Guild Wars 2

There will be physical copies, but I don’t know if they will be available in every country.
An official retailer in Germany said they’re selling physical copies (“including CD/DVD”, but probably it’ll be just an empty cover with a code inside). On Amazon there’s information about size and weight as well.

However, you won’t be able to claim the pre-purchase bonus because they won’t arrive prior to the release. At least that’s the case with the two retailers I’m aware of.

Edit: Talking about the Standard Edition.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

My point is that the OP didn’t provide any reasoning other than “dervish, because GW1”. You want to change the status quo? Great, it’s up to you to provide a rationale. All I’m doing is saying that pointing to GW1 isn’t enough.

I thought we could put two and two together and bear all of the other Paragon/Dervish/Ritualist/… threads in mind. Guess we’ll start all over again each time one of these threads appears. Overall it’s pretty simple, adding a new class = more work, but also: additional selling point for the expansion, adding versatility: new weapons, new play style, some people like it, some won’t.

Instead of thinking of a completely new, light saber wielding Sci-Fi class that doesn’t fit the game, it’s understandable to go back to the roots and take a look at the old popular classes of GW. The title of this thread even suggests that the theme of the new expansion would have been a great chance to bring back one of these classes.

All in all, it could have been, but they decided otherwise and that’s how it is right now. Most of the people didn’t expect a whole new class but many hoped to see some of it at least as part of the new elite specs.

darkprecure.6129:

Maybe we’ll get Dervish as a specialization with Exp3, when we go to Kourna and/or Istan. I don’t think LW Season 4 will bring us way down to those areas and only expand Vabbi, the Crystal Desert and the Desolation.

I don’t expect them to release another Elona related expansion after PoF. If Expansion 3 will also have a deserted Elona theme, people will be upset because it’s another deserted expansion right after the first one. The difference between the HoT and PoF theme is huge – jungle vs desert.

Living World Season 4 will probably longer than Season 3 because they won’t already release another expansion after 1 year. It might take us further down to some parts of Kourna but sadly I have a bad feeling for Istan. We will probably never see every part of Elona again.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

They shouldn’t bring back a class simply because we are nostalgic for the “good old days.”

Wow, the nostalgia point. Great reasoning. Why not? We’ve got a Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, Elementalist, Mesmer and even some sort of Assassin just as in GW.

Did they do that because we were nostalgic for the “good old days”?
They could have scrapped them completely and created new classes we’ve never heard of. They could have also renamed Tyria into Dragon Land. They could have renamed the game into Dragon Wars 2 if we’re already on it.

But GW2 is the sequel of GW1, even if they’re completely different games. And an expansion that partly takes place in Elona – which existed in GW1 – might have been a great chance to re-introduce a class called Dervish – that also existed back then. You might have already noticed that some elite specs are directly connected to the lore of Elona. But yeah, let’s just forget about every great connection the story could have had and every bridge between the two games. Just because some people would call it being nostalgic.

If you don’t want that then don’t work on Guild Wars 2. Create another MMORPG, think of another world with another story and other classes.

But here’s the best thing: Even if you didn’t play GW you might have fun playing Dervish. People might like it, it’s a great unique class that suits the environment and theme of the expansion. Sounds terrible, right?

Abelisk.4527:

Imagine doing 64 Renown Hearts in one day, hardcore grinders wouldn’t mind something like that.

The best thing in that case would be not to have achievements and quests that require you to do the same heart quests 64 times. Instead, we could have versatile content that requires you to be really dedicated to a quest, maybe one that requires you to use your brain instead of doing the same thing over and over again with an artificial time gate in between.
Something that wouldn’t be easily solved with the help of a guide (randomized) so that you have to think on your own. Every day you could progress a little further since it would take some time to solve it.

Ayrilana.1396:

Anet could have dialogue which is different depending on the character’s race. This is done with the HoT and LS dialogues in the open world. That said, it would require more resources and would it be beneficial for the entire playerbase instead of just the roleplayers?

I don’t think that anyone would be able to create unique story arcs like that by using the same events for everyone with an alternative text afterwards. What if the ally you’re protecting has to die in a certain story line – at the same time, other players will have to keep him alive in order to progress in their story? How do you stop people from keeping him alive? You’ll create a toxic, competitive atmosphere in terms of progress just like it’s been criticised by GW2 players regarding other games that let players fight for loot or nodes.
If there are more people on the one side (just as it is at world bosses positions) the other side will never know how their story continues. Maybe if you try to do the event 1000 times at different times when you’re lucky and no one else is around, you’ll make it.

By using the same events for everyone, you’ve basically scrapped every single idea behind the points and live with nothing but compromises:

• You’re not making decisions on your own. You can always be outvoted by other players and can’t reliably change the direction of your own story. It always depends on the decision of the other players. In the end, only a few will be happy with the decision made, the other players will be completely dissatisfied.

• Your own story, your back-story consists of a few lines of text that they added to a universal event that doesn’t seem to be that important itself – because it’s always the same, for everyone. You won’t be able to tell convincing (unique) stories like that. It will always remain the same with a small text that changes.

Ayrilana.1396:

Players can vote similar to how you choose the leader of the pact camp in VB.

You also need to remember that this is an MMO and not a single player game that’s played offline.

Alright that’s not quite the same thing as making decisions on your own but let’s say we let it count. Where’s the impact of the story of your character? An Ash Legion Charr votes just like a noble human. Are there special events which continue the story line of the Ash Legion Charr that the noble human can’t do?

And you need to remember that everything I mentioned could be possible by using quests.

Ayrilana.1396:

Whether or not there are any events in the game that match what you want doesn’t mean that events cannot be created as such nor that events and quests are any different from each other.

So the thread title is false as events can certainly be made to match what you want. It just takes more resources.

This:

Tekey.7946:

• Personality. And that’s a major point. Do you remember which legion your Charr character belongs to? Which order you chose? Which god did your humans choose and what’s the back-story of your character? Where did you come from, who are your friends and enemies? Doesn’t matter, you’re doing the same events as everyone else, no matter if you’re a human, Charr, Sylvari, Norn or Asura. Defeat this enemy because he’s evil. Defend this ally because he’s good.
  You’ll never find out who your character really is, how he would act according to his backstory and whom he would help.

combined with:

Tekey.7946:

• Multiple choices. Decisions with a real impact on the story and your character + other characters. Decide whom you can trust, if you want to be honest, greedy or naive. The story will have a different outcome accordingly.

in an event that appears for every player (in the same map), that supports every single combination of choices of each player? That’s ridiculous. Tell me how.

Ayrilana.1396:

And again, those type of things are not the standard of traditional quests. Most MMO quests, actually probably RPG games in general, use the fetch and kill types. You’ll see those two more often than anything else and have been a complaint as far back as Everquest; probably further.

Quests and events could of course always have more depth with addtional story and choices. Your argument, including thread title, in regards to events and quests not being the same is unfortunately incorrect.

Standard, most, more often: those quests do exist in other games. Therefore they’re part of the discussion.

And that’s why the topic and the thread title remains correct until someone provides examples of events that contain the points mentioned in the initial post.

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re using traditional in the sense of “what once was” which it never actually was.

Ayrilana.1396:

I went by your definitions on what you described as traditional.

Tekey.7946:

Here are some points being used in traditional quests – which events simply can’t provide:

• Solving mysteries, riddles. Letters you have to decrypt by combining hints found somewhere; stealth missions: find a way to sneak into a building without being noticed; Characters that went missing or act suspiciously – you have to find out what happened to them, what they’re up to and who is involved by asking other characters and looking for hints in the area. Also: how to achieve something by manipulating certain characters and processes – tactical thinking.

• Multiple choices. Decisions with a real impact on the story and your character + other characters. Decide whom you can trust, if you want to be honest, greedy or naive. The story will have a different outcome accordingly.

• Personality. And that’s a major point. Do you remember which legion your Charr character belongs to? Which order you chose? Which god did your humans choose and what’s the back-story of your character? Where did you come from, who are your friends and enemies? Doesn’t matter, you’re doing the same events as everyone else, no matter if you’re a human, Charr, Sylvari, Norn or Asura. Defeat this enemy because he’s evil. Defend this ally because he’s good.
  You’ll never find out who your character really is, how he would act according to his backstory and whom he would help.

Tekey.7946:

• Traditional quests can offer you certain choices that allow you to personalize your character, you can make different decisions at certain points of the story and change it (to an extent). Star Wars – The Old Republic demonstrates a system like as it allows you to keep the targets of your quests alive, kill them or be corrupt and let them buy their life for example. Your character does even have a scale that shows how far on the dark / light side he is, it changes with every decision he makes._

Ayrilana.1396:

Except what you list as traditional isn’t actually traditional. Quests in other games have not all been what you describe as “traditional quests” but more like the events we have in this game. You’re using traditional in the sense of “what once was” which it never actually was.

Traditional quests – known as rather solo oriented content.
Events – known as mostly group oriented content.

I’ve never said that I’d call them traditional in the sense of “what once was”. That’s just your interpretation. I’ve even brought up Star Wars as a current example and still you’re arguing about semantics. Eventually, I have to call them somehow, so please try to stay on topic.

Ayrilana.1396:

Personal character development isn’t a requirement for RPG’s. Personal character development was only present during the second story arc of the personal story (level 20). Nothing else touched on the player character’s background history. GW1 really had zero personal character development in the sense of background story as well. Instead both stories centered around the player character’s involvement in the events going on within the games.

Ayrilana.1396:

Psientist.6437:

Ayrilana.1396:

Ashantara.8731:

I don’t think the OP was trying to say that they wanted events replaced with personal quests. I think the actual statement was that ArenaNet has been completely neglecting personal character development (as initiated by the personal story) in favor of events, which is never a good thing in a MMO*RPG* for the RPG part is completely being ignored.

Soon people will turn from MMOs to traditional pen & paper again, because they miss the excitement of adventuring and character progress.

Personal character development isn’t a requirement for RPG’s. Personal character development was only present during the second story arc of the personal story (level 20). Nothing else touched on the player character’s background history. GW1 really had zero personal character development in the sense of background story as well. Instead both stories centered around the player character’s involvement in the events going on within the games.

Offering background story or variable story choices is only one flavor of ‘rp’ and ‘rp’ is a subset of player agency. I would argue that GW1’s sandbox profession mechanic and hero mechanic allowed player agency to function on a fundamental level.

And what Anet has done with these games is another ‘flavor’.

Since this discussion is getting more and more off-topic I’d like to remember that the initial topic is the comparison of traditional quests compared to events – what they can or cannot do. So I’d like to summarize these points in general and conclude:

• Traditional quests can offer you certain choices that allow you to personalize your character, you can make different decisions at certain points of the story and change it (to an extent). Star Wars – The Old Republic demonstrates a system like as it allows you to keep the targets of your quests alive, kill them or be corrupt and let them buy their life for example. Your character does even have a scale that shows how far on the dark / light side he is, it changes with every decision he makes.
• Events can certainly not do the same as they’re designed to be played by a group of players.

• Traditional events could be used to tell stories about your own character (charr legions,…) in order to create a backstory (that could be combined with the decision system mentioned above).
• Events can’t do that as they’re telling stories that are universally compatible with every character – in order to be available for every character.

Ashantara.8731:

I don’t think the OP was trying to say that they wanted events replaced with personal quests. I think the actual statement was that ArenaNet has been completely neglecting personal character development (as initiated by the personal story) in favor of events, which is never a good thing in a MMO*RPG* for the RPG part is completely being ignored.

Soon people will turn from MMOs to traditional pen & paper again, because they miss the excitement of adventuring and character progress.

That’s a nice addition to my points and a good description of how I feel like, thank you.

joneirikb.7506:

Couple of quick examples from top of my head:

• Answer Raven’s Riddles in norn starting area. (event)
• Mount Maelstrom map, even where you transform into animal (moa, dolyak, rabbit) to go gather stuff inside cave with angry ghosts.
• Timberlake (iirc) south end, event chain that tells a funny story of asura and human researchers researching Ettins, while each separate event is nothing new, the combination and story telling combines into something greater.

They do make some good events, but a good bunch of them are meant to be just filler for people to do to get xp etc. In short, a bit similar to most games quests, that are there just to give generic XP.

I do agree that I’d like to see more complicated and different events. And will be following this thread with interest. Just want to clear out that not all the events are the same.

Edit: should mention that the general quality of the “launch” materials tend to be richer in terms of creativity and variety. Not a big surprise that later content aren’t quite up to that level.

Thank you for posting a few examples. Alright so we’ve got the raven riddle event in Wayfarer Foothills, you’re right. If you find more events of the same type, you can add them later on. Let’s compare it to the original post:

Tekey.7946:

• Solving mysteries, riddles. Letters you have to decrypt by combining hints found somewhere; stealth missions: find a way to sneak into a building without being noticed; Characters that went missing or act suspiciously – you have to find out what happened to them, what they’re up to and who is involved by asking other characters and looking for hints in the area. Also: how to achieve something by manipulating certain characters and processes – tactical thinking.

I’ve now removed the word ‘riddles’ from the list as it’s been provided in an event. Everything else however, remains as it is. You’re neither getting a mysterious letter, nor the chance for a stealth mission or investigation of intrigues created by the citizens of Divinity’s Reach or the like in an event.

Linken.6345:

Also got the shrine of the cat in norn starting area were you can ask npc to transform you to a cat.

I’ll add the ‘transform’ events both of you mentioned to the one that can be found in Caledon Forest. But I seriously don’t know to which of my points they are referring:

• Solving mysteries
• Multiple choices
• Personality

As well as the Timberlake event chain which sounds nice, but it isn’t connected to any of the points listed above.

I know that events are not all the same, that’s why there’s always some space in the category “Other” for events that don’t fit into Defeat, Escort/Protect and Gather. But the discussion is not about whether there are some events that are fun to play. It’s really just about the three unique points of traditional quests which can’t be provided by events. But you may post other events that do refer to the points if you like and we’ll look if they’re comparable to the according quests.

Yargesh.4965:

Events where what was originally planed to exist as leveling fodder. Hearts where added as feedback said players did not understand how to proceed with just events.

They are not now or in the future going to get rid of events. Story is the only quest you are going to get.

No one was talking about getting rid of events.

Ayrilana.1396:

Correction: Events will never replace the type of quests that you want

Quests in many games have been fairly dull and involve pretty much the same activities. You either go kill something or you go fetch something. These are no different from the events that we currently have now.

I agree to an extent because there are really games that actually do the same thing in quests. But on the other hand, why would I even beg for these boring “kill this, gather that” quests if they’re basically the same as events now? I would rather suggest more complex and versatile ‘runescape’ quests to show that they’ve got a lot of potential and could be a nice addition to events.

Jak.6049:

I disagree. There are some central Tyria events that require you to acquire a particular transformation to proceed, as well as many in Heart of Maguuma that are based around objectives entirely different from the ones you mentioned.

They can bring everything quests brought us. Anet just chooses not to do this with the LWS3 map events.

Since you’ve got a pretty strong opinion on the topic, would you mind showing us some specific examples referring to your statement?

I do remember 4 events in Caledon Forest which demanded you to transform into a drake/crab/moa/jellyfish in order to fight a Hylek. These events would be put into the category “Other” as they’re not just a “Defeat” event. Yes, there are events that are unique and special. However, as you look through the events in each zone, the vast majority will require you to defeat A, escort/protect B or gather C.

Since there are no events that could provide the three points mentioned in the initial post, I’d like to know your opinion on how they could manage to do that. Unless there’s not a certain example, I disagree with your second to last sentence. Events can not provide everything that quests could do.

FrizzFreston.5290:

This is a pointless thread title. Instead of saying what events cant provide it really should point out what events currently dont provide and can improve on through other storytelling channels.

Working within the limits of Guild Wars 2 is better than designing a completely new system for it.

Plus ofcourse there will be more support for your ideas if your idea doesnt demand a new system. People on this forum act on criticism like its an allergy.

The thread was meant to be more like an approach on the theoretical side of events and quests in comparison. In the last paragraph I also mentioned the attempt of creating achievements that returned to a more traditional quest design. But it’s very unlikely that we’ll ever see the same sort and amount of quests in GW2 as in other MMORPG’s, so it’s all just theoretical.

As you can see, they were basically all sorted by 3 major types of activities: Defeat, Escort/Protect and Gather. Dynamic events were always considered to a substitute for traditional quest in GW2. Here are some points being used in traditional quests – which events simply can’t provide:

• Solving mysteries, riddles. Letters you have to decrypt by combining hints found somewhere; stealth missions: find a way to sneak into a building without being noticed; Characters that went missing or act suspiciously – you have to find out what happened to them, what they’re up to and who is involved by asking other characters and looking for hints in the area. Also: how to achieve something by manipulating certain characters and processes – tactical thinking.

• Multiple choices. Decisions with a real impact on the story and your character + other characters. Decide whom you can trust, if you want to be honest, greedy or naive. The story will have a different outcome accordingly.

• Personality. And that’s a major point. Do you remember which legion your Charr character belongs to? Which order you chose? Which god did your humans choose and what’s the back-story of your character? Where did you come from, who are your friends and enemies? Doesn’t matter, you’re doing the same events as everyone else, no matter if you’re a human, Charr, Sylvari, Norn or Asura. Defeat this enemy because he’s evil. Defend this ally because he’s good.
  You’ll never find out who your character really is, how he would act according to his backstory and whom he would help.

Events can be used to bring people together and make maps feel alive. However, because of their nature (everyone can participate no matter what character), they’re completely anonymous – there’s no personal involvement or identification going on.
Taking the events of season 3 as an example, their design is also pretty frontal, with the majority being listed as “Defeat”-events. There’s no room for stealth missions, solving mysteries or thinking about intrigues. Almost every event consists of: is it evil? Yes? Kill it.

Yes, I know there are games with boring quests. The points mentioned above should demonstrate that (complex) quests could definitely have a fixed place in GW2 because events can only cover content to a certain extent in a certain way. Events are great for group content and quests could provide a more complex, in depth, personal sort of content.
Every system has its flaws and that’s why they should try to find a balance between events and quests. The “current events” sometimes provided something similar (Burden of choice achievement e.g.) but sadly, they’re being developed pretty sporadically.

source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Events

Here’s a list of all events taking place in the Living World season 3 maps:

The Greyhawk.9107:

Waypoints, the Swiftness buff (and all the skills, traits, masteries, consumables, and runes affected by said buff), Asura Gates, Nuchok Wallows, Thermal Propulsion, etc. ect. ect.

“But it’ll only be in the Xpack maps!” Yeah, they said that about gliding too.

Waypoints: Games like ESO do have both waypoints and mounts, works great as it is. You already noticed that newer maps have fewer waypoints compared to vanilla maps. Silverwastes, HoT maps and Living World season 3 maps introduced different ways to travel around which refers to your last points:

Nuhoch Wallows, Thermal Tubes, Skritt Tunnels, Ley-Lines, Oakheart Essences. New types of transportation were used to replace many waypoints. And that’s exactly what mounts would do. Claiming that we don’t need mounts is just as claiming that we don’t need the systems listed above because we could use more waypoints instead. So why did we get them in the first place? It’s a decision that changed the design of the maps and added a lot to the “flow”- you probably don’t want to see a loading screen every 30 seconds as you travel through the map.

Mounts could be used everywhere, whereas Nuhoch don’t appear everywhere, you can’t find Skritt everywhere, Ley-Lines may not be available everywhere (referring to the lore of Guild Wars 2. So everytime they have to think of something new. Why should they spend resources on reinventing the wheel for every new maps instead of creating a universal system?

Not every profession has access to a signet that keeps up the speed buff constantly. And why would you want to spend a certain trait line, a skill slot or rune slot on speed buffs instead of useful things you could need in combat?

Another point is the introduction of Gliding in HoT. Gliding changed the way we could travel in Tyria massively. Did we need Gliding? We could play the game for a few years without it, but it made traveling more interesting, it added new possibilities in Jumping Puzzles or events, and gave us a completely different view of Tyria.
It would be likely to see a similar system in the next expansion as a main selling point. The mounts we’re getting will probably have certain features that could be fun in terms of gameplay. Additional to that, Arenanet could earn a lot by selling mount skins – just as they’re doing right now by selling glider skins.

No matter if one wants mounts or not, the next expansion will contain some anyways – in one way or another and I don’t expect them to scrap an entire system now that they already spend months developing. I’d suggest everyone to wait for the xpac, try them out and provide feedback afterwards. Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Yeah, pretty much. And its not just turning into just another clone, mounts simply don’t FIT in this game from a mechanical stand point.

What mechanical points are you referring to? Waypoints?

TexZero.7910:

If the leaks are true.

Everyone who saw the leaks should know that they’re real. It would have been way too much work just to troll people and the design of everything fit GW2 precisely – the interface, the design of the 3D models and the like. Plus there’s been a dodgy comment of Mike O’Brien on leaks in the latest AMA. If you read between the lines you’ll know that the leaks were real for sure.

Even if these screenshots were outdated and Anet changed something after they were taken, I don’t think they would scrap an entire developed system that probably took months to create.

Randulf.7614:

Mikhail.4961:

Randulf.7614:

Considering the improvements in Anets storytelling and gameplay implementations since S1

The what now?

Pretty much exactly what you quoted. Whether it is still “good” or “great” or not is a different subject, but there is noticeable improvement in the consistency of both story and dialogue since S1. An episode for eg no longer involves fixing signposts or map wide invasion events which progressed the story by almost nothing over a month+.

Gameplay mechanics in Silverwastes, S2, HoT maps and S3 also show varying degrees of gameplay improvements since S1.

Improvements vary greatly in these places, but it would be ridiculous to suggest Anet haven’t improved in these areas whatsoever.

I can’t talk about season 1 because I missed it, I’ve only seen some parts of it in different videos.

But I can compare season 2 and 3 as I played both of them. I noticed some sort of consistency in season 2 as it felt like if it’s been written mostly in one part. Characters had their personality, it’s been believable and interesting.

Season 3 however is an utter mess. There’s no consistency in the behaviour of the characters, everything feels completely unnatural and just makes sense if you look back (character 1 did this in episode 2 because he needed to find out things that will be clear in season 5 and the like). I didn’t notice any fixed style in the dialogue except for Taimi maybe. Plus, characters are just gone for no reason because of problems regarding the availability of voice actors and the like, so characters are missing the entire season and suddenly appear claiming: “I had stuff to do” makes it hard to believe. Your own character is constantly told to go there, go back to the other place, OH somehting else again happened there – only to justify the quantity of maps we’ve gotten
Oh look even more gw1 lore that’s been artificially put in there because people wanted to see more of it, go take a look! The entire season just feels artificial, like they’ve tried to put EVERYTHING in there from episode 2 on. The reveal of episode 5 – if it’s the truth as we know it at this point – is actually ridiculous if you look at the story as a whole.

The design of the instances vary as well, they’re either interesting, showing some exploring, investigating, speculating as in episode 1 – Out of the Shadows or rather boring, endless enemies in waves (vanilla GW2 personal story) like in A Crack in the Ice or even something completely different in other episodes.
You can notice that as well as you read through the feedback threads of each episode. The reason could be that season 3 has been officially confirmed to be written by 3 different teams in a certain rotation. Pretty difficult to keep consistency up if the teams are working on their own.

So I don’t agree to call season 3 an improvement over the other season(s).

Ayrilana.1396:

I suggest you play HoT again because you were given choices at least three times. This is why I had suggested that many of your issues would be resolved by playing the stories again because you likely forgot elements.

I do remember one time we had a choice (choosing between two characters). However, it’s been an instanced mission (=cooperative missions), not really comparable with a complete system of (open world) story quests that provide different choices. So I guess we’ll never see those types of quests in GW2.

And did this choice have an impact on the story? Nothing changed, no matter which character you chose. We’ve seen one of them in the Living Story again, the other one didn’t appear yet.

Edit:

They’ve included choices in previous storylines (i.e. Personal story and HoT

And we’ve never come back to the choices of the personal story. Not even the orders seem to exist anymore since we’re all just “the commander”. And no matter if your charr is part of the Blood Legion, Ash Legion or any other legion, it’s all the same right now. Not even the dialogues vary depending on you’re a human, charr, asura, sylvari or norn in the Living Story.

Even worse: in the current episode some humans may have encountered a strange situation, and many claimed that their characters would have acted completely different because of their choices at the character creation. So I guess you could say a choice in GW2 doesn’t have a single impact on the story.

Ayrilana.1396:

You then went on about how stories in the game should be extensive with many choices that impact the story. I disagreed with this needing to be a part of events, hearts, and achievements which is what you started this thread about. You typically won’t see the choices in the living story because it adds compexity which Anet may or may not have the resources to do. Notice how short the stories of each episode are in order to compensate for getting a map with each? These choices are something you’ll see with expansions which we saw with HoT.

Just to check on the last point, HoT didn’t provide any quests like that (decisions) but you’re still expecting them to release some with the next expansion? Why do you think they’ll include them next time? Or is it just theoretically, if they ever released those quests, they would come in an expansion?

Vayne.8563:

He directly said in his post that the old static quest style is superior for telling stories. I’m directly disagreeing with that. The numbers were brought into it to show that there’s a lot less going on in that game and it’s linear. It’s one way to tell a story but not necessarily the best way to tell the story.

The story here is more like a puzzle with a lot more pieces. I prefer this, but I’m just pointing out you can absolutely tell stories here as good as static quests in other games. You can’t use one bad dynamic event and an example of why old quests are superior.

Because I can do the same thing. Go and pick the worst quest in Guild Wars 1 and say that quests in Guild Wars 1 are inferior. I choose not to do that, because it’s misleading.

We’re talking about whether this particular quest is boring and I believe it is. But I also don’t believe that’s a barometer that can be used for dynamic events vs static quests.

Alright I agree, they’re clearly too different in every way to compare them properly. And of course, there’s no measurement referring to the “boringness”.

Getting back to the initial topic, I just hope that Anet will change the direction in the next expansion. Getting a back item of a season 3 map described either farming 200 blood rubies/jade shards/petrified wood/… or doing heart quests 64 times on 16 different days because of time gates.

Vayne.8563:

Reality check here. Guild Wars Prophecies had a total of 208 quests. That’s all it had. Guild Wars 2 launched with over 1500 dynamic events.

And that refers to which part of ThomasC’s post? He never claimed there were more quests in GW1 than events in GW2. However, if you want to see it that way, you didn’t even consider that there are tons of events which take just 1 or 2 minutes to complete. Plus, it doesn’t matter if you escort a pack pull in Queensdale or a Dolyak in Wayfarer Foothills, it’s basically the same event.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 2 however, has scouts and scouts tell a completely voiced story about exactly what’s going on at all the hearts in an area. They’re pretty detailed. They give as much info as quests.

You mean the NPC’s telling you where to find certain heart quests? Let’s take a look at them:

Corporal Nim Callahan: “Best watch your step in this area. My Seraph brothers and sisters maintain an outpost just north of here, but we’re spread thin and constantly harassed by nearby bandits. The outlaws have three fortified camps to the west as well, so be careful. Anything you can do to secure this area would be appreciated.”

Ok we’ve got a description of the area. “As much information as a quest?” what does this even mean? A quest could tell you this story: A worried mother begs you to find the pirates that kidnapped her son. After you defeated the pirates and found the son, he’s telling you that he’s alright, and that he faked the kidnapping because he wanted to live his own life, he didn’t want to take advice from his mother anymore because she already planned his entire future. He hands over a letter you should bring back to his mother. After you brought her the letter, she’s telling you that she had no idea that he didn’t want to become a normal merchand and that she accepts his decision even though it means that he becomes a pirate.

Which event, which heart quest and which NPC scout in GW2 can tell you a story like that?

Vayne.8563:

Quest games are not only generally linear, but they’re also static. Here is a story handed to you on a silver platter. Okay, thanks. If I want a story I can read a book.

I already provided enough examples (Star Wars The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online) to prove that you can have the chance to make your own decisions, let villains die or cooperate with them, lie to your allies, act corruptly and just care for the money. These types of quests are not linear and static. GW2 events however don’t provide any sort of decisions you can make (except for: do the event? yes/no).

Vayne.8563:

In fact, the number of quests in all four original Guild Wars products is less than the number of dynamic events in this game at launch.

And that still doesn’t mean that those events contain more story than the quests in GW1. It doesn’t change anything if you mention the numbers twice.

Vayne.8563:

In addition, some of those dynamic event chains tell quite complex stories, including the temples in Orr and the meta events in HoT.

But even stuff like the Visier’s Tower in Straits of Devestation has a lot of information there. Again, it’s just not handed to you. You have to work to get it.

Some of us, probably those who have played old adventure games, are more likely to go the extra mile, talk to NPCs and piece together stuff.

I’ve explored almost every inch of the core Tyria maps, even found the hidden sights like the cerebro jumping puzzle in Caledon Forest. GW2 doesn’t contain as much story as you’re claiming.

Vayne.8563:

If you don’t believe that much story/lore is in the game, you should watch Wooden Potatoes lore videos. There’s a ton of story here. You don’t get it from an individual heart, or an individual dynamic event or an individual scout. You get pieces from all over and you have to build it up yourself.

I personally find that more rewarding.

I’ve watched many of them and most of the time he’s combining old Guild Wars 1 lore with new insights of Guild Wars 2. How things changed in Tyria, what old relicts could have an impact on the current Living Story,… just like I’m aware of that_shamans map which provides the exact position of some areas of GW1 in relation to the GW2 map. Most of the times, these old places are nothing more but ruins (sights on the map) in GW2. They don’t have any purpose anymore other than pointing out that there’s been something 250 years ago.

Ayrilana.1396:

Tekey.7946:

@Ayrilana I think you’re not even trying to understand what I’m saying. You might want to try to think outside the box, re-read it, put it into context with everything and try to understand.

I understand what you’re saying. I’m just disagreeing with you.

Is that so? You didn’t even refer to most of my last post. You ignored everything you couldn’t answer and cherry-picked a few points. It doesn’t make sense to discuss further with this narrow point of view.

forum bug as always

@Ayrilana I think you’re not even trying to understand what I’m saying. You might want to try to think outside the box, re-read it, put it into context with everything and try to understand.

Ayrilana.1396:

GW2 never had quests as there have only been events or hearts. Events do tell a story but usually if they’re part of a chain such as ‘Escort the Vigil squad to the ancient ruins’.

What story do they tell? Let’s take this event chain as an example: Escort the Vigil squad to the ancient ruins. Pocket raptors appear. Kill them. More pocket raptors appear. Kill them. Rolling devils appear. Kill them. Some sarcastic remarks about these enemies: “Oh look, new friends!”. Vigil Marksman: I sense some sort of druidic magic. Druids appear. Next event: Kill the druids. Next event: A spirit of nature appears. Kill it. After it’s been defeated it tells you to leave the place. You leave.

Ayrilana.1396:

Let’s also not forget that many of GW1 quests were shallow tasks that were nothing more than go here or fetch this for the most part. Living story instances are like GW1 missions.

Be careful not to look at GW1 with rose-colored glasses. This is what quite a number of players are doing who praise GW1 and criticize GW2. They don’t realize that people complained just as often and about similar things during the time of GW1. I’m pretty sure that if they released GW3, people would be praising this game like they do GW1.

“Rose-colored glasses.” Since there were some content droughts in GW2, I jumped back into Guild Wars 1 now and then, did some quests, explored places I’ve never seen before and so on. There are tons of story lines being told. Small ones like helping out someone find their missing relatives and larger quests that either branch out or continue afterwards. Earlier I said something’s missing and I think now I know what I meant to say:

The core game of GW2 had a “personal story”. Human: You’re poor, living on the streets, you’re trying to find out who you are, you may not even know your parents. All the decisions you can do when you create your character. After the lvl 30-40 story instances, everything merges with the Zhaitan story (cooperative missions in GW1). After defeating Zhaitan we’ve never come back to those type of quests. Your character is just a nameless commander that kills Elder Dragons. Charr characters did not report back to their legions, the Asura never went back to Rata Sum. All of our characters have no life at all. We can’t make decisions on our own, would we like to cooperate with bandits or seperatists? Or would we rather meet out noble friends in Divinity’s Reach? Maybe there are some dodgy intrigues going on. What if our Charr character is still sceptical towards humans and we’ll see some quests trying to convince him not to be? Maybe he would change, maybe it would fail completely and he’ll hate the human race even more. That would have been an improvement over Guild Wars 1’s “one dimensional” quests (no decisions except for yes/no).

All of that has been pushed away by the Living Story and HoT (cooperative missions). There are no personal quests, our character has no personality at all. There’s no way we could make decisions and identify ourselves with our characters. That’s a main aspect of storytelling, no matter if it’s movies or even more games. They completely forgot about our characters. There’s more than just Elder Dragons in Tyria.

Ayrilana.1396:

Which is no different that many quest NPC dialogues in other games. What you’re wanting done just isn’t something you see often in games. Even the quests in the highly acclaimed Elder Scroll console games don’t do this. Do WoW quests even do what you’re thinking should be done?

Maybe you also tried out Star Wars The Old Republic at some point. I didn’t play it much but even the quests at the beginning had the option to choose what to do. Elder Scrolls Online did it as well. You’ve captured a villain, do you let him go and cooperate with him, do you kill him or do you just arrest him? Do you lie to someone at some point? Does it have an effect on the story? What’s the personality of your character really like?
That’s a pretty interesting part of a “Massively Multiplayer Online ROLE PLAYING Game”. And it’s missing completely in GW2. It’s something heart quests, events and even Living Story will never tell you about.

Ayrilana.1396:

Hearts were brought back because players requested them.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call an achievement a quest no more than I would call maxing a GW1 title a quest.

As for “stories” attached to hearts, you most often get more details about what you’re doing when you talk to the heart NPC.

I don’t remember many players requesting these hearts. I do remember however (when they were announced) that many people expected them to be different to starter area hearts. They would have accepted them if Anet improved the implementation. But they’re just exactly the same as the ones in lvl 1-15 zones.

So if those achievements are not equal to quests, where’s the replacement of traditional quests in GW2? Events are fast-paced, shallow tasks (Escort the Vigil squad to the ancient ruins. Kill the champion webby mother. Repel the aggressive mercenaries.) which obviously can’t tell a story like GW1 quests did. Living Story instances are more like cooperative missions. Something’s missing.

As you said, the heart vendors can tell you a little more about the region or the people around, but most of the time it’s basically a further description of the tasks. Story quests would contain characters, plot and one’s own initiative just like the living story does.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Blude.6812:

Not as bad as the apple collection at Ember.

Gotta agree with Blude — while Hungry Hal involved only a single fetch & carry, the achievement required 50 separate runs. At least with this one, you end up with several back items, including an interesting skin.

The reward is great, but that doesn’t change the awful design of the quest. I just hope that they’re able to think of something else in the future. There are plenty of quests in other games that might also include grinding, but at least they’re part of a great story that makes up for some grind. Heart quests however have no value for me, so why should I keep playing after I played through one hour of living story every 2-3 months.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

This post states, and I quote, “the same freaking starter heart quest 64 times”. It’s not the first time, either. Not 4 Renown Hearts, but the same heart 64 times.

I guess that’s just a missing letter there, it should say heart quests just like my initial post:

Tekey.7946:

When a quest consists of nothing but doing the same boring heart quests every day over and over for a million times…

or any other post:

Tekey.7946:

Every active player could think of a better quest than “do the heart quests 64 times”.

However, thanks for pointing it out, I’ll correct it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Perhaps, the Devs would appreciate your ideas on how, exactly, to create a quest that keeps players in the map with no repetition, and does not take years to create.

Regardless, good luck with your suggestion.

I guess they just have to take a look at their prequel Guild Wars 1 since it had some great main quests that branched out into several side quests which let people dive into the world and forget about time and everything else. These quests did tell real stories. GW2 scrapped the story part almost completely with regards to the heart quests. They were just an introduction to events, exclusively used in starter areas to guide new players. Now they decided to bring them back in their end game PVE zones. Alright, as long as they’re optional why not, some people might like them. But why would they ignore the potential of the druid stone quest and just hook it up to a crazy amount of heart quests? Remember that this quest is not the only possibility for them to keep players in the map. It can be an additional part of the system, but if is the only purpose of the map, it’ll be abandoned pretty soon. The reason for a quest shouldn’t be “keep them playing in a certain map for 16 days”.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

At least be factual; it’s not the same Renown Heart 64 times. It’s 4 Renown Hearts 16 times each. Again, if found boring, or too repetitive, don’t do them 16 days in a row.

Or, better yet, forego the Backpack and skin, if it causes this much distress.

Good luck.

Is there really that much difference between killing inquest researchers, spiders, pocket raptors and mercenaries? It’s 64 heart quests in total, you don’t have to split the number.

It doesn’t make a difference to me if I complete it in 2 weeks or 2 months, it’s the same thing over and over again. And that’s actually not a personal complaint but criticism towards the designers who created that quest, so we won’t see it again in future releases. They’ve got the chance to think of something different, more interesting next time.

Djinn.9245:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

At least there’s guaranteed progression. Could be RNG like some certain Spoons that can take forever to drop.

What would be your idea to keep players in a particular map for a couple of weeks without repeating content?

One thought: Don’t try to attain the backpack in just 16 days. Spread it out over 2 or 3 months so it does not seem quite so repetitive.

Pro-tip: Never try key-running.

Good luck.

I completely agree. It’s like “Hungry Hal” – everyone complained what a grind it was to run back and forth with one apple 50 times in a row. But no one said you had to do it 50 times in a row. When I feel like going back to that map, I run Hal 2 or 3 apples. Eventually I’ll have it done. I see no benefit in having it done faster.

No, people were upset to see that type of quest in GW2. I can remember people saying there’s no difference to other generic MMORPG starter quests. Many other games have some pretty interesting story lines in quests that might or might not include grind. But Anet decided to implement a ridiculous “gather 0/50 apples and bring them over there” quest with absolutely no story at all.

The same with the druid runestone. You’ll hear some lines of the druid but doing the same freaking starter heart quests 64 times has absolutely no value in terms of storytelling or gameplay. It’s just insulting, that’s how bad it is. 64 times: kill 0/30 mercenaries. kill 0/30 spiders. kill 0/30 inquest researchers. Wow. That’s the best game design I’ve ever seen.

A game that claims to be different, but introduces you to the most ridiculous, never ending tasks in its end game PVE zones, that’s what GW2 is right now. If that’s the direction Anet chose, it’s really, really sad to see what “Guild Wars” 2 has become – I don’t even want to call it Guild Wars anymore. And I hope for everyone that the next expansion will bring some fresh air.

Danikat.8537:

In that respect we already have more choice than most games. In many MMOs the backpack from the new maps collection would be the best backpack in the game – and therefore everyone would have to get it in order to keep up with the new content. In GW2 you only need to get it if you want that skin, otherwise you can get any other ascended backpack.

Exactly, but that’s the point of Fashion Wars 2. Because there is no gear grind in terms of stats, you’ll get the new skin that’s been released with the map. Saying you don’t need that skin and you don’t have to grind these heart quests (you might as well get another backpack) is like saying you don’t need that better armor piece because you could defeat the boss with your current stats as well. It just takes longer, is more challenging, whatever. Anyways, I simply criticized the lack of variety and creativity of this quest in particular. Every active player could think of a better quest than “do the heart quests 64 times”.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am unsure; is your idea a copy of launch Heart of Thorns maps? I thought players weren’t happy with the original Heart of Thorns maps; at least, there were a lot of threads full of laments regarding those maps.

IIRC, people were mainly upset about the difficulty (of enemies) and navigation in the HoT maps. Plus the Dragon’s Stand incident that happened to be a giant meta which only started every 2-3 hours. But we’re talking about the reasons to play these maps right now.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t know, maybe the Devs tried to come up with something different than those maps to try to placate the playerbase. /shrug

Regardless, no matter what the Devs do, someone won’t be pleased.

I don’t think that anyone begged for an achievement like that. Same with an apple a day.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

What would be your idea to keep players in a particular map for a couple of weeks without repeating content?

repeating content =/= achievements telling you to do 64 x the same starter area hearts over and over again.
HoT maps managed to keep players busy completely without heart quests. There’s no way that these types of achievements are the only possibility to keep the players in the map. Just think of Silverwastes, people played this map for a long time just because the meta-event was fun and rewarding.

If they have problems to keep people playing in the new maps they didn’t plan the current season properly. No one told them to design tons of generic maps with almost no other purpose than farming blood rubys, petrified wood, jade shards, winterberries and druid runestones.

Since Guild Wars 2 always tried to be different in terms of questing, it’s pretty disappointing to see the evolution in some parts of the game. Personally I didn’t mind the introduction of repeatable hearts in the new season 3 maps. It’s been the decision to hook them up to certain achievements or “quests” that bugged me.

When a quest consists of nothing but doing the same boring heart quests every day over and over for a million times… I’m talking about the druid runestone backpack you can get in Draconis Mons in particular. A nice skin (ascended backpiece) you can earn while playing the game. Sounds great.

What the quest would look like in other games: In a small village you heard a story of a powerful stone. The stone once belonged to [name]. It’s been destroyed in the battle of [region]. Some warriors gathered the remaining pieces which still granted them enormous power. They say if you put the pieces together, you’ll be as powerful as the great [name] again. Task: find the warriors, take the pieces and restore the magical stone. – You’ll probably find them in some dungeons as challenging bosses. However, you’ll have to attune yourself to certain elements/… in order to defeat them. Get the attunement in some side quests.

What GW2 did:
Tier 1:

• Buy a druid runestone fragment from the unbound Magic collector.
  Wha… Where did you get that? Why are you selling it? What should I do with it?
• Do 4 heart quests. Buy 4 other runestone fragments from heart vendors
  What a coincidence that every heart vendor finds a druid runestone fragment each day.
• Gather flowers and bring them to some druids.
  Be.. because druids like flowers. Yes. everyone loves flowers!

Tier 2:
Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. -> Collect 3×5=15 runestone fragments. Kill some of the druids’ friends and combine their elements with the runestones. Also bring the druids more flowers. EVERYONE LOVES FLOWERS!

Tier 3:
Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Collect 5×5=25 runestone fragments. Kill the bosses all around the map and combine their elements with the runestones. Give the druid lodestones. Also: MORE FLOWERS! And plant a seed.

Tier 4:
Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Collect 7×5=35 runestone fragments. Kill a few bosses all around the map. Kill other enemies to get their elements. Combine them with the runestones. Give the druid even more lodestones. Also: UNLIMITED FLOWERRRRRR! Plant tons of seeds everywhere. Congratulations.

You have to do the same boring, never ending heart quests 16×4=64 times. Gather 0/x. Kill 0/x. 64 times. Plus, it’s time gated. 1 runestone a day. It’s the most annoying, most boring I’ve ever done in a game. Yes, you’re not forced to do it. But if you want to get the backpack, you have to do it. All I’m asking for is a bit more creativity and variety.

Players have already created some great jumping puzzles in their guild halls. We’ve got the required mechanics (decoration), so let’s use them and expand that part a little further:

• A large selection of player created jumping puzzles – always accessible to everyone

• Taking place in instanced zones (not restricted to guild halls), use existing areas

• Use an interface (lfg) to find them and choose, maybe a ranking system: best jp’s at the top.

• New currency: In order to give everyone the possibility to create and share their jumping puzzles easily, you shouldn’t be restricted by the costs (and duration) of scribing. The new currency will be mainly earned by completing jumping puzzles of other players. You’ll spend it on decorations for your own jumping puzzles.

• Profit. Some players will enjoy creating jumping puzzles for other players and be creative. Other players will be happy to have constantly new puzzles they can try out.

- Content created by players for other players -

It’s just an example of user generated content. If you’re not interested in jp’s, maybe you’ll like other topics better.

image: Youtube – Mikei The Mighty

In Flashpoint we used a submarine to get from Rata Sum to the Fire Islands. Draconis Mons seems to be a habitable zone compared to the rest of the islands.

So why didn’t we go there in the first place? Map

In Rising Flames Taimi sent us to Ember Bay instead. Not only is it the farthest island from Rata Sum, it’s also completely barren, consisting of nothing but rocks and lava, Destroyers and Jade Constructs. Leaving the shipwrecked circus, pirate Skritt and shattered dwarf aside – what was the actual reason why we went all the way down to Ember Bay?

Why didn’t we explore the nearest island first? What’s special about Ember Bay in particular that would explain the extra detour and effort? Why did we even go there?

castlemanic.3198:

We’ve only had one episode since then, so it’s not like it fell out of their radar completely and is now something that will never be finished.

According to Dulfy, the current events related to the rift line were added on October 4.
Episode 3 – A Crack in the Ice was released on November 21,
Episode 4 – The Head of the Snake was released on February 8.

Leaving the reddit posts aside, that’s 6 months, half a year without a patch referring to the rift story line. They created new plot lines or continued other ones instead. Plus, there are many examples for unfinished story parts, we still don’t know anything about Rytlock’s holiday in the mists. Later, cub.
I think that the rift events will be concluded with the current season but on the other hand it’s perfectly fine to ask what’s going on.

castlemanic.3198:

GW2 has no need for mounts because it was designed without mounts in mind. WoW has so many of them because not only has that game been out since 2004, but it’s also constantly expanded it’s mount collection for people to use. It’s a flawed argument. Also, ArenaNet run on a cash shop and buyable expansion revenue instead of a subscription model, which means they don’t have the resources that WoW does to dedicate solely to the creation of mounts and the addition of mounts in the game. Mounts don’t have value in GW2 because it was expressly designed without mounts in mind, so adding them would be useless.

Unless you’re talking about mounts that would have no in game benefit, in which case they already exist.

New maps like Bitterfrost Frontier, Lake Doric and Ember Bay rely on just a few waypoints. They’re completely different to the vanilla maps (and how they were designed without having mounts in mind). Right now, we’re using thermo-tubes and leylines to move around quickly. The game changed a lot, a few years ago we didn’t have raids in GW2, now we’ve got them. It’s never too late to introduce something new: remember, the last expansion gave us the ability to glide almost everywhere (in PVE). I don’t know if they already knew that when they started developing vanilla GW2.

Games without subscription can earn a lot of money, too. Most of the times there are whales who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars (e.g. converting gems to gold to buy legendary weapons). And regular players who buy a 25$ gem card each month to buy the new outfit/glider/skin/harvest tool. Especially casual players who don’t have enough gold to convert them to gems will do that.

Considering that there is a significant amount of MMORPG players who like to have and collect mounts, introducing them wouldn’t be useless but a new selling point referring to the new expansion/and game overall.

The only place where we can find gorillas is Orr:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Risen_Gorilla

Did they always live there or where did they come from? Why can’t we find any living gorillas in the game? Could be interesting to see huge gorillas as challenging enemies elsewhere!

Healix.5819:

Current events are to fill the gaps, so don’t expect to see them when there’s something else.

But the festivals are just recycled content, I doubt we will ever see an additional SAB world or the like. Current events on the other hand contribute to the story of the Living World and it would be questionable to delay them for months because of recycled festivals.

Bloodstone magic in episode 1 -> sad anomalies -> Current event: Shadowstone -> no more sad anomalies.

Healix.5819:

The next current event will probably be around Feb 21st with another one on March 7th.

End of February would be almost 5 months since we used or sold the Shadowstone, since the rifts appeared… If we had to wait that long to continue this story line, that would be awful. I forgot about Lunar New Year

Soooooo nothing today. Wintersday next week, might as well last longer this year like Halloween to bridge the time to the next episode. I wonder if we’ll ever see some new events again.

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.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

I find it rather amusing myself that my Elementalist can cast a volcano under the feet of the bad guy and they will just stand there until they die.

I think it would eventually get very frustrating and tedious if mobs dodged, parried and blocked all your attacks. Can you imagine having to fight through a group like that just to complete a heart objective where every enemy you fight takes five times longer to kill because they keep eluding your attacks? Yeah, that’s gonna get old real fast.

Those kinds of mechanics are best for something like a raid environment where you are better rewarded for your effort. I don’t want to spend 5 minutes killing some random bandit for him to only drop a broken lockpick.

I think we should see it as an open-world endgame (lvl 80 zones) mechanic. Let core Tyria be easy and increase the AI in future releases. With that in mind, I wouldn’t focus on hearts at all (as they turned out to be just like starter area tasks but repeatable). Make those zones special and worth to fight against smarter enemies, increase the loot as they take longer and they’re more challenging compared to normal trash mobs.

Mea.5491:

Back in beta there was a patch when mobs actually avoided our AoE fields. It was a pain in the butt to kill them, EVERYONE complained so Anet removed it. Just sayin’.

Nooo! Why I already heard so much about the beta of GW2, it seems like many mechanics and features didn’t make it to the real game.

Back in GW1 we had NPC henchmen and heroes with real damage, each one got their own profession(s) and function and you could set up your group as you wish
On the other hand story missions could also fail completely, so you had to start all over again if your group was defeated.

Katoomba.6905:

(like “gliding”, well, at least no other game will ever be tempted to pinch/copy that system)

Aion had wings and gliding when GW2 was still in developement and in new games like Revelation you can fly, too (although it seems to be endless there).

Malediktus.9250:

Is this topic a joke? There is rarely more than 1 expensive or time consuming achievement per LS release. If anything there should be way more of this so you cannot finish all new achievements in the same week as an update happens.
Time consuming, expensive or very difficult achievement would be the perfect opportunity for Anet to make contest last longer and bridge the time between updates. I am suprised Anet is not actually doing stuff like this to keep people occupied tbh.

Are you seriously considering ‘expensive achievements’ to be a solution to make content last longer? What’s the difference to any other grindy asian MMORPG that gets hated on from GW2 players if Anet takes “I’m rich you know” 1000g gold sinks as a way to make their content last longer?

Challenging achievements? Yes. Difficult Achievements? Yes. Expensive achievements? No.