Talk:Colocal

Does anyone else think these things look like necromorphs?

nope--Relyk 20:59, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Beastalisk%22_cocnept_art.jpg Check it. Mango (talk) 18

33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Race

according to the article the race is canince but yesterday a was doing the queen colocal and get the achivment for griffon slayer. Should we chage the race to griffon??

Hmph, looks like someone changed it to Canine, for some reason. They've been treated as griffons since release, no need to change it now, and the mechanics of the game confirm it. Thanks for the notice! --Ventriloquist 14:29, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm a couple years late to the party here but... Let's face it, Colocals are not Griffons as we know them in GW2. They have no avian features whatsoever, and I suspect they're only labeled as that because they share a rig and there was nothing better for them to be classified as, same as Pinipals. Strangely, they do bear a strong resemblance to Griffons that were found in GW1, though so... I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, I'm changing the page to be a bit more ambiguous.Entrea Sumatae [Talk] 01:16, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Regardless of theories or whatnot, the game classifies them as "griffon". I just killed one myself to make sure of this fact, and yep, griffon slayer went up by 1, so they are to be considered griffins. - Do_odleplex 01:25, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

"I suspect they're only labeled as that because they share a rig and there was nothing better for them to be classified as" If they only share race because of rig, then mushrooms from HoT would be classified as skritt, and bristlebacks as quaggans. If they were just slapping on a classification because "nothing was better" then they'd have gone with the very ambiguous and wide-branching "Animal" species setting which includes most non-pet animal species in the game, which is similar in function to Beast from GW1. While Pinipal is quite the curiousity, colocals are far more griffon-like than anything else and I would hardly say they're wholly un-griffon-like as while they lack a bird-like head (GW1 griffons lacked such on occasion too) or feathers (that wouldn't be too odd given their environments), they share other biological features. Most likely, from a scientific viewpoint of the lore they're of the same Genus as other griffons. Konig (talk) 01:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Explain the Pinipal to me, then. It's more than a curiosity, it's precedent that there's been some lax species classification for creatures using that rig, unless you want to tell me those are griffon-like too. Couple with the fact that the original concept is called a "Beastalisk" (beast+basilisk, no reference to griffons whatsoever), and the complete lack of avian features (griffons have bird heads, colocals the head of a saber-toothed cat, for crying out loud, and I can genuinely not see a single bird-like feature on the animal unless you count those stabby-appendages as bird wings), and I'd say there's at least a decent case for them being non-griffons. The only reason I'm willing to entertain the fact that they may be griffons at all is the appearance of griffons from GW1, which had toothier appearances (though those were more reptillian and at least had dinosaur-like beaks rather than the straight mammalian physiology of colocals, so I remain unconvinced). I'm not going to start an edit war over this but I wouldn't classify a Colocal as a griffon any more than I'd call Vale Guardian a plant, no matter what the slayer achievements say.Entrea Sumatae [Talk] 06:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Colocal and pinipal are not griffons, but whoever made them used a griffon as a base, probably because they shared a rig, so they can use the same skills on land like 'lounge', 'slash and 'shred', and never bothered changing the type to something else. The reason we note them as griffon is because we don't know what type of creature they would have if they had the correct one, so we put the mechanic type in case there's ever some potion or upgrade that increases damage against them, and so people doing slayer achievements know they count. We know the type vale guardian would have because we know the type if had before it got changed, and nobody changed them to the new type in the page, and even if someone did, it'll probably get changed back by someone wanting to preserve the original type or the lore type. For raid creatures they should have created a new type that isn't used anywhere else, but they instead used 'plant', which was kind of a strange choice. In the game is not rare for creatures within an instance not to have their type. In many dungeons creatures are set to a different type so the dungeon's potions work on them. Ideally, in the infobox we'd have two optional entries: one for the lore race, and one for the mechanical type of creature, that can be left empty when we don't know the value. Mith🌟Talk 12:22, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Uh quick note, Vale Guardidan is an elemental, not a plant, you may be getting it mixed up with Slothasor. And if it that's the case, Anet has responded that Slothasor is a sloth, not a plant, so it was updated. - Do_odleplex 17:43, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

@Entrea: I cannot explain Pinipal, in all honesty, because unlike Colocals there is absolutely no lore to them in any form - at least as far as I've seen - and their rigs do not seem to be the same as griffons. Best explanation I have is that sometimes Anet wants what are different species in lore to share a mechanical similarity - for example, certain grub models count as wurms, because they're wurms in lore (see the Triple Trouble spawns).

@Mith: Sharing a rig has absolutely zero influence on the species parameter. You can tell because the Oakheart rig is used with risen gorillas, icebrood norn, aatxes, slothasor, and many, many more things but not a one share species, but there are shared animations and even skill names (which are also not tied in any way shape or form to species parameters). Similarly, skritt and mushrooms share rigs - no shared species. Sharing rigs is pretty common and a very old practice for Anet to reduce work loads (a lot of Margonites in Nightfall, for example, used rigs of other creatures from mursaat to seers to undead; same with destroyers in Eye of the North).

The parameters for setting family and army (by Anet's terminology - race and affiliation by GWW terminology, species and organization by GW2W terminology) are determined by a completely independent aspect to any of that. Any oddity in those two parameters would be either accidental or simply the lack of wanting to make something new (maybe for sake of creature friendliness or hostility) so they slap on whichever is best suited for their wants. Konig (talk) 20:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

There's lore for Colocals? I'm interested to see that, because as far as I can tell the whole flightless griffon thing was entirely made up based on their in-game species. Colocals and Pinipals use identical rigs and animations for their running and bite/paw attacks, which is why I draw the comparison.

As for shared rigs, there absolutely is influence. No one has ever been trying to say that all creatures that share a model must share a race, and you've demonstrably proven that false. Rather, the argument is that it's possible, or even likely, that when creating a new creature by using another creature's information as a base, the information for the creature's family might also be copied. That information can obviously be overwritten to change the species to something more suitable, but in an instance where there's nothing obvious to change it to, it might just be left as-is. A rig does not determine the species, but it can indicate that a creature might have been erroneously left as a species due to the rig's origin and never updated. I argue that's what happened. Pinipals and Colocals used the griffon rig and information as a base, and the race was grandfathered in because someone didn't feel the need to change it.Entrea Sumatae [Talk] 09:08, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Also, @Doodle: VG is obviously supposed to be an elemental, but it (and other raid bosses) count towards Plant Slayer. It's been speculated they were typed as plants in-game because there are no Plant Slaying potions that could be abused against them. Just throwing that out as evidence that what the game considers their race is not always 100% accurate to lore.Entrea Sumatae [Talk] 09:11, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Pristine feathers

Colocal can drop them in Dry Top at least. - J.P.Talk 14:18, 11 September 2018 (UTC)