Guild Wars 2

Hello Everyone,

I just got done reading the following article, “Quest hubs are dead” ( http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/6710/Quest-Hubs-Are-Dead-Finally.html ) and I thought it might be a cool conversation topic.

While I’m not the worlds most experienced MMO player, I did have some thoughts on why perhaps this article might be jumping the gun.

Traditionally, as you know, a player would be required to find a NPC, read and accept the quest, travel somewhere, complete a task, and then return to the NPC for a reward, or another task.

Guild Wars claims that this linear system promotes grind, and forces the players to spend a lot of time inning back and fourth from point a, to point b, thus missing much of the world. The result, as you know was to develop the heart system, which allows players to roam freely, and complete tasks without having to physically visit an NPC.

So, the question is, does this new heart system mean the death of the hub?

For me, no.

Quite soon after booting up Guild Wars 2, I started to get this feeling. At first I couldn’t place it. I mean, I was doing exactly what the game claimed should be the most fun. I walk walking around, exploring the map, killing everything in my path, all the while gaining experience.

It seemed so free, and open. Suddently dynamic events would happen and I would rush to help, earning a medal for my participation. However, very quickly I realized what the feeling I was experiencing was. I had no idea what I was doing, or why.

When I played WoW, I always knew what my task at hand was. Sure, it might be as boring as collect 20 scales, but I knew why I was doing it. Perhaps it was because a fisherman needed it to make a pie, or a new set of sparkly underpants, but either way I could always look at my quest log and choose to follow the story or not.

In GW2, I can run around willy nilly, completing tasks without ever seeing the NPC. For me, I feel that I’ve lost the connection to the story. Oh sure, it keeps me busy running around killing stuff without regard, but I find the longer I play, the less I care about why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Not only at, but in the world of GW2, the overlap of quests, combined with the sheer number of things to kill, means that the world never leaves me alone long enough to get my barrings. Task, after task, animal after animal, it all blends together into one giant super quest.

As someone who enjoys games for the story, I struggle with GW2. The first week of playing, my girlfriend and I busted through the starting worlds before we even knew it. We were walking home one day and she tentively asked me if I minded if we slowed down a bit in the game. If his made me launch because I had been thinking the exact same thing, but their she was enjoying the new open heart system.

She, like I enjoy the story, and so we sat down with the intention of taking it slow, and immersing ourselves in the world. We wanted to enjoy the quests and truly understand why we were killing things. However, despite our best intentions, we’ve now blasted though six worlds, and still have no idea what we did, or why.

You see, one of the huge advantages to hubs is that the player has the power to choose which quests are done, and why. The story is something he player must engage with I order to complete. In GW2, my girlfriend and I are constantly coaxed off task by some other task, and then we are distracted by an event, then by another event, and then the same event we did ten minutes ago starts again, and we run off in that direction.

In e end, we had no idea what our quest was in the first place, nor did it really matter. You just open the map, find the heart you missed, and go kill stuff until the progress bar fills up.

As someone who has just come off countless hours in the world of Skyrim, I miss the days of talking to everyone because they might have an interesting story to tell, and a quest to complete. While I applaud ArenaNet for attempting to create the next generation of MMO, I think that once the initial novelty of being able to run around freely and gain XP wears off, people will realize that they’ve missed the story.

My girlfriend and I are still attempting to force ourselves to pay attention, and not be pulled in a million directions, but I fear we will soon be I’ve same position as many level 80’s seem to be in…a world completed to 100%, with nothing left to do.

Well, you do know you can check in with the npc’(s) that you helped with a heart quest/DE after you help them right? They say something different than what they would say before the DE/ quest is done. Its very interesting too, i spend about 1/10th of my time talking to npc’s that i helped and skill points. You can even duowsome pstory with your girlfriend, even if you guys are a different race. I found the pstory very interesting if you dont skip the cutscenes. I wont show any spoilers tho ofc :P

That’s my fear as well Crazy, and is the exact reason I’m swapping between two Lvl 20 characters to slowly work at the game…..even still, I’m reeeeeeally FORCING myself to try and stay entertained.

It may be a bit “dark” to compare it this way, but if a traditional (possibly “grind-fest”?) MMO is like a soul-sucking corporate job and Guild Wars 2 is like doing volunteer work…..yeah; the volunteer work will leave you feeling all fuzzy & warm inside for a little bit, but the corporate job is the one that will bring you a big payoff in the end…..or at least that’s how my GW2 experience is going.

===

If Teva is even ~vaguely~ mentioning “skipping cutscenes” at all, then I question his/her ability to judge ANY game’s story. GW1 hooked me with it’s intense story missions and NPCs that will talk & acknowledge your progress, even just randomly wandering the towns, yet GW2 NPCs almost always give you pointless “Hellos & I SEEN CREATURES OF METAL AND STEAM ZOMG!!!”. Pre- & post-Heart dialogue is bland enough that I’d have stopped playing even something as old (and typically forgivable) as a SNES RPG…..so why doesn’t a cutting-edge game from 2012 have more immersive dialogue than something from the SNES era?

I can’t say my experience matches yours. In WoW I’d go to the quest hub and I’d get reams and reams of awful writing conjuring up a thin justification as to why I needed to kill 400 badgers to get 10 badger ears. Then I’d go and get some more awful writing explaining why I needed to kill 200 badgers. Then I’d get some flimsy pretext to kill some rabbits. Once I’d done all this I’d make a shopping list comprised of the places I’d need to go and the helpless animals I’d need to slaughter and I’d wander round the map doing what I essentially realised were chores. I had no idea why I was doing any of this, even if I could stomach the writing it would have long since jumbled together into a confused mess. in the intervening period.

Guild Wars 2 actually brings it back to the narrative. Without quest hubs the explanations for what I am doing happen at the same time as the events I am doing so the connection is maintained. I’m not flooded with it all at once so I have a chance to digest it. I could have the same experience in a traditional MMO structure but I am heavily discouraged by the radically increased travel time and inability to double dip quest objectives. All Guild Wars 2 offers is the option of disregarding it entirely.

I would say the dialog for dynamic events should probably be back-loaded rather than front-loaded. There are times when the narrative in these are extremely disjointed.

If you had no idea what you were doing and why, then clearly you didn’t bother to read what the events/hearts were about and you never bothered to click on scouts to get the story behind the events of the surrounding area. If you take the time to read then you will know exactly what is going on where you are and why the events are occurring.

If you want something more immersive, first talk to the character next to the heart. He/she will tell you what the event is about and why it is taking place. Then as you receive your gold medal, do not rush away in pride, but hang around listening at the npc’s dialogues and you will discover something else is about to happen.
The medal is not the end of the story…

There’s a lot of explanation & dialogue around. I always know who I’m helping and why. On WoW I picked up and handed in quests as fast as possible without reading a word of quest description since it’s irrelevant and boring and slowed my levelling. The more natural, spontaneous style of GW2 “questing” draws me in a lot more and feels more like a world with people in danger who need my help.

I’m not having the same experience. I love the fact that I don’t have to return someplace to pick up a quest reward and chart out the most efficient way to complete a long list of tasks. I like that I can get distracted and wander away from the heart area and come back any time and finish it up without watching a quest go gray because I didn’t knuckle down and get it done before I out-leveled it.

It is easy to get stuck in the rut of running from heart to heart and event to event. My secret is that I’m curious. Why is that charr hanging out on that hill? How did that blue Moa get up on that cliff? One thing that folks don’t realize is that you can get gold contribution in an event without having to stick around for the whole thing. Also, the events spawn fairly regularly, and some of them are quite long, so I don’t go running every time I see a hint of orange on my map.

It is easy to barrel through areas when you don’t have dead time walking between quests and back to quest givers. When I see someone with a name, i.e. not just “citizen” or “rancher”, I talk to them and I listen to the scouts to get an idea of what’s going on in the area. I have a chat tab set up just to record NPC chat so I don’t miss what’s being said. And that’s another thing – the amount of voice work in GW2 is stunning. I’ve picked up a lot by eavesdropping on conversations in the main cities.

I also look around. Resource nodes and creatures don’t spawn places where you can’t get to them. If there’s a light in the back of a cave, it’s coming from somewhere. If it looks like you can jump up on something, see where it goes. I found some ruins in a cave that way. I looked up and saw a light coming through a hole in the wall, jumped up on a ledge to get a better look and ended up exploring some ruins full of imps and oozes (and tripping and falling into a nearly bottomless pit at one point). I never did figure out the story behind them, but it was still fun.

The amount of attention to detail in this game has astounded me. The problem, I think, is that we’ve been trained by the MMOs that came before that everything not in your quest log is just scenery that an artist made that way because it looked nice. Stop and smell the roses. But ask that nearby Asura if he’s experimenting on them first.

Hierofan.2415:

If you want something more immersive, first talk to the character next to the heart. He/she will tell you what the event is about and why it is taking place. Then as you receive your gold medal, do not rush away in pride, but hang around listening at the npc’s dialogues and you will discover something else is about to happen.
The medal is not the end of the story…

I actually like the GW2’s heart system and events scattered about. You still have the option to talk to the actual heart NPC or you can just start doing the objectives when you get in the heart area. Other games had you doing a lot of running back and forth between quest giver and the mission area. It seems like GW2 tries to cut out unnecessary time sinks. We dont have mounts or taxis, but you can take a Asura gate anywhere you want. You dont have to run a lot back and forth between mission location and mission giver.

And like Heirofan mentioned when one event is complete dont immediately run away to do something else. Events can sometimes be chained together.

Soothsayer.9476:

If you had no idea what you were doing and why, then clearly you didn’t bother to read what the events/hearts were about and you never bothered to click on scouts to get the story behind the events of the surrounding area. If you take the time to read then you will know exactly what is going on where you are and why the events are occurring.

On the contrary, I talk to all the scouts and often talk to the heart NPC. The problem is that it’s way to easy to be pulled off task.

In many ways I wish it was required that you visit the heart to activate the story portion. For example, say I enter a new area with a heart. I’m not psychic, and so while I still have the option of killing creatures and gathering the items, it has no context unless I talk to the heart NPC.

So, say I collect a bunch of items on my way to the heart, I show up, and it says, “I’m looking for gears to build such and such, if you find any…” at which point ou could give the gears you have. If I went straight for the heart without killing creatures, I would have to get the context, then set out.

The difference between this and say WoW, is that I’m not required to accept the quest, but as in the real world, if I want to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, I need to talk to the person with the information.

I dunno, I just think that there should be a middle ground somehow. When I’m not required to talk to anyone, and I just get an email thanking me for my help, I feel disconnected from the story. There must be some way to merge the hub concept, with the heart concept, yet keep players on task if thats what they desire, but also give them the freedom to quest without being tied down to hubs.

The Heart events are actually touted as being a normal quest line by Anet. The Dynamic events are what they are their bread and butter. What they need to do is to find a way to better illustrate the story of the map when you first enter it. The scouts only point out a few things and tell you what the Hearts are up to. But maybe a small cutscene/vista with some dialog when you first enter a new map.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

In many ways I wish it was required that you visit the heart to activate the story portion. For example, say I enter a new area with a heart. I’m not psychic, and so while I still have the option of killing creatures and gathering the items, it has no context unless I talk to the heart NPC.

snip

The difference between this and say WoW, is that I’m not required to accept the quest, but as in the real world, if I want to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, I need to talk to the person with the information.

I dunno, I just think that there should be a middle ground somehow. When I’m not required to talk to anyone, and I just get an email thanking me for my help, I feel disconnected from the story. There must be some way to merge the hub concept, with the heart concept, yet keep players on task if thats what they desire, but also give them the freedom to quest without being tied down to hubs.

GW2 heart system is the middle ground

It is no longer mandatory for you to talk to the quest giver, it is now optional. You have the option to still talk to the heart giver to get the whole back story. Or you can just get into the heart area and start getting to work.

WoW you had to talk to the quest giver to start and finish, only recently did they add quests that you could pick up, or that would update at the mission site. I think SWTOR all had start and finish missions at the mission giver, The Secret World lets you start missions at a mission giver and finish it in the field, and you can also pick up missions scattered about the place.

Honestly the funny thing to me is……the hearts ARE quest hubs.

Sure they’re cleverly disguised, but they are quest hubs. Kill this many of this, collect this much of this, put this in this. Really the only difference is you don’t have to talk to the NPC to start the quest.

Mercucial.6759:

Honestly the funny thing to me is……the hearts ARE quest hubs.

Sure they’re cleverly disguised, but they are quest hubs. Kill this many of this, collect this much of this, put this in this. Really the only difference is you don’t have to talk to the NPC to start the quest.

At least the dynamic events break up the monotony of jumping from heart to heart.

I find alot of NPC’s actually run towards you, trying to get your attention. Many events start this way.

“Help me! I’ ve Fallen down this hole! Can some one help me?”
Crazy kid…. got stuck right next to 2 ore nodes and at the end of a nasty, monster-filled tunnel. Won’t move till “that monsters gone”.

Or….

“Help! They’ve taken my sister captive!”

I actually figured out there are ALOT of talkative npc’s. They are the ones that don’t say ‘Greet’. There are keys that drop or are found on the ground to open doors and turn off barriers. NPC’s tell you alot of this stuff. Oola’s Laboratory is an example in Metrica Province. Heck, they even make the first door a skill challenge. The second one needs a key.

I like the idea someone else floated. Hearts are considered ‘waypoints’ to your goals. They are level indicators to the rewards and monsters nearby. They aren’t your goals. It’s the story being told along the way in camps and towns. By scouts and travelers. These get you to the area. Dynamic events along the way are part of the stories.

And the storyline usually goes to areas ahead of you anyway that are directly related to your story. Sieges, special places, whatever. You are all going to find out about Zhaitan. Welcome to Orr.

I think the hearts are different from quest hubs in a few important ways. The task and the person that wants it done are in the same place. There are multiple ways to complete a heart. There is only one heart so once you’ve completed it, you can move on. If a dynamic event starts, you can spend more time in the area, but it’s all completely optional. If you don’t feel like doing it, you can come back at any time and you won’t have out-leveled the heart, and the dynamic event will spawn again eventually (or you can sometimes start it yourself by talking to the NPCs in the area).

Compare that to a real quest hub, say the crossroads in WoW. There are a bunch of quests you have to pick up. To complete some of them you have to walk all the way to the far end of the zone, keep a bunch of junk in your bag, walk all the way back to turn them in, pick up the next stage, then walk back to where you were. You must carefully plan out what order you’re going to do the tasks in so that you minimize your walking time and finish the lower level tasks before they go gray and you get no reward. It was such drudgery. To complete all of the quests you would spend hours doing nothing but walking to and from the Crossroads.

In case you have not seen it yet.

From: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/6710/Quest-Hubs-Are-Dead-Finally.html

They were my fault to begin with, at least partially. You see, I worked on World of Warcraft, the most quest-hub heavy game in existence. I even helped come up with that dang exclamation mark, borrowing it from Diablo 2 and being inspired by Metal Gear Solid.Since WoW, everyone shifted their online quest design to hubs and spokes, and a forest of exclamation marks as far as the eye could see. I, for one, am glad someone finally killed them for good.

I mean, of course, Guild Wars 2. The incredible success of the game has caused them to suspend digital sales, something I haven’t seen since WoW (which stopped shipping boxes so the servers could catch up in capacity). The momentum of Guild Wars 2 is incredible, and a credit to a team who dared to change the formula.

If you haven’t played it, I’ll risk a quick aside. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have quest givers, instead, you explore the map in a largely non-linear fashion, traveling the map as you please, or as your level allows, and experiencing the content in a more exploratory way. As you travel, you encounter situations that need your help in areas designated on the map by hearts. You fill up a bar by doing what needs doing, fighting centaurs, retrieving stolen goods, etc. These happen automatically as the game’s UI alerts you to nearby events, you don’t need to speak with an NPC. But that’s not all. Layered on top of that are Guild Wars dynamic events. Each location seems to have at least one dynamic event that occurs periodically, and they have repercussions. If the bandits are raiding the farmers, players should defend them, or the farm will fall. But if it does, there is always a counter-event to reverse the situation, you can now drive the bandits from the farm, and return things as they were. These function much like public quests in other games, everyone participating gets rewarded (grouped or not), and the state of the game world changes, at least for that small location on the map.

Why is this change so significant? Well, I think its obvious by the way players are voting with their dollars by snapping up GW2 in droves. It just feels…new. Your perspective shifts from just trying to grind through quests to actively exploring and experiencing the world. The entertainment factor creeps back in, much higher than other MMOs where players have long since figured out the optimal ways to level. You find yourself starting to pay attention more to the story and are therefore drawn into the world more, like a good book. All this is achieved, despite GW2’s approach of light dusting of story vs heavy and long cut-scenes or dialogue trees. It’s kind of amazing.

The feeling of grind melts away, and you just enjoy yourself. That’s the key, because all long-term (100+ plus) online games are about progression. The grind is still there, as it has to be for any progression based game. But the manner in which we go through the progression of Guild Wars 2 is fresh and unique enough to keep us interested and entertained for hundreds of hours. They did to the WoW formula what WoW did to the EQ formula. You see, quest hubs and such were heavily promoted by Blizzard to hide the fact that you were just grinding mobs to level (which was the original EQ formula). You were, in fact, still doing the same things as EQ, it just felt like you had a purpose and a story that guided you through it. It distracted you from the grinding. I remember early EQ players in beta for World of Warcraft. They would just run out into the fields and start killing monsters…and be disappointed. When I asked them if they tried the quests, they would always react with shock…they never tried them, or in some cases, even noticed them. But once people started questing, it was a completely different experience, and the rest was history.

I honestly can’t see myself ever going back to an MMO with exclamation mark NPCs and traditional quests ever again. Guild Wars 2 has changed that forever, and I’m sure will drive a host of imitators. And for that, I thank the team at Arena.net. At Red 5, a company I founded to try new things, we’ve been cooking up our own version of dynamic world events for a few years now. It was always a challenge to try and communicate what we were doing with our game, Firefall, to traditional MMO players. Thanks to Guild Wars 2, someone big has paved the way for people to learn a new way of playing MMOs, and we’re proud to follow in their footsteps and, maybe, just maybe, contribute to the trend of breaking the mold and trying new things. But more about that in my next article.

Hits the nail on the head, for me at least. Looking forward to seeing what other developers do with this new path.