Guild Wars 2

Its been about a year and a half since the game has released and one thing I still miss about gw1 or any mmo in general is questing. Quests have the ability to tell certain immersive and personal storylines that DE’s cannot because of their nature. Quests can only be completed once by a player(except daillies) while DE’s have a timer and reset. One thing about this game that I think has alienated players is the absence of quests. There is a HUGE audience out there who literally just wants to do quest storylines that take them across an entire zone or perhaps multiple zones, telling a unique story, that is very lore-heavy. Obv DE’s cant do this because they arn’t one time only.

I at least feels that zones in this game are incredibly empty because of this. A few heart quests where we go fight off some boars, collect some scraps for some dude’s house, etc. I don’t know if Anet realizes this and plans to add some type of hybrid heartquest or dynamic event. I think it would be rather cool. It would also cater to an immense audience in the game if they regularily did this. How does the rest of the community feel about this? Would the introduction of gw2’s spin on quests be interesting to players? Something that adds more story-driven content to the game? Something the game currently lacks besides what the personal story can do.

be more specific

as current LS can be considered “quest” for achievements too

Quests can only be completed once by a player
…
I at least feels that zones in this game are incredibly empty because of this

and how exactly one time thing will liven up empty zones?

one thing for sure. one time only – lore heavy story quests, won’t cater to me

Questing for achievements its not questing lol. Questing is starting a sort of task in a zone that could be small and sweet like that one quest(pretty much the only quest in game) in a certain zone in ascalon where you help a charr engineer repair his bike and as a reward he gives you a hat. Or it could be epic, it could lead you through a story line that captivates the lore of the very zone. There is an awful lot of lore for most zones in this game but pretty much anyone who plays gw2 would have to look online to learn most of it. Its just presented very poorly in this game, and cant really be presented well with DE’s.

Dredgehaunt cliffs for example is one of the most hated zones in the game, mainly because people hate dredge, and the environment is depressing, and nothing special really goes on. However it has so much lore to do with the dredge and dwarves. Its just presented in a very poor way. They attempt to do so through two sources. 1. NPC dialogue when you talk to random NPC’s, and 2. Heart’s which really provide shallow content just for leveling up. It’s not really captivating at all.

Honestly I prefer the whole Dynamic Event system over your standard quest system any day. One thing I absolutely hated about Guild Wars was having a mile long list of quests that I really didn’t want to do and had nothing to do with what I wanted for my character. In the end I cleared the whole list and just ran around. The system in GW2 is far more to my preference. If I want, I can participate, if I don’t, I can walk away.

I dont think gw2 should have been without DE’s. Its pretty revolutionary. But im just saying lorewise its pretty blan. DE’s do give the feeling of a living world though. Its just that they arn’t very flexible with what they can do in terms of story. A lot of it is “push off these mobs that attack this town” or “this generic named mob has spawned for the 85th time, champion spider queen, kill it.” You cant really have a dynamic event chain that led up to a unique boss named “Ripjaw the defiler” or something stupid like that, then kill him, and have him spawn 30 minutes later.

Quests like in the Personal Story? Yeah, I miss them. Being actually part of the story itself had a nice touch.

All we get nowadays is a random solo instance in the LS every now and than, that feels generic like the whole LS itself.

Honestly I won’t mind some quests at times. I don’t really mind how they did this event, its just a sear amount of raid requirement for some parts thats annoying. Nothing makes an event go flat and funless like 20 commanders all trying to bark orders and expect random people with no connection to them in any way to follow blindly.

I don’t know- I really like the system in GW2 with the combination of hearts, DE’s LS and Personal story.
The lore is there it is just that most people don’t pay attention to it.
Can it be better? Sure it can

I would love to see extended quests tied to my Order

The thing is with the system we have now- you can participate or walk away.

I hated quests in traditional MMO’s because it is much more like a check list- you have to do x to do y- regardless of whether you want to or not.

Don’t even get me started on running across an entire zone to do something for this npc- and then running back.
Only to find out that you now have to run in another direction- that kind of nonsense made me rage quit recently in another MMO’s Beta after 20 min of play, I simply didn’t care if there was a story after that.

I like the Renown Heart NPCs as a way to highlight areas of interest while making the world feel alive. With Dynamic Events, there’s usually no “why” to them. And even if there is a “why”, we’re usually too busy tagging mobs to care. There’s no time to stop and smell the roses. I don’t get that same attachment to the world as I did talking to Edna.

I also feel that Renown Hearts are a good way to attract players to areas where interesting Dynamic Events run. Without something to keep players in an area, they’re just as likely to speed through between DEs as they are to catch them. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Dynamic Events too. But I do hope new zones include Renown Hearts NPCs (as well as the vistas, points of interest, etc.) in the same vein the original zones have.

…as long as the new quests don’t count towards world completion, cuz I’ll freak out >.>

I understand what you’re saying OP and I DO miss those quests. It made you feel more involved in what was going on. Even in Elder Scrolls Online one quest can link into the next and unravel an entire scenario and makes you feel immersed. However, the heart quests are anything but immersive. They’re meant to be completed without reading text mostly and feel more like a road bump rather than a story-telling mechanic.

When they originally talked about quests, they talked about how other MMOs would have main, epic feeling quests with filler, boring grind quests in between. With GW2, they replaced that with the personal story and dynamic events. Hearts weren’t originally a part of the game. Both hearts and scouts were added later, when they found that players of traditional MMOs would get lost, since they would try to quest (personal story).

Questing should exist in the game and be handled like the personal story. Quests would mainly be to tell the back story of what is going on or side stories, which they have been doing through their site, but they don’t have the resources to do this.

Achievements are used as quests though and the living world tracker is basically a quest.

Anet skipped the traditional quest grind to max and went with the hearts and LS is basically get 150~ AP every 2 weeks with a stupid backpack/hat. Nothing more.

On the one hand, explicit, instructional quests as are present in most mass marketed MMOs canbe a great way to see the countryside, learn your character, and gain rewards. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does get old pretty quickly… I cannot count the times I have gone to quest hub A, gathered up all the quests, gone out, done them, and return to hub A only to be told to go to B and repeat. That isn’t as fun as it was when MMOs were new to me.

GW2’s syetm of DEs is great, but some of the most fun I have had soloing in zones is following those people who come running up to you and say something like “Hey, You! Over Here!” and then lead you on to a few linear objectives.

For instance: The little boy who builds the snowmen out of used armor pieces. If you help him, he thanks you, and goes on, and you are free to do so as well. But, if you hang out for a moment, you see that his efforts work, and the snowmen frighten off the intruders. Then if you hang out a bit longer, the next in the series of events happen, and you end up fighting a mini-horde of Grawl.

There’s a lot going on out there. Sometimes it just takes a bit of patience and observation to see if the little event you just did leads to another, and so forth. The big difference is that you’re not going to see the big green/red/yellow/blue quest indicators over their heads.

The only real quest-type thing I would like to see is if, after you’ve done all your PS chapters, that some of the unused NPCs might have additional things for you to do. I think it would be cool for one to run up to you and say, “Hey, You’re the one who helped kill a dragon, right? Maybe you can help me with (insert quest here.)”

It really depends on the quest. Personal story style missions? Sure, it would be nice, especially for lore and background.

kill 10 rats busy work type quests? hell no

Quests never really went away. What changed was the delivery system, and I think GW2 vastly improves on the ‘exclamation mark’ system. Even now, playing single player games, I get so frustrated when I manage to do things like complete part of a quest by accident or find an important quest location, but it didn’t count because I hadn’t already spoken to the quest NPC. Convenience features like that are why I love the dynamic event system.

I don’t.

I love the way GW2 are.

What you say that regular quests has story and yadayada… Lot of times they don’t. Like take the latest game I just left where there where over 400 new Quests for the new expac and what was these quest? Well in the middle of a big war the maid needed the heroes help to gather the dirty plates on the tables. After that the locals needed help to gather materials (Wood, Cloth, Hide and more) to survive when they have to flee their town. The quests before that you had to make friends with the locals and to do that you had to play goodguy/badguy with them. Sure the stories was okay and I get it why I helped the people but I didn’t have fun doing it and the story didn’t speak to me at all.

But in GW2 if I run in to an event, something happens, they talk, they do something, I can do something if I wan’t and when it is done they talk some more and I will see a living story right before me. Not a crappy Dialogue window with a voiceover telling me what has happaned and that I have to gather 10 helmets to prove I can kill something.

Though I wouldn’t mind more stories in the way of personal story. I realy like the personal story but I don’t wan’t quests like something to look ‘oh have I done this quest or that quest?’ No! I don’t wan’t that. A few more personal stories like;
- Priory, Whisper, Vigil – What happened after!?
- Help out Destinys edge, choose who’ to help.
and so on.

And I just love the Living Story!!! Don’t scrap that concept ever Anet!

Creeper.9360:

It really depends on the quest. Personal story style missions? Sure, it would be nice, especially for lore and background.

kill 10 rats busy work type quests? hell no

Isn’t this basically what daily/monthly/living story achievments are, kill 10 different mobs, pick up 30 relics, etc etc, you can dress it anyway you want, its still the same repetitive quest system.

For everyone reading this topic and having map completion, try and remember a few renown heart NPC names.
A few out of 300. Surely there are some memorable ones. They can’t all be insipid.
If you can, then congrats, your exploring experience was great.
I for one felt like it was a chore doing the map completion. Severe lack of personality from every zone map dwellers was a major disappointment. Lifeless.

Does it beat the kill 10 rats hubs? Sure it does. The whole concept is great. The final result however, just meh.

Ionut.2307:

For everyone reading this topic and having map completion, try and remember a few renown heart NPC names.
A few out of 300. Surely there are some memorable ones. They can’t all be insipid.
If you can, then congrats, your exploring experience was great.
I for one felt like it was a chore doing the map completion. Severe lack of personality from every zone map dwellers was a major disappointment. Lifeless.

Does it beat the kill 10 rats hubs? Sure it does. The whole concept is great. The final result however, just meh.

Renown hearts is not instead of Quests. Dynamic Event’s are! And I can remeber alot of Event stories I realy like. Posting them would not prove anything since I could mind aswell just /wiki them so you will just have to take my word for it.
But read the bold text again, that’s whats most important.

There are plenty of quests in this game, and there’s plenty of story in this game. What’s missing is a quest giver who tells you explicitly what the quest is.

What’s missing from this game isn’t really questing. It’s “longer” epic quests. Stuff like the missions in Guild Wars 1. There are precious few of those moments in this game.

However, quest chains are more long and involved and tell a story, and often tell take the place of multiple quests.

I absolutely love questing and GW2 does have a few but not near enough and doesn’t add to the/a story-line like other MMOs usually do. You can be running through a camp/settlement and have someone try to get your attention with; “Excuse me, do you have a moment”. I just wish there was more of this, but, usually most people don’t/won’t even acknowledge this.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Ionut.2307:

For everyone reading this topic and having map completion, try and remember a few renown heart NPC names.
A few out of 300. Surely there are some memorable ones. They can’t all be insipid.
If you can, then congrats, your exploring experience was great.
I for one felt like it was a chore doing the map completion. Severe lack of personality from every zone map dwellers was a major disappointment. Lifeless.

Does it beat the kill 10 rats hubs? Sure it does. The whole concept is great. The final result however, just meh.

Renown hearts is not instead of Quests. Dynamic Event’s are! And I can remeber alot of Event stories I realy like. Posting them would not prove anything since I could mind aswell just /wiki them so you will just have to take my word for it.
But read the bold text again, that’s whats most important.

You missed my point. The whole dynamic events awesomeness you experienced is a miss if you can’t emotionally connect to the NPCs your are doing the events for.
But is your opinion and I respect that.

Kobi Beef.3895:

Creeper.9360:

It really depends on the quest. Personal story style missions? Sure, it would be nice, especially for lore and background.

kill 10 rats busy work type quests? hell no

Isn’t this basically what daily/monthly/living story achievments are, kill 10 different mobs, pick up 30 relics, etc etc, you can dress it anyway you want, its still the same repetitive quest system.

the difference is you don’t have to do dailies to see the story :P

I think the #1 reason people begin to dislike this game is because they try to relate things in GW2 to things they already know. Hearts? Oh, those are like quests. Let me do all of them. Leveling? Oh, that’s grinding I have to do to reach end-game, hello champ train. Achievements? Oh, those are like quests too, better grind them all.

Obviously, people expand from that and find other reasons later, but I think that’s where it starts.

Quests really wouldnt be added for the sake of leveling though like other games do. I admit leveling up through crafting is a lot more fun jk lol no but really dynamic events make it more fun. But something like quests added, say even more personal story like content, could be added for the sake of having cool lore content. Instead of personal story, the story wouldnt be about you, but another npc, that you are taking part in.

Its been about 18 months or so since the game has came out and the ideas that anet must have circling around in their head must have drastically changed tbh. I have a hard time seeing them extending the personal story. If they do go back to it, I think it will have changed a lot. I think the same can be said about the living story. Anet certainly has learned a lot from the enormous amount of community feedback in the 15 months that elapsed for season 1, in my opinion too long of a season. The reason I mention the Living story is because its the main driving force behind communicating lore in the game right now. But its a type of lore that isn’t old and distant in the past, its lore that is currently taking place. This is still why I don’t think the living story can’t compensate for quests either.

I think if they wanted to put their own spin on lore content that explored the past, the best place to look would be expanding fractals. There would be the fractals that you use for dungeon content what not, then these fractal portals that perhaps sit in each zone next to a certain spot that upon entering let you into a certain instance in the past in that exact same zone. The only difference from fractals is that fractals have the dungeon mindset even though that is cool lore while these would be focused purely on an ongoing story in the past that you can’t experience in the present. It would be a series of instances that you had to progress through to finally get to the peak of the story.

I don’t think DE’s were a suitable substitute for traditional quests, but I do think the two could work side-by-side and I would welcome such a thing with open arms. I’m just not sure how quests would work in a persistant world since various players may be in different stages of the same quest which may create some issues.

If Anet were to introduce quests again, they have to avoid what they did in GW1, which was giving the player hundreds of quests but little in the way of rewards for doing them (DE"s anyone?). Sure, many quests offered a rich experience in terms of story and character interaction but in a game like GW2 (or any RPG for that matter) there has to be some sort of “tangible” reward to encourage the player to do them beyond the “experience.”

I don’t want quests but I do want more content in the high quality personal story format.

risa.1382:

I don’t want quests but I do want more content in the high quality personal story format.

ye me too. thats actually what i mean by quests so I guess im not conveying my idea properly.

I’d love actual quests, it’s one of the many things I miss from the original GW. These dynamic events are nice and all if you just start out, but they become stale very soon. I guess many ppl would say the same about quests, but IMO they had a lot more depth in GW1 than events have now.

They just need to take care of the fact that you can do these things any time you like.
Like the missions back in GW1 and the personal story here…maybe a bit like the dungeons, but more suitable for a PUG.
After the first time I was kind of disappointed by the way the LS goes.
If you can play each day – no problems there…but if your life changes and you have only very little time to go on and play you’re also gong to miss a whole bunch of lore and story.

Quests were static for a static world and they gave a bit of security – as they wouldn’t vanish after a time without playing (normally)

I think they should go on with the LS and somehow integrate it in the existing PS – the rest is just okay with dailies, hearts and so on.

But somehow it is against the design-manifesto, which sounded very promising in the first place and made me fear that some morons burn down Tyria within a week ;-)

I dont mind them myself.

think about it like this you cant be bothered doing your personal story, Cant be bothered farming you do a few quests instead. They just need to be somewhat interesting and since I came here from a game which doesn’t have quests I like this layout

The only thing I dislike about the Dynamic Event system is that I think it happens too frequently. I feel significantly less immersed when I save an area, turn around and chop down a tree, and then it’s being attacked again before I can even get three feet away from the place. I definitely do not get the feeling that what I’m doing is in anyway important.

Many of the events are also anticipating a population much higher than the reality of most servers. While I am super-pro-leet enough to defeat a champion by myself, it is also super tedious and not much fun to do.

If they missions had better scaling, and if they waited to see if a new player enters their radius before spawning their event cycle I think I would enjoy them a lot more.

As far as actual one-off quests go; I am absolutely in favor of them provided that they are compelling enough to do. I feel like this is sort of accomplished by the Living World, except that the events do not last long enough for me to take, say, a several month long-break and then come back to them at my leisure. It would be nice if they had some method of allowing us to replay significant missions or cutscenes without actually having to partake in the world changing environment, if only so that less active players could stay current with the story.

To be honest, I miss quests. But not the WoW quests or anything of the fetch quests, I want quests that has a story and ongoing progression towards its completion. Runescape’s quest system is the best I’ve ever seen, you solve puzzles, go to dungeons, and make yourself feel special. Heck, you even get a quest cape for completing all of them! Truly a reward.
In Runescape, I rarely seen any fetch quests, most of them have some kind of story in them. Some of them are just really long dungeons and crossing a booty-trap underground cave stopping this evil necromancer that put his daughter’s soul in a doll body, about to be sacrificed. Others are about passing 3 tests from holy ghosts, retrieving a special sword to defeat a demon that’s terrorizing a village. It would be amazing to see that in GW2.

So if quests are added to the game, have them like a shortened Personal Story, and have some story with its own characters and recurring characters. I also love quests that mention the choices I made in the past.

Here’s an example of how quests should link each other:
Level 20: Defeat an evil group that’s trying to summon a grawl god, you decided to jail the wizard instead of killing him.
Level 40: A thief has released all the prisoners in a jail, and you see the wizard and tells you what he saw as a thanks for showing him mercy.

I don’t ever want quests as some fetch quests (which are what hearts are, leave fetch quests to be hearts, pls). Quests should be like instanced dynamic events, you can also explore new areas and stuff, and solve puzzles and such, and have a party to do a whole quest. I think there should also be hard mode for a quest if you ever want to do them again.

My 2 cents.

Not me.

I liked the story in GW1, but I hardly remember the quests I did. Every 3 quests or so, I would just forget! There are a few that stand out in terms of challenge like Galrath, but no I’ll take the event system in this game.

i love to have quests but it has to be handles the right way, looking at the PS is maybe a way but not really the right one.
instead, we should first look at the quests and missions in GW1, then combine them and adjust them to fit the open world model.
i agree that a “kill 10 rats” quest becomes really boring but looking at what is possible we could actually end up with tons of quests that could be better then ether hearts or DE’s.

one reason why quests are needed, even if there are 1/40 traditional quests in it, is because it fills the world and expands the lore.
i can walk around in GW2 and have no desire to do a DE but like to do something from the beginning, i love to do stuff but at my pace and when i want it, not when a DE decides to start.

I do have an update to this thread as I had gotten one of my questions answered on the meta event stream. I asked whether the devs felt Dynamic events limited them from doing unique storylines since DE’s happen frequently, with timers anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours. They did say yes for the most part except a few certain DE’s which it did work. They said trying to do unique storylines, especially with unique NPC’s, doesn’t always work because it would be weird if you killed the same unique NPC every 20 minutes.

They did mention a DE though in harathi hinterlands which I didn’t know about, a type of secret DE which I thought was pretty cool. You basically go to the area of Saul D’alessio’s tomb and there is a dwayna statue nearby which you bow too and it summons an npc that tells you how to summon this guy who guards Saul’s tomb. All in all it was pretty cool but short with not so great rewards. I think events like this are too rare in the game tbh. We need more of these and less escort events or generic champ zerg events. They also need to make the rewards more unique. Some DE’s have very cool rewards like the frost gun or experimental rifle. I think more of those would make DE’s more fun.