Guild Wars 2

I hear a lot of people saying that GW2 is so much better in its quest design i.e. the Task system, which are the hearts on the map that you go to do, and the Dynamic Event system. I thought I would take up the Quest and Task-system (not speaking of the Dynamic Events in this thread, mind you, I will do that later on though) and then compare the two, answer why they are being used instead of the other, and what for.

- I will by no means conclude on one being better than the other, because both has their flaws and merits.

First up: The Quest-system
- I don’t think I need to tell you what the quest-system consists of. There are quests around the world, which are given to you by NPC’s. You then venture out into the world, do your thing and return victorious to the quest-giver.
- Some people find this an inconvenience, now that there is an alternative in GW2 to this, but then: Why use the quest-system?
- The quest-system includes interactive gameplay, immersion and lore. The quest-system works as a storytelling aspect of the game, and it is used not only in MMO’s but also single player games (Skyrim, Jak and Daxter, Assassin’s Creed, etc.).
- The idea behind it is to give you a task, where you are explained why you are doing it, giving you insight into the lore and story of a particular place and the people who inhabit it.
- In other words: The quest-system has an emphasis on Immersion, or immersive gameplay if you like.
- One of its biggest flaws seems to be telling you to kill a certain number of enemies that are just standing around in the field, not doing anything. Also, many find it inconvenient to have to talk to NPC’s (but that is a matter of personal preference. I like getting to know the world and people there, whereas some people just want to max their character and gear, or some such).

Next up: The Task-system
- The Task-system is like the quest-system but it takes away the middle-man, called the quest-giver. Also, it does not tell you to do any certain task, or kill a certain amount of enemies. You get a bar that keeps track of your progress as you contribute with any one of the tasks that you want to do.
- ANet designed it to be convenient. People wouldn’t have to search around for quests but could just do them as they appeared. The only problem is that players mostly don’t know who they are helping, or even why.
- The flaws of the Task-system is that the immersion into the game is lacking.
You don’t get any insight into the lore, and the NPC’s that you talk to don’t have much to offer of a conversation. Again, ANet designed it so you can do what you want to. You can talk to NPC’s and get information, if you want to, but even then there is not much depth in it.
It seems like you are just running from place to place being a good guy (the quest-system could have a shady character giving you a quest, and you had the option of being a “bad guy” at times).
- The two major problems are:
1. with only one task in each area of a zone, you don’t really get to “fall in love” with a village or an area, and you don’t get that much information about the places either.
2. you are shown on the map, where these Tasks are, which is guiding your step, instead of letting you discover the content for yourself. Also, when you are done with a zone, it may say on the map that you have discovered everything in that area, when you might just have missed out on a lot of content.
- The first problem can be solved by talking to scouts that tell you what is going on in a place, but generally there are only fighting and gathering tasks around, which does not add much variation to it. Right now it can get predictable and dull with the task system (Personally I hope and expect to see some changes, but I think they will be betting more on the Dynamic Events).
- The quest-system could also have added some info on conflict. A charr giving a quest, where he states his hatred for the human race, or an Asura stating his frustration over the simple minded allies. It is there in the form of NPC’s that you can talk to, but as previously stated, there is yet to be added more depth.

In conclusion:
- The Task-system is more convenient than the Quest-system, but offers little insight into the lore, unless you go looking for someone to talk to, who may or may not have something interesting and informative to say. Also, it does not take long to do a task, and getting acquainted with places in Guild Wars 2 is harder than what I have experienced in other MMO’s and single player games.
- The Quest-system offers more of a storytelling aspect, and more depth into the lore of each place. It makes it easier to get acquainted with an area, and to know what is going on. However, for those who just want to max lvl their character, or those who have already done the quests and just want to “get it done”, it can become a daunting task to travel between the quest-giver and where you complete the quest given to you.

I should say, of course, that the “questing system” in Guild Wars 2 isn’t the Task-system alone, but also consists of the Dynamic Events, giving it an extra layer.
- I shall compare the quests and Dynamic Events in another thread sometime.

I agree, and the only thing missing in this game is more flavor text. The NPC’s do fill in the story and the lore for those who want it. It’s the equivalent of reading the quest text before hitting ACCEPT, only you’re not presented with the wall of text up front. Traditional quest systems mark points of interest on your map anyway,, so I don’t see the issue with showing you basic information on the map.

In general I agree that the Hearts in this game lack the storytelling quality of traditional quests. I’d argue that multi-staged events fill that in. The temple of Dwayna for example, provides a lot of insight into the Temple of Dwayna and Malchor, who the zone’s named after. However, I feel that these events are few and far between and if you stumble in to the middle an event, you miss out on the exposition and story.

My suggestion to flesh out this game’s open world story is to provide more flavor text other than “Oh no something is happening! You should help and this is how you can do that!”. I want to know more about how an NPC is feeling, rather than just explanations of who is attacking what. We need more personality dialogue trees. Events need to have more dialogue during the event to provide context. Again, the game provides these things to a certain extent, but this needs to be pushed.

At first I was dissapointed with the lack of traditional quests for much the same reasons. But now it doesn’t bother me because when I started looking beyond the little tool-tip in the corner I realised the lore and back-story are still there.

If you want to you can go and speak to the heart quest givers and they’ll tell you a bit about the area and explain why you need to do these things, afterwards they’ll thank you for doing so and sometimes say something along the lines of hoping the area will become safer in the future.

Some of the dynamic events also function like traditional quests if you follow the chain and listen to the dialogue in between. The one with the bunny worshippers in Wayfarer Foothills is a good example.

There’s also NPCs around the world who will either ask for your help or mention tasks which need doing that you can then go and do, just like traditional quests but without anything to tell you that you must go and do it. And others who don’t have anything for you to do but can add a bit of flavour and lore, which actually was missing in GW1 – if they weren’t part of a quest (or you were speaking to them outside that quest) all you’d get was one line of genetic dialogue.

From what I understand you are comparing the Hearts system with the traditional quest system… the Heart system is shallow and doesn’t offer much lore and immersion but the Dynamic Event system is completely different. The DE system wouldn’t work in a single player setting very well, but it works wonders in a multiplayer setting.

I wouldn’t call a quest immersive when someone is doing a quest near me, interracting with objects that I can’t because hey I don’t have that quest in my log.

I wouldn’t call a quest immersive when I can’t help an escort quest, because hey you must start those at the begining and can’t join “en route”

I wouldn’t call a quest immersive when some mobs are attacking a camp, just because someone talked with an npc to “initiate” that attack, and get no credit for defending, because hey you didn’t start that quest yourself or was in a party that started it.

Dynamic Events have a lot more lore going around them than just clicking “accept” on a wall of text, like in most mmorpgs out there. If you just follow the npcs, listen to them, you can have all the immersion you want, and without the need to be on a specific part of a quest chain.

So in short I disagree, the Quest system is shallow and offers very little insight into the lore (you just press Accept and read walls of text, heck even in Skyrim) while the event system “takes you there” and offers far more lore insight, if you actually look for it that is. I always wonder why people leave after an event is finished, follow the npcs, listen to their dialogue (even if there is no pointer to it) and you will get all the lore you will ever want.

“Quests” in Generic MMO Area:

1. Kill 10 Wargs that have been stealing my sheep!

2. Collect 10 Warg skins so I can can make myself some blankets.

3. Find me 7 Elderberries for a Warg Repellent Potion.

4. Kill the Warg Alpha male.

5. Help me fix the fence (to keep the Wargs away from my sheep).

6. Bring back my stray sheep.

Renown Hearts:

Please, help make this place a little safer. We need the fences fixed, our sheep need protecting and rescuing and if you can find some Elderberries, we could use some for a Warg repellent.

In other words, they are almost identical. The major difference being that you can do any combination of tasks in a Renown Heart to “complete the quest” whereas most games require you to do each one individually, and in order, to reach the same destination.

While I agree that there could be more dialogue, you really don’t need much more than what is there already. In a “traditional” system you speak to a quest giver, he gives you a problem, you speak to him again after you have solved said problem and he thanks you. This is exactly what happens in a Renown Heart if you go and speak to the person with the Heart above their head (oh look, he has a heart above his head, so completely different to an exclamation point!) before doing anything, and after finishing it.

maddoctor.2738:

From what I understand you are comparing the Hearts system with the traditional quest system… the Heart system is shallow and doesn’t offer much lore and immersion but the Dynamic Event system is completely different. The DE system wouldn’t work in a single player setting very well, but it works wonders in a multiplayer setting.

I wouldn’t call a quest immersive when someone is doing a quest near me, interracting with objects that I can’t because hey I don’t have that quest in my log.

I wouldn’t call a quest immersive when I can’t help an escort quest, because hey you must start those at the begining and can’t join “en route”

I wouldn’t call a quest immersive when some mobs are attacking a camp, just because someone talked with an npc to “initiate” that attack, and get no credit for defending, because hey you didn’t start that quest yourself or was in a party that started it.

Dynamic Events have a lot more lore going around them than just clicking “accept” on a wall of text, like in most mmorpgs out there. If you just follow the npcs, listen to them, you can have all the immersion you want, and without the need to be on a specific part of a quest chain.

So in short I disagree, the Quest system is shallow and offers very little insight into the lore (you just press Accept and read walls of text, heck even in Skyrim) while the event system “takes you there” and offers far more lore insight, if you actually look for it that is. I always wonder why people leave after an event is finished, follow the npcs, listen to their dialogue (even if there is no pointer to it) and you will get all the lore you will ever want.

In this thread I’m only comparing the Task-system to the Quest-system.
- The Dynamic Events are a different story, but I do get your point.

However, I disagree that Quests didn’t have an immersive sense to them. In WoW or Guild Wars 1 quests were pretty much the content that you could do on your own, so that you weren’t required to always find a group (yes, GW1 required a group of NPC’s or people, but you get the point). They told you something about what was going on. Immersive gameplay is forgetting that you are in a game, and interacting with NPC’s would be “interactive gameplay”.

Guild Wars 2 is focusing a lot on what is happening now, i.e. the Dynamic Events, and it works very well, although one can predict what kind of Dynamic Events are in an area. They are very much the same, and I sometimes miss the point of why we are even fighting, and that’s where the quests would tell you that.
- As I already stated, one can get that information if he so chooses, but a lot of time I just feel like I’m wandering aimlessly around. My motivation for doing the Tasks in this game is to complete a zone, even if I don’t want to be motivated by that kind of “to do” list gameplay. When I try to talk to NPC’s they don’t give me the information in a way that appeals to me. It is a one-liner, mostly, and the dialogue is more “Ew, that’s gross” or some other immature way of expressing oneself than I would care to see in-game.
- Personally, I like quests better, but I like how I don’t get a certain number to kill in GW2. I would want ANet to stay true to their Task-system, but maybe try to make NPC conversations more interesting, so I don’t just stop talking to them entirely.

- I think ANet wants GW2 to be more focused on the current ongoings, leaving little reference to GW1. They have the Living World team working on these one-time events and I am looking forward to seeing how the lore will progress.
- It’s a lot of “experience story in the making”, which I really like. But the legends of old seem almost forgotten. It’s really a matter of having left a mark on the world from GW1 (but lets give them a chance to unfold the map in its entirety before we conclude anything).

- I think that GW2 needs time to reach its full potential and I would like to make a contribution to where it’s headed.
- That being said, I wouldn’t applaud them implementing a traditional quest-system now. They should stick with what they have made and try to improve it.

Sinifair.1026:

In this thread I’m only comparing the Task-system to the Quest-system.
- The Dynamic Events are a different story, but I do get your point.

Hearts are very very few compared to Events. The majority of your play time should be in events. Hearts were added to give directions to players, where to go and what to do.

However, I disagree that Quests didn’t have an immersive sense to them. In WoW or Guild Wars 1 quests were pretty much the content that you could do on your own, so that you weren’t required to always find a group (yes, GW1 required a group of NPC’s or people, but you get the point). They told you something about what was going on. Immersive gameplay is forgetting that you are in a game, and interacting with NPC’s would be “interactive gameplay”.

The exact same happens if you actually take the time to start a dynamic event yourself. NPCs interract with the world and each other (and the players of course)

I haven’t seen npcs just giving an one-liner in big event chains, on the contrary they actually move and interract with each other, unlike stationary npcs who have no idea of what is happening around them. Like rewarding a player for killing the bandits, while at the same time asking another player to go kill them. And in any case, a one-liner is better than a wall of text that nobody reads anyway.

While quests would work well in a single player setting (for example in Guild Wars 1) they would never be more immersive in a multiplayer environment. In games with Quests, you are actually playing a single player experience, as players interracting with npcs and finishing tasks doesn’t affect you the least bit, breaking any hope of immersion. In an Event-based system it’s the complete opposite as the actions of others affect every player, the world is actually alive, not stale and “single player”

You use the word immersion in your comments about why someone would prefer the quest system. I’ve come to a different conclusion than yours. The quest system is the least immersive part of any game to me, for several reasons.

First, quests in most games are static. They’re just there. This is not true in single player RPGs, with no persistent world, but it is true in MMOs. Someone’s going to attack the town..but it can’t because there are other people in the world who aren’t doing that quest. The town can’t be burning. No one would understand why,.

Rift did have a burning town in it, but it was ALWAYS burning. You could save the town and it would still be burning. In what way is this immersive (because I can’t see it).

The whole quest system is riddled with immersion flaws. People asking you to do ridiculous things, and then standing there and handing you a piece of gear for a reward, that they happened to have lying around. Most of the rewards make no sense and most of the stuff they ask you makes no sense.

At least with hearts you get to help out in the way you choose, and dynamic events are a reaction to a given situation. If I see a town under attack by undead or centaurs, of course I’ll want to help out the town. Why not? My favorite merchant is in there.

See, I find this type of dynamic questing system to be far more immersive than the traditional quest system as used in MMOs. Again, in single player games where the world can change, it’s a very different animal.

MMO quests basically suck. The Guild Wars 2 dyanmic events suck a bit less. lol

maddoctor.2738:

The exact same happens if you actually take the time to start a dynamic event yourself. NPCs interract with the world and each other (and the players of course)

I haven’t seen npcs just giving an one-liner in big event chains, on the contrary they actually move and interract with each other, unlike stationary npcs who have no idea of what is happening around them. Like rewarding a player for killing the bandits, while at the same time asking another player to go kill them. And in any case, a one-liner is better than a wall of text that nobody reads anyway.

While quests would work well in a single player setting (for example in Guild Wars 1) they would never be more immersive in a multiplayer environment. In games with Quests, you are actually playing a single player experience, as players interracting with npcs and finishing tasks doesn’t affect you the least bit, breaking any hope of immersion. In an Event-based system it’s the complete opposite as the actions of others affect every player, the world is actually alive, not stale and “single player”

Then we are talking about Dynamic Events, which actually wasn’t the idea with this thread. I shall compare the Quest-system to the Dynamic System in another thread.
- However, if I should tell you my opinion, without going into a deeper explanation, I like the Dynamic Events over the Quest-system (most of the time. I liked the way it was done in SWTOR, when I tried that out, although it could do with some polishing).

- The immersion for me (and many others) in other games, or lets say MMO’s, were lying in the lore and how rich it was, because everywhere you went, there was a reason the world looked as it did, there was a story to each place. Guild Wars is rich in lore, but it hardly uses all of it. Being there to create more lore with the Living World team making one-time events, I have high hopes for where Guild Wars 2 might go. But the story in Guild Wars 2 is all about “now”. There is no “This happened back then, which then lead to where we are today”, I don’t find that anywhere. Not to a satisfying extend as a Guild Wars fan.

- Many of my friends has left. They say the game looks good but the lack storytelling keeps them in a “meh” state. I think the missing “cliffhanger” element is a contributing factor in this. When they log out, they don’t feel like “Oh, I am so looking forward to logging in again”, and that is a shame. I have read that many others also feel like this

- But all of this does not mean that ANet should go for a Quest-system over their current Task/Dynamic Event-system. It merely means that there is room for improvement.

I know you haven’t mentioned events in your post, but I will be, since I feel they come as a package with Hearts.

Quests can be immersive for some things. Talk to an NPC, they mention they lost a heirloom back in their own home before it was attacked by centaurs. That’s not something that, in the player’s eyes, is repeatable. For things like this, a traditional ‘Quest’ would be best (how else do you know that person has lost it?)

With Hearts, they’d have been better going TSW way; talk to the person to find out how you can help (how else would you know?) and then just recieve the reward. Hearts would also make good Daily / Weekly / Random time frame activities as well, I feel, but that’s another discussion altogether.

However, Events, I feel, are more immersive than traditional ‘quests’ for kill x of y. Having someone tell you that the bandits are causing problems for them when they’re just tottering around in a field somewhere isn’t as immersive as the bandits actually attacking, killing villagers and pillaging.

Conclusion: All have their place, and GW2 could do benefit from a few traditional ‘quests’ as well, minus the indicator that displays them as a questgiver. Maybe have a task board where you carry out the task and then go see the person.

Except that what you’re talking about is totally independent of any system, whether it be quests, renown hearts, jobs, tasks or events. What you’re talking about comes from interactions with NPCs, pure and simple, and I totally agree that this is, to a large extent, lacking in GW2. On the other hand, they have at least made an effort to put some of this in in ways that don’t involve walls of text, like listening to NPCs actually talking.

It’s also worth noting that you cannot get the full story of GW2 from a single play-through. Indeed, you cannot get it in even five play-throughs. Each race, Order and minor race tells a different part of the story. There are two perfect examples of this that I can think of straight away.

When you go and “meet your mentor”, at the fountain in LA, there are three kids discussing what game they want to play. At first they want to play Destiny’s Edge and have a bit of an argument about what happened and why. Then when they decide that they want to play a different game they decide on Renegades and Separatists and the Charr cub jubilantly says “Dibs on Ajax!”. Now, I’m not entirely sure what path you need to take, but you either have to be a Charr or in the Vigil (maybe a Charr in the Vigil? Most likely it is simply the Vigil, though) to find out a) who the Renegades and Seperatists are and b) who Ajax is. The point is, if you play a Human that joins the Priory or the Order of Whispers, as I did, this reference to the Renegades, Seperatists and Ajax is essentially meaningless until, or unless, you head out to Ebonhawk where you can get at least some of the story by speaking to NPCs. Incidentally, skipping all of the Story-mode dungeons until Arah means skipping a chunk of story which basically means that the final quest makes little sense because, aside from your mentor, you’ve met Destiny’s Edge once. WTF are THEY doing here?

Another example that comes to mind is all the people you meet during your story. Sometimes you will meet someone once and then never see them again until the Cleansing of Orr. Personally I thought “WTF is HE doing here? I saw him loitering around somewhere once, but that’s it.” But by doing a playthrough with a different race and making different decisions, their presence at the end makes much more sense since some of them play larger roles in different story branches.

When all is said and done, GW2 does do a decent job of conveying the kinds of things that usually come through “quest boxes”. What is lacking is the “flavour dialogue” you get by talking to random NPCs which serve to colour the world. And you don’t need quests to do that.

Hate to say it but you are missing the “real” quests in this game – The char personal storyline. 49 quests if I remember rightly. Oh and also you forget that you are sent mail from the heart person after completing a heart and if you read it you can get a bit more insight and it is usualy similar to what a regular quest guy would give you after you complete a quest in another game.

The true immersion here and finding out the lore is from actually exploring the areas and no I don’t mean gaining 100% in said areas. Go back and explore every nook and cranny for things to find. Speak/listen to the npc’s, follow them yada yada. I am doing this now and must have just spent a solid 15-20 hours on Caledon Forest alone, that map has so many places to check! But hey I found 2 more jump puzzles from doing so.

I will also throw another spanner in the works here – Living Stories, yes what we have so far is not a good example but more is coming. One other thing is there is kind of quests in this game like you would find in regular games like wow. They are the npcs where you start an event at who have a * above their head. I find them a good mix of Gw2 questing and other games but they are repeatable.

I generally agree that the task system is greatly inferior because it causes the player to become much less involved with the NPCs, area, and game itself.

The quests in WoW made the experience memorable whereas the heart quest and desire to speed through the zones to get to 100% exploration as fast as possible for the bonus reward that only accrued upon 100% map completion made the zones in GW some of the most forgettable zones in recent MMO history.

Sinifair.1026:

In this thread I’m only comparing the Task-system to the Quest-system.
- The Dynamic Events are a different story, but I do get your point.

The problem is you can’t treat it that way, as if hearts and dynamic events are two completely seperate things that have nothing to do with each other.

It’s not a 1:1 conversion of quests into hearts with dynamic events as something seperate and different. A lot of things which would be quests in any other game are dynamic events and the only practical difference is that they start (and continue) whether players are around to join in or not.

The hearts are only in at all to give people who are used to traditional MMOs a pointer on where to go and a way to ease them into the system. That’s why there are loads right at the start of the starter zones and then fewer and fewer as you go along, with more dynamic events – once you get to higher levels you’re supposed to be familar with the system and not so in need of the pointers.

If you ONLY look at hearts as a replacement for quests then of course you’re going to be dissapointed, in the same way as if you tried to insist that green weapons must be the best in the game because that’s how it worked in GW1.

Ellisande.5218:

I generally agree that the task system is greatly inferior because it causes the player to become much less involved with the NPCs, area, and game itself.

The quests in WoW made the experience memorable whereas the heart quest and desire to speed through the zones to get to 100% exploration as fast as possible for the bonus reward that only accrued upon 100% map completion made the zones in GW some of the most forgettable zones in recent MMO history.

Personally I like that they did it this way because it gives people a choice. You don’t have to speed through the zones getting 100% exploration, but you can if you want to.

Alternative you can do what I’m doing and go around every zone stopping to talk to every single named NPC, stopping to listen to them talk to each other, watching the dialogue before, after and between DE’s and get a lot more lore and immersion from it.

I see it as kind of like the books in Elder Scrolls games or the codex in Dragon Age. They could have put all that lore directly into the quests and had people who want to just get on and play complaining about walls of text or endless cut scenes. So they put it in as an optional extra. People who want the lore can find it easily and take as long as they want reading through it all, but people who aren’t as interested are free to skip it.

You can’t just isolate hearts though from the questing system in Guild Wars 2. It’s disingenuous at least.

The questing system in standard MMOs is the way you experience content in the open world. Hearts were added later in the game to give people something to do when waiting for dynamic events. They were never meant to replace quests, or compare to them.

They were added to slow people’s progress through zones. Orr doesn’t have hearts at all for example and is a better example of what a zone would be if they’d stayed with their original plan. Many would have preferred it.

But the hearts were simply a compromise and part of the system. You have to compare hearts and dynamic events as a package, compared with quests from other games to be fair.

In other words, compare open world content to open world content, not just one small aspect of it.

I find that hearts are a nice improvement over quests. But i dislike that they have menial tasks which give no exp like repair certain objects just there to fill up the bar. In some cases for hearts i’ve found the only good way to complete the heart was the no exp route. My favorite ones have to be the gimmicky kind of hearts where you transform or use a unique object.

My only gripe with dynamic events is that they are not up 100% of the time like quests(by this i mean you walk into a hub and load up on stuff to do. There is no downtime unless you need to backtrack, but it still gives something to do rather than stand around). Or i need a group to complete certain ones, but i can’t find a group because the zones are empty. Personally I feel like events should pop up bigger on maps(or have an adjustable option) and have smaller cooldowns on them.

IMO this is one of the major things they did right in this game. BIG time better then anything else I’ve ever experienced in the game. The design of this isn’t flawed, what happened was the support for it stopped. So instead of getting new ones per month as the world turned, fleshing out the times in between the timers we got nothing so people are standing around waiting for stuff to happen. If they hadn’t spent the resources on Fractals this would have never happened and this game would be a much more full experience in PVE.

There are so many NPCs that will start dynamic events if you just take the time to talk to them. They don’t always have obvious icons (but many of them will run up to you and verbally ask for help).

They give you some exposition and send you out to kill X, or collect Y, or protect Z. Sounds like a quest to me. (Many of the DEs that might appear to be “random” to you, are actually someone else’s quest).

Most of these quests are way better designed than traditional MMO quests. Slow down, look around and take some time to appreciate them.

I liked the traditional quest system. Not only did it add greatly to the lore but also enriched the world with certain sense of being alive.

The tasks are shallow, repetitive and only some of them are memorable because they serve no grave purpose

From playing Guildwars 2 for 6 months now i have come to the conclusion the this new system is no different to a quest system and in some cases its worse..rather than better..

Dante.1508:

From playing Guildwars 2 for 6 months now i have come to the conclusion the this new system is no different to a quest system and in some cases its worse..rather than better..

Same feeling. I could do thousand quests in GW1, but I can’t stand hearts.

There is loads of immersion if you want it. Talk to the npcs.

If you don’t want immersion you don’t have to have it.