Guild Wars 2

Is arena net going to add more hearts in guild wars 2 game?

From what Colin said, if they ever add Cantha or Elona to the game, they will most likely not have Renown Hearts, but they will retain the PoI’s, Vista’s, and Waypoints.

The reason being they only added hearts, I believe, was so testers had a general idea where to go for DE’s, and to find what suggested area to go for the DE’s of your level.

This actually disheartens me. I always enjoyed doing quests in older MMOs, and the renown hearts sort of scratched that itch for me. I found Orr and Southsun Cove to be terribly boring areas to explore without hearts.

no more renown hearts = sad me

I enjoy the hearts, some zones would be incredibly barren and unfulfilling to explore if the hearts didn’t exist. If anything, I’d prefer to see hearts be more substantial and take longer to complete. Some are quite fun and are over far too quick (although I tend to keep going after completion, it’s somehow not quite the same)

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

I hope Anet adds quests that actually create interesting combat scenarios, with any resemblance of structure to tell a short story or express a bit of the world’s lore. You know, like GW1’s quests.

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

I think GW2 tried to remove questing as a thing by removing traditional kill X quests and adding in meta events, but then turned around and added mandatory press F 80 times per quests. Its worse than regular MMOs because its forced down your throat. GW2 did a lot of things right in my opinion, but every heart falls into one of three categories and becomes boring after the first world.
-Press F on X
-Kill things to press F on X
-Transform into a slow, clunky, low damage mob to press F on X

DiogoSilva.7089:

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

Exactly.

Isn’t it funny, though, that some players actually want the “kill x rats” quests?

I wonder if the majority of players prefers that kind of quest, or dynamic events.

I think they could be without hearts entirely if they make DE’s be big chains that actually tell a story, where NPC’s have some proper dialogue etc. They shouldn’t be all over the place ofc cause some people still want to farm events, but they could easily use it as a story telling tool.

Erasculio.2914:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

Exactly.

Isn’t it funny, though, that some players actually want the “kill x rats” quests?

I wonder if the majority of players prefers that kind of quest, or dynamic events.

You’re not seeing the whole picture. Renown heart NPCs give you a reason to stop by certain locations. Those locations might have DEs that kick off five or ten minutes. But if you’ve got no reason to visit that spot, or if you simply run right through it with no reason to stick around, you might miss a great chain of DEs.

And remember that heart NPCs offer items for karma. These might be anything from fun consumables to crafting recipes for unique armor skins. They give you a chance to unload your loot without having to return to town.

And then there’s the lore aspect. These NPCs give a bit of depth to the world of Tyria. Edna’s Orchard without Edna is just a building we can’t enter and a copse of apple trees with a few low-level DEs. I understand there are more than a few players who don’t even bother talking to the heart NPCs; but there are those of use who do. And these NPCs breathe a bit of life into the world.

darkace.8925:

And remember that heart NPCs offer items for karma. These might be anything from fun consumables to crafting recipes for unique armor skins. They give you a chance to unload your loot without having to return to town.

And then there’s the lore aspect. These NPCs give a bit of depth to the world of Tyria. Edna’s Orchard without Edna is just a building we can’t enter and a copse of apple trees with a few low-level DEs.

Orr has those NPCs, telling about the lore and acting as Karma Merchants, without having hearts.

And ideally we would always have some dynamic event active in different parts of the map, so someone running around would find a few interesting things to do.

From my personal experience, GW2 has serious trouble expressing its lore, and exploring Tyria is an highly repetitive experience. Hearts contributed a lot to both situations.

If hearts were to be substituted by more elaborated quest systems, exploring Tyria and getting to know more about its lore would have been a much more exciting experience.

As it is, hearts are terrible.

I enjoy DE’s. I’ve done many of them over and over and over… Hearts… some are fun. others not so much.

Two examples: there’s a heart in SE Harathi that offers target practice with ballista or mortar as an option. Then, there’s one in NW Sparkfly where you use Hylek weapons to splat termite mounds, pull the tail, kill the termite, take the meat, burn (cook?) the meant and give it to a hylek.

The Harathi one, I enjoy as long as I haven’t done it on another character recently. There’s a wee bit of hand-eye coordination going on, which engages me. The Sparkfly one I find very tedious. I tend to just stay on a cannon and shoot mounds as they respawn, so as not to have to do the other parts.

At least neither are like Fedex quests elsewhere.

Spam: “Take this thingambob to Frito, the master artificer of Other-end-of-the-world.”
Frito: takes thingamabob “Please thank Spam for me. Oh, and tell him he forgot to send the watchamabob.”
Spam: “Ah, the watchamabob! How could I forget. Hmm, I don’t have any, you’ll have to go to Reeses, the quartermaster of Fort Way-the-heck-over-there. Get a watchamabob from him and bring it back to me so that I might adjust it.”
Reeses: “How is old Spam? A watchamabob? Well, I could give you one, but my cat just died and rats are overwhelming the fort. If you could kill ten rats, it would help free me up enough that I could fetch you a Watchamabob.”
Spam: “Wonderful. Just let me adjust this, then you can take it to Frito.”
Frito: “Excellent. When you return to Spam, I’m sure he will reward you for your efforts. And tell him I said to say hello to his wife.”

I think it’s a valid point that they do add some extra detail to the world with npc’s involved (heart vendor etc) and that it gives a sense of direction. I do think that if they wish to add more they will have to make them more meaningfull than just ‘search this that or that or kill x’. I don’t know how they would go about doing that though, events can be chained while hearts are just.. fetch quests.