Guild Wars 2

Hi,
So, what do you guys think about renown hearts? Would you like a new zone full of renown hearts (ofcourse also riddled with dynamic events and such) ? Or even add renown hearts to South Sun.

Thoughts?

Hearts are a chore. They are probably the reason why I don’t want to do map completion on another character.

Azure Prower.8701:

Hearts are a chore. They are probably the reason why I don’t want to do map completion on another character.

I feel the opposite, it gave me something to do in the zone. Granted there are quite a few hearts that I really dislike doing (like that Jotun one with the stones, and the cow/bug one (in Diessa, I think it is).

I think hearts are >>>> quests, so yes if they add more maps they should include more hearts.

I’ll be sorely disappointed if new regions like the Crystal Desert (if they’re ever added to the game) don’t have renown hearts (and vistas, POIs, etc).

Overall, I like the hearts. I thought they should have put hearts in Cragstead and the Hatchery, along with some DEs, and made those two areas part of the zone instead of instances.

I enjoy the hearts/quests and would welcome more.

I don’t remember the interview I saw it in, but Collin said any new zones would likely be Orr style, with no hearts. They only had hearts in the first place because alpha test groups said they needed more direction and couldn’t figure out what to do without them

You know this is the first I’ve thought about this. I think hearts would be a good idea for new maps. I think Orr and Southsun feel sort of “incomplete” because of their lack of hearts. Dynamic events should be a huge deal, but hearts would simply fill out the zone and give more substance to it. They could offer zone-specific unique rewards from the vendors too. I can’t think of a good reason why hearts would hurt a zone.

I love the hearts and would want new zones to have them. Now that there are settlers in Southsun they should add some there too.

khani.4786:

I love the hearts and would want new zones to have them. Now that there are settlers in Southsun they should add some there too.

Agreed. I’d take renown heart NPCs who actually add immersion over an army of crazed karka who add nothing any day of the week.

Hearts are the bane of my existence and the reason I hate mapping since I have an OCD like thing where if I enter a zone I must finish everything there. They’re fun the first time, but just become so tedious the 3rd or 4th or 8th time. I wish all maps were like Orr and directly event driven.

Also I’d love if they would never add more hearts or replace them with old style quests just because I absolutely hate killing the same enemies or doing the same thing to fill up a meter on a bar.

I’m surprised so many people actually like them in this thread

Go back to other games where old styles quest giver ask: “Go kill 20 something (but they dont count if you killed them before), walk back to me, kill their leader now, walk back to me, go see behind the leader, there was something precious that you couldn’t see before I told you to.” It will feel so tedious that you will come back crying for more hearts instead.

I prefer hearts x10000 than old style questing and would love more if just to feel more complete. You can pretty much skip every cool events in Orr if the timing’s not right. At least with hearts you stick around and know that this zone is meaningful.

L Step.8659:

Hearts are the bane of my existence and the reason I hate mapping since I have an OCD like thing where if I enter a zone I must finish everything there. They’re fun the first time, but just become so tedious the 3rd or 4th or 8th time. I wish all maps were like Orr and directly event driven.

Also I’d love if they would never add more hearts or replace them with old style quests just because I absolutely hate killing the same enemies or doing the same thing to fill up a meter on a bar.

I’m surprised so many people actually like them in this thread

Having done map completion 3 times already (and working on the next two characters getting there) I enjoy doing the hearts. They give coin, karma & experience to my low level characters who need it and give me something else to do besides just walk through the zone and hit certain points. You can technically complete Orr without having to kill anything if you’re sleuthy and such.

I certainly don’t want old-school kill 30 of this type quests, but I like the added variety and it certainly helps level characters and help you learn how to play whichever class you’ve made.

Well, I hate JPs, Minigames, Dungeons and meaningless living stories, and people that like those got tons. And they happily tell me.. if I don’t like them, don’t do them.

So, in that spirit, I would love hearts in Southsun and new areas. And.. if you don’t like them, don’t do them.

I like them. I think every zone should have a few, at least. They add story to the zones, and give a sense of progression as you move through an area. The fact that they become merchants you can sell junk to and sometimes buy useful supplies from means can become a secondary reason to unlock them if there’s few merchants in the area.

If Southsun gets another reworking, I hope they add a few in there. (And let’s be honest, Southsun NEEDS another reworking.)

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Well, I hate JPs, Minigames, Dungeons and meaningless living stories, and people that like those got tons. And they happily tell me.. if I don’t like them, don’t do them.

So, in that spirit, I would love hearts in Southsun and new areas. And.. if you don’t like them, don’t do them.

Also, very much this.

Palador.2170:

If Southsun gets another reworking, I hope they add a few in there. (And let’s be honest, Southsun NEEDS another reworking.)

Very much so.

For the people saying they like hearts since they don’t have to kill 20 or so things of something..yes you do. Most of my hearts are completed by just killing harpies or charr or wahtever the heart is by. So hearts are essentially kill 20 of these, or you have some like the jotun one in Wayferer where you run back and forth spamming F buying and selling. They’re essentially the old quests the more you think about it.

But hey, good for you if you like them, map completion multiple times will be much easier :p

L Step.8659:

For the people saying they like hearts since they don’t have to kill 20 or so things of something..yes you do. Most of my hearts are completed by just killing harpies or charr or wahtever the heart is by. So hearts are essentially kill 20 of these, or you have some like the jotun one in Wayferer where you run back and forth spamming F buying and selling. They’re essentially the old quests the more you think about it.

But hey, good for you if you like them, map completion multiple times will be much easier :p

Some of the better ones give you multiple ways to get them, though. Those are the ones I prefer.

Originally this game didn’t have heart quests but because during alfa testing and other “game shows” they went too, people were to confused what to do, they added this “quest system” to give people little guidance. As you see the Orr has no more hearts to do because they suppose that up until then everyone has learned that the game is based on events.
The only want i see adding new hearts in the game is by introducing a new race with starting level 0 and not 80, otherwise, the new zones will be just lvl 80 zones and no hears anymore

Dra Keln.2015:

I don’t remember the interview I saw it in, but Collin said any new zones would likely be Orr style, with no hearts. They only had hearts in the first place because alpha test groups said they needed more direction and couldn’t figure out what to do without them

I highly doubt that colin said that in an interview because hearts are the core of the questing systems in gw2 they arent guide posts or meant to direct you anywhere, they are meant to make you feel a connection to the area and earn some exp and coin and karma at the same time.

Yes, new hearts for new areas. Hearts have a lot of potential for enriching the storytelling. Maybe they haven’t effected the changed world yet, but I like the involvement in local areas. They will most likely get better and better through time.

Dagok.3948:

I think hearts are >>>> quests, so yes if they add more maps they should include more hearts.

They aren’t quests… Objectives are similar to quests but there is no story there and they are not tied together in chains.

This is an interesting question.
I don’t particularly like hearts but they do give a sense of permanence and connection to an area.
I know they were not intended but I do think at this time they add to the game world.

I am very much in favor of adding hearts to South Sun- or any other new area as we explore and open them up- it would give a nice sense of progression to the world.

Even if hearts werent intended why remove them now? They added alot of quality to the game and had a unique twist on the normal questing system seen in most mmos and if they dont add hearts to new zones then i might as well quit the game because what do i do then?

Stroll aimlessly until i happen upon an dynamic event? Sorry but i dislike dynamic events,

i want ti be able to look on my map to find that heart then go to it and explore there all while completing my heart at the same time.

Please dont stop adding heart quests arena net they are a core of the games quest system and work well together with dynamic events because some of them are tied to the heart themselves(edas apple orchis dynamic event and heart) sorry for the longpost.

AncientYs.8613:

Even if hearts werent intended why remove them now? They added alot of quality to the game and had a unique twist on the normal questing system seen in most mmos and if they dont add hearts to new zones then i might as well quit the game because what do i do then?

Stroll aimlessly until i happen upon an dynamic event? Sorry but i dislike dynamic events,

i want ti be able to look on my map to find that heart then go to it and explore there all while completing my heart at the same time.

Please dont stop adding heart quests arena net they are a core of the games quest system and work well together with dynamic events because some of them are tied to the heart themselves(edas apple orchis dynamic event and heart) sorry for the longpost.

I have a nagging suspicion we’ll never get a full-fledged expansion, and thus we’ll never get more renown hearts. “What will we get, instead,” you ask? Busy work. Living Story busy work. Burn X effigies, kill Y Sky Pirates, collect Z kites.

I’m afraid the game is headed in the direction of bimonthly busy work content with the occasional dungeon/fractal/mini-game/jumping puzzle thrown in to keep things a bit more interesting. I hope I’m wrong; I hope the Crystal Desert winds up being closer to Queensdale than it does Southsun (in presentation and content, not level and difficulty). But I’m not going to hold my breath.

I love the hearts system. My only complaint has been they take often a minute to complete, seconds in a group on occasion. Having them last longer would engage me more to the map and interacting with the npcs. No reason at all DE’s and Hearts can’t continue to together enrich further maps.

However, only in explored zones. Orr was an unknown to the pact, so hearts wouldn’t have made sense. Crystal Desert probably the same, but I ssupect some few bastions of people still exist far shiverpeaks and maguuma waste for some heart style questing

I didn’t know there were this many vocal people that enjoyed hearts. They work well in low-level areas as a tutorial and guiding system, but as the game goes on, they become a chore.

Outside of their initial guiding function, hearts are just a bad version of events, or a bad version of traditional quests. Unlike quests, hearts can’t properly tell a story or create an interesting scenario – they’re just there, waiting for you to fill the bar by doing repetitive and mindless tasks. They never create new obstacles or challenges to overcome neither. And unlike events, they can’t be enjoyed with other players, they do not scale, they never get to an epic level.

The only good thing about hearts is how seamless they are, but so is the much superior dynamic event system.

Well-designed traditional quests at least have a structure. They can tell a story within their own structure (sometimes even with cutscenes!), they can have a controlled pace and gameplay flow due to their structure, they can offer moments of higher or lesser intensity, or higher or lesser danger, etc. They can have a beginning, an ending, a climax, and so on. Hearts? The worst kind of generic mmo quests: kill x enemies wandering in the open world, or gather x things on the ground. Once the bar is full, it’s over. No sense of adventure. No sense of story or lore. No sense of danger. No sense of excitement. Nothing. Just generic grinding.

If most of the hearts were completely scrapped in GW2’s maps, and were substituted by story instances, story/ lore/ mechanically unique quests, or events, GW2 would only be better for it, IMO.

Either Anet expands and improves the system, or I don’t ever want to see it again.

I like most of the hearts as long as they involve more than running around looking for things to stomp and running in circles looking for things to pick up and give to an NPC. The ones that involve more action I like.

In GW1, quests were a great source of lore. They required you to explore the maps, not in the sense of getting to the next heart for the extra % map completion, but by building a new adventure within the world for you to go through. They added new enemy encounters alongside that new adventure. And they contributed to the story, with actual NPC dialogue, and “primary” quests that allowed you to follow the story inbetween story instances, so there was no gap inbetween.

GW1’s quests were the source of new adventures. GW2’s hearts have little to offer but repetitive bar-filling tasks.

I prefer running around in orr (no renown hearts) finding POIs etc.

I don’t like the hearts either. As Diogo said above, they feel very much like the worst quests in every other MMORPG; with the difference (admitedly an improvement) that instead of it being just a matter of “go kill ten rats”, it’s a matter of “kill some rats and/or press F here and there”.

The issue is that the area without hearts also happen to have the worst events in the game. A limitation of hearts is that they lock part of the world – if a heart asks people to feed Ted’s cows and take care of his crops, we can’t have a Dynamic Event in which Ted and his cows would be driven away, with the zone overtaken by ninja zombies from Cantha. But Orr never uses this – the potential is there, but the events in Orr are the worst in the game, with very little story and no meaningful change in the world other than the constant “this camp has been taken/this camp has been lost” or the statues (which are more annoyances to get rid of than cool things to deal with).

ArenaNet should, IMO, not add hearts to new zones, but work instead in ways to communicate lore. This could be done through good dynamic events (there are many great examples), or through ambient dialogue (the Bazaar is great in this aspect), or through many other means (like the book carts in Divinity’s Reach).

Erasculio.2914:

I don’t like the hearts either. As Diogo said above, they feel very much like the worst quests in every other MMORPG; with the difference (admitedly an improvement) that instead of it being just a matter of “go kill ten rats”, it’s a matter of “kill some rats and/or press F here and there”.

The issue is that the area without hearts also happen to have the worst events in the game. A limitation of hearts is that they lock part of the world – if a heart asks people to feed Ted’s cows and take care of his crops, we can’t have a Dynamic Event in which Ted and his cows would be driven away, with the zone overtaken by ninja zombies from Cantha. But Orr never uses this – the potential is there, but the events in Orr are the worst in the game, with very little story and no meaningful change in the world other than the constant “this camp has been taken/this camp has been lost” or the statues (which are more annoyances to get rid of than cool things to deal with).

ArenaNet should, IMO, not add hearts to new zones, but work instead in ways to communicate lore. This could be done through good dynamic events (there are many great examples), or through ambient dialogue (the Bazaar is great in this aspect), or through many other means (like the book carts in Divinity’s Reach).

^this, imo i agree with you, hearts should improve tenfolds in a way that they will involve game lore and let us be a part of events happening around us through doing heart quests. basically vastly improved than what it is now.