Guild Wars 2

One of the first things you’ll encounter while playing through the PoF story is a heart quest. If you weren’t able to participate in the demo, here’s a video, it should start at 12:30

https://youtu.be/-M5-c8y5fGc?t=750

You could progress by extinguishing fires and revive NPC’s. In oder to finish the heart quest in the video it took aprox.

• 12 extinguished fires
• 8 revived people

The latest view on (repeatable) heart quests showed that some people like them while others dislike them. Many people said they’re ok with it as long as they’re optional.

Unfortunately, they introduced them again as a mandatory part of the story in PoF just like Living World Season 3 did. Logically, if they had read the feedback of the players they would have agreed to the compromise by implementing hearts as an optional part of the maps. I don’t understand their decision to integrate them into the story considering the mixed feedback.

So the idea of the heart is to give you a variable option for how to progress. You don’t have to save 5 people from fires and extinguish all the flames. You just need to help out enough to fill in the bar. Once you have it’s done. It makes the X rat quest aspect of the story more dynamic.

Personally I think it’s a good call and was a reasonably enjoyable part of the story.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the big problem I had with hearts in the core game was map completion. When you’re working on a gift of Exploration, doing ~300 hearts felt HORRIBLE, especially when they dominated the amount of time world comp takes. If all the PoF maps together have ~20 hearts, that’s fine to me.

Would it be more accepted if they just removed the heart icon from the mission UI? A lot of what they’re having us do is similar to what we have done in previous missions.

It stopped the story dead for me. The heart was so boring that I just didn’t care to play it anymore.

So you complaint about a symbol on the map o.O
Because the story event will be exactly the same with or without the heart symbol… you know…

It actually works out well for me, as I always do the story missions on my main, and always do the hearts for map completion anyway, so if the hearts is what progresses the story that’s fine as I can get both done at once.

Though I have to admit the demo story mission was boring as kitten, but still saved me doing the heart separately for map completion.

I suspect that the heart is part of the story intro so that new players can see how they work.

They were nominally required for parts of LS#3 (in some cases, you’d have to work pretty hard to leave them incomplete while finishing the story; in a few cases, they were all-but-explicit requirements).

I’m not a fan of hearts generally. But as long as I never need to do them more than once per map or per story, I don’t mind. The Druid Backpack scavenger hunt required repeating hearts over 5 dozen times (4 hearts repeated 16 times each) — now that’s excessive, in my opinion.

tl;dr heart as part of PoF story? eh, that’s ok. (But please no more scavenger hunts that require completing them for ages.)

There is only a minor difference between previous mission-quests and now mission-hearts: The heart actually shows up as a heart-symbol, that´s all.
Call it quest, heart, task to fullfill or whatsoever at the end it remains as something you have to do for progressing in your personal story.

The story has always been this way, except now it has an icon. Move on.

With PoF coming these forums are turning into “I don’t like the game, please change it completely” more than the occasional good or bad critisizm.

At least with HoT it was largely deserved; but this is an infinitely better product compared to that rushed, half-complete piece of garbo and people still aren’t happy with a single thing that it seems to be offering so far.

Im going to have to concur with others that hearts have always been included as part of ‘mandatory’ game play. Its not the end of the world.

Ayrilana.1396:

Would it be more accepted if they just removed the heart icon from the mission UI? A lot of what they’re having us do is similar to what we have done in previous missions.

mazut.4296:

So you complaint about a symbol on the map o.O
Because the story event will be exactly the same with or without the heart symbol… you know…

Arzurag.7506:

There is only a minor difference between previous mission-quests and now mission-hearts: The heart actually shows up as a heart-symbol, that´s all.
Call it quest, heart, task to fullfill or whatsoever at the end it remains as something you have to do for progressing in your personal story.

No it’s not just the heart symbol. Yes, we’ve already seen a similar design in the personal story (e.g. multiple waves of undead – which directly reappeared in the Bitterfrost Frontier story).

Just because it’s been like that in the past doesn’t mean it has to be like that in the future. A game can be improved over the years. They had 2 years with a team that was directly assigned to the expansion. They could learn from their past and think of ways to make the story interesting. Instead, they used the same “extinguish 12 fires, revive 8 people” heart quests we could already experience in starter area maps.

If the actions of the heart quest (extinguish fire, rescue people) are important for the story, you could forget about the number of fires and people (they’re nameless characters). It’s not important for the story if you revive 7 or 8 people so forget about it.
Represent the villagers symbolically and concentrate on interesting gameplay, quality over quantity:

Instead of helping 8 separated NPC’s you could focus on a group of people that were trapped inside of a burning building due to the attack.

• Take the fire extinguisher to secure the way to the entrance.
• The way is still blocked by wood trusses that collapsed during the fire.
• There are several interactive objects you could use and combine at different points to carry them away.
  -> maybe there’s just one solution, maybe there are several possible solutions.
• Maybe your newly added mount could also help in a certain way.

If the symbolic way doesn’t seem to be immersive because you didn’t save all of them, you might as well provide some uninjured NPC’s that rescued the remaining people in the meantime.

You don’t have to extinguish 12 fires and save 8 people to tell the story. Think of a creative way how to do it instead of the number how often you press “F” or “1”.

Tekey.7946:

Ayrilana.1396:

Would it be more accepted if they just removed the heart icon from the mission UI? A lot of what they’re having us do is similar to what we have done in previous missions.

mazut.4296:

So you complaint about a symbol on the map o.O
Because the story event will be exactly the same with or without the heart symbol… you know…

Arzurag.7506:

There is only a minor difference between previous mission-quests and now mission-hearts: The heart actually shows up as a heart-symbol, that´s all.
Call it quest, heart, task to fullfill or whatsoever at the end it remains as something you have to do for progressing in your personal story.

No it’s not just the heart symbol. Yes, we’ve already seen a similar design in the personal story (e.g. multiple waves of undead – which directly reappeared in the Bitterfrost Frontier story).

Just because it’s been like that in the past doesn’t mean it has to be like that in the future. A game can be improved over the years. They had 2 years with a team that was directly assigned to the expansion. They could learn from their past and think of ways to make the story interesting. Instead, they used the same “extinguish 12 fires, revive 8 people” heart quests we could already experience in starter area maps.

If the actions of the heart quest (extinguish fire, rescue people) are important for the story, you could forget about the number of fires and people (they’re nameless characters). It’s not important for the story if you revive 7 or 8 people so forget about it.
Represent the villagers symbolically and concentrate on interesting gameplay, quality over quantity:

Instead of helping 8 separated NPC’s you could focus on a group of people that were trapped inside of a burning building due to the attack.

• Take the fire extinguisher to secure the way to the entrance.
• The way is still blocked by wood trusses that collapsed during the fire.
• There are several interactive objects you could use and combine at different points to carry them away.
  -> maybe there’s just one solution, maybe there are several possible solutions.
• Maybe your newly added mount could also help in a certain way.

If the symbolic way doesn’t seem to be immersive because you didn’t save all of them, you might as well provide some uninjured NPC’s that rescued the remaining people in the meantime.

You don’t have to extinguish 12 fires and save 8 people to tell the story. Think of a creative way how to do it instead of the number how often you press “F” or “1”.

You don’t understand how game design works. You can’t just keep churning out unique and exciting content all of the time, it has to be repetitive and boring, otherwise it doesn’t last long enough to make it to the next milestone.

Your suggestion would require a far more complex use of dev resources.

This is the sad reality of games that need to be constantly updated, and why one-shot games only last something like 20-30 playing hours.

Hearts were added back in to pad content so that more intolerable forms of padding (heavy mastery or token grinding, etc) could be toned down which is largely responsible for why LS3 was better than HoT.

But either way, they have to add filler, that’s all.

If anything the story was extremely lacking in filler up until now. Even with having heart-like mechanics in most missions in the past, it tends to be over very quickly and not offer much replay value beyond achievement grinding.

In my opinion many story missions could stand to be much deeper by slowing down, giving the player time to immerse and kitten around a bit.

If you’re time-restricted, then story-based games probably aren’t for you…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I suspect that the heart is part of the story intro so that new players can see how they work.

They were nominally required for parts of LS#3 (in some cases, you’d have to work pretty hard to leave them incomplete while finishing the story; in a few cases, they were all-but-explicit requirements).

I’m not a fan of hearts generally. But as long as I never need to do them more than once per map or per story, I don’t mind. The Druid Backpack scavenger hunt required repeating hearts over 5 dozen times (4 hearts repeated 16 times each) — now that’s excessive, in my opinion.

tl;dr heart as part of PoF story? eh, that’s ok. (But please no more scavenger hunts that require completing them for ages.)

Just a small note: The Druid Backpack did not require completing Renown Hearts over 5 dozen times. That was only if one wanted to complete it as fast as possible. I’m still working on it, I’ve just started the last stage, and I’ve certainly only completed the Renown Hearts a handful of times. (Remember, one can acquire 1 Druid Runestone Fragment daily without going near a Renown Heart.)

As to the topic, I didn’t really mind the Renown Hearts in Crystal Oasis. In fact, I really enjoyed the firefly one. I purposely did that one more than once. They didn’t seem to take long to complete. It’s not really much different than completing a particular Dynamic Event (or two) over and over. In addition, (per character) they only have to be completed once (or so).

Hannelore.8153:

You don’t understand how game design works. You can’t just keep churning out unique and exciting content all of the time, it has to be repetitive and boring, otherwise it doesn’t last long enough to make it to the next milestone.

Your suggestion would require a far more complex use of dev resources.

This is the sad reality of games that need to be constantly updated, and why one-shot games only last something like 20-30 playing hours.

Hearts were added back in to pad content so that more intolerable forms of padding (heavy mastery or token grinding, etc) could be toned down which is largely responsible for why LS3 was better than HoT.

But either way, they have to add filler, that’s all.

If anything the story was extremely lacking in filler up until now. Even with having heart-like mechanics in most missions in the past, it tends to be over very quickly and not offer much replay value beyond achievement grinding.

In my opinion many story missions could stand to be much deeper by slowing down, giving the player time to immerse and kitten around a bit.

If you’re time-restricted, then story-based games probably aren’t for you…

Sounds horrible to be honest. And it’s certainly not about time restrictions.
Let me show you an example of Living World Season 2: Meeting the Asura

It’s the only real stealth mission in GW2 I can think of. You can’t run through it, you’ll have to stop and wait, pay attention to the enemies in order to remain being hidden. That way, you’ll spend more time in the story instance – you can’t always go straight-lined through it.

Unfortunately, most of the time GW2 uses another approach to fill the time:

• Secure the way to the boss. 0/10 enemies killed or 5/5 waves remaining.

- which eventually lead to the reintegration of heart quests in the story of Living World Season 3 and Path of Fire:

• Press F to revive 0/8 people. Press 1 to extinguish 0/12 fires. Kill 0/10 enemies.

But that’s exactly the point where Guild Wars 2 wanted to be different compared to other MMORPGs. It’s funny how often people claimed that “GW2 doesn’t have these boring fetch quests, it’s so different.” and in the end it’s all the same, just extensively disguised. It’s the main story of the second expansion of GW2. Many other games do have a lot of fetch quests as part of the leveling content. However, their main story often provided varied, much more interesting designs. But instead of being creative, Anet just made a step backwards by integrating basic starter area fetch quests into the main story.

You said:

You can’t just keep churning out unique and exciting content all of the time, it has to be repetitive and boring, […]

Your suggestion would require a far more complex use of dev resources.

What did they do in the past 2 years of developement of Path of Fire?

Where and when can we expect unique and exciting content if not in a coordinated, planned expansion?