player, aside from certain cases like the new maps. This system wouldn’t make things too easy. They already are fairly easy. Why not allow players to have some fun?
I realise it could break PvP or WvW, but I imagine it’s alright to disable this mechanic for these two game modes. If it’s necessary, I mean. Perhaps players who aren’t very fond of new people in dungeons and raids would at least think twice before kicking someone, who owns a useful companion. Then again, these bonuses don’t have to be huge. Just big enough for players to be interested in getting these creatures. It would be fun to cultivate them in eggs, or upgrade them a little the way mawdrey was upgraded. Maybe except for speeding things up with gold and uneccessary time gates on crafting.

I know that this is a crazy idea and that probably not too many players would be interested in hunting for creatures around the world, but I somehow feel like our staff is a bit afraid of taking any risks. It seems to me like they’re really against “pay to win” and they try to keep things balanced, but it usually ends up working the other way around (Mostly in PvP). We can’t trade, or make our little shops, or cultivate creatures like in so many other games. There’s no housing and not too many things you can unlock without spending an x amount o gold. Luminescent armour is a good example of letting players work for something without losing a fortune while doing it.
Many other games use these sort of systems and they are successful. There’s no horrible consequences. The world won’t end. Please let us have some fun. Add something new we can enjoy doing. Let us have pointless mounts that don’t give speed boosts, let us catch gnomes with strange bonuses, let us decorate our houses, use trophies for something, get married in front of a dwayna statue, dive with our gliders, name our gear, or even un-bind it so we can gift it to our friends.

I’m sorry for such a long post but I wanted to explain what I meant so that everyone patient enough to read it, understood it.

Please, no pitchforks.

Do not want.

Sounds like fun. As a Ranger, I enjoyed ‘catching’ all my pets. It took me a looong time, because, for one, I could not find the last 2 or 3, and secondly, it was quite some time before I was over my reluctance to venture into EB. Lol, how times change.

Though, for many, I’m sure it would be only a matter of hours waiting for the Dulfy guide; I still enjoy all the scavenger hunt-type content.

When you actually describe your idea, I think it sounds nothing like Pokémon, and you’re only hurting your case by making the comparison. It’s distracting from your actual suggestion.

I know “more detail” seems like the way to go when making a suggestion, but by the time I got to the end, I wasn’t 100% sure what it was you were suggesting again. You want things hidden in the world that people can interact with to get small bonuses, but I’m not really sure if these things always follow you around (overlapping with mini-pets?) or one-time things (which could be implemented any number of ways.)

You don’t need to preface your idea with a lot of caveats, or tie it into what you think the dev team does well or poorly. Just explain it concisely, and you might find there’s an easier way to accomplish the changes you want to make.

It might be an interesting concept to those that had GW adding a pair of possessed old glasses so you can see the old locations of items, like where Gwen’s flute was found in the original game ( for example – if you walk in that spot it might say ’ a haunting flute melody can be heard’ or something. Or at Thunderhead Keep ( I know not in the game yet, but hey!) ‘has anybody seen a healer’ (ref to the monk strike back in the day) Maybe like a nostalgia title. Doesn’t have to be tied to the original game – just a muddled suggestion!

Or they could just bring back Polymock and enhance it with more collectible pieces you find all around Tyria.

I like both games, but no. Prefer to keep them 2 different games. It would completely break what’s left of the immersion of this game.

No thanks.

Redenaz.8631:

When you actually describe your idea, I think it sounds nothing like Pokémon, and you’re only hurting your case by making the comparison. It’s distracting from your actual suggestion.

I know “more detail” seems like the way to go when making a suggestion, but by the time I got to the end, I wasn’t 100% sure what it was you were suggesting again. You want things hidden in the world that people can interact with to get small bonuses, but I’m not really sure if these things always follow you around (overlapping with mini-pets?) or one-time things (which could be implemented any number of ways.)

You don’t need to preface your idea with a lot of caveats, or tie it into what you think the dev team does well or poorly. Just explain it concisely, and you might find there’s an easier way to accomplish the changes you want to make.

My idea is about catching/hunting for various creatures around the world, so it should remind you of the concept of pokemon games. Of course they’re not a one time thing. I don’t know if you didn’t read all of it or if I didn’t word myself right, but the whole point was about these creatures hatching from eggs etc.
We do have minis and pets, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for more. They could for example be so small, they could fit on your shoulder, or stick to your arm. Or even sit on your head, which would make the cosmetic side of things more fun.

You do have a point though, since I don’t think most of the people who commented on this post, actually even read it.

This is not the first post about integrating the 2 games. Nothing new to read and still 0% interest in it.

Sounds like you want Pollymoc back.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Sounds like you want Pollymoc back.

Now Polymock on the other hand…

Tiscan.8345:

Or they could just bring back Polymock and enhance it with more collectible pieces you find all around Tyria.

Now you’re talking!

Yoroiookami.3485:

My idea is about catching/hunting for various creatures around the world, so it should remind you of the concept of pokemon games. Of course they’re not a one time thing. I don’t know if you didn’t read all of it or if I didn’t word myself right, but the whole point was about these creatures hatching from eggs etc.

I did read it, but it’s about 12 paragraphs, and I feel like the idea itself is only really described in 4,6, 7,8, and part of 10. It’s a little meandering.

I’m not saying that to be snippy, but because I want people to be able to understand your idea, and to make sure I understand it. It has so many ideas and different spins that by the time I was finished, I wasn’t sure if it was one clear idea, or many possible directions. ^^;

I like the idea, but maybe not a whole new mechanic. What if every player always has a “egg” hidden once per day in certain maps. You interact with it to get it. The location of each egg is per player. Once you have the egg, it becomes one of many eggs based on the map it was found in. You can go to your home instance to place it. Once a day you can “feed” it certain items. Once it has been fed a certain amount of times, it hatches into a unique mini that’s is account bound.

Oh joy, another rendition of treasure hunts. My fave.

Tiscan.8345:

Or they could just bring back Polymock and enhance it with more collectible pieces you find all around Tyria.

This this this

Even if it’s not necessarily a scavenger hunt for the individual game pieces, but looking for blueprints, “samples”, materials or “inspiration” for an asura to be able to design and craft the pieces for you. The stronger pieces would be more challenging to find/reach or collect materials for.

It sounds like it could be fun, but from what I understand scavenger hunts are very costly and resource intensive to create, requiring a lot of different development teams to collaborate. I would hope for something like this to be released, but I think it would be wiser to expect it in an expac rather than a LS update.

Pokemon games are about forcing creatures into cages to later make them kill each other. Its like dog-fighting with fictional creatures, very educational.