Guild Wars 2

One of the main boasts of GW2’s PvE design was the death of the classic quest system. I mean the quest log that told you to kill ten rats, fetch a dozen hides, and take down the big bad ogre in the middle of the map.

That quest log was replaced with a combination of the public event system, renown hearts, and the personal story. What happened?

We’re not likely to see hearts on any new maps, as they’ve reportedly lost favor with the devs. They have expressed interest in potentially growing the personal story, but nothing has been added since launch. Events, at least, are still all the rage.

The achievement system started off simple, and built up promise over the last year. But since ramping up the Living Story, it has become more and more like a quest log, albeit one linked to seasonal public events.

We’re right back to a checklist of killing ten rats, collecting a dozen hides, and taking down the big bad ogre.

Thoughts?

The princess kissed the frog to make him a prince. After looking upon him a minute, she shrugged her shoulders and waggled a finger. He was abruptly turned into a hylek.

Well, people have been complaining about the “lack” of direction with the living story for months, so of course they had to do something to guide people.

Gulesave.5073:

We’re right back to a checklist of killing ten rats, collecting a dozen hides, and taking down the big bad ogre.

Thoughts?

Very much so. The difference is that with quests I used to be able to pick and chose which ones I wanted in my log. Not so with boring, grindy achievements. They are pushed into your face every time you look at the character selection screen.

It was never about killing off the quest system. It was about cutting out the filler (the kill 10 rat quests) while leaving the main story quests. What ArenaNet ended up with was the personal story as the main quest line which evolved into the living story. This current living story has an obvious quest-like element to it.

Quests work because they get the player’s attention and direct them where they need to go. Remove this, and the majority of players won’t know what to do any may not even know something is occurring. Since some sort of direction must be given, ArenaNet chose the achievement system to do this, rather than implementing a quest system. This can be confusing, since, for example, Halloween required you to complete the meta even though that wasn’t what was asked of you.

Hearts (and scouts) were not originally in the game. They are the result of quest driven players trying GW2 and immediately getting lost or confused. Hearts were meant to direct these players to areas with events.

I agree that there are too many kill x of y achievements within the living story. I think that is the biggest problem with it. Why can’t we investigate some benevolent interesting ruins? Why does it always have to be killing something (for the majority of the story)?

These types of achievements have been there since day 1 though. They just ding lower now. For example, look at the Insect Killer achievement that has been there since launch.. Kill 1,000.

I do agree with you op. LS is slowly reverting to the traditional MMO quests. Even one of the Tower of Nightmares achievements is asking to kill 100 Toxic Alliance members which is optional but people have nothing else to do anyways. Achievements would have been fun to get through difficult content just like in Tequatl the Rising and Queen’s Gauntlet.

Yea, the living story achievement system is essentially a quest log.

Kill ten rats/Kill 100 Toxic Alliance members.

Collect ten bear hides/Collect 50 toxic spores.

I would absolutely love for arena net to re-introduce the quest system to GW2.

For m, it’s all about the story in the GW universe and a good story necessarily needs a fixed start and ending, as well as fixed points throughout, in order to have a good build up, pacing, and a satisfying end. Telling a story through events imo impossible, because of the randomness in which they spawn – they can’t rely on players seeing it through from start to finish.

Also, Dynamic Events are about " the players doing stuff ", and as such rarely focus on dialogue and characters. That’s where the nature of quests shines, which only include a limited number of characters and can heavily focus on narrative instead of actual gameplay.

I don’t want Kill ten rats! -quests for my leveling experience, I want narrative driven quests on a small scale, so that the writers can actually fill the world of Tyria with character, and ultimately life .

Concerning the Living Story, besides obvious and main quests that give actual and easy to follow direction and are only available during the LS releases, minor quests could be strewn around the world, that forecast and harp back to the LS releases.

Bezayne.6459:

Gulesave.5073:

We’re right back to a checklist of killing ten rats, collecting a dozen hides, and taking down the big bad ogre.

Thoughts?

Very much so. The difference is that with quests I used to be able to pick and chose which ones I wanted in my log. Not so with boring, grindy achievements. They are pushed into your face every time you look at the character selection screen.

Well, GW2 had already gone back on it’s “no grinding” promise since day 1. So, hey, why not just go back on everything else? Right?

Living story has the same cycle all the time: gather things, go around the world to find things, kill x number of things, doa jumping puzzle and then finish it off in a dungeon.
usually the JP and the dungeon stop a good amount of players to see the ending of a LS arc so they start to care less about it because the4y know they will not be able to finish it

JungleNin.8379:

Bezayne.6459:

Gulesave.5073:

We’re right back to a checklist of killing ten rats, collecting a dozen hides, and taking down the big bad ogre.

Thoughts?

Very much so. The difference is that with quests I used to be able to pick and chose which ones I wanted in my log. Not so with boring, grindy achievements. They are pushed into your face every time you look at the character selection screen.

Well, GW2 had already gone back on it’s “no grinding” promise since day 1. So, hey, why not just go back on everything else? Right?

Let’s see:
-no grinding? (all LS – the later more obvious)
-no gears treadmill? (ascended gear introduced bit by bit)
-no raids? (tequila redone!)
-no quest in “kill 10 rats” manner? (nooo… we have achievements for that!)
-no need for LFG tool ever again? (yeah… we all know how that one ended)

Most painful thing is, that Anet really created tools to get rid most of this stuff. They just use it to keep the zombie kicking and biting instead smash it’s head with it.
Ohh, ohh… I’m going back to palpate some obelisks. Still 2 maps to go

Healix.5819:

Hearts (and scouts) were not originally in the game. They are the result of quest driven players trying GW2 and immediately getting lost or confused. Hearts were meant to direct these players to areas with events.

And we can see how well that worked. Once the hearts are done people wonder what they should do next to get enough XP to continue their personal story.

The core issue is the concept of discoverability. Discovering that the events exist, what they do, and so on.

ANet seems to think that all players want to do is explore and discover. That is likely a fallacy coming from observing long term GW1 players. Those that didn’t wander off to other games once they were done with the quest lines, but instead went back and scoured each and every zone for lore and easter eggs. People like, For example, Wooden Potato. Him and his like may be loud, but not likely to be the majority of any game community.