My thoughts on Questing (not that I matter)
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How hard is it to find a area for you to explore?
easy; finding a place to quest? not so much.
seems you missed my entire point as well but that’s what happens when you don’t read.
“Go (back) to SWTOR?
My favorite questing of all time was vanilla WoW, but it wasn’t really immersive until I used thottbot/alakhazam to supplement the quest dialogue with all the additional story, lore, and behind-the-scenes info those type of resources contain.
I guess I’m just more willing to immerse myself; I attribute that to excessive sci-fi/fantasy reading as a kid. That is to say, I don’t mind not having the story handed to me as if this was television."
never played SWTOR, and I’m not really interested in starting, anyway this isn’t about what game has better questing or whatnot (as I said I already play an MMO with superior questing so that isn’t my issue), it’s about making the questing in GW2 fulfill its potential.
it’s also not about quest giver dialogue, even the standard dialogue in GW2 serves its purpose fine, what I meant is that while it’s fine as quest dialogue, it isn’t able to mend broken immersion, and again not talking about immersion as a character in the world but as a player playing the game.
I’m not “less willing” to immerse myself, as a matter of fact I try very hard to immerse myself in good game worlds (the lore for WoW outside of the game is actually very interesting, one of the reasons I played it as long as I did), and I don’t care how loosely the story is handed to me (well, as long as it’s there at all) I’ll always look into it myself if it’s in the least part interesting, but as I’ve said my issue isn’t with that (although it does crop up occasionally), it’s with the OTHER immersion, the kind that makes the game seem like nothing but grind.
“The Questing in GW2 is flat out the worst questing I have personally ever seen in an MMO, ". So when you say “questing” in GW2 are you referring to the Hearts? If you are comparing Heart “quest” to most traditional MMO quest then yeah, the rewards and overall complexity is stronger in traditional MMOs (for most) but keep in mind Hearts were sprinkled on in the later stage of development, they are not your primary source of entertainment or progression through GW2. You could in fact think of them as bonus content.
Your characters personal story and dungeons are where the games writers spent the most work. It’s where you find the voice dialog, complex scripted events, etc.. and it is your linear path through an open world that gives you a reason to care when you finally taker on the final end boss.
Dynamic Events are a third component and a reasonable amount of dialog and scripting has been put into these as well.
I guess if I’m understanding your complaint correctly I would agree that quest are kind of weak in GW2 but then again they aren’t the only way the story is delivered. The combination of Hearts/Events and Personal Story provide a unique experience that counters grind and tops anything else I’ve played.
“So when you say “questing” in GW2 are you referring to the Hearts? If you are comparing Heart “quest” to most traditional MMO quest then yeah, the rewards and overall complexity is stronger in traditional MMOs (for most) but keep in mind Hearts were sprinkled on in the later stage of development, they are not your primary source of entertainment or progression through GW2. You could in fact think of them as bonus content.
I guess if I’m understanding your complaint correctly I would agree that quest are kind of weak in GW2 but then again they aren’t the only way the story is delivered. The combination of Hearts/Events and Personal Story provide a unique experience that counters grind and tops anything else I’ve played."
when I say questing I mean every aspect of it, heart quests to events to personal story, the whole shebang. my complaint is that because of how the features are implemented and come together it makes questing for questers very bad indeed, you HAVE to grind if you are a quester, it isn’t countered by anything in the game questing related, it’s countered very much by alternative activities but that doesn’t really help much of your primary interest is questing and everything else is the definition of casual interest.
understand this, the heart quest is the bread of questers in GW2, they may not be the majority of the content and they may not be the focus of questing, but they are the driving force behind questers experience, once I’m out of heart quests my options turn into stand around and do nothing (much) while I wait for proper quests to pop up, OR move on to the next area, but I can’t move on to the next area without grinding and just standing around waiting for events is not only boring but it makes me want to move on and as such any events that I’ve been waiting around for become un-enjoyable grinds so that I can move on and have semi-decent questing (even if it is only until I have to grind again).
despite heart quests being such a small and simple thing there is a lot hinging on them for questers (and not really anybody else), when the bulk of your quests are semi-random events than you need to give people something to do in the mean time, but questors have nothing but heart quests (the reason why they exist) and they fail to do the job, both as quests and as filler content between events.
Personally, I think there is actually only one quest in this game: the personal story.
I’m at 50% map completion, finished PS and 80 (+30ish) on my main. And in all that time, the ONLY time I had to go from one place to another was in the PS, or when following a caravan event.
I’d like to see questing as I thought it was going to be designed into this game. A simplified example:
Level 1. Escort the beer cart to the outpost by the river. Thanks, now if you’d like to, you can feed the guests some beer (heart event here), or go out and gather up deer meat for the feast (heart event here), or if you’d rather, you can take this package of documents over to Bullywhistle in Rata Sum (personal quest, no personal story) or help us get these fireworks and roasted meats over to Greff at the fishing camp (start Dynamic Event: escort the Dolyak). Or all four. Or none of the above.
And if you choose to feed people beer, they get drunk, then get in fights, which might lead to a brawl which leads you off to get herbs to cure hangovers and bruises…
Or if you choose to take the fireworks, there’s a fireworks display that draws the Grawl out of the caves, but if they come out of the caves, the caves will be empty for a while until reinforcements arrive or if you take the documents to Rata Sum, that allows them to finish a new golem prototype that if you bring it back to the outpost, it stays there as a guard for a while until it’s destroyed…
I’ll stop there, but I hope you see my point. There’s no cohesion in the questing as implemented. No progression. It’s just a constantly recycling set of “stuff to be near”, rather than stuff to be involved in.
I’m an explorer at heart, but I really miss quests that help you explore in this game. They’re all “localized”, except the escort events.
As for an “immersion” solution, here’s one that I think is pretty simple and comes in 2 parts:
1) spawn a personal Crier when you get relatively close to a quest who runs over TO YOU and offers you the quest. I haven’t thought through the details, but maybe if you get in the same 1/4 of the zone as the quest giver, or when you accidentally loot a quest related item? In any case: Hub avoided, heart avoided, quest gained.
2) spread out the items that satisfy quests. Maybe even to different zones. Maybe even make some of them in WILDLY in appropriate zones for your level so you have to do more than just kill your way through to getting them. Like you know… sneak or something.
Anyway, just a couple thoughts on immersion, the main point being: for the most part (there are of course exceptions here and there) each heart and “event” feels like it’s an instance, not part of a world.
My $.02
I absolutely love the questing system the way it is. However, I see no issue at all with your request to simply give players the option to only show hearts and their objectives after talking to the NPC.
Sounds fairly simple and still retains the core of the game for everyone who does like it the way it is. My only real objection is that I do not believe the plot/story would flow as naturally from area to area if upon entering you had to find quest givers (hearts) first. But that is a minor side effect of the requested feature.
1) spawn a personal Crier when you get relatively close to a quest who runs over TO YOU and offers you the quest. I haven’t thought through the details, but maybe if you get in the same 1/4 of the zone as the quest giver, or when you accidentally loot a quest related item? In any case: Hub avoided, heart avoided, quest gained.
for heart quests it needn’t be that complicated, just give the option of hiding the objective/quest until you’ve spoken to the quest giver (keep tracking the players progress towards it), and events don’t really need anything special because from what I’ve seen they are pretty evident that something is going on when you get there so it kind of makes sense that you already know, if anything you just need to make the specific details of the event hidden until you get much closer to the area and just give a general outline of the event location and type when it pops just so people know where to go (you could go as far as hiding the event details until you speak to the giver on some specific events).
After reading the OP and replies so far, there are two things that I haven’t heard mentioned yet that may go a long way to address the OP’s concerns.
I have noticed that, as I leave the beginning areas, there are a lot more dynamic events that require the action of a player talking with an NPC to trigger the event. I have learned that, to see the most interesting dynamic events, I need to actively watch and listen for NPC’s asking for help in some way, and I now chat with named NPC’s (not just the heart folks) in most outposts to see what’s going on in an area.
The second thing that no one has mentioned is the scout NPC’s on the map. They very fluidly point you towards the heart areas, and in my mind they are the ones who are giving out the details of what needs to be done before you ever talk to a heart person.
Between the scouts and the NPC’s calling for help or that you need to poke at to see if they need help, I’ve found this to be the most cohesive, immersive world and questing system I’ve seen in quite some time. Between the hearts, all the dynamic events in a zone (several of which you can start yourself so that there’s no waiting), and the personal story (which actively brings you to new zones outside your geographical area), I’m a bit surprised that a quester and story-follower would have trouble keeping up with levels if he/she is following that natural flow.
Have you used either of these features, OP? I’d be interested to hear what level you are and where you’ve been as well.
Have you used either of these features, OP? I’d be interested to hear what level you are and where you’ve been as well.
I know of both those features, I agree the scouts justify knowing the location of heart quests, just not knowing the exact details and outlines of the problems those people are facing (it’s a bit of a stretch and also the travel time from scout to quest creates a subconscious disconnect). and yes I know of events triggered by talking to an NPC, done several (done some many times over) but there isn’t too many of those and they are still semi-random (certain conditions must be met before they can be triggered, such as someone in some place so on so forth).
last I checked I was somewhere around level 40+ and had been through all the areas left of lions arch (and ventured a little into the norn starting areas with a friend earlier) it was at that point that I gave up because of the issues outlined in the thread, I just wasn’t enjoying the game and didn’t feel like doing it for another 40 levels.
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