User:Xelonir/Concepts

A collection of concepts/ideas that crossed my mind:

Account Merging
Once upon a time ...

... we were not able to buy additional character slots. Back then a lot of people who wanted to play more classes than they had character slots decided do buy a second (third, fourth, ...) account. Then, at a later time, ArenaNet started offering character slots through the In-Game Store.

Of course adding an empty slot to an account is much easier than merging two accounts - a lot of data has to be coppied in the latter case. But there are also a lot of other things that have to be taken into account. I have no idea how complicated the merging of two accounts is from the technical side, but here is a concept for the requirements that would be needed on the player's side to allow for the merging of two accounts.

I will refer to the account that will remain after the merging as account A, and the one that will be merged into it as account B.


 * 1) Account merging cannot be undone.
 * 2) Both accounts must be registered to the same NCSoft master account. This shows that both accounts belong to the same person. One of the biggest dangers when providing the possibility to merge accounts is of course that someone steals an account and merges it with his own. By linking the Guild Wars account to an NCSoft master account a player can protect his account from this.
 * 3) When merging two accounts, two character slots will be lost. When we add a chapter to an existing account we get only two additional slots, whereas creating a new account for that chapter would give four slots. So it is only logical that two slots will be removed when accounts are merged. Therefore a total of at least two empty slots must exist on the accounts to be merged (either 2 on A, 2 on B or 1 on each). No empty slots, no merging.
 * 4) The total number of char-slots (account A + account B - 2) must not exceed the char slot limit.
 * 5) Guild membership: Account B must not be a member of any guild. If e.g. it was the leader of a guild, the guild would suddenly be without a leader - a problem the merging program would have to handle. Much easier to make "no guild" a requirement. No problem here for account A since it will continue to exist.
 * 6) Xunlai Chest: Account B will lose its Xunlai Chest. So all items should be removed before merging, else they will be lost.
 * 7) Titles: Account-based titles of both accounts are simply added up. Character-based titles of course remain with the individual characters.
 * 8) Unlocks: The merged account will have all unlocks of both accounts.
 * 9) Bonus items: The merged account will have all bonus items of both accounts. Includes CE boni (glowing hands, dances).

The Procedure: Log in with account B, go to Edit Account -> Merge Accounts, enter the email address of account A.

Log out of B and onto A. If condition 2 is met, a message box will pop up, asking if you really want to merge the accounts. If you choose YES all other conditions will be checked. If everything is OK you will automatically be logged out and cannot log onto either account until the merging is completed (which might take a while).

Additionally to this merging procedure, adding a chapter to an existing account should result in two additional char slots (up to the limit) even if that chapter was already part of the account.

The Minipet Trader
Did you ever experience the "curse of the birthday presents"? One of your chars has had his birthday, you open the present full of anticipation and get ... your 4th Miniature Hydra. Very disappointing.

So here's an idea how all those duplicate minipets could still be turned into something worthwhile: The Minipet Trader (MPT)


 * This is an NPC who buys and sells miniature pets. But not for gold or ectos. Instead when you "sell" a minipet to him you will get Minipet Tokens - which you can use to "buy" other minipets from him. That way you can finally get the one minipet you really want.
 * The MPT will only sell minipets you can get from birthday presents (though personally I wouldn't mind if he also sold promotional minipets at a higher price).
 * The costs depend on the rarity of the minipet:
 * white: sells for 2 tokens, buying one costs 3 tokens
 * purple: sells for 5 tokens, costs 8 tokens to buy
 * gold: 20 / 30 tokens
 * green: 50 / 75 tokens

The Diet Consultant
One of the problems faced by people who play multiple characters: You have collected just enough sweets to get the Sweet Tooth (ST) title on one character (if at all). Now you'd like to vanquish areas or play hard mode dungeons/missions with different characters. Only, that skill-boost or DP-removal from the sweets would be nice to have available on the other chars, too. But that would mean you won't be able to get the ST title. Not fair, especially since people who only ever play one char never face that problem. Of course it would be a lot easier if the ST title was account-wide, but Linsey said she won't do that.

Here's a possible solution: The Diet Consultant (DC)

The DC is an NPC where you can exchange a sweet into its diet version. So you give him a Peppermint Candy Cane and in return you get a Diet Peppermint Candy Cane which also removes all your DP but doesn't give ST points anymore. The ST points are added to the title of the character who did the exchanging.

Of course the diet versions should have slightly different icons than the suggary items to prevent trade fraud.

A DC should be placed in one outpost per chapter, but maybe not in the big ones but in a small, remote one instead.

Wisdom Title Revisited
Why is it that only gold items give points towards the wisdom title? Are blue and purple items so bad that identifying them is utterly useless? Of course they aren't, even though this title's mechanics suggest it.

Proposed changes:
 * All points the player has allready received for the title are multiplied by 10
 * All tiers of the title are multiplied by 10
 * Identifying a gold item gives 10 points towards the title

So far, nothing has changed. Only the numbers got bigger. Now for the actual change:
 * Identifying a blue item gives 1 point towards the title
 * Identifying a purple item gives 3 point towards the title

Yes, I admit that this makes getting the title a little bit easier.