Guild Wars 2

munkiman.3068:

Dirame.8521:

timmyf.1490:

Could this be simpler? Remember when Southsun had those Magic Find buffs? What if there was just an NPC – Nicholas-style – who moved between zones every day. He gives you a buff with +MF EXP Karma Coin only within the zone.

This would mean lots of people in the open world, though just within the zone of the day. Still, it’d mean you can do some open world content with better rewards.

Petunias the Sylvari Traveler could also give you recipes for crafting precursors! You just have to complete an absurd of collection first though.

I think i just miss Yakkington and opening the gifts

Don’t worry, you get Groot the Oakheart instead!

Yeah , the Dry top mechanics and with each player that particapate on the event can contributes to both map-level its the best idea .

But IF the engine can support … or they have the manpower or cash ….. they could combine ‘’Dry Top mehanics’’ with the ‘’GW1 Allaince Battle system’’ (havent played gw1) , in order to create some ‘’bad guys for a week’’

Edit i am too drink atm, sorry for the gliberish :P

For example :
- They system chooses randomly 10 players , each week
-Each player is sent a message that ‘’a stranger ’’ is waiting in their Personal Home Istance , to ask you for a proposition
- The stranger, wearing a hood will ask you to ‘’do him an illegal favor’’ , such as to bring back something from the Scarlet’s Drill Base from LA
- The item is guarded underground in the sewers of caves from some 85+ lvl elites , and by the queens orders none should touch it
- If you accept the ’’quest’’ a Table can you interact in your Personal Home Istance will show up , wher you could interact .
-Each player is given 3 areas ,where they Must maintain till the end of the week or they will ‘loose the game’’ > they will granted 2 gold for each area they can maintain . If they succed to kill the Queens’ 85+Guards and take the Item , they will rewarded with a Precursor (kind of scavangive hurt) and 15 gold at the end of the week .
-In order to participate in the ’’game’’ they must pay some ‘’shady fee’’ (5 gold-goldsinks)
-The ‘’game master’’ (the one that eccepted the quest) , can interact with the table and manipulate 50 npc ’’workers’’
-He can place them in various spots on the ’’Table’s minimap’’ and are used to gather resources .
-He should avoid placing too many npc ’’worker’’ too close ,otherwise the zerg will find them and kill them quickly
-He can place traps on the floor that additional Guards will some up to protect the npcs , if a 80 player will step on the trap
-With those resourses , he can build more npc ’’workers’’ of he can build an Army of Npcs slowly
-He can also assing his ‘’npcs Assasins’’ to attack any other Dynamic event in his region he is controlling , in order to get more rewards
-He can build bases (nothing extreme too costly to create for the engine ) , such as a wooden spikes that surround the camp
-all those things dont show up istandly , but they need 3-4 hours (something like farmvill , where the ‘’game master’’ dont need to be 24/7 online) .Or when he is logout a ’’mcahine’’ will takeover the thngs

The rest of the guys :
-they must kill enough enough workers or npc’’Assasins’’ that will attack the Dynamic Events . Each npc will have a chance to drop some clues about the person that those npcs are working for
- if 3.000 ppl found enough clues (his gender-class-race-his game master nickname he choosed , they second-war-era will begine .( till those 3.000 ppl have found any clues, it will give his some time to create an army and choose what to do
-the gamemaster can create tremendesloy overpowered npcs and in order to kill them you have to do some dynamic events-or somehing to progress the map and unlock some buffs to kill those overpowered npcs or something to debuff them

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Anthony, I absolutely agree, and I’d argue that it wouldn’t take THAT much assistance at the system level either.

I beg of you, have a look at this idea I floated months ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Rewarding-Adventure-in-the-Open-World

And please let me know what you think!

Dirame.8521:

munkiman.3068:

Dirame.8521:

timmyf.1490:

Could this be simpler? Remember when Southsun had those Magic Find buffs? What if there was just an NPC – Nicholas-style – who moved between zones every day. He gives you a buff with +MF EXP Karma Coin only within the zone.

This would mean lots of people in the open world, though just within the zone of the day. Still, it’d mean you can do some open world content with better rewards.

Petunias the Sylvari Traveler could also give you recipes for crafting precursors! You just have to complete an absurd of collection first though.

I think i just miss Yakkington and opening the gifts

Don’t worry, you get Groot the Oakheart instead!

Ha, maybe we can go a little Nornish and do that instead. Kinda tired of Sylvari being center stage lately.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

I really dislike the design of Dry Top’s event system and I really hope ArenaNet doesn’t see that as the new bar for Open World maps going forward.

To me, the Open World (or zones) is about exploration, immersion, world story and smallscale content. If I run into other players and we share a similar goal for a short while, awesome – that’s why I play MMOs. Every time I run through a map I’ve played before I might come across an event I didn’t see, the world changes based on the events I complete and generally Tyria feels literally dynamic.

Dry Top kills one of the most unique and greatest strengths of Guild Wars 2’s open world – it is not dynamic. Dry Top works on a time table, it was really saddening for me when I discovered that all the events on Dry Top occur like clockwork. Golem event spawns in 5 minutes, devourer event spawns in10 minutes, crystal event spawns in 15 minutes etc. I hate that. It seems necessary to have scheduled events for these organised maps to occur, but it really loses site of what I personally think the Open World is about.

The Open World should be about slower paced exploration, not madly waypointing around to suit the timetable of the new events as the commander reads out the schedule over map chat. Talking to that NPC and triggering an escort which then establishes a camp and then triggers another event regardless of what’s going on on elsewhere on the map. Picking up a runestone in a cave and attracting a powerful monster, coming across a mysterious largos that needs my help – none of this happens because I was told by a commander who is looking at his/her timetable, it happens because I spoke to that NPC who asked me for help, because I went off the beaten path and swam into that obscure location, because I saw that cave opening and thought “What’s in there?” and discovered a little part of Tyria I hadn’t seen before. It’s really hard to design events that meaningfully interact with the world when they have to occur on a time table with a strict beginning and end.

The Map Level rewards are also poorly implemented imo. The timer placed on them creates pressure to do as many events as fast as possible or you get worse rewards. The incentive to do so is very weak because the majority of the time players will only want a T6 merchant once or twice – you save up for it and buy all at once, the rest of the time it doesn’t matter if you get T6 (so why work hard to support others other than altruism?). Personally I don’t think making a T6 map get a “T6 Chest” at the end is a good solution either (that feels like punishing players for being on the wrong map), I don’t like this system period.

Maybe if there was no timer, maybe if each map progressed as players engaged with the world anyway, the difference between an organised map and a casual one was the speed at which they reach T6. That preserves the Open World’s design of being exploration based and it also removes the need to schedule the “Dynamic” Events around the world. Honestly I feel like Open World design should reward players for exploration and interaction with the world, not taxiing into a map with a commander using a spread sheet.

I think there is room in GW2’s design for large scale and organised Open World events but I think that should be primarily reserved for content like Tequatl – world bosses that occur on longish spawn timers. I think designs like Dry Top sacrifice so much of what makes the Open World engaging and fun and it fails to reward players for exploring the world. I think we will also see longetivity issues, even with megaservers. I’ve already seen very few T6 maps during Oceanic hours, when the content becomes older, players acquire their rewards and move onto the next farm, this map will be far less sustainable than Cursed Shore.

PS: Geodes really need to go into the account wallet, just like Amber needs to be deposited as a crafting material along with Foxfire Clusters.

I’m currently mapping and leveling four characters. Some hearts are fine, others are tedious like catching Fly’s or getting turned into a pig. While you can work around them they often give such easy, convenient EXP (compared to the effort required for Dynamic Events) that the pay off is considerably quicker and much more gratifying.

An interesting post appeared on Reddit earlier today. The gist of it was that the rewards for completing dynamic events (petty copper/silver & karma) are not up to par with what the rest of the world offers. There’s no clear incentive to do these events more than a few times unless they offer a unique “Drytop Merchant”

For example, you could put in 45 minutes stringing together Event chains in Harathi for Modnir (w/ an RNG chest rewards & at least a Rare) and maybe get 10 silver. Someone in a dungeon could run 1-2 paths and make 2-3g. To drive the point home, you often get more gold per hour gathering materials (even 1 tree) than an entire Dynamic Event offers. Just One Soft Wood Log is often worth as much as or more than the monetary reward from completing an event.

Guild Wars 2 likes to beat its chest and say that it offers diversity. However, the matter of fact is that many players, myself included, play it like a hack/slash game like Torchlight or Diablo — Some might say we’re addicted to the possibility that is gambling for loot.

I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I think that making a clear statement “Dungeons are where we want most of the gold in the game to be” isn’t fair to people who don’t enjoy dungeons and is toxic to a game that is ultimately about choosing your own play-style to obtain the things you want.

I’d rather be out in the open world enjoying myself than in a cramped dungeon stacked in a corner or LoS’ing mobs. Dynamic Events are really cool, and I’ve discovered several I’ve never done before and continue to do so. That said, I don’t really see why players would bother when the rewards don’t match the effort.

Given the option I would like to see hearts made optional. Most of the time they’re a grind; which is somewhat comforting when you’re new, but when it boils down to it many of them are quests where there’s an additional layer of “Fetch” and “Kill” quests which serve no real purpose. I don’t remember the last time I read the dialogue for a renown heart. Perhaps I should for a while…

I definitely think that dynamic events are the true core of the game’s PvE/Leveling-Experience, which is sad because they’re so often neglected, but as I said earlier, it’s understandable that they’re neglected because of how poor their reward scaling is compared to the rest of the game.

LunarRXA.5062:

I’m currently mapping and leveling four characters. Some hearts are fine, others are tedious like catching Fly’s or getting turned into a pig. While you can work around them they often give such easy, convenient EXP (compared to the effort required for Dynamic Events) that the pay off is considerably quicker and much more gratifying.

An interesting post appeared on Reddit earlier today. The gist of it was that the rewards for completing dynamic events (petty copper/silver & karma) are not up to par with what the rest of the world offers. There’s no clear incentive to do these events more than a few times unless they offer a unique “Drytop Merchant”

For example, you could put in 45 minutes stringing together Event chains in Harathi for Modnir (w/ an RNG chest rewards & at least a Rare) and maybe get 10 silver. Someone in a dungeon could run 1-2 paths and make 2-3g. To drive the point home, you often get more gold per hour gathering materials (even 1 tree) than an entire Dynamic Event offers. Just One Soft Wood Log is often worth as much as or more than the monetary reward from completing an event.

Guild Wars 2 likes to beat its chest and say that it offers diversity. However, the matter of fact is that many players, myself included, play it like a hack/slash game like Torchlight or Diablo — Some might say we’re addicted to the possibility that is gambling for loot.

I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I think that making a clear statement “Dungeons are where we want most of the gold in the game to be” isn’t fair to people who don’t enjoy dungeons and is toxic to a game that is ultimately about choosing your own play-style to obtain the things you want.

I’d rather be out in the open world enjoying myself than in a cramped dungeon stacked in a corner or LoS’ing mobs. Dynamic Events are really cool, and I’ve discovered several I’ve never done before and continue to do so. That said, I don’t really see why players would bother when the rewards don’t match the effort.

Given the option I would like to see hearts made optional. Most of the time they’re a grind; which is somewhat comforting when you’re new, but when it boils down to it many of them are quests where there’s an additional layer between the simple “Fetch” and “Kill” quests (of other MMOs) which serve no real purpose. I don’t remember the last time I read the dialogue for a renown heart. Perhaps I should for a while…

I definitely think that dynamic events are the true core of the game’s PvE/Leveling-Experience, which is sad because they’re so often neglected, but as I said earlier, it’s understandable that they’re neglected because of how poor their reward scaling is compared to the rest of the game.

First off, thanks for taking the time to respond to this issue…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content.

Upon personal experience I would say that it can still function that way, but when I think lets do some DE’s, I think where do I go, then I think ‘hearts’, after which I immediately think, I’ve done them all, so I’m back at ‘where do I go’… ‘well anywhere really’, well sure but:

They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area.

Just going somewhere, without any hearts means that most of the stuff is just lost on you. I have actually tried talking to some NPC’s around hearts to try and figure out what was going on around there, to basically fail at it because their dialoge is now set to ‘tnx for helping me, here take this’ … sure that is fine ’n all, but what did I help you with exactly, and why? … aka. the Hearts helped understand the area, but after not having been to an area for 1y or more, how will I figure out what exactly was going on there …

There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

Seeing I just mentioned the issues I experience with the hearts ‘completed’, let me try and clearify once more that I do not want the hearts to reset because I want to do hearts! I want the hearts to reset so that I have an incentive to go out and run into DE’s again, that I can get a bit of a backstory to why I’m there doing something… aka. I want them to reset in order to fulfil the function they were intended to fulfil.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals.

I think the DryTop approach is a risky one, mainly for what others have already pointed out. And while the events in DryTop currently fit the story, and could be reverted to keep doing so once the LS moves on (aka. the zone becomes a place where the Zepherites start to rebuild their fleet, and they would want to collect as many of Glint’s remains as possible). The events in other maps do not always lend themselves for such a structure, though as some-one mentioned ‘Hintari Hinterlands’ I could see something like DryTop work there. But what about all those maps that do not have these all encompassing stories?
- Also, for each DryTop equivalent in the game, people are needed to complete them, for each you add, the population is spread and it becomes harder to complete.

This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Well, I agree with Events being the bulk of the repeatable open world content, the thing is, I currently find it hard to just ‘walk out’, and when i do it’s very hard to find out what exactly is going on, meaning i get the feeling of just pressing 1 to down red things in order to get something completed… Instead of finding myself involved in this story that I picked up from things happening around a heart, which then led me to this DE, which consequently now makes sense, I’m no somewhat immersed fighting these bad-guys because X, Y or B, when it’s completed i feel satisfied because i foiled the evil plot.

And while i see a lot of players here hammer on ‘reward reward reward’; honestly, i couldn’t give a kittens tail for rewards, my reward is that i logged in to have some fun, i managed to find some interesting story (heart, or DE near one) that led me along this path of DE’s to some plot, and finishing them all was something worth fighting for. And, and this was a nice analogy, the heart gave me something to do while i waited for the DE to start, sure it wasn’t engaging or hard (though i am rather emphatically motivated, so picking apples to help somebody out, is all fine by me), but at least it was better than checking out the ceiling, or twiddling thumbs…

My real ‘dream’ for any game (or GW2), is for it to have seasons that each last 1,5months, for a total of 2 cycles in 1 RL year; Each season would come with it’s own (hearts and) DE’s and change the scenery. Sure foes may not always change entirely per season, but each season would give rise to new events, or change existing ones. Along side this over-arcing DE’s would tell more intricate stories, and many of these over arcing DE’s would come within a Tiered system, so that player actions or non-actions would change which DE’s would spawn.

But seeing that seasons would mean building 3 more times the amount of content that GW2 has now, not to mention that it needs adjustment of most of the textures and plants, not to mention that (well this sort of depends on the technology behind the game engine) the amount of ‘resources’ available on each map are likely not to be enough, meaning you would more then likely need to manually set an entirely different map to be loaded for each season. Yeah, not likely ..

The over-arcing tiered system to events might see it’s light someday, though that too relies heavily on how events are ‘set’ in the world currently, at least how i envision them. And the maps/tech may not be suitable to have different events in the same location, where only one is active based upon the Tier the over-arcing story is set to.

Anyways, I digress… I hope it’s more clear as to why i want hearts to reset, to fulfil their function, which is currently (after completion of them) lacking in the game. I would go with other sollutions, sure! but this seemed like an easy and straight forward fix and a manageable goal for ANet along side all their other plans…

Shiren.9532:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

I really dislike the design of Dry Top’s event system and I really hope ArenaNet doesn’t see that as the new bar for Open World maps going forward.

To me, the Open World (or zones) is about exploration, immersion, world story and smallscale content. If I run into other players and we share a similar goal for a short while, awesome – that’s why I play MMOs. Every time I run through a map I’ve played before I might come across an event I didn’t see, the world changes based on the events I complete and generally Tyria feels literally dynamic.

Dry Top kills one of the most unique and greatest strengths of Guild Wars 2’s open world – it is not dynamic. Dry Top works on a time table, it was really saddening for me when I discovered that all the events on Dry Top occur like clockwork. Golem event spawns in 5 minutes, devourer event spawns in10 minutes, crystal event spawns in 15 minutes etc. I hate that. It seems necessary to have scheduled events for these organised maps to occur, but it really loses site of what I personally think the Open World is about.

The Open World should be about slower paced exploration, not madly waypointing around to suit the timetable of the new events as the commander reads out the schedule over map chat. Talking to that NPC and triggering an escort which then establishes a camp and then triggers another event regardless of what’s going on on elsewhere on the map. Picking up a runestone in a cave and attracting a powerful monster, coming across a mysterious largos that needs my help – none of this happens because I was told by a commander who is looking at his/her timetable, it happens because I spoke to that NPC who asked me for help, because I went off the beaten path and swam into that obscure location, because I saw that cave opening and thought “What’s in there?” and discovered a little part of Tyria I hadn’t seen before. It’s really hard to design events that meaningfully interact with the world when they have to occur on a time table with a strict beginning and end.

The Map Level rewards are also poorly implemented imo. The timer placed on them creates pressure to do as many events as fast as possible or you get worse rewards. The incentive to do so is very weak because the majority of the time players will only want a T6 merchant once or twice – you save up for it and buy all at once, the rest of the time it doesn’t matter if you get T6 (so why work hard to support others other than altruism?). Personally I don’t think making a T6 map get a “T6 Chest” at the end is a good solution either (that feels like punishing players for being on the wrong map), I don’t like this system period.

Maybe if there was no timer, maybe if each map progressed as players engaged with the world anyway, the difference between an organised map and a casual one was the speed at which they reach T6. That preserves the Open World’s design of being exploration based and it also removes the need to schedule the “Dynamic” Events around the world. Honestly I feel like Open World design should reward players for exploration and interaction with the world, not taxiing into a map with a commander using a spread sheet.

I think there is room in GW2’s design for large scale and organised Open World events but I think that should be primarily reserved for content like Tequatl – world bosses that occur on longish spawn timers. I think designs like Dry Top sacrifice so much of what makes the Open World engaging and fun and it fails to reward players for exploring the world. I think we will also see longetivity issues, even with megaservers. I’ve already seen very few T6 maps during Oceanic hours, when the content becomes older, players acquire their rewards and move onto the next farm, this map will be far less sustainable than Cursed Shore.

PS: Geodes really need to go into the account wallet, just like Amber needs to be deposited as a crafting material along with Foxfire Clusters.

100% agree with you. I find myself playing in Dry Top just because it is more rewarding than many of the other zones – but I am having less fun in the process.

Have A Heart!

Reset hearts periodically? No.

Make hearts replayable? Yes.

I actually enjoy some of the activities needed for some of the renown hearts, and regret when I can’t do them anymore because they become locked out when the heart is completed.

Dynamic events don’t make these activities available. That’s a separate system and, in my opinion, irrelevant to what hearts themselves bring to the gameplay experience.

Allowing players to replay hearts would allow them to choose whatever heart-related content they want whenever they want, and choice is a good thing.

I had this little idea since Anet implemented the PvP reward tracks, add the same mechanic for PvE but with repeatable hearts here and there with PvE Reward tracks. Suppose one week we have some repeatable hearts in Shiverpeak Mts. and within the track offer skins, mats or gold of said region. (it could need also to complete certain dynamic events here and there too and not necessarily have those hearts and DE limited to a single region/map).

Just do it like Call of Duty and it’s prestige…just tweak it a bit and allow players to reset renown hearts in an area that’s completed already.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

I am glad you decided to discuss this with us, because I always felt like gw2’s pve had “something” missing.
Since I like this game very much it kinda frustrates me a bit that I cannot fully enjoy it because it’s pve doesn’t appeal me (and I have been a huge pve cruncher in the past in other mmorpgs), so the first question was addressed to me “why I don’t like this pve?”. The answer was always “it’s not repeatable”, even dungeons are like a movie, once you have seen them the first time you already know everything and everything will always go in the same way.
So, imho, the first key to transform “linear/non repeatable” content into something constantly exciting and entertaining is “randomness”: the more random factors are added, the better.

Ok, after reading Majik’s post i think perhaps i should specify more what i would want from hearts:

1. I would like the initial dialog to be available to reread it, so that i can use it to regain direction in the area that i am in. (aka. what’s going on here; because that functionality is lost after completion)

2. I would like to redo the activity that the heart provided, mostly to have something to do while i wait for a DE to spawn or pass by.

What i do not need specifically:
3. A visual indicator of which DE i repeated
Explanation to why i thought a visual indicator would be preferred
- I thought it would make sense to empty the heart periodically so that it would become clear that they can be repeated.
- I also thought that by having them periodically reset, it would ‘drive’ people around the world, as they could only do the heart one time during the period, meaning that you would have to move around the world to complete more. Which would obviously mean that more maps get some attention during that time period.

4. A complicated system to replace what is simple and already there…

5. Special rewards, how ever cool, although i know some of the hearts already give nice rewards that most people have not gotten when they did the heart and by now have simply forgotten that they exist. Sure it be cool if this system could be expanded by draping some more expensive karma rewards in them, but like i mentioned earlier, i mostly want the hearts ‘back’ for their initial purpose.

I love the OP’s idea with the hearts, because world completion is already recognized with a green outline. I love the idea of completing hearts again as dailies and monthlies. And if all the hearers are completed again within a month, then there should be a huge reward and achievement!

One thing I want to add: there should be greater rewards for completing events. Gold, T6 mats, precursor chance, cool weapons skins, maybe add a reputation aspect like other MMOs.

I would hate to see an element like the Dry Top meta be expanded to other maps. When Dry Top is working well it is a lot of fun, but it is SO hard to find a map where it is working well, and too often it is just frustrating when the map you’re on is incapable of reaching T6 no matter how hard you try. The megaserver system is just not good at matching like-minded players onto the maps.

It’s also too time-intensive. You can’t just log into Dry Top and play for ten to fifteen minutes and get a decent return on that like with World Bosses, you either have to commit to most of the hour, if not a couple hours, or nothing.

Btw, check out my thread “Drytop Dead?” for more feedback as to why I feel Dry Top is not currently working well.

The devs should further incentivize the current dynamic event system in sub-max level zones and tap into the already robust core leveling experience that the game offers.

I think that a good way to get people back out into the leveling zones experiencing dynamic events is to add region specific “Geode” type currency in addition to karma to purchase region specific cosmetic gear including armor and weapons.

Development time would be limited to creating said armor/weapons rather than going back and adding in events and other larger features and it would revitalize large amounts of content.

The events are already in place and provide repeatable content; In fact, if I leveled a new character right now, I am confident that I would see many events that I have never before seen. The problem is, I have no incentive to seek them out on their own because the karma rewards aren’t very good, and there are far better ways of obtaining gold.

I actually created a thread on the subject of a karma dominated reward structure, and I will provide a link below. Since I know a dev is looking for thoughts in this thread, I would really like to draw folk’s attention to the lack of end-game relevant karma rewards in the game.

Karma rewards should be more dominant:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Karma-should-be-more-dominant-as-a-currency/first#post4339681

lol..terrible idea…

I don’t want to do hearts because rewards are… for the lack of better word insulting. So you try to force me into it? Worst idea ever.

Broseph.9283:

Karma rewards should be more dominant:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Karma-should-be-more-dominant-as-a-currency/first#post4339681

No. They should not be.

Karma is something many long-time players have in tremendous bulk, specifically because there is nothing to spend it on. I think at some point I had upwards of seven figures until I decided to start buying Lost Orrian Jewelry Boxes.

If you moved to Karma-based rewards? There would have to be either a reset of Karma or an astronomical amount set as the goals to prevent older players from just going “huh, 5000 Karma for this new shiny thing? Sure, I’ll get fifty . . .”.

Unfortunately, the choice of once-more an item-based currency not unlike GW1’s collectors? REALLY has the risk of junking up inventory. Unless, of course, there was a “regional currency” like Geodes for Dry Top, Seed Pods for Maguuma, Dwarven Artifacts for Shiverpeaks, Old Shining Blade Insignia for Kryta, and Tarnished Rin Relics for Ascalon. You get the picture.

Second thing? Try to structure it so a full stack is more the yardstick for “high tier rewards” so you don’t need to hoard like 6 full stacks to get the high-level rewards. Just, say, two at most. So events might give you 1-2 each, but you can turn those in for . . . say, regional-based skins like the Shiverpeak Hatchet, or Verdant Dagger . . . Glyphic Longblade . . .

Final point. It is also a good place to introduce something interesting and new for players to go after. Might I suggest the lorebook idea which was scrapped early on? Trading these objects to get some information from locals . . . or to unlock things to go investigate for lore? I could come up with a framework in 24 hours which could possibly be engaging for players interested in getting their hands into the world of Tyria rather than just running through it looking for the next champion bag.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

i have been toying with an idea for a year now about making hearts have large scale impacts on the map based on the last player who did them, lets take a small example im making up here on the spot, lets take the first heart in queensdale, the cow pen, lets say a player goes to compelte it they have 3 basic paths they can take, feed cows, kill bandits, kill wurms, each action you take based on one of these 3 paths would change how the world around that spot is affected, ignoring the cows will decrease the cow population and remove grain sacks that players use for speed, they would also increase the price of cow related items worldwide, but if a player does feed the cows and does help protect cows from the bandit and giant wurm event then cow population will increase and have reverse effects, killing wurms would also decrease wurm population and same with bandits, making such events less common.

this could make a dynamic world that is moved by individuals

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anthony, can you tell me why karma seems much less important now that it has been at release?

We have added a few karma sinks along the way but typically new content comes with a new currency, eg. candy corn or geodes. I haven’t personally implemented all of this content or currency but if I had to guess I would say that this pattern exists because we actually want to give you specific rewards for specific content.

With all due respect, karma was implied to be another useful currency alongside gold during the pre-release days. Perhaps I misinterpreted the messages back then, but today, I find the lack of more outlets to spend karma to be very disappointing. I always imagined that if I couldn’t afford something in gold, I could have always supplemented it with karma—hence why karma is reward from events. However, now that it has been effectively two years, I can see the distinction that item costs are purely in karma, which is fine to a degree.

As for karma’s role as a currency, I’m incredibly concerned that its importance is constantly diminishing with each new currency added. Perhaps another use for karma could be considered? Currently, new maps and content lead to a new currency. Item prices requiring the currency (in the case for Dry Top, geodes) can vary based on an external variable—such as favor of the Zephyrites. What if karma could act as that specific external variable?

Example: Player John Jingleheimer wants to purchase 15 zephyrite lockpicks in a tier 4 Dry Top map, but he doesn’t have the geodes for it and doesn’t want to spend the time running events. He does have a lot of karma though, so he can pay (example number) 50,000 karma to gain access to t6 prices and purchase the 15 lockpicks.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Broseph.9283:

Karma rewards should be more dominant:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Karma-should-be-more-dominant-as-a-currency/first#post4339681

No. They should not be.

Karma is something many long-time players have in tremendous bulk, specifically because there is nothing to spend it on. I think at some point I had upwards of seven figures until I decided to start buying Lost Orrian Jewelry Boxes.

If you moved to Karma-based rewards? There would have to be either a reset of Karma or an astronomical amount set as the goals to prevent older players from just going “huh, 5000 Karma for this new shiny thing? Sure, I’ll get fifty . . .”.

What if we had very high end armor sets cost several hundred thousand karma each?

What if we could purchase transmutation shards with karma?

Im just brainstorming here; Karma was implied to be a useful currency (everything in the game rewards it) and the reason you have so much karma is because it has no relevant purchasing power. I think significant effort should be put into rediscovering its use. If you had to make choices on which awesome items to buy with your karma, you would be more careful in how you spend it and would likely not be stockpiling it.

Also, you have a point about the different currencies getting out of hand…perhaps we could borrow from the dungeon currency system? For example, if a person wanted a certain item, they could farm the respective zone or dungeon (or both!).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anthony, can you tell me why karma seems much less important now that it has been at release?

We have added a few karma sinks along the way but typically new content comes with a new currency, eg. candy corn or geodes. I haven’t personally implemented all of this content or currency but if I had to guess I would say that this pattern exists because we actually want to give you specific rewards for specific content.

Have you guys considered allowing old temporary content items to be purchased with a combination of karma and laurels sometime in the future? I personally feel the buying of equipment types (practically skins) through WvW with Badges of Honor and Silver/Gold is a nice touch, and would love to see something similar unfold in PvE using a combination of Karma and Laurels.

What i really hate about Dry Top is the timer system. Everything is always a race in GW2 as it is. I like how EotM is a 3 hour match, and wish some events would last that long.

RyuDragnier.9476:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anthony, can you tell me why karma seems much less important now that it has been at release?

We have added a few karma sinks along the way but typically new content comes with a new currency, eg. candy corn or geodes. I haven’t personally implemented all of this content or currency but if I had to guess I would say that this pattern exists because we actually want to give you specific rewards for specific content.

Have you guys considered allowing old temporary content items to be purchased with a combination of karma and laurels sometime in the future? I personally feel the buying of equipment types (practically skins) through WvW with Badges of Honor and Silver/Gold is a nice touch, and would love to see something similar unfold in PvE using a combination of Karma and Laurels.

What if we used Karma, Laurels, and a rare drop item (mysterious fossil, ect.) from specific zones?

I realize it’d probably peeve a good chunk of the player base off, but karma is a really attractive idea to me and I’d accept a karma reset if it meant more generally useful items could be put on the vendors. Right now it’s just some leveling skins and doodads, aside of the temple armor.

Just personal opinion; doubt it’s useful.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

I think Dry Top is a step in the right direction, having a way for all the events in the zone to be relevant and contribute to all the various unique rewards given by the zone vendors however I felt it missed out on a lot of good things previous living world events had done.

In Escape from LA, the mega-event had a ton of flaws but it was still fun once you got a zone going because getting a good score not required you to spread out but relied on good players to tackle the hard events. The Miasma events (especially the molton one) usually required a solid 5 man team to tackle each of them (partially because they scaled up so bad) and some escorts were nail-biters. At the same time the majority of the map was relatively easy meaning you can spread your inexperienced playerbase out and still make them feel appreciated.

Really other then the Moa bird and the north mines, there really aren’t that many really difficult events even with bonus conditions…. and the former can usually be completed if there’s one guy smart enough to do the mechanic. So other then the difficultly of organization there isn’t a lot of challenge in Dry Top and I kinda expected more from a level 80 zone.

I’m a leader in TTS and while it was interest early on for Dry Top, it’s kinda died out which makes me sad because we’re kinda the target audience for this kinda stuff.

Broseph.9283:

RyuDragnier.9476:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anthony, can you tell me why karma seems much less important now that it has been at release?

We have added a few karma sinks along the way but typically new content comes with a new currency, eg. candy corn or geodes. I haven’t personally implemented all of this content or currency but if I had to guess I would say that this pattern exists because we actually want to give you specific rewards for specific content.

Have you guys considered allowing old temporary content items to be purchased with a combination of karma and laurels sometime in the future? I personally feel the buying of equipment types (practically skins) through WvW with Badges of Honor and Silver/Gold is a nice touch, and would love to see something similar unfold in PvE using a combination of Karma and Laurels.

What if we used Karma, Laurels, and a rare drop item (mysterious fossil, ect.) from specific zones?

Not bad. Or allow karma to otherwise ‘substitute’ in a pinch, at extravagant exchange rates, for certain kinds of our multitudinous currencies. You’d be left with a choice – do the specific content to get the currency efficiently, or substitute a limited supply of longer-term effort.

Done right, it would feel good. Every once in a while you’d look at your karma balance and realize that in this episode of the living story you’d have a million karma banked up and could afford enough of ‘x’ to craft the special backpack with little effort.

Yes, there’d be an initial flush of ‘freebies’, but the karma bank balance’d dry up if you made enough pricey yet enticing rewards.

I would like to see the sandstorm element of Dry Top applied to other maps as weather events (lightning storms, blizzards, etc). This could be applied to one or two random zones per hour/day/whatever. During this time, there could be region-specific buried chests/geodes/etc that would have a chance to drop from the existing events in that zone. I think that the lack of true region or zone skins is hurting replayability of existing zones, and a mechanic and rewards like that could help revitalize them.

No, thanks. Please do NOT reset the Hearts every month. :/ It would drive my completionist mind completely crazy.

Arghore.8340:

tl;dr, Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

---

The combination of Hearts and Dynamic events was one of the things I looked most forward to when GW2 was announced, to me it was one of the big selling points and a step away from the traditional ‘pick-up quests -> do quests -> turn in -> rince -> repeat’.

We all (well most of us at least) know that the Hearts were added due to people not entirely comprehending the DE’s. We have been ‘conditioned’ so much by the traditional way of questing that ‘things just happening’ was such a turn in our gaming experience that it was hard to grasp. The thing with ‘conditioning’ is, that it is very hard to just turn it around, sure you may be able to use hearts to steer every character to level up enough that they make it to level 80. But what about after that…

This is something that I noticed about my own behaviour, I somehow still do not ‘go out’ to do DE’s … for some reason they do not offer some sort of ‘hey go here’ kind of thing, like quests with !-NPCs used to do. And seeing I’ve come to understand that if I myself think or do something, that it is not unlikely that there are others with the same thought or behaviour…

This lead to think about what could entice me to actually ‘DO’ go out into the world, and what I liked when i first started. Well these were the hearts, as I ventured into the game I moved towards hearts, and while doing so I ran into events. After a couple of hearts (and knowing somewhat how they worked) I tended to also hang around the hearts after completion just to see if something would start off of it. This made the ‘living world’ feel rather easy to pick up on, and it felt rather natural…

Yet, after I completed all the hearts, hmm well, it just felt that there was little incentive to go back out and hunt DE’s. It may be weird, but that is how conditioning works, it cultivates a certain behaviour that is very hard to break, you may be able to coach into some sort of other behaviour, but if you remove the incentive trigger, it’s very likely you lapse back into your previous behaviour. The hearts basically functioned like the well known ‘quest hubs’ we know from more traditional games, and once they were done, it just felt like ‘I was done’…

So this made me realise that in order to revitalize the game, the trigger for going out should be reset. Which means: Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

what do you think? do you miss incentive to just go out into the world to do events? do you think this could solve part of it? any other thoughts?

This is possibly the worst idea I’ve ever read. Sorry but it’s just bad. People aren’t going to come back and do the worst content in the entire game (hearts) for a silver or two every month. As it is you ONLY do hearts for world completion.

As it is I wish hearts had never been added. They’re MIND NUMBINGLY BORING. God I hate doing them for map/world completion as it is.

nexxe.7081:

What i really hate about Dry Top is the timer system. Everything is always a race in GW2 as it is. I like how EotM is a 3 hour match, and wish some events would last that long.

I don’t think it’s much of a race in GW2 to rush through things. But you have to realize some timers are there because otherwise . . .

Look, just to put it into perspective: before the World Bosses had timers? It wasn’t a matter of if you could beat it but when. Claw of Jormag once took five players an hour to do, at 4am CST – I was there. The timer is there so there is actually a chance of the event failing rather than keeping the “loot pinata” which was there for things like Shatterer.

That’s why there’s timers on things, and some of them are a little tight sometimes so there can be a sense “we need help, someone get friends over here to help out” rather than “just autoattack for another twenty minutes and get your guaranteed rares”.

I don’t feel time-pressured within Guild Wars 2. I feel like if I miss something, I can just wait for it to come around again on the cycle. Or “no big deal, it’ll be there tomorrow”.

(One thing I disliked about the Marionette fights, and some of the other LS1 content – it was temporary and each loss meant one less time I could have gotten one of the time limited achievements I couldn’t get before. I’m somewhat glad we have changed that.)

Devildoc.6721:

Arghore.8340:

tl;dr, Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

---

The combination of Hearts and Dynamic events was one of the things I looked most forward to when GW2 was announced, to me it was one of the big selling points and a step away from the traditional ‘pick-up quests -> do quests -> turn in -> rince -> repeat’.

We all (well most of us at least) know that the Hearts were added due to people not entirely comprehending the DE’s. We have been ‘conditioned’ so much by the traditional way of questing that ‘things just happening’ was such a turn in our gaming experience that it was hard to grasp. The thing with ‘conditioning’ is, that it is very hard to just turn it around, sure you may be able to use hearts to steer every character to level up enough that they make it to level 80. But what about after that…

This is something that I noticed about my own behaviour, I somehow still do not ‘go out’ to do DE’s … for some reason they do not offer some sort of ‘hey go here’ kind of thing, like quests with !-NPCs used to do. And seeing I’ve come to understand that if I myself think or do something, that it is not unlikely that there are others with the same thought or behaviour…

This lead to think about what could entice me to actually ‘DO’ go out into the world, and what I liked when i first started. Well these were the hearts, as I ventured into the game I moved towards hearts, and while doing so I ran into events. After a couple of hearts (and knowing somewhat how they worked) I tended to also hang around the hearts after completion just to see if something would start off of it. This made the ‘living world’ feel rather easy to pick up on, and it felt rather natural…

Yet, after I completed all the hearts, hmm well, it just felt that there was little incentive to go back out and hunt DE’s. It may be weird, but that is how conditioning works, it cultivates a certain behaviour that is very hard to break, you may be able to coach into some sort of other behaviour, but if you remove the incentive trigger, it’s very likely you lapse back into your previous behaviour. The hearts basically functioned like the well known ‘quest hubs’ we know from more traditional games, and once they were done, it just felt like ‘I was done’…

So this made me realise that in order to revitalize the game, the trigger for going out should be reset. Which means: Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

what do you think? do you miss incentive to just go out into the world to do events? do you think this could solve part of it? any other thoughts?

This is possibly the worst idea I’ve ever read. Sorry but it’s just bad. People aren’t going to come back and do the worst content in the entire game (hearts) for a silver or two every month. As it is you ONLY do hearts for world completion.

As it is I wish hearts had never been added. They’re MIND NUMBINGLY BORING. God I hate doing them for map/world completion as it is.

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Karma is something many long-time players have in tremendous bulk, specifically because there is nothing to spend it on. I think at some point I had upwards of seven figures until I decided to start buying Lost Orrian Jewelry Boxes.

If you moved to Karma-based rewards? There would have to be either a reset of Karma or an astronomical amount set as the goals to prevent older players from just going “huh, 5000 Karma for this new shiny thing? Sure, I’ll get fifty . . .”.

It is possible to get around this but yeah it would be a problem. I am down to about 3m karma at this point (having spent quite a bit on Orrian Jewelry Boxes). I know others have significantly more.

Ashen.2907:

It is possible to get around this but yeah it would be a problem. I am down to about 3m karma at this point (having spent quite a bit on Orrian Jewelry Boxes). I know others have significantly more.

I wasn’t joking. At one point I had seven figures of Karma until I went “this is incredibly stupid to hoard” and visited Meddler’s Summit. “Come on, no Risen Priests, no Risen Priests….”

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

+1 on Hard/Heroic Mode.

Reset Hearts – if you choose to – make all mobs on each map level 80-84, with more vets and elites – better loot.

I’m going to make this really plain and simple and clear for all the ex-WoW zombies out there.

The “dead world” aspect only applies to mid level zones. It’s a side effect of having a level based system and zones with discrete level ranges. It happens in every MMO, and the same braindead zombies keep asking for more level cap increases, which doesn’t EXPAND content it replaces it, as now the old high level zones that people ran around in become ghost towns like the other mid level zones.

There are a lot of people running around in Orr, Southsun, Dry Top, and Frostgorge, at all times, doing events, farming mats, killing champions. Because that’s going to give level appropriate mats and rewards.

if you raise the level cap to 100, all those zones will be dead.

Making hearts repeatable won’t change that fundamental rule, that mid level zones are dead.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Do it!
If you made every map have distinct skins/bonuses/etc which are earned in the same way as you do stuff in Dry Top, that’d be fantastic.

As a lazy suggestion, we could start with Kessex Hills; build a new tower (though a substantially less impressive and plot relevant one), and make that zone the “toxic spore” zone. We’ve already got a ton of toxic spore rewards, patterns, and Tower of Nightmare skins.

If you want to copy Dry Top perfectly, have new Kessex Hills have a ‘calm before the storm’ in which you build up fortifications and do the zone’s regular stuff in preparation for ‘germination’, when the new tower starts shooting out spores across the zone.

Devildoc.6721:

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

The steps to complete a heart aren’t much different or less interesting than the escort events, or events where you stand in a red circle, etc. If the rewards are equivalent then how is it such an awful idea to expand the things that you can do in a zone after completion?

The Great Al.2546:

Devildoc.6721:

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

The steps to complete a heart aren’t much different or less interesting than the escort events, or events where you stand in a red circle, etc. If the rewards are equivalent then how is it such an awful idea to expand the things that you can do in a zone after completion?

I would really recommend shifting the focus from the hearts in the zones to the dynamic events. There are MANY more dynamic events in each zone than hearts, and this content wouldnt mess with the completionists.

I think adding many more DEs which happen around Renown Heart areas, and cover overlapping duties for those activities would be a good start. So people who did the Heart activities could do them again for rewards they could use, and others could do the event and still progress the Heart.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

the DE system and WvW are by far the best aspects of GW2, I say do it. They capture this essence of working together with all the players around you to accomplish a goal, you might not even know the ally next to you but you’re working together in “jolly cooperation”

In fact hearts take away from this feel as people are competing over things to click on to advance their heart progress, they get in arguments, call each other names, etc. It’s a bad system that frankly should be discontinued as soon as possible in the world. Don’t make any more, that’s for sure. Events lack that competition as you have no “personal progress” on the event and as long as you’re helping out, you’re going to get credit, it’s all cooperative, it’s all helping each other out, ressing that downed guy you don’t even know or killing the mob near him so he can rally, people throwing down healing fields and CC. DE’s and WvW do this very well, in fact they are the reason that I continue to play at all. It’s certainly not living story, but because no other game makes you feel like you’re playing WITH all the people around you so well. Everything still has nodes to fight over and kill stealing and quest objective stealing. People of your same faction on your server aren’t allies they’re an explicit oriface of people’s bodies who steal things from under you. GW2 everyone’s truly on the same side.

BCWardens.8679:

+1 on Hard/Heroic Mode.

Reset Hearts – if you choose to – make all mobs on each map level 80-84, with more vets and elites – better loot.

Hard mode would be great, resetting hearts no. By that point we don’t need another tutorial on where to find events, we could just do them.

The Great Al.2546:

Devildoc.6721:

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

The steps to complete a heart aren’t much different or less interesting than the escort events, or events where you stand in a red circle, etc. If the rewards are equivalent then how is it such an awful idea to expand the things that you can do in a zone after completion?

What makes events is the fact that everyone in the area is doing them TOGETHER. Hearts everyone is doing their own personal progress, fighting over water buckets and worm holes and all other crap. Keep the competition to PVP, don’t give us more reasons to hate our neighbors, if you want to squabble over quest objectives with the guy next to you there are dozens of other games that do that.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Here’s my thought

Dry Top Event Structure
PRO

• High replayability due to rewards(geodes, dust)
• Zerg splitter, so it doesn’t feel like just a glob of people going from event to event
• Each event has some nice mechanics
• The Flow of the map is really great.

CON

• Lacking story/depth surrounding the events, compared to the Events in other zones. There’s no followups or lead to the events, since everything is on a timer
• Everything is on a timer, so you don ’t get the feeling of wandering around and stuff will happen. In Dry Top you know exactly when something will happen.

As far as the story/depth is concerned, the added 3 priory members that are travelling the map as we are do cover a pretty big part of this, so I can look over it. But there’s no event chaining, following an NPC starting an event, helping him out, he goes away triggering something else.

timmyf.1490:

Why is Dry Top better for this? Well, you need Geodes for lots of recipes and skins. So you have to play those events.

If you went back into old zones, added a bunch more dynamic events, added map-specific progression, and gave map-specific rewards, I bet you’d see a lot more players in those zones as well.

The trick is that the rewards need to be 1) exclusive or 2) comparable in gold value to other forms of content. And if #2 is economy-breaking, you NEED #1.

Just my two cents.

You bring up a good point, if every map (or region) had there own geode like currency, and that with it we could trade them in for stuff even level 80 could use. It would make going back to old zone and doing events even more fun.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

I personally don’t see the big difference between hearts and events. I’m sure to devs they are completely different, but to me they are simply “complete this objective”. In that vein, if the current idea is to have events vs hearts ala Drytop, why not replace all hearts in the world with events. Then we would have repeatable content in the whole world.

Edgar brings up the idea of the “zerg splitter,” which is a fair concept, and Dry Top does that, but in a very rigid and difficult to coordinate manner. You either need everyone to know the various activities, or you need commanders running everything. I think Teq and the Marionette provide a better model for zerg splitting.

1. Start with one zerg. Have a single rally point on the map, well advertised and visible from anywhere on the map. Have some steady pre event here that will really attract players for like 2-5 minutes.

2. Split the zerg. Have two to four events that start within walking distance of that event, in opposite directions. maybe some of these are escorts, or they are relatively short in duration, but the idea would be to attract players to them, without being easy to “tag them all” before they finish.

3. Split them further. Have more events that are even further apart than the last, within walking distance of the previous event in that direction, but not of the other events.

4. Bring it all back together. bring it back to 1-2 events as a grand finale, along with free teleports from wherever each event ends to where the final events meet up if they are not within walking distance. Perhaps the teleports could help organize the split zergs, like if you eventually split the initial zerg into six packs, and then have two different finale targets, then people that go after events 1-3 can teleport to finale 1 and those that go to 4-6 get teleported to finale 2.

5. Make sure that all these events are visible from anywhere on the map, and provide a running tally of how many players are actively participating in each on the map or the event tracker, so that everyone knows how well each event is doing, which might be going badly, and which ones need more players or might be a bit overloaded.

With those elements, I think you could make for a really fun and simply zerg splitting meta that is unlikely to fail just because there aren’t enough commanders around.