Guild Wars 2

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

And don’t make the mistake to decrease the reward when more players are there… GW2’s design philosophy is: you shouldn’t be afraid of seeing other players. It’s a social game after all.

I have some ideas in mind to prevent that from happen. Basically, if you are the first one to start the event, you should get the same amount of the local currency, no matter if you do the event alone or if 100 players are helping you. But if you join into a event that is already populated, you wont get as much reward as if you would be alone.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

GreenAlien.5623:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

GreenAlien.5623:

No, that is just annoying if you have to buy the lockpick first. Why make it so complicated with farming events for tokens and then searching for chests when you can just make the events rewarding?

Because exploration needs to be rewarded in a game with a world that screams “explore me!!” to you. Why should people who explore a zone for an hour get so much worse rewards than people who run around with a champion train for an hour?

But you have to farm tokens first. Best way to do it in maps with champ trains will be to run around with the champ train, which defeats the purpose.

I haven’t seen that many champtrains on maps with dungeons lately. I might be wrong though. Anyway, events scale so they are solo about equally long as in a zerg. You get the token for event-completion, just like the geodes… so a zerg won’t help much.

And don’t make the mistake to decrease the reward when more players are there… GW2’s design philosophy is: you shouldn’t be afraid of seeing other players. It’s a social game after all.

A zerg will earn you a champion loot box and tokens, so it is still more “rewarding” for people who follow the zerg. You dont necessarily get more tokens, but more other loot..
You dont have to decrease the reward for more players, but if you want roaming to be as rewarding, you need to at least equalize it.

GreenAlien.5623:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

GreenAlien.5623:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

GreenAlien.5623:

No, that is just annoying if you have to buy the lockpick first. Why make it so complicated with farming events for tokens and then searching for chests when you can just make the events rewarding?

Because exploration needs to be rewarded in a game with a world that screams “explore me!!” to you. Why should people who explore a zone for an hour get so much worse rewards than people who run around with a champion train for an hour?

But you have to farm tokens first. Best way to do it in maps with champ trains will be to run around with the champ train, which defeats the purpose.

I haven’t seen that many champtrains on maps with dungeons lately. I might be wrong though. Anyway, events scale so they are solo about equally long as in a zerg. You get the token for event-completion, just like the geodes… so a zerg won’t help much.

And don’t make the mistake to decrease the reward when more players are there… GW2’s design philosophy is: you shouldn’t be afraid of seeing other players. It’s a social game after all.

A zerg will earn you a champion lot box and tokens, so it is still more “rewarding” for people who follow the zerg. You dont necessarily get more tokens, but more other loot..
You dont have to decrease the reward for more players, but if you want roaming to be as rewarding, you need to at least equalize it.

Simple fix: Champions wont spawn on upscaled events.

Broseph.9283:

5) You could even make it regional. “Complete Krytan events or hearts to fill out this reward track and earn Krytan themed rewards.”

Again, I am looking for simple ways to spice up old content. I personally love the PVP reward tracks and I wish that I could do something similar in PVE. I could be wrong, but I believe a system like this might make sense in the game world. It might even be possible to hold this feature until a class hits 80 in order to not overwhelm new players and cater specifically to the veterans.

This is a clever and elegant suggestion that I think could be smoothly integrated by being unlocked via map completion. Once you’ve completed a map, the minimap UI gets a progress bar and a little map completion star that you can click on to view the details of the reward track.

Heck, they already have regional reward tracks in the game! Migrate the logic to PvE but with renown/DE-completion-juice contributing towards progress instead of rank points, tie in some UI hooks and you’re done!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• Karma may be an underwhelming common event currency. Many people would like to see it applied towards a greater variety of personal reward goals such as crafting materials, more skins, etc. People seem favorable to region specific rewards, but at some point we have to reconcile the notion that it would probably further devaluate karma. I would also like to submit that karma has another issue which is that whenever you purchase something you are setting back your progress towards other purchases. Of course, that’s a fundamental aspect of currency and yet, it’s less intrinsically rewarding than gold because you can use gold to make more gold (gear upgrades, crafting, trading, etc). At the level 80 end especially, big karma sinks are largely cosmetic and will not help you earn more karma. Personally, I feel that effective reward systems regularly disperse rewards along the path to a longer term goal. (If you haven’t checked out PvP Reward Tracks, you should!)

Karma is a big part of the issue; generally when levelling, heart vendor rewards are competing against buying items from the trading post and crafting upgrades, and anything that could potentially become available down the line. Rewards like food aren’t particularly attractive to new players, because while they’d use it, that’s karma that could spend on something potentially cooler.

For level 80s, karma has three uses: cooking materials, getting your first exotics from the Orr temple vendors, and obsidian shards. Neither is particularly exciting – the temple vendors you really only need to see once, and the other two you buy in bulk so you never get that feeling of finally reaching a goal amount for karma. Players generally don’t have the opportunity to buy something worth a sizable amount of karma that serves as a goal – for the most part, that’s restricted to gold purchases (that fluctuate on the TP) or regional currency.

I wonder if karma might be more valuable if it could be lost, like how you lose a small amount of gold when you die and have to revive at a waypoint. Just spitballing here, but what would happen if players lost a small amount of karma if an event failed?

Alternatively, what if you could buy grab-bags, one-per-character or one-per-day items off karma vendors? Or spend karma to trigger a special event or dungeon mode? This might also allow players to buy karma items that buff their karma gain under specific or unusual playstyles, or for instance a karma killstreak buff.

Hearts:

I think they largely fail at directing players to events, because it’s rare for an event to be running while players are there, so players end up doing filler activities to complete the heart, then move on. This gives entirely the wrong impression about the game, that the hearts are the backbone of levelling and that most of the actions of the game are kill-ten-rat style quests but gussied up with not having to pick up the quest first. I think players should mostly be filling hearts through events.

Occasionally, an event pops half-way through, and players complete the heart during the event, but it seems strange that the additional help doesn’t seem to matter to the NPCs very much. It looks like people have brought up earning karma from repeating hearts; perhaps this could be done via a second ‘overhelp’ meter, which has diminishing returns (based on how full the meter is).

A related issue is when you’ve gone through an area and done most of what the heart vendor wanted, but to get full credit you have to hang back and wait for respawns so you can kill a few mobs. If the heart vendor wants you to deal with all the enemies in the cave, for instance, what should matter to the heart vendor is not how many enemies you killed, but how empty the cave is. (Maybe the contribution points you get can fluctuate based on external factors.) If the cave’s empty, maybe the heart vendor cares about something else as well, and directs players based on how pressing their needs are at the time.

It’s pretty easy to complete a heart before you manage to make it to the heart vendor to find out what the story of the area is. Most heart vendors, when they go into their ‘congratulations’ dialogue, don’t give you the option to ask ‘what was all that about?’ and get their explanation of what’s going on in the area that they give when the heart’s not complete.

I like to compare hearts to the achievements in Dry Top; they’re both goals trying to influence player behaviour, but unlike hearts, achievements can be awarded for completing a specific task. There are a few hearts that might benefit from being awarded for a single accomplishment, like the stealth training heart in north Blazeridge Steppes.

Many hearts act, essentially, as kill quests. These are kind of boring, but it always struck me as strange that they couldn’t be extended over half a zone, overlapping with other hearts. The framing of some hearts is that any action across most of the zone would suit the NPC, like killing centaurs in west Kessex Hills; honestly, though, there probably should be events tied to these hearts to make them more than just a generic kill quest. A better example are the hearts leading to the Font of Rhand in Diessa Plateau; you can ‘help’ around Bloodsaw Mill in a pretty generic way, but if there’s an Flame Legion attack or the Iron Legion’s gearing up for a reply, there’s more to do – but then they get out of range and suddenly you’re not helping Bloodsaw Mill any more. But the heart up here is about defeating Flame Legion! You just took care of their invasion!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

But in specific regard to this thread, your question asks the possibility: could we keep maps fresh by adding tons and tons of events? In my experience, a large complexity factor in event implementation is other events. Any time an event is placed near another, we have to at least consider how they will interact. There’s one interaction between two events, two between three, five between four, nine between five, and so on. Returns definitely diminish. Over time we’ve come up with some effective techniques and patterns to mitigate this, but the cost is greater than zero.

The Harathi Hinterlands chain to is epic. Is it possible to have chains like this which occur within a time period, then are dormant for a block of time while another large chain happens? In other words, to avoid the overlap of events/chains, have batches of them which never overlap.

My concern would be the idea of “x events always happens at 1pm,” every day. To this, I think the solution is to time the event cycle so it shifts forward by an hour (or half hour) every day, to the point where someone showing up every Tuesday at the same time would eventually get through all of the .. groups of chains… after a number of weeks equal to the number of chains.

The boss timer system seems to have the forced event chain start times in place.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for all your comments, everyone!

I’ve been checking in on this thread pretty regularly and I appreciate the thoughtful discussions. I wish I had time to reply to everything but it’s a busy day and the thread is growing larger so as a quick alternative I’ll throw out some potential takeaway points to summarize the discussion:

• The reward structure in Dry Top is desirable for many people. But Dry Top lacks some favorable elements from earlier open world maps such as chaining or random events. My thought here is that one does not exclude the other and in the future we could incorporate both the best of both designs.

• Some people would like to an option repeat hearts. Many people are opposed to being required to repeat hearts which is probably enough reason not to require it. In the future we ought to consider repeat rewards or even a prestige system for voluntarily replaying one-time content.

• Karma may be an underwhelming common event currency. Many people would like to see it applied towards a greater variety of personal reward goals such as crafting materials, more skins, etc. People seem favorable to region specific rewards, but at some point we have to reconcile the notion that it would probably further devaluate karma. I would also like to submit that karma has another issue which is that whenever you purchase something you are setting back your progress towards other purchases. Of course, that’s a fundamental aspect of currency and yet, it’s less intrinsically rewarding than gold because you can use gold to make more gold (gear upgrades, crafting, trading, etc). At the level 80 end especially, big karma sinks are largely cosmetic and will not help you earn more karma. Personally, I feel that effective reward systems regularly disperse rewards along the path to a longer term goal. (If you haven’t checked out PvP Reward Tracks, you should!)

Lastly this:

LunarNacht.8913:

@AnthonyOrdon.3926: How hard is it to create dynamic events? I thought to remember an article back at release that your systems allowed to create new events in a short time.

Good question! The answer: it depends. Largely on the complexity of the event and the experience level of the event designer. I can create a very simple event very quickly. Things such as interesting characters, voiced scenes, event criers, new mechanics, new items, finely tuned scaling, new bosses, new boss abilities, world impact, and chained events are examples of things that will give an event higher implementation cost. Some events feature none of those and some are all of the above. Complexity is also deceptively difficult to perceive. Clockwork Invasions, for example, appear to be many, many events but conceptually they were just one very large event, which is much less expensive. When I implemented those, I deliberately sacrificed depth to achieve breadth. In retrospect, a little more depth was definitely in order. But we were able to create what was more or less a brand new experience and we have those lessons to apply if we revisit the concept in the future (which I intend to do, at the right place and time).

But in specific regard to this thread, your question asks the possibility: could we keep maps fresh by adding tons and tons of events? In my experience, a large complexity factor in event implementation is other events. Any time an event is placed near another, we have to at least consider how they will interact. There’s one interaction between two events, two between three, five between four, nine between five, and so on. Returns definitely diminish. Over time we’ve come up with some effective techniques and patterns to mitigate this, but the cost is greater than zero.

Clearly I’m willing to ramble over this, so maybe someday we should have a thread on event complexity vs fun vs replayability. ;]

Thank you for this answer!
I love the different designs you used for the open world in the second half of season 1 and would like to see them all return in one way or another.

The basics of heart quests are already in the world for the Orr maps, but there are no hearts there.
Maybe add some there too?
O_o
Or would the farm train get too overpowered with accidentally completing hearts over and over again over time?

AngelDiscarnate.5489:

The basics of heart quests are already in the world for the Orr maps, but there are no hearts there.
Maybe add some there too?
O_o
Or would the farm train get too overpowered with accidentally completing hearts over and over again over time?

No hearts in Orr was a design decision, I remember reading, because it’s meant to focus on very quickly repeatable quests taking the place of them.

what Colin said about adding hearts to new zones:

Lewis: If Elona or Cantha are released, would we expect more vista’s, skill points and hearts or would they be more like Southsun or Bazaar?

Colin: There could be, but hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels, but we feel at higher levels we really can embrace the events system. I think you’ll see is a larger sense of innovation and growth in what dynamic events can do for a zone. That doesn’t mean vistas and skill points are out the window as it’s highly likely you’ll see those come back with new zones as well.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/colin-johanson-interview-looking-ahead-part-2

Reading all the discussion about ‘PvE reward-track’, I wanted to point out that PvE already has an Achievement Reward Track, just wanted to mention that so you are reminded of it…

Incidentally, I’d love to see some map completion rewards for the two new zones.

May be a good idea that, after one char got 100% map completion, he can speak with any heart-npc and tell him “hey, I would like to help you again”, this resetting that particular heart.

Turn all hearts into dynamic events and add dry top kind of meta-event/reward structure to all maps.

Regarding the rewards from completing events and giving people the incentive to
go back to low level zones to complete events:

I kinda like the way dungeons work, you do a dungeon path and are rewarded tokens
that you can use to buy weapons and gear unique to the dungeon you completed. Why can’t we implement something like this in the open world by turning every zone into a “dungeon” and reward tokens from completing events?
Let’s say you complete an event in Queensdale, when the event is finished you get 1-3
Queensdale Tokens as well as your normal reward. (zone tokens could have its own category in the Wallet) Every zone also have its own unique Merchant where you can choose between 1-2 unique weapon skins that can only be found there.

This would mean that every zone in the game has 1-2 unique skins that only can be obtainable by completing events in that zone. This is only an vague idea I had, so feel free to improve it.
Is this something that could actually work in the game?

EDIT: Missed that someone wrote something similar a few pages back

Zenty.3596:

Is this something that could actually work in the game?

EDIT: Missed that someone wrote something similar a few pages back

haha yeah we talked about it It absolutely can work, look at drytop. If you take away the tiers and the timed events there still is that core mechanic: you get geodes for every event and can purchase stuff for those geodes at local merchants.

I really like that idea, maybe future legendaries need specific crafting mats that can only be purchased in specific zones for the zone-currency.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Clearly I’m willing to ramble over this, so maybe someday we should have a thread on event complexity vs fun vs replayability. ;]

Please do!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• Some people would like to an option repeat hearts. Many people are opposed to being required to repeat hearts which is probably enough reason not to require it. In the future we ought to consider repeat rewards or even a prestige system for voluntarily replaying one-time content.

I think one could have the option to repeat them each x amount of time, idealy each day. But in all cases should be just an option. Unless it was done as part of some kind of reputation system (could be map rep, region rep, race rep and/or faction rep).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• The reward structure in Dry Top is desirable for many people. But Dry Top lacks some favorable elements from earlier open world maps such as chaining or random events. My thought here is that one does not exclude the other and in the future we could incorporate both the best of both designs.

I am so happy you noticed this. The biggest reason I never play GW2 except to catch up on living story is that the world often doesn’t present engaging content. I want to feel like the actions of me an my peers affect the outcome of the world. I don’t think you ever got this right, and have actually taken steps away from actually having a world where actions matter, ¹ but the events prior to the Living Story (yes I do mean before January of 2013) were much better at giving this feeling than those you added under the crunch schedule of the Living Story.

At the moment most events seem to be random occurrences with NPCs popping out of the ether rather than having an organic existences that leads them to have motives and purposes for the actions they take. Worse most enemy engagements are on timers and just go away regardless of player interaction. There are no consequences, and thus it feels pointless. There is no exposition for most NPC actions, thus the actions seem irrelevant and the NPCs stale.

¹ – Megaservers really put the nail in the coffin on this because we have no guarantee of returning to zones we were actively helping. Effects bleeding over into neighboring zones based on our actions also had much promise for giving “epic” consequences to actions, but it is no longer achievable due to megaservers. Other things added that hinder this are guilds starting mega-bosses with a button press rather than having events organically arise due to the actions of players in the zones.

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.

As discussed, rewards are the driving factor in replayability.

Dry Top is effective because the map-level goal is “get better loot for cheaper.” The loot is broad enough that a player can decide “my personal loot goal is x” but have that overlap with another player’s goal. Either way, they’re both being driven by loot.

I know we have tons of different currencies, but I wanted to throw my support behind adding another set.

What if events (or final events at the end of an event chain) dropped a region-specific (NOT map-specific, that would be awful) currency, like Geodes? Completing the Renown Hearts could give a slightly larger, but not overwhelmingly-large, cache of this currency and the merchants that are unlocked could cash in the region currency for:

1. Dungeon tokens.

Completing renown hearts in Kryta could reward you with Krytan Coins or something, which can be cashed in for Seals of Beetletun.

Completing events in the level 1-50 Maguuman Jungle zones could drop Nightmare Seeds, and Maelstrom (the only Maguuman area that is 50+ I think?) could drop Beta Capacitrons or something, which could be exchanged for Nightmare Blooms and Data Crystals respectively.

(Because of the substantial rewards from Orr already, perhaps Orr and Arah rewards could be excluded from this.)

OR

2. New region/map-specific skins.

These new currencies would have the added bonus of making Dry Top feel more like the rest of the game.

Honestly I think that getting dungeon tokens for specific areas is a beautiful idea. Obviously they have to be realistic in quantity (an hour in a low level zone should not reward you with 70 tokens), but even the chance to get tokens for dungeon weapons/armor would certainly make me want to go back to the lower level zones. It would give players something to work toward. You could even have it so that each successful event in the area guarantees one token. That way, you have people have positive reasons to do the events, and to succeed at them.

Im not really into the idea of having dungeon tokens as the reward for hearths/events, I think it should have its own unique set of rewards instead of using the dungeon rewards which are suppose to be rewards for doing the dungeon. But that’s just my opinion.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Honestly I think that getting dungeon tokens for specific areas is a beautiful idea. Obviously they have to be realistic in quantity (an hour in a low level zone should not reward you with 70 tokens), but even the chance to get tokens for dungeon weapons/armor would certainly make me want to go back to the lower level zones. It would give players something to work toward. You could even have it so that each successful event in the area guarantees one token. That way, you have people have positive reasons to do the events, and to succeed at them.

It also gives new players something exciting in the long-run for working through the game. You may have like 120 Figures of Koda by the time you reach level 80, which is one run short of your first real dungeon armor piece. Instead of grinding through 800,000,000 DEs to get those last 60, just run HotW P1 one time and poof!

Heck, do both token conversion AND unique skins. Extend it to Order gear too – Kryta for Whispers, Shiverpeaks for Priory, and Ascalon for Vigil.

Zenty.3596:

Im not really into the idea of having dungeon tokens as the reward for hearths/events, I think it should have its own unique set of rewards instead of using the dungeon rewards which are suppose to be rewards for doing the dungeon. But that’s just my opinion.

I get exactly what you’re saying here. If we’re dreaming big, I think we should create an entire set of new region-based rewards. Dungeon rewards are just an easy way to tie together leveling-, endgame-, and lore-based content without having to design an entire new set of rewards.

I agree, it’s more realistic to take existing rewards (dungeon rewards) than creating tons of now armor-sets. One of the devs clarified once, that creating new armor takes quite a while. I see no problem giving dungeon rewards to explorers now that you can get that gear through sPvP also. It’s not a showcase for completing the dungeon any more.

And think of it: a lot of players who prefer solo content (open world) rather than group content (dungeon) won’t have that gear yet and would love to work for it, even if it takes longer than doing the “more difficult” thing: the dungeon. (more difficult depends on the group of course, not everybody runs with a guild or good players regularly)

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I agree, it’s more realistic to take existing rewards (dungeon rewards) than creating tons of now armor-sets. One of the devs clarified once, that creating new armor takes quite a while. I see no problem giving dungeon rewards to explorers now that you can get that gear through sPvP also. It’s not a showcase for completing the dungeon any more.

And think of it: a lot of players who prefer solo content (open world) rather than group content (dungeon) won’t have that gear yet and would love to work for it, even if it takes longer than doing the “more difficult” thing: the dungeon. (more difficult depends on the group of course, not everybody runs with a guild or good players regularly)

This is exactly what I was thinking when I first suggested this idea. If the dungeon sets weren’t rolled into pvp already, I likely would have felt differently.

I actually really like this idea. I’ve only read the first few posts in this thread, so apologies if this has aleady been covered.

Maybe it’s different for other people, but my favorite part of the original leveling process was just looking out, saying to myself “I wonder what’s over there?” and then just traveling and finding out. While I now usually know what’s over there, allowing us to redo hearts would get us back into the world and bring back some of that freeform exploration.

One of the best things about GW2 is that so much happens in the world and players are currently out an about, making it feel like an active world, unlike other MMORPGs which locks everything behind instances that separate the playerbase.

The problem with focusing on events like dry top is that they promote a zerg mentality. With reknown hearts, you have pockets of content that segment the world without promoting zerging quite as much.

felessan.9587:

As discussed, rewards are the driving factor in replayability.

I’ve played many multipayer games over and over again without being doled out trinkets or rewards. I’ve replayed several RPGs multiple times through without the incentive of reward. I agree most people replaying GW 2 are doing so because of rewards, but that’s because that’s all it offers in PVE. If the activities were fun and engaging then rewards should only be there to supplement, not be the reason for playing. If Arena Net has to keep people doing activities with loot it suggests to me the activities really aren’t that fun, challenging, or engaging. It is no longer a virtual world they are offering, but a slot machine that gives you useless virtual goods.

expanding on the idea of zone/region currencies:

Why not bring this alongside a “veteran mode”? Once you’re lv.80 you can play either normally just the way it is now or turn on veteran mode (e.g. by putting on some veteran costume) which scales the characters level down a bit more (in a lv.80 zone you’re lv.79).

Completing events in this mode rewards you with the region tokens.

• more difficult content – check
• more rewards after you’ve reached lv.80 – check
• making old zones relevant again – check

Yes, in theory you can get carried by players who don’t play in veteran mode, BUT since low level players aggro mobs significantly you’re still in more danger than any other player. + all the other “carriers” won’t get the token, so they will probably rethink this strategy and far more players will join in veteran mode.

or in the spirit of drytop:

normal playing —> 1 token per event
veteran mode —> 2 token per event

While i love how you keep this topic alive with an entirely off topic discussion, and while i can see it tries to approach somewhat the same problem with a different solution (entirely outside the scope of the topic starter); which was why i did not request you guys to make a topic of your own… i know right, lol, I shamelessly admit to it benefitting my thread was the only reason not to.

Seeing there is now a topic that deals specifically with regional token rewards https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Extending-Dry-Top-s-Geode-System/first#post4351178 i would suggest taking your discussion, opinions and ideas over there.

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.

What are the chances of getting more of these currencies added to the wallet instead of filling up bank spaces or bag spaces???

I think dungeon tokens for events is an interesting idea.

• It’s a currency already in game so another doesn’t have to be added.
• It allows people who don’t do many dungeons to get tokens.
• It rewards people for doing events with the ability to buy rares and exotics they can salvage and also to fill up their wardrobe.
• The NPC who sells items for these tokens can be easily updated to sell new region specific rewards.

Astral Projections.7320:

I think dungeon tokens for events is an interesting idea.

• It’s a currency already in game so another doesn’t have to be added.
• It allows people who don’t do many dungeons to get tokens.
• It rewards people for doing events with the ability to buy rares and exotics they can salvage and also to fill up their wardrobe.
• The NPC who sells items for these tokens can be easily updated to sell new region specific rewards.

yep, and think of it: players who have never entered a dungeon but gathered 100 token by doing events might feel they could try out dungeons in order to complete their set faster.

I don’t think it’s entirely off-topic, we’re talking about revitalizing the game world and a lot of people agree that hearts aren’t the way to go. Also we talked about karma and how there could be a superior currency.

Marcus is right. I would really love to revitalize the game world but agree that redoing hearts – which I personally find tedious and boring – is not the way to go. I really feel there would be a lot of players that would cheer at the opportunity to get dungeon tokens for completing events around Tyria. The events are way more fun and interesting, and I think typically more group oriented, meaning that more players would be brought together. We really don’t need new currencies, either, IMHO. We have too many already.

Due to rewriting the OP, based upon all the feedback I got so far, this is a post of the 2nd reworded OP as a form of archive:

Seeing i am under the impression that my original OP did not express my suggestion properly, i have taken the liberty to reword it. Hopefully this will create more insight and result in a better discussion especially for those that just read the tl;dr and post a response.

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 Dailies, and add Y hearts to the monthly completion list.

I think this will cause players to venture out into the world to do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience. This suggestion as thus, is not so much to get people to do hearts, but it’s to give hearts their original purpose again, by stearing players towards dynamic events.

To sum it up in a ‘twitter like’ statement:
I want the hearts ‘back’ for their initial purpose. #resethearts

As Anthony pointed out in this thread.

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…

Once you completed all the hearts though, this function is lost. If you haven’t been to an area for 1,5y (which isn’t unlikely) there is no way to regain context and awareness, as you can not reread the Heart Texts, or do the Heart again.

Further along in this thread i posted a more distinct set of things i would see as part of this suggestion, and i think including it here in this OP will help people form a better idea of the suggestion:

What i want:
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’m neutral about
1. I personally don’t realy mind if this suggestion were to cause the ‘heart-traders’ to also reset, most hearts do not take that long so regaining access would be fairly easy. Yet, i can also see how that would annoy people, so perhaps the trader should not reset.

What i do not need specifically:
1. 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.

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

3. 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. But “Sure” it be cool if this system could be expanded by draping some more expensive karma rewards in them.
As turned out by various side discussions in this thread, other and better (higher scale) karma rewards are a thing people would like, integrating them in a repeatable heart-system could accomplish this.

I hope that with this new OP the suggestion is better worded, that it’s easier to comprehend what and why i want it, and as such the discussion gets a better starting point… If you are interested in the original OP you can find it here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/3#post4341272

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?

I don’t think anyone misunderstood your original post. More that they like the idea of getting more people into more maps, but many disliked doing the hearts to begin with, so simply would not redo them. I don’t care if you reset them. They’re boring. I’d rather go trash risen giants in CS, or, really, do anything other than the hearts over again. I’d rather see special rewards tied to events, as would many others. Don’t be disheartened by that. We agree with revitalization and getting more interesting rewards in all of Tyria.

And really, you can redo the hearts any time if you roll out an alt. Re-map to your heart’s content

I don’t mind having the “option” of repeating some hearts for extra coin and karma (reward based on heart area level of course).

But I think I would prefer to be able to see ALL of the active DE’s in my map. I really don’t care for being in say the Southeast area of Gendarran fields and waiting on DE’s to start and not have any clue that there are three active DE’s going on in the Northwest area.
Obviously if the DE is near a waypoint that waypoint will be contested..so that at least is a “clue” but there are many DE’s that are not near waypoints. This might help in finding things to do in areas that have completed hearts.

On another note, I don’t care for all of the different currencies in the game. Area specific (Geodes) or Special Event specific (festival tokens) I think is terrible because they are so limiting compared to coin (for killing) and karma (from DE’s) because you can earn these in any region of the game. Just because you want a certain “skin” you shouldn’t have to grind over and over a single area to be able to earn the required currency for that item. Maybe they could offer a currency exchange something like 100 karma for a festival token. (or something to that affect).

Based upon feedback in this thread I reformulate my initial suggestion to serve as a new topic starter. Feel free to leave your comments after this post.

Personal Heart Reset
The hearts in the world should be able to be reset by players individually, so that they can access that bit of content ( be it to participate with a friend, to regain background for the area, or to have something to do while one waits for DE’s to spawn in the vicinity ).

1. Talking to the NPC resets the heart ( ‘Need some more help?’ -> ‘If you have some time, all help is welcome’ -> ‘Sure, reset the event’. )
2. Once you reset a heart it will visually indicate you reactivated the heart, ( f/e a * will be displayed on the heart, or a green outline is added to the heart .)
3. Once reactivated you can finish the heart again, for one time, after completing it you won’t be able to do the heart until the system resets. ( This to prevent people from ‘farming’ the same heart over and over, or even feel compelled to do so, and to make people fan out through the game if they prefer to do more hearts .)
4. After a month the hearts you ‘reset’ during that month will reset itself, or if possible the hearts will reset individually after a month, so you can do them again.

=> Because the hearts are not considered main content, there is no real need to adding them to achievement lists.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder why events have no surprise rewards now and then. Imagine having the chance for things like these when getting a gold medal:

• sometimes a surprising champion loot box
• rarely a mystic forge key
• rarely a dye
• rarely a mini
• rarely a lodestone
• very rarely a rune of holding (to craft 18 or 20slot bags)
• very rarely a rare dye
  etc.etc.

Simply a huge (seriously huge – anything could drop) loot-table. What I loved during the personal story: Rewards where you could choose one out of 3 items. Do this for events, people would love it. BUT with interesting rewards, cut the blues and greens & junkitems.

The thing is: when people know there is a chance (and even the slightest one) of getting something really really rare, they go miles to get it.

I think you’ve summed up the main problem with that last sentence. You’ll see what should have been a fun rarity die in the face of a frothing farmfest.

Sariel V.7024:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder why events have no surprise rewards now and then. Imagine having the chance for things like these when getting a gold medal:

• sometimes a surprising champion loot box
• rarely a mystic forge key
• rarely a dye
• rarely a mini
• rarely a lodestone
• very rarely a rune of holding (to craft 18 or 20slot bags)
• very rarely a rare dye
  etc.etc.

Simply a huge (seriously huge – anything could drop) loot-table. What I loved during the personal story: Rewards where you could choose one out of 3 items. Do this for events, people would love it. BUT with interesting rewards, cut the blues and greens & junkitems.

The thing is: when people know there is a chance (and even the slightest one) of getting something really really rare, they go miles to get it.

I think you’ve summed up the main problem with that last sentence. You’ll see what should have been a fun rarity die in the face of a frothing farmfest.

But how would anyone farm all DEs? If they ALL had the opportunity to drop something cool, and all from the same loot table, that would actually discourage farming.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

But how would anyone farm all DEs? If they ALL had the opportunity to drop something cool, and all from the same loot table, that would actually discourage farming.

Exactly, that’s why I’m a friend of the zone-token rewards (1 token for a completed event, to purchase some region-specific rewards and/or Dungeon-rewards).

Having rare loot as a reward additionaly to that geode-like reward would give people surprising good stuff now and then when farming their tokens.

SirMoogie.9263:

felessan.9587:

As discussed, rewards are the driving factor in replayability.

I’ve played many multipayer games over and over again without being doled out trinkets or rewards. I’ve replayed several RPGs multiple times through without the incentive of reward. I agree most people replaying GW 2 are doing so because of rewards, but that’s because that’s all it offers in PVE. If the activities were fun and engaging then rewards should only be there to supplement, not be the reason for playing. If Arena Net has to keep people doing activities with loot it suggests to me the activities really aren’t that fun, challenging, or engaging. It is no longer a virtual world they are offering, but a slot machine that gives you useless virtual goods.

I too have played multiple RPGs through multiple times, but each time I come back I play for “total completion” or getting gear drops. I know I’m not alone in that.

Really, the story in GW2 and our interactions with it are pretty anemic and generic. You’re right, the events aren’t that engaging. In an effort to revitalize the game world, the events would either need to be completely and totally reworked, or they need to make it that virtual slot machine, because shiny things do keep people playing. I personally would feel more compelled to play and not lurk on the forums if I could get cool skins.

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.

Wrong, players are just farming it..that’s why they are there, not because the content is “fun”..not sure if farming is working as intended game design.

Gaming For The Ages

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

In the future we ought to consider repeat rewards or even a prestige system for voluntarily replaying one-time content.

Definitely this. Opening up content for replayability is an incredibly powerful “force multiplier” for content (and I daresay the very idea of “one-time content” is a good one to move away from).

Replayability, in turn, is a great way to keep players playing. After all, it’s been working quite well for Chess for quite a long time indeed.

No reason GW2 can’t do the same.

Back in beta, there were any other hearts.

Instead just merely resetting existing hearts, why not also bringing back those?

You could call the feature “Platinum hearts”.

• Platinum hearts would be a repeatable version of golden hearts you get in a zone when there’s no incomplete golden hearts.
• Existing hearts and discarded hearts that didn’t make it to world completion would be randomly brought back.
• Platinum hearts would even appear in maps with no hearts like Dry Top, Southsun and Orr.
• You get in zone with no hearts or all hearts completed, and when you open the map you’ll see on screen 2-9 platinum-colored hearts, depending on that zone’s size.
• You can then go and complete the heart. When the heart is complete, instead a fixed set of items like golden hearts have, platinum hearts would have a random selection of items with a limited stock and karma costs, sometimes at a discount, sometimes with additional costs like coin. For example, one could have a stock of 1250 potatoes for 25 karma each, 250 silk for 250 karma and 1 silver each, a tradable rare weapon for 11K karma, or a single lodestone for 20K karma and 15 silver. When the stock for each item runs out, you can still see the item in the vendor so you can check it and tell others, but the number under ‘stock’ says 0, and can’t buy any more. As the stocks are limited, there’s no problem if the items there can be traded, people won’t be able to get infinite units, not even many units, as the stock of an item can be just 1. Sometimes there could even be some rare crazy deals in a platinum heart, like a single BL Key for 64K karma and 1 gold.
• The weekly selection of items for all platinum vendors would be the same for all players, but you will have to complete the heart to see it.
• The next week, maps get a new selection of platinum hearts and a different random selection of limited stock items on each heart.

With this, there would be always a reason to travel the world and do stuff around, and visit places you usually wouldn’t visit, and all that work for all those hearts that got scrapped would not be wasted.

I haven’t read through all six pages, but I want to get my thoughts on the topic of reinstating hearts – and revitalizing content – down.

I do not like hearts. They are static and repetitious, and they affect nothing. They are, in short, a traditional MMO quest system minus the need to go out and accept the quests. If you do a full zones’ amount of hearts, the chances are very high that you’ve done all the activities a heart can provide. After that, it’s just a boring and dull rinse and repeat cycle.

Furthermore, aside from the dialogue of the heart NPC, and a few interactive objects disappearing, there is no change between completing and not completing a heart. And even in many cases, interactive objects don’t change or disappear.

Allowing or forcing a resetting of the hearts will do nothing but add grind to the game, in all honesty. Their purpose – to tell players “events are here” is done whether or not they’re complete, it’s just whether or not players decide to go into the locations. And even then, the hearts are very poor for telling players the locations of events in all honesty.

It would be better, in my opinion, to in fact reduce the number of hearts – or at least rework on the objectives for them. In too many cases, it’s just “run around pressing F as you approach objects” or “kill the random mooks who… actually have little involvement in the heart’s lore.” The hearts are good for introducing players into the game – especially players from other MMOs who are too used to the traditional MMO quest system – but the latter levels should have a reduced amount of hearts. In all honesty, once you hit the level 25+ maps, hearts become nothing more than a tedious, repetitive, task for map completion. Only those who are so used to the traditional MMO quest system would likely enjoy doing them. I only enjoy them for what little lore they provide – and this can, and should imo, be done via events.

A long time ago now, I put out a request to remove hearts entirely, replacing them with events that have you doing the same “things” from a lore stance – storywise you’d be doing the same stuff, but mechanically it could be different. It was overall poorly received. Thinking on it now, it’s because it’s too large of a change – there are indeed players out there who enjoy the traditional MMO quest design, and the hearts are theirs to enjoy.

Nowadays, I would instead reduce and alter the hearts. As you go higher in level, you encounter fewer hearts, until you cease hitting them entirely. Personally, I would reduce the level 25-40 locations of maps by approximately 5 hearts, remove an additional ~5 hearts in 40-65 areas, and remove hearts entirely at level 65 (thus no hearts in Frostgorge or the latter halves of Mount Maelstrom and Fireheart Rise). Of course, this then reduces the requirements for map completion, so there must be compensation: the addition of Dry Top and Southsun Cove to map completion, as well as new vistas, skill challenges, and points of interests where applicable throughout (especially to Southsun Cove). In replacement of hearts, new events that follow the same story of the removed hearts would be put in place (as well as a few applicable skill challenges).

The question of the topic thus becomes: “How does one entice returning to the old content?”

The answer would have to result in locational-unique rewards, I fear. Achievements only bring players back for one more go, until they finish the achievements, and new events can easily be overlooked entirely by most players. Scavenger hunts like Mawdrey is similarly only going to return players for one go – and even less than achievements, especially if it’s like Episode 3’s open world event completions where you can just stride to that unique new rubble pile if the event isn’t active.

I believe the best way to go about this is as I brought up in “this thread I made”: before being told of this thread’s existence. A system akin to the geodes, but rather than unique to the zone, unique to the region (Maguuma Jungle, Maguuma Wastes, Shiverpeak Mountains, Steamspur Mountains, Orr, Ascalon, Kryta for now), with unique merchants added to accept said new regional tokens. These tokens would in turn sell recipes for new exotic weapons (think akin to the Godskull weapons, Beaded weapons, and Modniir weapons on top of the Ambrite weapons as examples), as well as being the subject of future recipes or direct objects that could be used in future scavenger hunts. Such a set-up can even be used to integrate and improve the PvP Region tracks.

Though the idea is less for “revitalizing old areas” and more of “ensuring people prefer succeeding events over failing them.”

(5,001 charrs)

Of course, I wouldn’t abandon the notion of improving event, dungeon, etc. mechanics. Be they world boss or no. It’s a real shame that ArenaNet had decided to scrab their dungeon revamps since this is direly needed as players get better stuff (more gear stat combos available, more traits and skills), as it results in power creeping.

New achievements are certainly a useful tool for bringing players back into old zones – especially if they are akin to Forgotten Halls or Vexa’s Lab, new activities in old zones – but in the long course are more of a bandaid than anything else. Even so, I would definitely create more such activities, as well as restructure the achievements we have – redivide the Explorer and Jumping Puzzle categories into individual Region-named categories, akin to Dry Top’s set-up (and rename Dry Top’s category after the Maguuma Wastes). But alone, it is only enough to bring players back until they complete such achievements – as such, new achievements would need to be introduced in large quantities, otherwise everyone will rush to the single new achievement, lagging up the zone for the first week, and completing it – thus never returning (much like how the Gendarran Aetherblade jumping puzzle was, or how the Episode 3 open world events were).

In short, I don’t think doing a single thing will improve player’s desires to go to the older places in the long term. A large quantity of things done at once is what’s needed – thus making this the perfect subject for the next feature batch (the one after September’s). And that “large quantity” should, IMO, include:

• Reworking what you do for hearts (to improve desire to do them and map completion with alts).
• Introducing a large series of achievements at once for both new and old content.
• Introducing regional currency rewarded to event successes.
• Introducing new events/other content to give new content for players to do.

Just my preliminary thoughts.

Hey Konig, to read the token stuff you are best to read the thread backwards …

And seeing you do suggest reworking hearts so ‘replay value’ for them could increase (on alts), then if hearts to get replay value, why not add a personal reset