Going over the voice of terminus Q&A with WoM. It got me thinking.
We have a firm idea and opinion about NPC hirelings.
But how about the possibilty to become or choose for a carrier as hireling.
This could be a mage taking on jobs to kill or harvest or a tailor taking on jobs to craft or harvest.
You might not level up enough to reach the end on the tier BUT it might provide you with enough facilities to travel across the world in relative safety. (Note! I'm not talking about shortening the duration of travel.)
So starting of in human starter zone, I pick up some jobs as a so-called hireling. These quests/content can be found in the outskirts of the city or settlements. It migt increase my faction/standings high enough to be allowed to travel with a traversing Caravan.
This way, I don't risk dieing too often traveling from one place to another, it might be slower than when traveling in group or other means of 'fast-travel' but I'll be safer and I know that after X-time, I'll have reached my destination.
With this position, you actually allow a link between adventure and tradeskill. As both can take this path and both can venture out in the world. This could not be limited by the level of your class but merely based on your skill to harvest. The hireling quests/content will scale to your level as you choose to craft or kill for hire. Does that make sense? Pretty much in every region one could find low level mobs or recipes/demand.
It's an option to prevent getting stuck or feeling that you don't have anything to do (after clearing your general adventure or craftcontent in the area).
With different starter zones in mind, it could allow for that bridge between zones. Why would that be required?
It allows for people to visit one another across the world and team up from there. So that, if a friend starts a newby toon in Wild's end, they will actually have a possibilty to reach the Valley of the Watchmen to join up with his friend who started as a newby Archai.
So this is for now purely talking about a safer way to travel when you're low level or have bad standings with environments you'ld have to cross to reach your friend.
Another benefit with this PC-hireling-carrier, is that it might allow evil races to stalk around the good races city and still have something to do. And perhaps even more importantly, by doing these quests as evil-race hireling doing jobs for the good-race NPC's, it might actually open up a (secret?) way into the city itself. This again could result in players experiencing content they otherwise might never be possible to, due to the Shot On Sight design of the guards in and around that city.
With crafters in mind, it could actually allow those devoted crafters to reach those rare recipes or other factions unique within enemy lines. And that on it's on is a major challenge/achievement.
Well, I hope you get what I'm saying.
Keep in mind, crafters and investement being rewarded and preventing Treadmills from occurring too often or too quickly.
And I am talking about PC-hireling carrier. NOT NPC hirelings, so please don't go into those here.
It's a side-carrier choice if you want to name it something.
I'm not talking about the usual work-orders or general faction content/quests. These hirelings are in fact a community or organisation with their own standards and priorities (lore ofc). So instead of sticking to good vs bad races, they do not stumble of what kind of race the player is, as long as they are willing to take the jobs. It goes without saying that this must be timeconsuming, otherwise it will be a must-have for everyone. It should NOT be within reach for everyone.
What do you say?