Before the repeatable hearts were released with the new zones, there’s been a discussion on how they could look like. Some players were even completely against them while some said they accepted hearts as long as they were different to the normal starter zone tasks. Let’s take a look at them:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ember_Bay
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bitterfrost_Frontier
When I played through the episodes and maps I felt no difference at all to the starter area hearts: kill enemies and gather things remain 99% of the tasks. The only difference is that they’re repeatable, but there’s no actual motivation to do them.
The sad thing about it is that they’re even fixed parts of the story each episode. It’s a step backwards in terms of storytelling to have starter hearts in there:
Arrived in Ember Bay, we started off with heart #1: kill destroyers 0/x, collect samples, restart devices 0/5. Then we continued, in order to talk to the ‘Rock Face’ we had to do heart #2: arm skritt 0/3, rescue skritt 0/3, wake up skritt 0/3.
In Bitterfrost Frontier it’s been even worse. A huge part of the story has been gathering and killing enemies for the ingredients of the elixir, also in line with several heart quests: Loot suet 0/x, gather winterberries 0/x, eggshells 0/x, flexible sticks 0/4, chicken feathers 0/4, shiny ice 0/4
Bloodstone Fen however didn’t have hearts and the story literally focused on the story. We explored the environment, looked out for survivors, we had to find out what the White Mantle has been doing there, we reconstructed the events. We chased Caudecus and Lazarus appeared. Out of the shadows contained much, much more story compared to episode 2 and 3. The latter were stretched with boring heart fetch quests which don’t belong into a Living Story episode. I’m neutral to having repeatable hearts in the maps, but I don’t want to see them in the story anymore.