Increase usefullness of Minipets

As we get older, more and more minipets. Too many in my opinion. Why not have Minipets be like summoning stones with limited uses and they are gone. Various minipets with different skills and level.

We already have Summoning Stones, Assassin Support, and the Asuran Summons. This would make 1 person a 4 man army, and a team of 8 would turn into a 32 man army. Isn't PvE already easy enough? Not to mention that some of the mini pets would have hugely powerful builds (Mallyx, Kuunavang, Shiro, Kanaxai?) and some would do absolutely nothing (Panda, White Rabbit?). This would require significant time to program, and most likely the builds for ALL minipets would have to be the same to keep it 'fair' and 'balanced'. Not gonna happen with the people they have available for GW1. Although it has been suggested many times before, I'd be happier to see the mini pets pick up gold that drops, and maybe items.

I can only think of two uses now for miniatures:

- 1. Unlock Polymok pieces.
But since there is no PvP polymock, and PvE polymock sucks, I wouldn't bother about this one.

- 2. Exchange for other miniatures.
They could add an NPC that exchanges miniatures. You talk with the NPC, and depending on how many miniatures you have and the types of those miniatures, you get a value of points.
- Dedicated white: 1 points
- Dedicated purple: 2 points.
- Dedicated gold: 4 points.
- Dedicated green: 8 points.
- Not dedicated white: 3 points.
- Not dedicated purple: 5 points.
- Not dedicated gold: 8 points.
- Not dedicated green: 15 points.
And then, you can exchange miniatures based on that:
- Get another random white: 5 points.
- Get another random purple: 15 points.
- Get another random gold: 25 points.
- Get another random green: 50 points.

For example, you could use 5 dedicated whites to get another white. Or two not dedicated.
You could not use 50 dedicated whites to get another green, because you have only 45 inventory slots. But you could use 7 dedicated greens or 4 not dedicated ones.

You talk to the NPC, he removes the items from your inventory, and in exchange the NPC gives you another one different to any of the miniatures you gave (or even different to any of the miniatures in your monument of Devotion).
That way you could use all the repeated miniatures you got and no one buys to try and get another one you may miss.

The only exceptions would be the miniatures that drop from chests, CE and some promotions, those won't be acquired this way, but all the rest like Birthday miniatures could be acquired this way, by purchasing lesser miniatures from other players and trying the NPC... an having luck.

The NPC could be called "Toy Maker", and could also work like the Festival hat maker, just with miniatures.

I was thinking only one pet per party at a time. And wouldn't "KILLER WHITE RABBITS" be the bomb?

minipets should pick items up ;-) i'm too lazy to pick it up =P

Now that would be nice. I might actually carry a mini on me.

Minipets participating in combat? Sounds really silly. Do you want them to have a significant effect or just do some almost unnoticable wanding?
Significant effect = nonono, because PvE is already too easy and there are too many summons and shit like that already.
Almost irrelevant but still doing a little dmg/buff/healing = could look fun but is that really worth all the work required to completely redo the way minis behave? Writing new AI and a ton of playtesting of every single one? Maybe fun but there are tons of more important things to do in GW that would take similar amounts of work.

Minis picking up junk - cool, but sometimes you don't want to pick everything but only some selected things, inventory space is very limited and there's trash not even worth salvaging. So the mini would need a few configuration options, I would most likely set mine to gold coins only.

Oh, and that idea with exchanging minipets at an npc is beyond horrible and just coudn't work in this form
There are more than 20 different minipet rarity levels, their colors often don't have anything to do with their rarity. Differences are beyond any comparison.
Also, dedicated minis are practically used up, so there shouldn't be a way to turn some back to an unded one.
If you really got hundreds of 1st year whites for some reason, sorry, don't hope to turn them into one or two rares, thats riddic.

The only way

/signed for making a minipet run around and sniff out gold coins and pick them up

Mini pets picking up items along the way....nice idea I would love my Kunnavang picking up the ectos that drop for me

I agree. Other than showing off there is no use for them.

Then when people drop their VS's on the ground and minipets pick them up we can say what, it was the minipet don't blame me.

but anyway this is turning into another thread about having minipets pick up items i vote /close.

Minipets already influence the enemy AI in PvE (the use-vs-foes-wielding-certain-weapons part) and such, don't give them even more power.

Sry not aware of this can you elaborate?

Minipets count as allies in many circumstances.
For example, ["You're All Alone"] will not affect you if you are near your minipet.
They also affect many Paragon skills, such as [Leader's Comfort].

mini pets that pick up gold ftw. best use i can think of for them it wouldn't harm anyone seeing as you can get any of the most common minis for very very cheep.

LMAO! Killer White Rabbits would be AWESOME!

/signed to pick up gold
/unsigned to pick up anything else. Tho this would stop people from dropping items on the ground to show off.
/unsigned for damage or builds because they would then be enemy targets, we would need minipet rez skills, and agreed about too much rebalance of PVE.
However, they could just animate like they really are attacking. Then Killer Bunnies would be some funny stuff to see.