Let us use sugary items in all PvE areas?

Currently the only sugary item that can be used outside of town is the Birthday Cupcake, which is pretty handy! However, all of the other sugary items are a bit of a waste, as you can only use them to run faster in town.

Other than when a special event is going on, running faster in town usually isn't all that useful, or at least not enough to merit eating lots and lots of sugary things. Wouldn't it be nice if we could eat a sugary item outside of town, in PvE areas, and get the speed boost from the item?

It would be a great gold sink, since the only sugary thing you can get outisde of a collector exchange or special event drop is Red Bean Cake, and said bean cake is 400 gold for 5 minutes of use. Plus, it seems like Birthday Cupcakes were partially added to help with Hard Mode, since the monsters in Hard Mode all run 33-50% faster and it's harder to run away from them without a speed boost, and since a free speed boost in PvE isn't game-breaking, how about more items that can help out with our speed in PvE? There is no need to make more items that do that, just let us use all the other sugary items outside of town!

Hope I'm not the only one who would enjoy having more places to use the sugary items

[PS - To anyone who would be mad about the idea of getting to rack up sugar points and finish the title as fast as you can click and be able to get a speed boost out of it anywhere in PvE, while being drunk requires you to click a drink at intervals and takes a week to finish, I also support removing the wait time between clicking drinks to get drunkard points.]

Droks runners would have a new skill set:

Balanced Stance
Smite Hex
Healing Signet
Holy Veil
Mending Touch
Healing Breeze
Mending
optional

Only reason Cupcakes were allowed to be used outside of towns was for the other benefits, not the speed boost. Having the speed boost without the use of skills can unbalance the game -even if it is just PvE.

/not sign - runners could focus on only survival skills instead of filtering in running skills.

So....how does running faster without a skill break the game in pve? If running faster without a skill was game-breaking, those Birthday Cupcakes would have just been +100 Health and +10 Energy. Hell, under that arguement, the +10 Energy bonus of the cupcake is technically overpowered if you can get it without an weapon/item mod or investing in attribute points/runes/insignias, so it should just be a +100 Health cupcake. Oh wait, +100 health for 10 whole minutes without a skill or runes or insignias, that's overpowered too, might as well just make the cupcake give you 10 minutes of speed boost in town.

That's the point I was trying to make, if the cupcake didn't ruin the game with 3 PvE bonuses, making the other sugar items allow you to just run whatever amount faster for a few minutes won't ruin the game either. And, if runners want to get a speed boost without a skill, that's fine, let them pay 200 gold a minute for that speed boost, ANet likes gold sinks and they have said repeatedly that they do not oppose runners.

If there's something I am not seeing or understanding about how eating an item to run faster for a couple minutes would literally ruin the game in PvE, please explain so I don't sit here and wish I had more ways to use the sugary items, since the only-cupcakes-outside-of-town limitation seems a bit silly right now.

I vote against the suggestion to give more sugary items a use in PvE, for the following reason:
if the supply of PvE-compatible Sugary Items would reach huge proportions, the use of sugary speed boosters might become common and even a requirement for entering certain PUGs or competing with other runners. This shall put pressure on many PvE players to acquire these sugary items through farming or money spending, enforcing even more grinding, just to stay in the race.

There is a notable difference between a novelty festival item and one that is available from merchants at a constant price.

In the case of birthday cakes, they only dropped for a weekend. The quantity that exists is finite and presumably declining. Eventually one would expect them to disappear entirely or rise in price to a point that is prohibitive for use as a running tool. Thus their impact would only endure in the short term.

Red bean cakes, on the other hand, are able to be purchased at any time for a fixed price. The benefits they would provide to runners are permanent.

This would only support running. The items are for fun only, not for functionality.

Well, if you really believe this, then I got some Golden Eggs to sell you.

200g each. +1 to all attributes for 5 minutes, and +1 sweettooth. PM if interested.

Sugar Jolt is a 50% speed boost, and they're much, much easier to acquire at festivals than the cupcakes were. If they were useful in pve areas, well, they'd be nearly ubiquitous.

how bout for Hard mode only then? that could work

That would change Hard Mode into Sugar Requiring Mode; the increased speed of mobs in Hard Mode is supposed to make it more "hard" for everyone playing it, not just for those for who a never depleting stock of sugary boosters is too much of an expense.

I think we found someone who doesn't know how to survive in Hard Mode.

+1 attribute and ote event items are very limited.
Food from istan specialtis do not give the higest of the bonuses...
Alcohol do not give bonuses at all...

But you can buy unlimited ammounts of sugary items frm Canthan merchants...
So it can't be done...

/notsigned

A.net once said so themselves that they like this game to be based on the 8 skills you use and your abilty to properly use them, not on "magic potions" and other invintory items.

You know, I never thought of that, but you're right, it would be like the new "R6 only" "LB8 only" stuff people already do. I haven't even tried hard mode yet, I'm trying to finish up all the things I've skipped in normal mode before I go try hard mode, but I was thinking "Man, look how often I have to run all the way back across the zone to go back to these quest reward guys, it would be nice if I could use all the different sugar things to run faster when it's not important enough to bring a run skill". I also had read a lot of people complaining about how they couldn't break aggro from the hard mode monsters when it first came out, even with a speed boost (not sure if that was a bug or if it's still like that) so I thought the idea of having the option of sugar speed boost + running skill speed boost might make those frustrated people happier. It sucks that something that could be an nice optional convenience would become a new grind requirement by the playerbase and therefore it wouldn't be fun or convenient anymore.

If you're referring to me, I haven't even bothered to go do HM yet. I'm not completely done in normal mode yet in all 3 games (want to have HM available in all games before I go to it) with my main character because I only get to play maybe once a week. However, if it makes you feel better to troll around and make fun of other people, go right ahead. Nobody is going to cry over a trolled insult and it just makes you look bad.