Guild Wars 2

For players of Guild Wars 2 the word “quest” is constantly thrown around as a hot topic and flash word where people just mindlessly bash without even thinking what it actually means.

When you hear the word quest you think “oh no I don’t wanna start running around killing 10 wolves”, when in reality that’s not what quest means, that’s just busywork. We already have busywork in the game – it’s called hearts and events.

Things such as “water my plants X times” or “gather X objects and bring them back to me”, those things which people so quickly blame on quests and hate are currently present in the game in the form of hearts and events.

So onto my main point, GW2 needs quests. Once again, I don’t mean “gather X things”, we already have that, we don’t need more.

What I do mean are quests which make you go out, explore, discover and challenge yourself in the world. Right now GW2 is completely barren and empty of substance and content in the open world.

When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.

On top of that the quests themselves could make you explore the world to complete them, as quests usually do.

Think for example you explore a cave to find a dead body in the end with a note on it, you pick up the note which starts a quest. The note ends up being the last written words of the doomed person, in the note he explains how he regrets leaving his family in Lornar’s Pass, who are waiting for him in Pinion Pass.

You now find this note from a mysterious dead man and you have clues (it’s important not to just tell the players ‘go to location X’, let them figure it out but give them decent and simple clues) on where to go and what to do.

Once you meet his family they might reveal something about the dead man’s motivations, why he was there and what happened, etc.

I mean the possibilities are endless, imagine how epic it would be if you found this quest in a Lv1-15 area but had to go to a Lv25-40 area to complete it. Now you have a reason to go to this location, you have something to look forward to when you level up. You’re driven by your desire to find this location and continue on your quest, and imagine how fulfilling it would feel when you’re finally able to find Pinion Pass.

So in conclusion, I think GW2 needs these sort of hidden, mysterious, rewarding, and even challenging epic quests which send you out on an adventure. Also, rewarding is very important, players won’t be bothered unless they have a reward to look forward to. That’s why events feel so mundane after a while, their rewards are very uninspiring.

PS; quests are a great way to tell a story or dish out lore about the game, another thing GW2 currently lacks.

TL;DR – we need epic and challenging quests in the game which make you want to explore the world. Not talking about “gather X things”, we have those in the form of hearts and events already. GW2 is severely lacking depth and something to do in the world, and Living Story hasn’t been cutting it.

Sorry for the horrifically long post too.

It’s “cool” to hate on WoW

WoW has quests in it.

People dislike quests, cause they think it makes them cool and hip and fresh (and other words)

Instead it makes them something else.

Personally, I think quests should only be used for personal development (learning new skills and traits, getting a specific weapon unique to your profession ect), since Events provide more in the way of immersion for kill and escort quests. That is:

• Quests for things that only affect you
• Events for things that affect the world

However, I do agree on your point that there should be little to no hand-holding (although chances are the majority of players will end up using a guide anyway).

TheDaiBish.9735:

Personally, I think quests should only be used for personal development (learning new skills and traits, getting a specific weapon unique to your profession ect), since Events provide more in the way of immersion for kill and escort quests. That is:

• Quests for things that only affect you
• Events for things that affect the world

However, I do agree on your point that there should be little to no hand-holding (although chances are the majority of players will end up using a guide anyway).

I also think quests should be used for something more grand than just doing a task, such as getting unique rewards, or discovering something about the story or lore.

Imagine if you finally had a reason to explore the cities. Imagine going up and down every inch of the Black Citadel, that place has some beautiful areas which are just completely wasted.

The best quests in GW1 for me were those which gave new skills, I didn’t even care if it were mundane and boring, the reward made the whole experience exciting – reward matters.

Finally on the note of hand holding, people will use guides if they’re lazy, hand holding or not, let them. What matters is giving that opportunity of deeper and more immersive experience to the players who want it.

Now it’s important to understand the fine line between totally vague and completely obvious when directing a player. The Halloween scavenger hunt and the Tequatl scavenger hunt are examples of being too vague (or giving literally no clue in the Tequatl case). While the personal story quests with their giant glowing green star being an example of being too obvious.

A game needs to give their players choice, even if the end result will be the same a player wants to feel like he made his own decisions of how to reach the end result. That’s why it’s important not to hand hold.

Delryn.7235:

I also think quests should be used for something more grand than just doing a task, such as getting unique rewards, or discovering something about the story or lore.

Imagine if you finally had a reason to explore the cities. Imagine going up and down every inch of the Black Citadel, that place has some beautiful areas which are just completely wasted.

The best quests in GW1 for me were those which gave new skills, I didn’t even care if it were mundane and boring, the reward made the whole experience exciting – reward matters.

This is why I only made a distinction between affecting the player and affecting the world, and not mundanity (is that even a word?) and epic.

From an immersion point of view, mobs actually attacking in the world makes more sense than ‘kill 10 of these just standing around’, while quests are exclusive to that player, so they make much more sense in terms of personal development where you don’t necessarily need others (although sparodic, random quests when you do dungeons, such as collecting artifacts, battleplans ect would be pretty cool).

Delryn.7235:

Finally on the note of hand holding, people will use guides if they’re lazy, hand holding or not, let them. What matters is giving that opportunity of deeper and more immersive experience to the players who want it.

Now it’s important to understand the fine line between totally vague and completely obvious when directing a player. The Halloween scavenger hunt and the Tequatl scavenger hunt are examples of being too vague (or giving literally no clue in the Tequatl case). While the personal story quests with their giant glowing green star being an example of being too obvious.

A game needs to give their players choice, even if the end result will be the same a player wants to feel like he made his own decisions of how to reach the end result. That’s why it’s important not to hand hold.

I didn’t give the Tequatl one a shot, but I personally didn’t find the Halloween one that bad. I’d have said the Flame and Frost one would have been a better example.

Given how the Internet has evolved, in terms of exploration stuff, games really shouldn’t include hand-holding as mandatory IMO. At the very least, give players the option to have GPS or not.

Kind of like what they did with the World Map, where you can turn icons off.

Story was the quest but they ditched that ages ago.

These hidden ‘quests’ are in the original design. Nearly all the jumping puzzles are hidden. They are probably too hard to find and most players would have missed them entirely if there were no achievements and net spoilers. There are also mini dungeons that can be completed solo or with a friend. They don’t have a big alert in the top of the screen saying “Quest here! Do it now! Do not ignore this message!” but they are in the game. Some of the open world events also tell short stories and take players into little adventures that do substitute nicely for quests.

The reward for these hidden quests can’t be too big or else everyone would repeatedly do them. That leaves the loot near the level of the current open world chests which are admittedly underwhelming.

I agree with the OP. We need longer, more intricate quests in this game. Scavenger hunts with clues you can figure stuff out,. stories that evolve as you play them. Some of that is covered by dynamic events…in some of the bigger chains. I mean the event chain in Malchor’s Leap isn’t very different from a quest chain in other games.

But I disagree with the OP that hearts are like standard quests for two reasons. First, very very few standard quests have multiple ways to complete them and very few standard quests can be filled by completing dynamic events nearby. Virtually all the hearts I do now, I finish without even trying to do the hearts.

To me, the issue with quests in MMOs is that they really are superfluous, only there to make you think you’re doing something. In theory, they help you get used to the game and how the mechanics work… but I really don’t see how you can’t do that by, ya know… playing the game.

And no, GW2 really doesn’t do that all that much better. While it IS an improvement that each “heart” generally has multiple ways to complete it rather than “Kill [x] number of creatures”, it still doesn’t seem like the hearts really add much to the game itself. It’s busy work to make you feel like you’re doing something of significance, nothing more.

I never felt the heart system was any better than the quest system. Sure, I guess it “free’s” you up to roam wherever, but for some people that also can be a bad thing, as in you easily get to a point where you are kinda just running around aimlessly without any goals. Also I feel the old questing system also makes you interact with villages and the sort a lot more than these hearts. Basically, with the hearts you can run through the entire game without talking to any of the people you are helping. To each their own, there are plenty of games with quests so I don’t feel this is an important issue for gw2. It’s just one of those things where you either like it or don’t, it still works.

There is no heart system. There are 300 hearts in the game and 1500 dynamic events. Hearts were added for one reason and one reason only…to keep people in the areas where events happen. They are there to serve a different purpose than quests, not to act as quests. It’s DEs that are meant to be the quests in this game.

In fact, hearts were added very very late in the beta stage, because people were just running through zones and not encountering anything.

killcannon.2576:

It’s “cool” to hate on WoW

WoW has quests in it.

People dislike quests, cause they think it makes them cool and hip and fresh (and other words)

Instead it makes them something else.

So much truth to this. Hating mainstream has been “cool” for a very long time.

OP I completely agree, I have many friends that have tried to play the game and have gotten stuck right after their personal story out leveled them which happens pretty fast. The question I always hear is “Now what do I do?” and I haven’t found a good answer to that… finding hearts is easy but even when you find all the hearts in the area of your level you still need more experience. So… Wait for an event, or grind some enemies. Needless to say, those people that cannot push through that don’t stick around long. I had a friend running around Queensdale for hours trying to find these events I was talking about. Poor guy never saw one, And eventually got frustrated with just running around killing enemies in the open world.

The static story and lack of goals really hurts, there is also the grind time between story chapters that can and for some often does tun into “Oops I got 30 levels and forgot about that story thing I was supposed to be doing” Many people haven’t completed their story and have been 80 for over a year!

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

perilisk.1874:

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

There are things like that hidden in caves in this game. Even something as simple as a rich ore vein, or some character you can talk to.

It doesn’t happen all the time (because if it did, it wouldn’t be special) but it does happen.

Delryn.7235:

For players of Guild Wars 2 the word “quest” is constantly thrown around as a hot topic and flash word where people just mindlessly bash without even thinking what it actually means.

People forget that Baldur’s Gate also had quests

I totally agree with you. There is nothing in this game that tells you the lore. And quests could fix that. But it is probably never going to happen. Instead we are going to get more achievements (like find 10 things on this huge map – doesn’t it sound familiar to you?).

Vayne.8563:

perilisk.1874:

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

There are things like that hidden in caves in this game. Even something as simple as a rich ore vein, or some character you can talk to.

It doesn’t happen all the time (because if it did, it wouldn’t be special) but it does happen.

But there is no lore or story tied to that vein or chest is it? And is that vein a start of a longer and more complicated story? No… It isn’t.

Pass. I’m not playing CSI online.

HiddenNick.7206:

Vayne.8563:

perilisk.1874:

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

There are things like that hidden in caves in this game. Even something as simple as a rich ore vein, or some character you can talk to.

It doesn’t happen all the time (because if it did, it wouldn’t be special) but it does happen.

But there is no lore or story tied to that vein or chest is it? And is that vein a start of a longer and more complicated story? No… It isn’t.

There are other things I’ve found in caves besides Ore veins. That was but a single example.

I mean it would be really REALLY stupid if every single cave had an NPC in it, that would give you a story about the world. But there are things in this game off the beaten track that you can find that give you some sort of story or information or whatever.

I’ve found most of the jumping puzzles in this game by exploring as well.

I agree traditional quests are awesome when they aren’t just grind x. Think pre-expansion quests in WoW that sent you across the world instead of sticking you to that one specific zone. Quests have evolved a lot and your example in the OP is perfect on how they should do them.

Events are probably too complex to be multi-zone faceted but quests sure aren’t.

You start off reading a scroll in queensdale and multiple tasks later you end up in an 80 zone summoning a lich to defeat him for killing your mysterious dead man who left his family to avenge his brother. Or something :p maybe his spirit gets summoned after killing the lich and you finally get to put him to rest.

Also, it’s easier to put in text than voicing everything, and a lot of people like me prefer reading a story. Remember when we used our imagination in older RPGs? Now everything is voiced and really takes away from the feels imo unless the acting is reaaaally good, which is rare.

“Unfortunately” GW2 is a living world. Which something a lot of players wanted. What a lot of them didn’t realize is that this means that sometime you won’t have anything to do in a specific zone.

If you really think about it, they didn’t mess it up too much. Most DE’s give you a gist of what’s happening in each zones and you get too see those events unfold before and after.

However there are technical limitations : events in low level zones (Queensdale) respawn really fast to allow new players to enjoy them without having too wait too long, which might annoy your immersion (if you are the type to get annoyed easily). And in higher level zones the problem is that the waiting time between events in chain can sometime be more than 5 minutes…yes even 5 minutes is a long time to stand still in place, especially when you don’t know if something is going to appear and nothing hints at it (no NPC running around, no dialogue box telling you something is coming up).

Also, some event chains can’t be done by yourself because there’s probably an annoying champion and the end of it.

And finally, the reward factor simply is missing for a lot of them. And I’m not only talking about monetary rewards. For example, can someone tell me what’s the point of “The Kodan Claw” meta event ?

However while I know there are no events that take you from one zone to another, I think you can find little hints here and there. But honestly, I didn’t explore enough to know that for sure, because wandering around alone gets annoying after 15 minutes.

It’s a very real issue in GW2, a lack of direction.

I got a friend of mine to start playing a couple of days ago. I told him to make a character and play alone for a little while so he can discover and learn things on his own a bit more, and get used to the mechanics.

A day later I go to check up on him and he says he doesn’t understand what he needs to do, he’s just running around killing things.
Said all there really was of interesting for him to do was the Personal Story Missions. Of which he said weren’t too fun either since you had to do a lot of traveling to get to a place, to either have a minute of conversation or two minutes of mindless combat and just move on.

Is it bad that I feel like I have to make excuses for why GW2 is fun?

It’s a real issue, lack of depth and direction. If they made the personal story more like the instanced story missions in GW1 it would have ended up much better.

GW1 missions were in a large open area, usually like small dungeons or just a large part of the map which you had to traverse yourself, find the objective on your own. Instead what we have now is a very small and limited location in which we need to stand still and kill things that approach.

It’s very restrictive, not enough interactive.

As for the Heart system not being quests because they have multiple objectives, so what? It’s still the exact same thing, think of it as 3-4 quests put into one with the reward of none.

Seriously, reward in this game is another big issue. Imagine having to play a traditional MMO with traditional quests. Now imagine if all of those quests just gave you a few copper, maybe a silver. That would get very boring very fast.

That’s what both the heart and events are, they have virtually non existing rewards. It’s nice how completing a heart opens up a little shop, I like to think of that as the “quest completion rewards”, still shallow though.

Mathias.9657:

I agree traditional quests are awesome when they aren’t just grind x. Think pre-expansion quests in WoW that sent you across the world instead of sticking you to that one specific zone. Quests have evolved a lot and your example in the OP is perfect on how they should do them.

Events are probably too complex to be multi-zone faceted but quests sure aren’t.

You start off reading a scroll in queensdale and multiple tasks later you end up in an 80 zone summoning a lich to defeat him for killing your mysterious dead man who left his family to avenge his brother. Or something :p maybe his spirit gets summoned after killing the lich and you finally get to put him to rest.

Also, it’s easier to put in text than voicing everything, and a lot of people like me prefer reading a story. Remember when we used our imagination in older RPGs? Now everything is voiced and really takes away from the feels imo unless the acting is reaaaally good, which is rare.

Yes to everything.

A quest can be so meaningful yet so simple at the same time. I got chills just imagining how amazing it would be if your continuation/example of an epic quest were true in the game. It’d be able to pass so much emotion with so little, a lot more than “quickly! The risen are invading the south beach, run to the giant circle in your map and stay there killing them for a few minutes!”.

Also what you said about spoken dialog is true. There’s too many of those artsy cutscene dialogs and at one point you just start to subconsciously zone out during them. I find it hard still today to actually pay attention to what the characters are saying.

It just goes in one ear and out the other.

This is however also true about written dialog, if there’s way too much to read odds are the player won’t have the patience. I know that was true for me about the quest dialogs in GW1, walls after walls of text.

A game needs a good balance of both, enough reading to keep your attention and enough cutscenes to make you go awe!

That’s because he isn’t cut out to play GW2. You know why hearts were put in the game ? Because during the first tests, the players didn’t know what to do. Anet had to modify their idea because the players that wanted to explore didn’t want to do it without directions, they wanted to be guided through.

Now that the game is released I also don’t really want to explore, but not because I don’t have directions. Because after wasting hours and hours on finding nothing at all, I don’t see why I should continue to bother exploring something when there’s nothing to explore (I’m exaggerating a little).

RedStar.4218:

That’s because he isn’t cut out to play GW2. You know why hearts were put in the game ? Because during the first tests, the players didn’t know what to do. Anet had to modify their idea because the players that wanted to explore didn’t want to do it without directions, they wanted to be guided through.

Now that the game is released I also don’t really want to explore, but not because I don’t have directions. Because after wasting hours and hours on finding nothing at all, I don’t see why I should continue to bother exploring something when there’s nothing to explore (I’m exaggerating a little).

That’s where reward comes in, in the end people want rewards. What is there for me out in the world? Events which will give me some near worthless exp, a measly sum of silver, and a drop of karma in my oceanic amount of karma – not worth wasting my time for.

As far as loot I’ll just find some junk, few crafting materials, blues green with the occasional rare to be salvaged. There’s no motivation.

Before GW2 gives their players more rewards, they first need to create more rewards. The game has very few unique items.

I don’t need quests to motivate me to go explore some cave like the OP needs. And I certainly don’t want something akin to the “quest log” as those tend to fill up quickly and I feel pressed to finish all those quests, even the ones that are no longer appropriate for my level; well, that’s just me.

What I would like to see are the sorts of quests that are the only way to get some cool item for your class, a new skill, advancement to the next skill level, etc. GW1 sort of did that with elite skills but those quests were self-defined: “Go to this place over here, hunt down this boss, and then claim the elite skill from its corpse”; those were fun.

There’s numerous types of rewards that could be given at the end of the suggested quests that wouldn’t necessarily turn them into “the next stop on the champ train”. I believe the devs mentioned at one point that new skills and/or traits would become unlockable via in-game content — those could certainly be added as rewards. Unique (to that quest) skins, for both weapons and armor, that weren’t locked behind .0000001% RNG. Recipes that allowed you to create something along the lines of an endless keg of ale or a neverending bottle of rum. 5 gifts, like the GW1 royal gifts or gifts of the traveler. Specific dyes. And those are just a few examples.

As for the quests themselves, they could be of varying length/depth, from as basic as Bob the Brewer getting drunk and forgetting where he left is recipe for the endless keg of ale, but kind of remembering a bunch of strawberries and a bunch of griffons … (lame, i know, but just an example of brevity) to something with as much complexity as taking you from a 1-15 zone to a 40-50 zone, with pieces of the quest running through all the zones inbetween. And while I think I remember reading that the devs wanted to steer away from text-based quests, as mentioned, the inclusion of these would probably be easier than scripting out cut-scenes, gathering the voice actors/actresses/etc., and could, conceivable, be set in various, remote locations throughout each zone.

But, this may be a case of wishful thinking or too tall an order to be asking.

I totally agree with this.

Bad quests are just that, bad quests. They should not at all be taken as an indictment of the entire traditional questing system. Quests, when done right, can be interesting experiences. They can drive exploration and provide challenges with unique rewards. They can be excellent vehicles for deeper and more pointed lore. As such, I also feel that they could, and should, very well have a place in GW2 alongside the currently existing DE and Heart systems.

What players should be afraid of when it comes to traditional quests is simply bad quests, not quests in general.

Delryn.7235:

we need epic and challenging quests in the game which make you want to explore the world.

Good work.

You’ve successfully avoided the typical mental traps and fallacies that side-track people into announcing very minute things as being “the problem with the game” and went right to the heart of it.

Maybe there’s a career in game design for you.

Delryn.7235:

~

So onto my main point, GW2 needs quests. Once again, I don’t mean “gather X things”, we already have that, we don’t need more.

What I do mean are quests which make you go out, explore, discover and challenge yourself in the world. Right now GW2 is completely barren and empty of substance and content in the open world.

When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.

On top of that the quests themselves could make you explore the world to complete them, as quests usually do.

Think for example you explore a cave to find a dead body in the end with a note on it, you pick up the note which starts a quest. The note ends up being the last written words of the doomed person, in the note he explains how he regrets leaving his family in Lornar’s Pass, who are waiting for him in Pinion Pass.

You now find this note from a mysterious dead man and you have clues (it’s important not to just tell the players ‘go to location X’, let them figure it out but give them decent and simple clues) on where to go and what to do.

Once you meet his family they might reveal something about the dead man’s motivations, why he was there and what happened, etc.

I mean the possibilities are endless, imagine how epic it would be if you found this quest in a Lv1-15 area but had to go to a Lv25-40 area to complete it. Now you have a reason to go to this location, you have something to look forward to when you level up. You’re driven by your desire to find this location and continue on your quest, and imagine how fulfilling it would feel when you’re finally able to find Pinion Pass.

So in conclusion, I think GW2 needs these sort of hidden, mysterious, rewarding, and even challenging epic quests which send you out on an adventure. Also, rewarding is very important, players won’t be bothered unless they have a reward to look forward to. That’s why events feel so mundane after a while, their rewards are very uninspiring.

PS; quests are a great way to tell a story or dish out lore about the game, another thing GW2 currently lacks.

TL;DR – we need epic and challenging quests in the game which make you want to explore the world. Not talking about “gather X things”, we have those in the form of hearts and events already. GW2 is severely lacking depth and something to do in the world, and Living Story hasn’t been cutting it.

Sorry for the horrifically long post too.

Agree I been ‘asking’ for quest since the beta (mainly in fan forums but also here). It really makes a connection with the world. Here there are many NPC’s but I don’t feel a connection with the world of the NPC’s. In a way the world looks fake because NPS’s are seemingly having no purpose. I like to know the background of some of them and get a nice reward for it.

Your theath reminds me of those topics where I gave a similar example however you talk about a cave I talked about a little house. You go there find a woman who is worried because her son is lost, you go and discover he is eaten by some animal. Back at here place she ask you if you would give the sad news to his brother who lives far away. Eventually you get there (exploring the world) and tell the news. He is someone who breed birds for a living and to tank you for making the long journey he gives you one of his birds (mini). His neighbor then trust you and also ask you for a favorer and so on.

Something else that kept me exploring the world was fun-crafts like you have in some mmo’s. Most famous one will be engineering in WoW. In GW2 you explore the world mainly to level and to well see whats out there but there is no real unfolding story or goal to your journey.

Then again. GW2 makes money with there gems so nice rewards they prefer putting in the gem-store and it’s also not really one open world. More multiple maps. That does not help in this case. You don’t wander into a new area you load into it.

And while events feel useless non-world changing because they keep repainting. Quest end for that char so in a way you see the world progress for you. You did help that person and maybe that initiates a new quest.

Vayne.8563:

HiddenNick.7206:

Vayne.8563:

perilisk.1874:

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

There are things like that hidden in caves in this game. Even something as simple as a rich ore vein, or some character you can talk to.

It doesn’t happen all the time (because if it did, it wouldn’t be special) but it does happen.

But there is no lore or story tied to that vein or chest is it? And is that vein a start of a longer and more complicated story? No… It isn’t.

There are other things I’ve found in caves besides Ore veins. That was but a single example.

I mean it would be really REALLY stupid if every single cave had an NPC in it, that would give you a story about the world. But there are things in this game off the beaten track that you can find that give you some sort of story or information or whatever.

I’ve found most of the jumping puzzles in this game by exploring as well.

Story about the life of the NPC (Like in OP’s example) would also be nice (does not all need to go about the world). Yes you are correct there are some paces where such little stories unfold but it’s just happening.. I am not part of it. It does not make me go explore or do anything and thats why a quest can be better. And those thinks where I am part of.. events, feel useless because they keep happening over and over again. When doing a quest you see progress for you the world changes a little bid but with the events it’s just a reoccurring thing all the time and nothing really changes.

In Kessex Hills you have that bridge that you have to defend every time you get there.. it’s like.. I just did that 10 min ago, and 10 min before that. The feeling of victory also gets lost that way.

pdg.8462:

I don’t need quests to motivate me to go explore some cave like the OP needs. And I certainly don’t want something akin to the “quest log” as those tend to fill up quickly and I feel pressed to finish all those quests, even the ones that are no longer appropriate for my level; well, that’s just me.

You are correct that you should not be required to do all quest. Doing the quest you like the best should do the trick.. not showing question-markets above quest-givers might be a help there.

But in GW2 you do need to do all hearts and vista’s and waypoints (not events) because it gives you map-completion that gives you a reward (one of the better rewards in the game I think) and eventually leads to world completion that you then need to get a legendary.. and then you can do exactly the same again with your alts… Oow the joy.

So the way it now works is how you say you do not want quest to work.. except for the quest log. But personally I don’t see the quest-log as problem as long as you do not need to do everything. You collect the ones you like or more and when you are a to high level you drop the low level quest out of the list.

I still long for the day when an MMO designs quests as well as good single player RPGs like Skyrim or Oblivion.

I totally agree that there should be quests in Guild Wars 2. Especially ones that really get you exploring the world.

It would be cool if Personal Story was more ,,,well,,, idk,,,PERSONAL perhaps?

Knighthonor.4061:

It would be cool if Trahearne Story was more ,,,well,,, idk,,,TRAHEARNE perhaps?

Fixed.

Delryn.7235:

When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.

Vistas were added during Beta specifically to encourage people to explore the environment more, both by rewarding them for it and by pointing out some hidden locations. Points of interest serve roughly the same purpose. Their presence may make the rest of the world seem a little lacking in motivation by comparison, because it doesn’t offer the same level of reward, but, honestly, my two favorite places in Tyria are Divinity’s Reach and Garrenhoff, neither of which have substantial rewards, because I’m a flavor junkie and find them both inspiring and immersive. There are a lot of places like that, like the classrooms and library in the Durmand Priory, or the abandoned camp in…Trionic Lattice, I think, which summons up an ice imp if you investigate. I’m not sure that’s even part of an event.

Could there be more points of interest, vistas, jump puzzles, and dynamic events to make these places more mechanically rewarding? Yeah, always, but you can only make the world so dense with mechanical rewards before it starts feeling like there are more full caves than empty ones. (Or, more likely, you run out of budget.)

I like to explore for the sake of exploring, and there’s a surprising number of hidden gems in the game if you like that kind of thing. The things that do reward me are nice, and I’m slowly working my way towards World Completion, but there are a lot of dynamic event chains I do because I want to see what happens, not because they’re materially rewarding. I stumbled upon the end of Defeat the Transformed Pirates once, for example, and was intrigued enough to go through the entire event chain from the start afterwards to figure out what was happening.

As for long quests that stretch across multiple zones, that’s partially covered by the Personal Story and Living Story, as anyone who’s ever had to do “Fixing the Blame” can attest. More of them, ones more casual than Personal/Living Story, would certainly be welcome, however.

The last set of quests I enjoyed that were not “make work” was the epic quest class armor line in DAoC for (what was at the time) BiS gear at endgame. Started when you were level 12 or 17 (working your way to level 50 endgame). Sent you to far reaches of the game, the quest mobs only showed up when the player with the specific quest stepped into the area, and culminated with some steps that required a group or a raid to complete.

You literally “quested” for your unique-looking-to-your-class, trademark sign of class/arrival gear.

That was memorable. It was meaningful. It was not uncommon for some players to “choke up” when they got their last piece.

It was the best questing in an MMO I have ever done.

PS: have done the personal stories through Zhaitan completion here on multiple characters. They do not feel like epic quests in the sense of the one I just described. At best, in GW2, I am following a preset set of instructions in a story. At worst, I am being guided from zone to zone. Nothing particularly epic there. Including both of the Claw Island episodes which I’ve done over 18 times now. Sense of exploration/discovery and figuring out what needs to be done is just not there.

goldenwing.8473:

(snip)

It was the best questing in an MMO I have ever done.

That was beautiful.

I want that.

@ Redenaz

The world could be littered with vistas and points of interest, that wouldn’t solve the fact it’s a shallow world. In fact I don’t mind points of interest as they help you keep track of locations in the map but I am fully against vistas.

I think vistas were a completely bad idea. Vistas are a chore and nothing more, when I started playing back on release the one thing I’d always ignore was vistas. I couldn’t see the point to getting them because after the first two or three vistas I was done, it was boring.

I only started doing vistas once I realized I should get map completion. Vistas are nothing but a chore and they give a player nothing.

Showing the cutscene of a really pretty location is worthless, however a player actually going and exploring and experiencing those very pretty locations themselves is where the true potential lies.

Sure I can just walk around that mountain myself instead of just seeing the vista but what’s the point when I have literally nothing to do in all those pretty locations? Since they’re all barren and empty of things to do.

Giving players an actual reason to go and explore their world will do something that vistas could never accomplish.

As I’ve already said, the current state of the Personal Story is beyond horrible.

As goldenwing perfectly put it; “At best, in GW2, I am following a preset set of instructions in a story. At worst, I am being guided from zone to zone”, which was exactly what my friend who just started playing said.

The way GW1 handled Missions was fantastic! Why didn’t they just keep that? Why fix something that’s not broken?

Delryn.7235:

It’s a very real issue in GW2, a lack of direction.

I got a friend of mine to start playing a couple of days ago. I told him to make a character and play alone for a little while so he can discover and learn things on his own a bit more, and get used to the mechanics.

A day later I go to check up on him and he says he doesn’t understand what he needs to do, he’s just running around killing things.
Said all there really was of interesting for him to do was the Personal Story Missions. Of which he said weren’t too fun either since you had to do a lot of traveling to get to a place, to either have a minute of conversation or two minutes of mindless combat and just move on.

Is it bad that I feel like I have to make excuses for why GW2 is fun?

It’s a real issue, lack of depth and direction. If they made the personal story more like the instanced story missions in GW1 it would have ended up much better.

GW1 missions were in a large open area, usually like small dungeons or just a large part of the map which you had to traverse yourself, find the objective on your own. Instead what we have now is a very small and limited location in which we need to stand still and kill things that approach.

It’s very restrictive, not enough interactive.

As for the Heart system not being quests because they have multiple objectives, so what? It’s still the exact same thing, think of it as 3-4 quests put into one with the reward of none.

Seriously, reward in this game is another big issue. Imagine having to play a traditional MMO with traditional quests. Now imagine if all of those quests just gave you a few copper, maybe a silver. That would get very boring very fast.

That’s what both the heart and events are, they have virtually non existing rewards. It’s nice how completing a heart opens up a little shop, I like to think of that as the “quest completion rewards”, still shallow though.

Right because quest rewards in other games, like Guild Wars 1 even were so friggin fantastic. Not to my recollection.

I remember getting a variety of gear I didn’t care about,. or gear that didn’t fit my profession or play style. I remember getting hammers, when I was specced for swords. I remember getting items way below what I was already using (which if you bought the game of the year addition was quite easy). I remember thinking, what a weird thing that this guy just gives me a hammer I didn’t ask for and I don’t need. Those were the good old days.

At least with hearts, you get some karma, which you can spend on the reward you want, or save and get no reward at all.

I think you’re glorifying what quest rewards in most games were.

And again, hearts weren’t designed to take the place of quests, dynamic events were. Hearts are there to keep you in areas where dynamic events happen. Comparing them to quests is pointless.

On another somewhat related note to the points of interests and vistas; waypoints.

I am completely and entirely against the abundance of waypoints we have in the world. I personally think the game shouldn’t have any waypoints at all, however I understand GW2 was specifically designed with the idea of waypointing in mind.

Having some 20 waypoints in reasonably small areas is ridiculous. You pretty much don’t have to walk anywhere when you can just teleport at will.

This not only ruins immersion, but also severely limits the desire to explore players may have. On top of all that what’s the point of having such a huge fantastic world when it’s made to feel minuscule since you have the power to be wherever you want whenever you want it.

Everyone complains that they never see players running around in the world and that areas are too empty of players. Here’s the thing – it’s not, but since people can just teleport anywhere you rarely ever see anyone actually walking places.

At most I think areas should have one waypoint in each entrance and nothing more.

Delryn.7235:

I think vistas were a completely bad idea. Vistas are a chore and nothing more, when I started playing back on release the one thing I’d always ignore was vistas. I couldn’t see the point to getting them because after the first two or three vistas I was done, it was boring.

I used to often go out of my way to get to Vistas if I saw their icon on the map. There’s some value of amusement in scaling a bunch of rocks to get to a previously unknown and relatively unreachable place. It’s neat.

But their implementation is horrible. Off the top of my head, two major problems:

a)They’re mandatory for world and map completion. Making something mandatory is the best way to make it suck. It’s the same way school kills any interest you might have had in art or science.

b)They’re just bad. Same problem as with jumping puzzles: it’s not done well. Platforming is an art Nintendo have been perfecting for years before they’ve even invented it. Throwing together a bunch of platforms makes a game the same way a bunch of stale dough makes a croissant.

In fact there are Vistas better than Vistas in this game, you might have spotted them from time to time: those out-of-the-way gardens of strawberries or other plantlife. They’re completely optional, you know they’re possible to get to, and they give a token unique reward for reaching them (and you know exactly what that reward is).

Delryn.7235:

On another somewhat related note to the points of interests and vistas; waypoints.

Yep, there’s the difference between waypoints and mounts: one immerses you further in the game’s world, the other takes you out of it.

Another difference is that scaling the terrain on a mount may be – gasp – kind of fun and challenging. Can’t have that.

On the other hand, lack of waypoints at all easily leads people to abandon exploring and stay put in the general area where they know the loot may lie, since getting back to it on short notice will be impossible. Not to mention getting where you want to be on short notice can be extremely important sometimes. So it’s a bit of a dilemma.

Vayne.8563:

Right because quest rewards in other games, like Guild Wars 1 even were so friggin fantastic. Not to my recollection.

I remember getting a variety of gear I didn’t care about,. or gear that didn’t fit my profession or play style. I remember getting hammers, when I was specced for swords. I remember getting items way below what I was already using (which if you bought the game of the year addition was quite easy). I remember thinking, what a weird thing that this guy just gives me a hammer I didn’t ask for and I don’t need. Those were the good old days.

At least with hearts, you get some karma, which you can spend on the reward you want, or save and get no reward at all.

I think you’re glorifying what quest rewards in most games were.

And again, hearts weren’t designed to take the place of quests, dynamic events were. Hearts are there to keep you in areas where dynamic events happen. Comparing them to quests is pointless.

So that’s not even remotely close to what I’m trying to say with quests. Giving example of common weapons which are rewards for “kill X things” quests in other games adds nothing to the current discussion.

Also at no point in any of these posts did I say we should copy quests and/or quest rewards from other games, in fact that’s the opposite to what I’m saying. We should have epic quests with fulfilling rewards.

Another thing, there are no grounds for a GW2 player to criticize another game’s less than thrilling rewards on basic quests, when GW2 offers the weakest and most pathetic rewards of any MMO I’ve ever played.

Events give you no rewards beyond a small amount of exp and currencies, hearts give a pathetic amount of silver and copper (the true reward for hearts are the shops they open but still, not actually a reward). While Story Missions give the same type of rewards as basic quests from other games, things such as blue hammers or green boots which are usually way below your level since Story Missions are such a boring chore after the first couple times you do them.

Lastly, all you’re doing is knit picking bad examples of GW1 quest rewards and ignoring the fantastic ones such as new skills and spells. That’s not a nice thing to do.

Draco.2806:

Delryn.7235:

On another somewhat related note to the points of interests and vistas; waypoints.

Yep, there’s the difference between waypoints and mounts: one immerses you further in the game’s world, the other takes you out of it.

Another difference is that scaling the terrain on a mount may be – gasp – kind of fun and challenging. Can’t have that.

On the other hand, lack of waypoints at all easily leads people to abandon exploring and stay put in the general area where they know the loot may lie, since getting back to it on short notice will be impossible. Not to mention getting where you want to be on short notice can be extremely important sometimes. So it’s a bit of a dilemma.

Which is why I understand GW2 was desgined with waypointing in mind. We however don’t need waypoints to be littered all around the map, just a very small amount in each map to help someone out is all we need.

There are some ridiculous waypoints, like in Divinity’s Reach.

On the 1st floor in the middle of the crafting area there’s a waypoint, directly above it near the bank and trading post there’s another.

After the first time getting the waypoints, I’ve never again walked up or down that area. I just waypoint to the trading post, get what I need. Then waypoint down to the crafting tables, then once I wanna leave the city just waypoint out.

Why do we even have those elevators that get you up and down if their use is completely removed? Why do we even have that beautiful aquarium hallway in between both locations if we’re never gonna see it more than one or two times? Same as the ones in the Grove.

The waypoints remove the beautiful atmosphere the game has as well as horribly breaking immersion. Instead what we get with waypoints are long loading screens.

Delryn.7235:

Vayne.8563:

Right because quest rewards in other games, like Guild Wars 1 even were so friggin fantastic. Not to my recollection.

I remember getting a variety of gear I didn’t care about,. or gear that didn’t fit my profession or play style. I remember getting hammers, when I was specced for swords. I remember getting items way below what I was already using (which if you bought the game of the year addition was quite easy). I remember thinking, what a weird thing that this guy just gives me a hammer I didn’t ask for and I don’t need. Those were the good old days.

At least with hearts, you get some karma, which you can spend on the reward you want, or save and get no reward at all.

I think you’re glorifying what quest rewards in most games were.

And again, hearts weren’t designed to take the place of quests, dynamic events were. Hearts are there to keep you in areas where dynamic events happen. Comparing them to quests is pointless.

So that’s not even remotely close to what I’m trying to say with quests. Giving example of common weapons which are rewards for “kill X things” quests in other games adds nothing to the current discussion.

Also at no point in any of these posts did I say we should copy quests and/or quest rewards from other games, in fact that’s the opposite to what I’m saying. We should have epic quests with fulfilling rewards.

Another thing, there are no grounds for a GW2 player to criticize another game’s less than thrilling rewards on basic quests, when GW2 offers the weakest and most pathetic rewards of any MMO I’ve ever played.

Events give you no rewards beyond a small amount of exp and currencies, hearts give a pathetic amount of silver and copper (the true reward for hearts are the shops they open but still, not actually a reward). While Story Missions give the same type of rewards as basic quests from other games, things such as blue hammers or green boots which are usually way below your level since Story Missions are such a boring chore after the first couple times you do them.

Lastly, all you’re doing is knit picking bad examples of GW1 quest rewards and ignoring the fantastic ones such as new skills and spells. That’s not a nice thing to do.

Actually the true reward for hearts is exactly that…the shop they open. That is the reward for them. And you can get stuff you want/need or save your karma for the next shop. Why say it’s not a reward, when clearly that IS the reward for finishing a heart.

And I did comment that the game could use longer and more involved quests in my very first post. Not sure why you think I’m against that.

I’m only against comparing hearts to traditional quests when they were never meant to fill that role in the first place. You compare dynamic events to quests, because that’s what replaced them.

Delryn.7235:

Lastly, all you’re doing is knit picking bad examples of GW1 quest rewards and ignoring the fantastic ones such as new skills and spells. That’s not a nice thing to do.

Because they were the exception and farm from the norm. Only quests in Prophecies and EotN gave you skills. And only a few quests had any nice monetary reward.

But that’s not the problem : at least they had different rewards. When I do an event that takes me 10 minutes, where I can fail if I mess up, and get the same reward than an event I could have done in less than 3, something’s missing.
DE’s unlock new merchant too, have you ever looked carefully at what they sold ? It’s beyond terrible. Not only does it costs gold, but you can find a counterpart (sometime better even) with the nearest Heart. Sure there are a few exceptions that sell fun items (experimental riffle), but most of them sell you completely useless items.

Delryn.7235:

We don’t need waypoints to be littered all around the map, just a very small amount in each map to help someone out is all we need … The waypoints remove the beautiful atmosphere the game has as well as horribly breaking immersion. Instead what we get with waypoints are long loading screens.

Bingo.

Ease of access to different locations is an important utility. But it comes at a steep cost of making a lot of the game completely irrelevant.

Vayne.8563:

Actually the true reward for hearts is exactly that…the shop they open.

Yeah, and they suck. Bad.

A reward that’s objectively worse than any other is no reward at all.

Stooperdale.3560:

These hidden ‘quests’ are in the original design. Nearly all the jumping puzzles are hidden. They are probably too hard to find and most players would have missed them entirely if there were no achievements and net spoilers. There are also mini dungeons that can be completed solo or with a friend. They don’t have a big alert in the top of the screen saying “Quest here! Do it now! Do not ignore this message!” but they are in the game. Some of the open world events also tell short stories and take players into little adventures that do substitute nicely for quests.

Also worth mentioning: the explorable achieves. Everything you mentioned + explorables seem to be exactly like what the OP is talking about with hidden areas. I enjoyed finding these, so I wouldn’t complain if the devs added more to the game…

Delryn.7235:

When you hear the word quest you think “oh no I don’t wanna start running around killing 10 wolves”, when in reality that’s not what quest means, that’s just busywork. We already have busywork in the game – it’s called hearts and events.

I happen to really like events, and feel that they are a definite upgrade to traditional quests. I only have 2 complaints about them, really. One is how linear most event chains are since success or failure are often the only 2 things that determine the next event in the chain instead of having multiple possible objectives within the events themselves, and the other is that most NPCs tend to be oblivious to events just around the corner except for the ones that run up to you and tell you that an event is going on.

Not a fan of hearts, since I see them as the exact type of “kill 10 rats” type of thing that makes the traditional quest structure so tedious. I guess it’s pretty tough to pad out an MMO without this kind of busywork somewhere in there however… I tended to skip most of the hearts on my alts though.

People hate on “busywork” so much but those small things add to the experience. If a game has only one thing for you to do through out its entirety then something that would be considered epic will end up being mundane and possibly boring if everything you do is just more of the same “epic”.

If the game had just events it would be even worse off than it is today. The hearts though some tedious manage to add to the experience. They’re used as a mean of breaking up the repetitiveness of the game.

If you’ve just completed 10 events in a row which makes you invade a huge fortress you’ll end up enjoying your more quiet time of watering plants.

However as it stands both the hearts and events are deeply lacking.

Most lacking of all are the Story Missions and I wanted to talk about that a little.

Story Missions had such great potential, because since they’re instanced they give a player the opportunity to experience something unique to them, something “personal”… as it should have been.

Since they create a world in which only you exist it could have been so much more. You should have been given more freedom to choose your actions. No I don’t mean give us more dialog options, dialog options though important are the weakest of all gameplay features to add to a player’s sense of choice.

Something along the lines of putting the player in a large instance and telling them “your objective is to retrieve a stolen item, good luck”. Then letting the player choose manually how they go about this. Please, no giant green stars to guide you.

Will they enter the enemy’s lair head on and face the horde of enemies waiting for them? Will they try to sneak around and not get caught? Will they attempt in causing a diversion to get a chance to sneak in? Will they kill the keeper of the item they’re after or will they avoid confrontation?

The possibilities are endless, and it’s something that is easy and cost efficient to create in a game since you’re not paying for cutscenes, you’re just creating gameplay.

The smallest of things make a huge difference in this. For example you need to first reach the enemy’s lair. The shortest route is through a bridge but there are enemy scouts in the bridge which might alert the camp of your presence. You have the choice to go around, but around there’s a lot of very powerful wild creatures. You may also choose to go underwater undetected, but it’s the longest route, etc.

None of this however should be specifically told to a player. A game should never say “you have three paths you can take, the bridge, the side, or underwater”, this is a big mistake. Instead the game should just present the situation for the player and let them inspect their surroundings to come up with a solution best for them.

People are not stupid as many game companies like to think they are.

So in conclusion Personal Stories could have been such a fantastic experience for the players, instead what they seem to be are regular instanced events with too much dialog.

It seems too much attention and emphasis was put into the events. Like everything was supposed to just be about events. Especially since we know hearts, vistas, and so on were all added last minute. It seems all that was planned were events, ArenaNet cared too much about events and put too much focus on events.

Which in the end is ironic as to the fact of how uninspiring or unrewarding most events are.

Delryn.7235:

People are not stupid as many game companies like to think they are.

Many developers tend to believe otherwise because their playtesters often end up behaving like abject… not very smart, shall we say, and fail even the obvious tasks in a horrible fashion.

Half-Life 2 EP2 commentary

“We’ve added a small maze-like element to this cave by adding two branching paths in the player’s way. One of our playtesters then proceeded to turn right at this junction for half an hour. This was a strong argument for removing it from the game.

But that’s a fallacy. Failing at a certain task is perfectly acceptable in a non-linear world. In fact, it’s beneficent to the experience, because it dents the aura of invulnerability and 100% success the player accumulates otherwise.

+1 to the rest of your post, by the way.