Guild Wars 2

Hearts often do not show up although the map seems to be completely fog free.

They should be displayed on the map in unfinished state instead of just not being displayed at all.

I have this issue all the time. When going for map completion in the end there is one heart missing (this time Diessa Plateau. Help Kastaz Strongbow maintain his garden) . I could stare at the screen for hours and never find it.

Look, how close the vista and the waypoint are which I got both. Still the heart doesn’t show up on the map until I literally run into the guy.

The only way to solve this is to look up completed maps somewhere else and one by one compare the hearts on my map with theirs.

I don’t have this issue with vistas, POI, skill points, etc. Just the hearts have an odd tendency to hide themselves.

I remove map fog from an area and still the heart isn’t displayed. I’d call this a BUG!

Talk to scouts.

I know. I found the last one missing in Snowden Drifts, exactly this way.
But doesn’t that contradict the exploration playstyle we (at least I) like about gw2.

If I need to talk to scouts in order for quests to show up on the map, where is the difference to old school pick up questing?

If this is a suggestion/feedback as to how you think things should work, why did you post this in the game bugs forum and not in the suggestions forum?

Anyways, I think the scout system is great as it is and I don’t want them to remove them. they point out what is happening in an area and show you the locations of the hearts. In no way is this a bug.

I posted this on the bug forum, because I think hearts should show up on the map without needing to talk to scouts or literally bumping into the quest giver.

If map fog has been removed, then uncompleted hearts in the area should be visible on the map. POI, Vistas and Skillpoints work exactly this way. Only some hearts hide themselves although the map area has been diclosed.

Hence I call it a bug.

No, ArenaNet specifically designed it to work this way. It’s working as intended. It’s not a bug at all. If you think they should have designed this system differently, you should’ve posted this in the suggestions forum, not here.

No, skill challenges are visible even before unfogging for whatever reason, but as you say, the PoIs and vistas are visible after unfogging (of course they are, how else would you find them?), but after unfogging an area you can see where the scouts are on the map, so just run over and talk to him/her and he/she will point the hearts out for you. You could keep playing without talking to scouts, but naturally you will have a harder time finding the hearts.

You are right. Skill points even show up before map unfog which can actually be irritating when the SP isn’t in my current zone (happens sometimes with those in caves located in the mountains surrounding a zone, but are accessed from the other side).

Still, POI and Vistas seem to be in perfect sync with map unfog. Hearts are not.
I also think that hearts and scouts might be different, because they have been added later to the game to probably give a more guided questing experience.

Anyway, how do you know that hearts are designed to not show up on the map unless you speak to a scout?

IMHO all 5 node types (forgot about the WPs) should behave identical. Show up on the map as soon as the area they are in has been unfogged.

Yeah, ArenaNet added the hearts and the scouts somewhere in alpha or pre-alpha when they noticed that people didn’t understand what they were supposed to do. “Just explore!” apparently wasn’t enough, so they added the scouts to point you in the directions of things to do and event hotspots. The vistas were actually added last of all in the beta.

They then added voiced dialogue to the scouts who give you a quick overview of the lore and content in an area. If they had made it so that you only have to unfog the area and instantly seen where all the hearts are and what to do there, then what was the point in writing and voicing dialogue for the scouts if people are just going to ignore them and run from heart to heart? I personally love hearing what the scouts have to say about the area and I’m afraid if they changed this to work the way you want, I’d just ignore them and miss out on the content. I’d also have a harder time understanding what I’m doing and why I’m doing it when completing the hearts. The scouts add to my immersion of the game and I think they work great the way they are.

Also, if you prefer not talking to the scouts and just explore the world without them, if you see a village further down the road that you’ve unfogged but haven’t been to yet, it wouldn’t make sense in my opinion to know what’s going on there already without being told that earlier. Instead you’ll feel curious and think “I wonder what’s happening over there”, and some of that feeling will also be gone if they changed this.

Those are the reasons why I think ArenaNet designed them this way. I seriously doubt it’s just an oversight and it’s definitely not a bug. They’ve thought this through.

I see your point though, it is indeed a little out of sync with the other stuff, but I personally have only had this problem once since I couldn’t find a scout anywhere to point out the last heart. Most often you’ll have all the hearts unfogged when you’ve talked to all the scouts. PoIs however, annoy me since they’re so hard to see on the map.

An explorer goes on every part of the map twice to see if there is going to pop up something.
A quest driven player will just talk to scouts to show him what he needs to do.

It all works as intended by A-Net.

Use this. I use it often if I am missing something on a map.

http://gw2cartographers.com/

Thing is, scouts icons disappear on the maps too.
And I’ve found that I can’t even talk to them when I actually need it, even
if I may have done it before. Thus leading to using /wiki and looking up
the map, because I simply don’t want to waste energy looking for ONE
heart or something silly, for ages on end.

I’m obviously the explorer type of player. I usually need two passes for a zone.

First I just run around driven by what looks interesting to me, join events, gather, do a vista or a skill point when I feel like it and talk to NPCs. Without actually intending to do so, I make progress with some hearts, because I’m helping out. This I would call the pure fun phase. I mainly use the map in this phase to see, if I missed something (map fog).

I’m really enjoying this. And I think this is where Anet has really delivered what they had promised. The world they have created is just stunningly beautiful and when I just wander around and explore I feel like I’m a part of it.

In a second phase I go for map completion. Do the remaining skill points and vistas (still fun) and complete the POI and hearts (feels like work). I doubt more and more that adding the hearts and scouts to the game was a particular good idea.

Also I feel that some POI aren’t really interesting, otherwise I would have been there in phase one. Adding the vistas though, was a great idea, because it rewards exploration!

I always forget to talk about the WPs. I typically unlock them all in phase one, but rarely use them. Maybe that’s why.

Anyway. To me it boils down to exploration (the original gw2 concept) vs questing (old school). If map completion requires me to quest (meh!) then at least the quest markers should show up on the map when unfogged.