Hunter's Spyglass

Whilst I am not usually one for advocating the game be made easier, I came across a little idea which may revolutionise the locating of the final monsters in a zone being vanquished.

It's not as though finding the last monsters is challenging or particularly fun by most people's standards...but it can be a bit of a waste of time and generally irritating when you just want to kill that last one and be on your way.

I propose a Spyglass. This object could be obtained from merchants found in a few zones / towns for a small fee, and be customised on creation. Naturally, they should be confined to use within explorable PvE areas only.

The point of this item is it sits in your inventory, and when searching for the last few foes in a zone, to stop you needing to run for miles for no avail, all you would need do is to find a convenient hill or elevated point, stand on the top, and double click the inventory icon. The screen then turns into a circular view and your character is fixed to the spot. You can turn on the spot, and use the mouse to change the angle of view, or the zoom of the spyglass. Clearly it allows you to see considerably further than you usually would, but I like to think it's slightly more imaginative than suggesting a "divining" system, as such found in Eye of the North quests, which really just spoon-feed you as a player. The Spyglass would keep the "free search" aspect, yet reducing the amount of "continual-running-around-until-you-find-it".

My inspiration for this idea came from my recent Vanquish of The Scar in Prophecies. Prophecies is quite good for providing high points to search from and such a device would have been handy, and fun, for me there when we were running around searching for the last sly griffon.

I'm fully aware this item is not "needed" in the game, so comments declaring how "easy" it is to find all the monsters in a zone are not welcome because that much is accepted. If you've cleared a zone of all but 1 group, if course it's "easy" to run around to find that last one. This idea may simply cut down fruitless running.

That is a big YES. Even though im already legendary vanquisher i sure could have used these spyglasses. Would have saved me from making multiple laps on some of the huge and mazy maps of GW.
What really sucked is unknowingly chasing a full map parol enemy around the whole map and end up not finding him until i switch directions.

Wow...a new idea for once!

/signed, this'd be amazing if implemented.

I would vote for something simpler ... i.e. Using spyglass would ping closest monster once. Its simple & would be huge help.

Given how some areas are built, this wouldn't be such an effective item. Try using it effectively on the streets of Cantha, or maybe around the Echovald Forest. The Desolation and Ring of Fire island chain are also less-than-forgiving areas where this would be used. Even some areas of the expansion will gain little benefit from this.

I did my Vanquishing the "hard" way, and gaining titles has become easier and easier over the last months. Hate to see what cost me say 500 Hours to complete, to be done in 400.

Next thing we get is my 5000 hours online got me 20 max titles, and someone that started last year and put in 1500 hours, outranks me.

!@$% that!!

/sign no

This. Your Spyglass idea simply won't work. You mentioned The Scar, how would you ever see creatures that are inside the gorge. You would still have to run all over the place for the best viewing points. Only thing that would work is a pointer, or a device like the divining you mentioned.

However, the most time I've ever spent searching for stragglers is 15 mins tops. Searching for the last few monsters is just part of vanquishing, live with it, or don't try it at all.

/notsigned

/signed
Finding those last mobs is a real pain.

I have to agree with Arduinna and say that a arrow that points you in the right direction is much better. If you have a group that is on the move alot you can miss them again when you get to the point you seen them last. As when you have the direction arrow it will show you the way they move.

It wouldn't work. Mobs don't actually spawn until you walk into a certain range to "activate" them.

So unless you've activated them, and they ran off on patrol, there will be nothing to see. (Think UA abuse and HFFF etc).

Nice idea though, original.

Not all zones have an elevated location to make use of something like this. Some zones have walls or tunnels that would allow monsters to avoid notice even if you were looking at them. Although I am of the opinion people should spend the time looking (yes, I myself have had to re-search an area) I don't know that your idea would actually be helpful in many zones. At least have it indicate a red dot on the radar instead, and allow the radar to be zoomed out to have a larger radius.

Sadly, you're right with this. However, one would assume that if you only have one final group to locate you've spawned everything anyway.

I like the concept of the tool, but I think there could be a much simpler improvement.

For 10ish Seconds, all Monster's locations are shown on your mission map.

Same system with it being bought for the merchant, but I think that this is easier to use and MUCH easier to code. I don't know if the 2 people we have working on GW1 could manage this.

/signed for this

just a thought: considering there's no z axis in the current game, game might not be able to know if your on high ground or low, maybe z axis only works on the character jumping and moving vertical-wise. not very sure.

also if Anet is going to do something for locating stuffs on map, read these as well, and thanks, be very helpful for cartography."]this [/URL]too Anet, thanks, a rough idea.

Don't talk to me about texmod :P not using it, this is something that bugs me about Arena Net, their saying A and doing B ways.

Maybe you could explain why a Ranger will do more damage when shooting at a target at a lower elevation then?

Make it an consumable, a 'specialty' (like powerstones or essences) for any of the allied factions that have none: Luxon and Kurzcick, Lightbringer, Sunspear or Shinning Blade.

I'm all for consumables that do not directly aid in battle, but ease gameplay like summoning a merchant, revealing where NPCs and monsters are or setting a camp where you can't attack or be attacked to rest for a while.

Holy hell people it's not hard to systematically vanquish an area. The only people who'd need this are nubs who run around a zone with no plan or strategy.

/notsigned for noob-crutches.

I do generally work my route out beforehand for any area but there have been teh odd occasion whereby I've missed 1 small group or a long snaking patrol and its taken an age to track them down. Okay its not the most difficult thing to do but it is irritating after 15-20 mins all the while waiting for an err=feckoff and start again message

/Signed becuase i think its a pretty good idea , maybe for the last 10 monsters it ping or point an arrow in the general direction kinda thing.

Easy, instead of there being a z axis, the field is still 2 dimensional except that there are certain "Hot spots" that are coded as high elevation or low elevation to give attack advantage or disadvantage.

Think of it like a grid or checkerboard so to speak. Each square on the board is given an attack modifier of 0 for sea level, -1 for lower, +1 for higher. Could go as high as +10 for all as i know but basically the field stays 2 dimensional as far as programming is speaking, and the attack bonus goes to whoever has the higher number modifier.

Please let me know if i didn't explain it well enough.

hrmz that is quiet understandable, daze, thanks.

I did say i am not sure MagmaRed, am speculating that since there's no z axis might not make a different, since daze explain it that way, the spyglass, if implemented, could use those hot spot, if they are there.