Guild Wars 2

GW2’s version of quests was basically the Hearts on the maps. In addition to these there was the dynamic events. You are encouraged run around and just explore the world.. see the things happening around you (the events) and take part in making a difference. Well.. Dynamic events are really nice and do aid in making the world feel like it’s moving or “living” they rarely change and while new ones have been added, they are few and far between – usually just part of some LS release.

The Hearts were nice because they offered the players a destination to where something can be done, and the player rewarded. On top of that the player could complete these tasks in more than one way. The problem with the hearts was that there weren’t many of them and the rewards were minimal and uncompelling. Regardless, I liked the hearts being a part of the game.

My question to everyone else would be then, did you like the hearts in the game and would you prefer there to be more. Personally I would. I think they are easier to create than dynamic events and could offer more content to the game, more for the players to do, a great opportunity to tell a side story or two in each map and explore the history of the lore, reward the player with new skins and real rewards and offer new ways to make gold without rerunning the same contentment over and over and over.

Essentially I’m saying that I like what ANet did with quests and would like to see more of it. I don’t think it would ruin the game. Leveling up is easy enough that doing this content wouldn’t be necessary it would just be extra content that would be fun and interesting and tell map specific stories while offering the players more skins and looks to choose from at lower levels.

Thoughts?

No, in short I don’t think they should add more Hearts to the game.

I understand Hearts and I appreciate what Anet was trying to do with them. But they are a mechanism for getting players to explore all areas of maps (basically giving you a reason to go through the decent number of maps and areas that your personal story never takes you).

Hearts have almost zero lore/story value and the fact that they can be completed before you even talk to the corresponding NPC (who delivers any story relating to the heart) is a huge problem. There have been times when I have walked into an area and completed one single dynamic event – and the heart has completed – meaning that I’ve had to look on the wiki for the dialogue.

Dynamic events do a better job of delivering story/lore, but the fact that they repeat at an incredibly quick rate cheapens them.

I don’t want to say that Arenanet might do better by adding a few quests into the game, because I admire what they’re trying to do and traditional Quests also have their fare share of problems. But I definitely don’t think that adding more Hearts is a good idea. Going forward I think they’re better off concentrating on the continuing story and making sure that they add NPC’s with good dialogue to deliver lore, and also adding or tweaking Dynamic events into old areas.

They’re a handy way to have players in the areas where Dynamic Events occur, but they’re not necessary for this function. I liked the tiny bit of life they added to the game, and I always looked forward to seeing what they had to offer after completion, but I can do without them.

Bolthar.7192:

GW2’s version of quests was basically the Hearts on the maps. In addition to these there was the dynamic events.

IIRC, this is actually a twist of the true design intention.

At the core of GW2’s design are the dynamic events. In the initial concept, those should have been the one and only world content of GW2. There once was something like a “dynamic event design workshop” (a press event) at some convention where Eric Flannum correctly summarized that if you want to do true dynamic in an MMO, you cannot just throw in a number of public quests here and there, you have to make them the core content of your game or they will not deliver the intended effect. (I am obviously paraphrasing here. I wish a could give you the video source, but I am unable to find it.) In those days, ANet even claimed that there would be no quests in GW2.

The renown system (aka “tasks” or “renown hearts”) was a late addition to the design concept. At some event a dev (I guess it was Colin?) explained that prior to the hearts, they learned in play testing sessions with focus groups that the lack of “exclamation marks over the heads” was not well received by MMO veterans. The concept of just going out their and exploring the world on their own, maybe finding a dynamic event or two, was not understood by the focus groups and they didn’t know what to do. Hence, they added the heart tasks to regions with dynamic events to attracts players to that regions. While they were doing the mundane tasks, events would start and require the players full attention. The heart tasks were essentially progressed to completion while doing the events, since they would have been no longer relevant.

At a later iteration, ANet expanded on the hearts concept to also serve as karma vendor once enough renown had been earned in that region. Unfortunately, the contribution of events towards the tasks progress had also been greatly reduced, which made them a little bit more of a chore. And in addition to that, hearts were severely over-communicated in the game, making them essentially the most obvious element of the UI.

Personally, I still consider the over-communication of the renown tasks as GW2’s most dire design flaw. This over-communication was spawned from the understandable intention to cater the veteran MMO crowd that so desperately needed a checklist for them to know what they should do. (You could also call that a lack of confidence in ANets own initial design concept.) However, this approach backfired. Since heart tasks were so prominently visible in the UI, and dynamic events were very often quite immersively, if not subtly, melted with the environment, in the perception of journalists and players the mundane and rather boring hearts were mistaken as the core content of GW2. I have seen countless review, “let’s play”, or walk-through videos showing that so many players were running straightly past all the wonderful content of GW2 just to reach the next heart, to fill it, and to move on. I have heard people explicitly stating stuff like “Nah, don’t go over there, that invasion is just some crazy world event. Here, my quest says I should plug some daisies for farmer Ree, so let’s go there …”

So, step-by-step, hearts changed to eventually end up as GW2’s version of traditional, boring checklist-quests. In some regions with very low dynamic event density, they even seem to have taken over as core content, since otherwise there would be very little to do. It certainly did not help that dynamic events turned out to be so prone to bugs and blocking errors, either. (Seriously, has anyone ever seen Save the merchants from the Bloody Buccaneer kidnappers in a bug free state since release?)

Hence, I was very happy to see that ANet did not include a single heart in the new Dry Top map and rather packed the map with events. Although those events are still lacking the dynamic aspect (the “cascading out”, the “cause and effect”), I consider this a step in the right direction.

Just my 2 copper.

~MRA

You’ve made some good points and I agree with them all for the most part as far as the way things stand now. But I feel that if the hearts could take on a different form they could be worth a lot more. My main reason for wanting to see more of them is because I think they have the potential to offer more lore and side story to the game. Again, as you’ve said the current design makes it possible to complete the heats without every talking to the NPC so the current design of the heats would need to be altered. I would love to see more DEs in the game and for them to expand more but I would also like to see more story to each map that explores the present story as well as the lore and history of that map.

GW2 hard mode zones…..that is all.

Brother Grimm.5176:

GW2 hard mode zones…..that is all.

Never happen as it is too hard to program. In GW1, since it was totally instanced, it was easier to do. With an Open world, it would be too hard w/o affecting other players around you?

Sorry that is just a dumb idea.