Guild Wars 2

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:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/6#post4359338 this links to this same post, but posted further into this thread, so you don’t have to read all through the thread.

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.

I hope that with this new OP the suggestion is fleshed out, dealing with most if not all concerns raised in the thread so far. And as such can function as a new discussion starter for the rest of the thread.

… If you are interested in the original OP’s you can find it here:
1st. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/3#post4341272
2nd. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/6#post4358803

I think undoing progress every month is a terrible idea. If you want to do the hearts again, simply start a new character.

I have to admit that I do like this idea. Not sure about the monthly reset, but in general this is a nice approach to keep players in the world off the beaten track of world boss trains etc.

I dunno about resetting hearts per se as it’s already redundant considering we got world events already.

Should you be 1 or 2 game-years old now, you just got a zero to Lvl 20 scroll. After you did world-completion, put your not-soulbound inventory into the bank, delete your char and start a new one: voila all hearts to redo

PS: And as a nice side-effect: 2 more world-completion rewards for legendary crafting.

I’m not really for resetting hearts, especially on a monthly basis, as it would simply make me feel like I need to grind them out again.

Personally, I don’t have an issue finding myself motivated to go out and do events. I don’t need hearts as an incentive to do so. My guildies and I will go out and do events just to build some influence and to goof off. I’ll do events if I’m farming something specific, as events generate more foes to kill typically, than what can just be found standing around / respawning. Some events I just like doing.

shrug

Considering hearts are not just unrewarding but often quite boring (certainly after the first time), I do not think many people will complete hearts more than once per character. Thus I believe your plan to lure people into rarely done events would probably have little success, regardless of how noble I think it is. But perhaps you can think of a better trigger.

I do not believe it is conditioning. It is sad, but I believe that by design many events will be ignored. Their unreliability is both what makes them cool and what makes them unable to be a goal for players. Even after 2 years (and 2 days) I enjoy running into an event I have never or rarely seen while doing something else on the world map, and often stick around to see it through, but going out to hunt for events is usually unsatisfying since you can have long dry streaks between events. Unless of course you go to some areas where you know a lot of events spawn, but returning to the same areas defeats the “randomness” of the experience.

I have 3 level 80’s atm, none of them have full world completion, and 2 have them have barely any hearts done.
hearts are boring.

resetting them, won’t make them more interesting.

I dont know about a full reset because that does seem like a loss of progress. On the other hand, i dont see it as a bad thing if a person were able to complete a heart multiple times, perhaps on a cooldown perhaps not. I know that I have accidently completed some hearts just doing events in areas anyway and allowing them to be completed again would just be a small extra bit of karma. Adding them to monthlies I dont see as a problem either because, even for someone who has map completion on all their characters an doesnt want to think about another heart question, there are already more monthly options than are required for completion.

On a side note, I also dont think it would be a problem if there were a 10%-20% chance of getting a region themed weapon/armor skin (on a salvageable item please) on completing a heart after the first time through it. Of course, skins take time away from other development, but its an option. Or maybe a couple of loot bags from whatever is in the area. Nothing that you would need to farm in order to complete something, but just a bonus if you happen to fulfill the requirements for a heart a another time.

Taygus.4571:

I have 3 level 80’s atm, none of them have full world completion, and 2 have them have barely any hearts done.
hearts are boring.

resetting them, won’t make them more interesting.

Have 13 80 .. the last ones have around 18-21% world completion and i rather wish
they would consolidate all those hearts and make them accoundwide .. they are
simply just a timesink because they sadly give nearly no reward.

Ok, like I said, even in the tl;dr, put a green outline around hearts to signify progress for map completion! … So, I don’t understand why halve the people here say that they wouldn’t like ‘their progress’ to reset ?!?

Sigh, yup, if you do stuff for your rewards you are best of grinding path X of dungeon Y, obviously this solution would not get you back into the world. Unless a better (blix or w/e) short path is found, you will not move anywhere else but where you get the highest reward for your time. Fair enough, but don’t use it to deem other approaches to experiencing a game of lesser importance…

Lastly, perhaps some numbers:
- there are a guestimate (just pulling this out of my you know where) of 20 maps.
- there are 24 hours in a day
- completing 5 hearts (and being drawn in to some events) will take 1 hour of your time. 5 hearts is the ‘daily’ target.

If 20 people do this, ever hour, that would make for 480 people (20×24), if this would be the case for every map, it would involve (20×24×20) 9600 people a day. With this amount you would have 20 people on every map during the whole day, and seeing we have the mega server going, it would influence the experience of nearly everyone that is in the open world.

So sure, 9600 is maybe what 1% of the gaming population? And while it seems weird to do something for just 1%, at the same time… having 20people on every map for every hour, will increase the experience of everybody alting, of new players, and to everybody that actually goes out and do some hearts to expose themselves to new events…

This suggestion isn’t at all about doing the hearts! It is about creating an incentive or ‘trigger’ to get the people that are not enticed to do so with out one into the world.

Even making them green to denote I haven’t lost all my progress (which I did pick up from your initial post, OP), I would still feel like I needed to regrind the hearts. I know that’s not the intent, but that’s how a lot of people would feel about it. It wouldn’t be any different than the people that can’t stop themselves from doing all the dailies on the daily list just because they are there. They know they don’t have to do them, but something compels them to do them anyway. I have enough will power that I wouldn’t redo all the hearts, but I’d definitely feel like I should be, or like I needed to.

I think Anet needs to avoid putting any more things into the game that make players feel like they “should” or “should not” being doing something. People are already feeling like how they play, what they play, isn’t really their decision anymore.

While hearts aren’t hard, I still think they should be slightly more rewarding than what they presently are. Its hard to make people “want” to do other aspects of a game if they aren’t all equally rewarding. Its easier and faster to make gold doing dungeons than doing hearts, for example. It’s an imbalance that needs correcting.

Arghore.8340:

Lastly, perhaps some numbers:
- there are a guestimate (just pulling this out of my you know where) of 20 maps.
- there are 24 hours in a day
- completing 5 hearts (and being drawn in to some events) will take 1 hour of your time. 5 hearts is the ‘daily’ target.

If 20 people do this, ever hour, that would make for 480 people (20×24), if this would be the case for every map, it would involve (20×24×20) 9600 people a day. With this amount you would have 20 people on every map during the whole day, and seeing we have the mega server going, it would influence the experience of nearly everyone that is in the open world.

So sure, 9600 is maybe what 1% of the gaming population? And while it seems weird to do something for just 1%, at the same time… having 20people on every map for every hour, will increase the experience of everybody alting, of new players, and to everybody that actually goes out and do some hearts to expose themselves to new events…

This suggestion isn’t at all about doing the hearts! It is about creating an incentive or ‘trigger’ to get the people that are not enticed to do so with out one into the world.

As I said in my earlier post, I understand it is not about the hearts, but the hearts will draw nearly no one (not even those that do not care about min maxing rewards) in that would not have been there anyway. I believe you are overestimating the effect the resetting will have.

Arghore.8340:

Ok, like I said, even in the tl;dr, put a green outline around hearts to signify progress for map completion! … So, I don’t understand why halve the people here say that they wouldn’t like ‘their progress’ to reset ?!?

for alot of people the empty heart with a green border isnt so much a reality thing as much as it is psychological. They just dont like seeing them empty, so it feels like lost progress when in reality it isnt. Thats why I just suggested that they be allowed to be redone without the heart actually visually resetting. The vast majority of people arent going to want to go back and redo all their hearts because there is no reward for second map completion so keeping track of what has been completed this month isnt really a benefit. But like I mentioned, it would be a nice little bonus if you are doing events and happen to fulfill the requirements again if you got a little bonus karma or perhaps the other little thing I talked about.

If I ever get desperate enough to want to do hearts I have 5 chars with less than 100% world completion.

Frankly, hearts are boring and the rewards for doing them again would have to be pretty good to make it not a real grind and a chore.

@LanfearShadowflame, while I see your ‘problem’ in regards to feeling the need to ‘grind’ them, I do not agree with your notion of it being a problem. I actually think they should put in MORE stuff like that, why? only if you feel that you can NOT do all of it, will you ‘hopefully’ be stimulated to do the things you LIKE to do…

I do agree that the discrepancy between rewards is a problem, but if you are after a reward then doing anything on the daily list specifically is the wrong way to go about it? Most of the time you can complete the daily from doing one World Boss event, which would then complete the daily AND give rewards. But besides that, sure it wouldn’t hurt to increase rewards for hearts a tad. Not really the scope of why I made this thread though…

Well, what about adding new hearts, periodically, hither and yon across the landscape, perhaps based on previously fulfilled hearts? Hearts that only appear after you’ve done certain things. Follow-up stuff. Or, if not hearts, then brains, maybe, or thumping gizzards.

Beats me why they don’t add hearts to places like, uh… those places where we did stuff with Braham and Rox. Or in Karkaland. Or in Dry Top.

By the way! I recently ran across a spider cave in Metrica Province that I did not remember ever seeing before. It even had an event. Has that always been there? And that treehouse in Queensdale – has that always been there? I lingered there for a while last night, but nothing ever happened, so evidently there’s no event, but still.

Anyway. Carry on.

I’m down with making Hearts repeatable on a monthly basis on the condition that Karma for completing Hearts gets a 100-200% buff.

Arghore.8340:

@LanfearShadowflame, while I see your ‘problem’ in regards to feeling the need to ‘grind’ them, I do not agree with your notion of it being a problem. I actually think they should put in MORE stuff like that, why? only if you feel that you can NOT do all of it, will you ‘hopefully’ be stimulated to do the things you LIKE to do…

As someone else pointed out, this is a psychological thing. Something not easily changed. They have done things like that already, to help “break” the some of the completion mentality; however, all it does is cause more of an uproar. Account bound unique minis could be considered similar. It’s very difficult to change how people are “programmed” to react to certain things.

I do agree that the discrepancy between rewards is a problem, but if you are after a reward then doing anything on the daily list specifically is the wrong way to go about it? Most of the time you can complete the daily from doing one World Boss event, which would then complete the daily AND give rewards. But besides that, sure it wouldn’t hurt to increase rewards for hearts a tad. Not really the scope of why I made this thread though…

You make my point for me here and yes, it’s beyond the scope of your initial idea. Still, part of the reason (as others have pointed out) that people don’t do hearts currently, is that they don’t feel rewarded for it. This doesn’t have to be a monetary reward; though most would prefer it to be. Still, hearts should be as monetarily rewarding as other components of the game, which would encourage more players to do them instead of just blowing them off.

Galespark.7835:

Considering hearts are not just unrewarding but often quite boring (certainly after the first time), I do not think many people will complete hearts more than once per character. Thus I believe your plan to lure people into rarely done events would probably have little success, regardless of how noble I think it is.

So much this ^^^. Yawn fest that is unrewarding.

The Heart System needs to be improved to stay interesting for the game even for veteran players, which have already long time ago played through the game and explored the game world with multiple characters to 100%.

How do you reach this goal? Its very simple:

1) Make all Hearts replayable
2) Redesign the Heart NPC’s, so that they can offer for everyone a multitude of different personal tasks rather than having only 1 single open world Task.
The 1 Open World Task should be only to unlock big load of the personal tasks.
Every single Heart NPC has to offer like 10+ different personal tasks,s which ANet needs to keep increasing with Patchs every now and then to decrease the chances, that you keep on repeating too fast the same old personal tasks always.
Every Patch that Anet does should always add somewhere in some maps a few new personal tasks for Heart NPC’s
3) Implement a Reputation System which players can improve through doing personal tasks for Heart NPCs to increase their Region Reputation Level.
4) By increasing your Region Reputation Level, you will see changes in all of the behaviors of NPCs towards you. But beware, increasign somewhere your reputation in region X, might perhaps also decrease your Reputation in Region Y in regard, of what for tasks you fulfill for the people of the various regions.
5) Increasing your Reputation in Region X might lead to the point, that you will unlock completely new and differentpersonal taskas, that Heart NPC’s will give you only at a specific level of reputation for that Region, once they trust you enough to give you these new tasks, which might be then also more rewarding
6) By increasing your reputation level, you will improve also all of the NPC’s Karma Rewards and with increased Reputation in a Region, you will see them gettign also improved reward lists for what they trade you for Karma, among those thigns also alot of unique thigns for each individual Heart NPC, like Minipets, Weapon Skin Sets, unique Armor Sets, helpful bags of specific rarer materials and so on
7) Get especially rewarded by reachion a reputation Level of 100% for each single region, gain unique titles through getting enough positive reputation in the regions of Tyria.

Thats something that Anet has to do, the current Heart System is nothing but just unthought out junk, which has been developed only for being there basically for starter characters and those, that need to level up.
But after that point, those NPCs become total pointless and useless, as they reward you with nothing for your Karma, that is somehow really useful for you or just really feels like being a meaningful reward for you thats also somehow special for the NPC or the region in which you play and which creates for the player the DESIRE to return to all those NPC’s and regions in a constant matter to work on your character’s reputation, which should be for each region not too easy to improve.
Getting a good reputation is quite some hard work and not something, that you earn yourself just by over night…

The game needs systems, that reward people for doing constantly in all kinds of the regions dynamic events.

People like hearts?

Hearts are what a traditional quest is, but without a more elaborate story, without a more elaborate gameplay scenario, without a structure and without unique rewards. Their seamless nature is fun, but we already have dynamic events for that. Their synergy with dynamic events is also interesting, but that’s pretty much it.

Do you know what makes exploring the world a second time painful to me? Grinding to fill bars to completion (Hearts).

They were interesting the first time around, for the first maps, before they became highly repetitive.

Did you know that the game originally didn’t HAVE Hearts?

But players didn’t know where to go to find the events. So ANet put things to do to pass the time in areas were events tend to pop up. These are the Hearts. They are primarily there to slow your progress in an area down long enough for you to see an event occur. They put it towards map completion and gave rewards to it so that players would have incentive to slow down when they ran into a heart.

And no to a reset that I can’t control. The right side of the screen is already cluttered with personal story and daily/monthly achievement and living story stuff and world event stuff. I don’t need to be forced to have heart information there when I’ve already done it.

I don’t think resetting hearts is the way to go.

A long time back I suggested the book method, like Guild Wars 1. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Storybook
An NPC gives you a book, you can have multiple copies in your inventory if you wish. In it are all the events in a map. Doing the events fills up the book, (one event will complete only one page of one book, not that page in all the books in your inventory). You can turn in the book to a reward NPC for exp, karma, gold or progress toward new skins unique to that area. Each book can be turned in partially filled but a completely filled in book gives the best rewards.

Imo, a system like this would get people out in the world to do events, all the events, in order to fill up books.

Orpheal.8263:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7

Like this. Lots to do. “rewards like Minipets, Weapon Skin Sets, unique Armor Sets, helpful bags of specific rarer materials and so on” nothing required.

Beldin.5498:

Taygus.4571:

I have 3 level 80’s atm, none of them have full world completion, and 2 have them have barely any hearts done.
hearts are boring.

resetting them, won’t make them more interesting.

Have 13 80 .. the last ones have around 18-21% world completion and i rather wish
they would consolidate all those hearts and make them accoundwide .. they are
simply just a timesink because they sadly give nearly no reward.

OMG, acc.wide hearts!!!
would love!! <3 <3 <3 XD

Beldin.5498:

[hearts] are
simply just a timesink because they sadly give nearly no reward.

gift of exploration

Wouldn’t having account wide hearts limit available experience for leveling alts?

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Wouldn’t having account wide hearts limit available experience for leveling alts?

yes.
but

I have leveled my mesmer, without completing a single heart. (yes, not one, )

Surely by the time all hearts are complete you know the best ways to level. You know how dynamic events work (the original way to level).
You’ll probably use crafting or EOTM, dungeon switching, and likely you’’ll explore the places you need asap.

please not. I have 8 characters, 6 with 100% map complete, 1 with 99% and 1 with 64%.

I dont want to do more hearts. Was fun at the begining, but then are starting to boring.

Taygus.4571:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Wouldn’t having account wide hearts limit available experience for leveling alts?

yes.
but

I have leveled my mesmer, without completing a single heart. (yes, not one, )

Surely by the time all hearts are complete you know the best ways to level. You know how dynamic events work (the original way to level).
You’ll probably use crafting or EOTM, dungeon switching, and likely you’’ll explore the places you need asap.

But not everyone plays that way. (Lol I just had this argument with someone else that was berating me for using dungeon swapping for experience) Some people like doing hearts (stop cringing), so for them account wide hearts would be detrimental. I don’t feel we should negate their play style just because it doesn’t suit us.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Taygus.4571:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Wouldn’t having account wide hearts limit available experience for leveling alts?

yes.
but

I have leveled my mesmer, without completing a single heart. (yes, not one, )

Surely by the time all hearts are complete you know the best ways to level. You know how dynamic events work (the original way to level).
You’ll probably use crafting or EOTM, dungeon switching, and likely you’’ll explore the places you need asap.

But not everyone plays that way. (Lol I just had this argument with someone else that was berating me for using dungeon swapping for experience) Some people like doing hearts (stop cringing), so for them account wide hearts would be detrimental. I don’t feel we should negate their play style just because it doesn’t suit us.

I never said we should.
Just something I’d love.

Would be excellent, if anet could implement something that would suit both.
Like if the scout had an option.

“Would you like to combine your characters efforts in heart quests” yes/no
“Would like to remove current character from combined efforts”yes/no
(all newly created character would be out of the combined efforts until you go to a scout and “combine”.)

Win -win? :P

Don’t reset my completed hearts, don’t make them account-wide so that if I make any new alts they can’t get XP off them.

But I would totally be down for someone being able to choose to reset, or whatever anyone wants to call it, a map zone to do it again and pass the time.

Taygus.4571:

I never said we should.
Just something I’d love.

Would be excellent, if anet could implement something that would suit both.
Like if the scout had an option.

“Would you like to combine your characters efforts in heart quests” yes/no
“Would like to remove current character from combined efforts”yes/no
(all newly created character would be out of the combined efforts until you go to a scout and “combine”.)

Win -win? :P

Maybe?

I mean, I’m not against having the option I suppose, but how would that affect getting the gift of exploration if you wanted to do more than 2 legendaries (and thus needed more than 2 gifts). Would it become a means of short cutting it? Which would make people that didn’t have that option rather kittened off, I’m sure. Or would the person have to break them back apart to character bound? Should they get credit for hearts that they would have gotten credit on had they not been account bound, and how hard would that be to store and track? If a character had some hearts done prior to merging into account bound hearts, how difficult would it be to retain that information? Upon finishing map completion with another character, can we re-merge to account bound hearts and how difficult is it to retain, track, and manage further progress on other characters?

Ok I’m going to stop now.

I like the idea in principle but might want to see some revision in the details. The idea of adding incentives for replaying content, hearts in this case, is a great idea. On the other hand a visual sign on your map giving the impression, to a quest completionist like me for example, that one’s progress has been reverted (I know that you are not advocating for a true progress reversion, but it would feel like one to me).

I do like the idea of adding hearts to the daily and monthly checklists.

I also think that would be interesting to add rewards for secondary completion of aspects of world completion:

The second time you complete all hearts on a character you get X
The second time you visit all vistas on a character you get Y
Etc.

Have tertiary options as well.

Hmm, going back to the OP’s idea, have a toggled option to show how many times each heart has been completed so that those actively working on revisiting hearts have a useful tool to aid them without giving a visual indication that feels like lost progress to those who want to be done for that character.

I like the idea very much, in principle. I’m sure some details would be needed to be hashed out. There could even be an awesome title to work towards, with AP points at various levels and when you get to the last tier , you get the title “I <3 Tyria”, or something to that effect.

Would love some more casual AP points in the world.

Oh, and the addition of the daily and monthly should be just that: an addition. There is ‘no’ reason to take ‘away’ a daily and monthly option by adding this, thank you very much.

I like the idea of repeatable Hearts, especially if integrated as something simple like a daily/monthly achievement. I think 5 is too high for daily, though — 1 or 2 would be more reasonable.

Seera.5916:

Did you know that the game originally didn’t HAVE Hearts?

But players didn’t know where to go to find the events. So ANet put things to do to pass the time in areas were events tend to pop up. These are the Hearts. They are primarily there to slow your progress in an area down long enough for you to see an event occur. They put it towards map completion and gave rewards to it so that players would have incentive to slow down when they ran into a heart.

Uh… do you have a source on this? You must be talking about an extremely primitive prototype version, because even in early betas there were Hearts. In fact, there used to be over double the amount of Hearts that we have now.

This was a suggestion long ago. Give people the option to reset hearts once per month or something…give them the OPTION. In return, they get increased rewards each time they reset. Some more things can go along with this, such as participating in dynamic events as well, increased rewards or whatever.

This could have been done instead of megaserver. I think it would have had nearly the same positive effect and none of the negative impact that we see today.

Edit: I want to add that the OP’s heart is in the right place. Get people out in the game again playing whatever tickles them the most…not the flavor of the month Living Story funnel cake or zerg train.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I like the idea of repeatable Hearts, especially if integrated as something simple like a daily/monthly achievement. I think 5 is too high for daily, though — 1 or 2 would be more reasonable.

Seera.5916:

Did you know that the game originally didn’t HAVE Hearts?

But players didn’t know where to go to find the events. So ANet put things to do to pass the time in areas were events tend to pop up. These are the Hearts. They are primarily there to slow your progress in an area down long enough for you to see an event occur. They put it towards map completion and gave rewards to it so that players would have incentive to slow down when they ran into a heart.

Uh… do you have a source on this? You must be talking about an extremely primitive prototype version, because even in early betas there were Hearts. In fact, there used to be over double the amount of Hearts that we have now.

And yes, this person is correct. The game originally did not have renown hearts. Before Closed Betas and I believe before Alpha. Test focus groups were put in a chair, given the game and the devs said “Ok, go!”. The focus group testers looked around and said…uh ok? What do I do?

The devs had to explain to them that they just wander around aimlessly finding content. The focus group could not do this as they are/we are all conditioned to look for quests. So they put in renown hearts to give a bit more structure, as well as the scouts.

Karizee.8076:

I think undoing progress every month is a terrible idea.

Resetting character progress is never a good idea. Fractal levels fiasco, anyone?

Fyrebrand.4859:

I like the idea of repeatable Hearts, especially if integrated as something simple like a daily/monthly achievement. I think 5 is too high for daily, though — 1 or 2 would be more reasonable.

Seera.5916:

Did you know that the game originally didn’t HAVE Hearts?

But players didn’t know where to go to find the events. So ANet put things to do to pass the time in areas were events tend to pop up. These are the Hearts. They are primarily there to slow your progress in an area down long enough for you to see an event occur. They put it towards map completion and gave rewards to it so that players would have incentive to slow down when they ran into a heart.

Uh… do you have a source on this? You must be talking about an extremely primitive prototype version, because even in early betas there were Hearts. In fact, there used to be over double the amount of Hearts that we have now.

ANet said that about the hearts before the open betas, that people were lost without a traditional quest type structure. I remember reading the quote, but it’s been over 2 years now and while I can find numerous references to it, the original quote seems to be gone.

ANet seems to have removed a number of old quotes. The links leading to the quotes clarifying the manifesto are gone also.

I’m not okay with hearts resetting every month. I have severe OCD (the real deal) and this would drive me nuts… on top of that what purpose is do to them again as a level 80? The rewards are aweful… not much incentive to do them again. I think to add re-playability to the hearts you have to re-design how they function and deliver rewards.

What about a new currency system revolving around hearts? Each time you complete a heart you would get so much of the currency (this would be account bound) and each heart related NPC would sell unique items (by unique I mean unique to the heart or map) that you can then trade the currency for. Of course this means there would have to be a manual reset but I’m okay with that since if I don’t want to I don’t have to. I realize karma kinda does this already, but you can get it elseware lowering the incentive to do hearts and the rewards are crap. This would give much more incentive to do hearts if they have unique rewards tied to them. It would also be a form of non-RNG based rewards which would be good for the game.

Another suggestion would be (would drive me crazy but whatever) what if once you reach world completion you get a tiered harder/longer version of the hearts and each time you complete it increases and gives better rewards but you can only complete that heart once per day?

I just don’t think a simple reset makes them worth while. It would give me more incentive to re-do them if they had a real function for us 80s and people still leveling too.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I like the idea of repeatable Hearts, especially if integrated as something simple like a daily/monthly achievement. I think 5 is too high for daily, though — 1 or 2 would be more reasonable.

Seera.5916:

Did you know that the game originally didn’t HAVE Hearts?

But players didn’t know where to go to find the events. So ANet put things to do to pass the time in areas were events tend to pop up. These are the Hearts. They are primarily there to slow your progress in an area down long enough for you to see an event occur. They put it towards map completion and gave rewards to it so that players would have incentive to slow down when they ran into a heart.

Uh… do you have a source on this? You must be talking about an extremely primitive prototype version, because even in early betas there were Hearts. In fact, there used to be over double the amount of Hearts that we have now.

Early Alpha versions didn’t have them. And it makes sense why they put them in. Players are so accustomed to quests leading them around in the world that they were lost without them.

It would be like being told to go a road trip across a country you’re unfamiliar with and being told you can’t use a GPS or use internet map sites. How many of us would end up lost because we aren’t familar with (or able to find) the non-digital means to find out where you’re going?

Colin mentioned it in an interview but it’s such an old interview at this point that I haven’t been able to locate it.

I can’t stand the hearts. Orr is a ton of fun to map complete simply because there are no hearts there.

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’d have to agree. I believe a far better method would be something like Dry Top, or (as I believe someone above suggested), something like Nicholas the Traveler from GW — the point being to have something he wants that drops from mobs in various locations.

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.

Yes. Yes yes yes. Renown hearts were my least favorite part of the game. While I respect the feelings of others who like them, I think you’re on the right track that dynamic events are more fun and engaging than hearts.

Honestly, when it comes to open world content, I think one of the largest reasons you don’t see people do it is because there’s “no reason to do it.”

“No reason” = lack of exclusive rewards, or lack of rewards in general

Let’s say I decide to run around in Timberline Falls for exactly one hour, do some gathering, and complete dynamic events along the way. What can I expect as far as rewards? Some crafting mats, probably a handful of blues and greens – and not necessarily any unique skins – and maybe 1 gold?

Okay, how about instead I run dungeons for that hour. I get maybe 5 or 6 gold directly, more blues and greens, a huge number of champ boxes, and dungeon tokens which can get me unique skins, exotic-level gear, or be converted into gold.

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.

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.

My thoughts are as follows;

Make everything like dry-top. And I’m being serious here.

Dry-top, as you’ve stated has managed to meld personal and group goals together. It’s also managed to make the Merchant important, it has also reduced the need to grind champs for bags (even though you can still do that) and it is just all round a well designed system that would really make players feel like they are working together to achieve a goal.

You’ve done almost everything right with the dry-top event system. Use it everywhere, is my suggestion.

If I’m going to have hearts reset, I’d want it to be reset through Hard Mode or something. :o

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’d have to agree. I believe a far better method would be something like Dry Top, or (as I believe someone above suggested), something like Nicholas the Traveler from GW — the point being to have something he wants that drops from mobs in various locations.

So much this! Please! I know we have geode traders in dry-top, but i loved trading with Nicholas each week. Maybe his great-grandson?