Guild Wars 2

At the thread title suggests, I’d like to suggest some smaller festivals be added to the game. “Festivals” don’t even have to be an actual festival, but more of a world-wide minor event that touches on several areas, and happens once or twice a year.

Let’s look at a real world example that happens here in the US, Girl Scout Cookie sales. Once a year, Girl Scouts set out to sell these things. Maybe someone passes around an order form at work, to help their daughter out. Maybe one knocks on your door (less common these days, I know) and tries to sell you some. And maybe, once the boxes actually arrive, you’ll see them set up outside of a local grocery, mega-mart, or legalized marijuana store to sell the remaining boxes on the spot. And lots of people actually look forward to that time of year in a minor way. It’s not something big like Christmas, it’s just the time of year when they can finally get more Thin Mints.

Imagine something like that in game. In fact, let’s steal the idea directly and make an example of a smaller festival. From Lion’s Arch you get children of all races setting out to sell snack cakes for the “Lion Cub” children’s group. A few kids show up in each major city, selling their wares. Maybe a few extra people show up, willing to trade recipes that use the cakes to make something bigger (10 boxes of Spice Cakes and 10 milk to make a Spice Cake feast, for example.) It goes on for a couple of weeks, and then it’s over.

There can be lots of minor festivals out there, none of which would require massive changes to the game or even any redecorating like a major festival does. Maybe there’s a set time of year where students in the asura colleges are sent out to find inspiration and unwind a bit. Maybe the sylvari want to start a holiday to commemorate the fall of Mordremoth, or the start of spring. Maybe there’s a charr festival where they blow stuff up, and now warbands are sending members out to find the most interesting junk to bring back and blow to bits. Maybe the norn have invented a glider sport vaguely similar to Quidditch, and now teams from each major city are trying to drum up support before the games.

Opinions on this idea?

They could have something similar to the PFRC traveling from waypoint to waypoint.

Nice. Little events that reuse existing assets as much as possible, especially old or rarely seen assets. Maybe that Charr festival could have a raffle for some BL tickets or at least ticket scraps. It could also be an opportunity to spread little bits of lore that we wouldn’t otherwise hear about. It would bring more vibrancy to the world. Maybe there could be a beach party in LA, or a flower festival where the violets lady gets some backstory instead of being a one-dimensional kook that hands around the bank.

A lot of people would love to see more ‘stuff’ going on in the game, even if minor. Then again, a lot of people would hate it — there were a lot of complaints about Halloween, Wintersday, and Lunar New Year that (a) they were recycled from previous years and (b) there wasn’t enough to do.

Personally, I’m in the first group: I always prefer to see more things going on, to keep the game feel like it’s constantly evolving and part of a living world.

This is such a cool idea. I love the Girl Scout cookie idea. It would make the game feel so much more alive.

I think the content wouldn’t feel “recycled” if done right. I think there should be 0 achievements tied to this personally. But one or two would be okay. The key to not making this feel recycled is making the event feel totally “non mandatory”. Of course all events aren’t mandatory, but any event with achievement points tied to it make people feel like they need to do them. This suggestion (I believe) is more of adding to the “atmosphere” rather than actual content.

To expand on the Girl Scout cookie idea. If there are no achievements tied to it they will have to sell something that is at least interesting, if not useful. Maybe a cookie that works like a tonic or like current heart npcs that sell items that change character color/size. I’m trying to think of some more clever effects that relate to cookies but they aren’t coming to me. All I can think of is thin mints and turning green/thin lol.

But seriously this would add character to the game. I get tired of running around LA for months and hearing the same Npcs saying the same things over and over. If there were events like this in between it would help the word feel more alive.

Andraus.3874:

This is such a cool idea. I love the Girl Scout cookie idea. It would make the game feel so much more alive.

I think the content wouldn’t feel “recycled” if done right. I think there should be 0 achievements tied to this personally. But one or two would be okay. The key to not making this feel recycled is making the event feel totally “non mandatory”. Of course all events aren’t mandatory, but any event with achievement points tied to it make people feel like they need to do them. This suggestion (I believe) is more of adding to the “atmosphere” rather than actual content.

To expand on the Girl Scout cookie idea. If there are no achievements tied to it they will have to sell something that is at least interesting, if not useful. Maybe a cookie that works like a tonic or like current heart npcs that sell items that change character color/size. I’m trying to think of some more clever effects that relate to cookies but they aren’t coming to me. All I can think of is thin mints and turning green/thin lol.

But seriously this would add character to the game. I get tired of running around LA for months and hearing the same Npcs saying the same things over and over. If there were events like this in between it would help the word feel more alive.

Aww, I like achievements. I’d love it if there were some (sensible) achievements like ‘eat 50 girl scout cookies’. But after the whole 10,000 drinks debacle… :/

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

A lot of people would love to see more ‘stuff’ going on in the game, even if minor. Then again, a lot of people would hate it — there were a lot of complaints about Halloween, Wintersday, and Lunar New Year that (a) they were recycled from previous years and (b) there wasn’t enough to do.

Personally, I’m in the first group: I always prefer to see more things going on, to keep the game feel like it’s constantly evolving and part of a living world.

I feel like a lot of those complaints centre around the fact that Halloween and Wintersday should be big festivals and should get new content each year. If they were to make sure that those main events had new content each year, I don’t think people would be bothered by a set of smaller festivals or events that were consistent. I’m definitely in the first group as well though. GW2 does a good job of creating a world that feels alive, something like what OP suggests would just add on to that.

It’s a definite “yes” from me, but I’m not sure about the ethics of selling girl scouts.

The holiday events are my favorite activities. Smaller events that get people into the world would be fun too. I would love to see Girl Scouts crushing bad guys using cool gadgets and fireside girl like ingenuity.

I think regular hosted events would be neat. It could be based on a poll of what people want the weekend event to be.

I like the idea, and I miss all the stuff from GW1 – pirates, chocolate bunnies, shamrocks, etc. Throw in some themed drops like that to add to the occasion.

A quick check on the GW1 wiki shows 13 “special events” which range from drops like the bunnies to full-blown Wintersday. Plus there was Nicholas the Traveller, and daily/weekly events like Bounties.

It just seems like there is room to do so much more!

I don’t know what’s wrong with them that they cant see that at this point no one would give a Hot kitten if they reintroduced old festivals that could be considered ‘Lore’ or ‘Immersion’ breaking such as Festival of the four Winds so long as we got something Content wise until Living Story finally turned up.