Hearts are NOT quests, are NOT grindy

[Alaris]

So much in theory, practically you will simply do what's available at a point. You will hardly wait for a "collect" item to reappear and ignore the mobs you could kill that just spawned.

That is not entirely true, although it is partly true. I did some hearts by actually doing whatever spawned in front of me, because that is how I enjoyed it. But on multiple occasions the spawns and the interactable items were sufficiently separated that I could do either and not both tasks. For example, there was a farm where I could water the plants or feed the cows away from mobs. So I could have done that one either mainly with interacting with the world, or by killing mobs.

Technically (and I mean that as in the mechanics, not linguistically) they're quests, but they're goddam fun quests.

Again, if the combat is fun then it really doesn't matter if there's grind. The problem with grind usually isn't its existence, but the fact that it keeps you from doing what you would rather be doing. In my case, I wanted to try endgame dungeons. Grind kept me from it. But in GW2 there are dungeons and bosses throughout, so grind is not getting in your way.

[satenia]

That is not entirely true, although it is partly true. I did some hearts by actually doing whatever spawned in front of me, because that is how I enjoyed it. But on multiple occasions the spawns and the interactable items were sufficiently separated that I could do either and not both tasks. For example, there was a farm where I could water the plants or feed the cows away from mobs. So I could have done that one either mainly with interacting with the world, or by killing mobs.

If the farm area you're referring to is at the beginning of the human storyline, then the reason why it works so well is simply because it's always populated. With enough players present, you will never truly be forced into combat. Actually in this particular event I found it hard to be able to attack a mob fast enough before it died.

On the contrary, one of the last hearts events I did at around lvl 20 had no one else in the area. There was no way I could simply have ignored the mobs and just decided to collect items and/or disarm traps. Unless you really want to stay in a smallish area and wait endlessly for respawn of 1-2 items and traps. Camp much?

So to summarize, a hearts event only really leaves you complete freedom of choice if there is a healthy balance of other players present, also the more you decide to stick to one of the (for all hearts events repeating) activities, the more grindy you are making it. I don't think this whole system is really as great as the OP wants to make it sound. As I've mentioned before, I can only advise to play more than 2-3 of them preferably with multiple characters to build an opinion.

[Alaris]

So to summarize, a hearts event only really leaves you complete freedom of choice if there is a healthy balance of other players present

Compare that to other games commonly giving you no freedom on how you can complete a quest, that's a major improvement.

also the more you decide to stick to one of the (for all hearts events repeating) activities, the more grindy you are making it.

That is insane.

1) If you stick to one, it's because you enjoy it more.
2) If you get bored of it, then you'll do something else.
3) Grind exists independently of how you interact with it, grind is a design choice. It by definition not dependent on what players do, it's something players have to do in order to progress.
4) Do you even realize that you're playing a game? I don't really know what people are expecting here, those who want no grind... I mean, I can't conceive of how you'd provide content that nobody would ever call grind.

[satenia]

That is insane.

Note that I'm referring to the OP's (wiki rather...) definition of what is considered grind and how the hearts events apparently aren't.

Wikipedia definition:
Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive tasks during video games. [1][2] The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Tibia, or Lineage [3] in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content

1) If you stick to one, it's because you enjoy it more.
2) If you get bored of it, then you'll do something else.
3) Grind exists independently of how you interact with it, grind is a design choice. It by definition not dependent on what players do, it's something players have to do in order to progress.
4) Do you even realize that you're playing a game? I don't really know what people are expecting here, those who want no grind... I mean, I can't conceive of how you'd provide content that nobody would ever call grind.

As far as I can tell, none of your points contradict the definition of grinding

Note that I don't have any issue whatsoever with the hearts events, only with the claim that they are neither quests nor grindy.

[Alaris]

Note that I don't have any issue whatsoever with the hearts events, only with the claim that they are neither quests nor grindy.

They are quests and they are grindy. I agree with that.

I got confused because it sounded like you were saying that giving players a choice didn't work or made things more grindy, which just didn't sound right.

Choice is a good thing.

[satenia]

I got confused because it sounded like you were saying that giving players a choice didn't work or made things more grindy, which just didn't sound right.

I was saying that choice depends on outside factors (such as population) and that choosing to only do one particular activity during an event will make the event more grindy overall. If you could do 10/10/10 but decide to go for 0/0/30, the later activity fits better into the definition of grinding.

[shawn]

Reading this thread felt grindy. I almost WASD'ed away.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

[satenia]

Reading this thread felt grindy.

But it was NOT a quest, right?

[shawn]

More like an achievement.

Except instead of reading it I just put my game face on, my fingers firmly on the wasd keys, and then used my right mouse finger to scroll past all the walls of text.

[Raww]

i must say that these hearts are a real refreshment. im tired of having to run from person to person having to talk to them. swtor made it a little better with all that voice acting and cut scenes, BUT after you did it once go threw all that again wasnt fun to me unless i was following my personal story. with GW2 i found that i didnt get bored of doing the hearts more then once and they didnt take forever like some quests in WoW/swtor. it was a lot more fast paced and there was a lot more you could do to help out, like if monsters were mostly dead i could just do something else instead of waiting on a mob to spawn. i found the hearts to be very fluid, going from one to the next seems natural to me, the way they had them laid out were very good in my opinion. unlike WoW/swtor which have you traveling a lot and you really notice it. GW2 map seemed big but it didnt take long at all to get from point A to point B, then getting the waypoints made it that much better. but i liked to travel because along the way youre more then likely to come across an event. i was always getting side tracked because events were popping off left and right. so far im very happy with how they set up the questing. personal story is great and on par with swtor i think if not better (swtor personal story lines are really awesome, they did an amazing job), im hoping to experience more thats if they give us more in the next BWE.