Hearts are NOT quests, are NOT grindy

[Alaris]

I prefer interaction... there you now have one. They had npcs run up and ask for help for some DEs... why is that considered a good thing there but having no interaction with one for hearts also good?

I'm still confused as to what exactly you're arguing.

If you say that having an NPC is better than not having one, I agree. So does ANet. There's NPCs for DE's, hearts, etc. Afaik, ANet initially did away with NPCs then decided to add them in anyway because people liked them.

If you say that "being forced to talk to NPCs" is better than "having the option to talk to NPCs", then I don't see the logic in that, and I highly doubt that you'd get popular support for it. People regularly complain about being forced to talk to NPCs here and elsewhere. But sure, go ahead and make a game ignoring people's complaints, and then wonder why it doesn't sell well. That's one reason why WoW clones fail.

[sorudo]

you already have the option to talk to NPC's, just not to get a quest.
a quest should be a natural occurrence, GW2 made it pretty obvious that this works fine.
the only problem i have with some events is that they barely have anyone asking for help, of all 3 the events i have only had one time that an NPC runs up to me to ask for help and i enjoyed that one time.
it's natural, you don't walk up to a farmer to get a quest while the farm is being attacked, you help him and go to him after it's all done.
when a farmhouse is burning, you don't have a farmer standing there calmly waiting for you, he runs up to you so maybe you can help him to put out the fire.

[RabidCoqui]

It was more the issue of having the npc, but either way trying to "prove" subjective issues is, IMO, generally not a good idea.

[Alaris]

It was more the issue of having the npc, but either way trying to "prove" subjective issues is, IMO, generally not a good idea.

Which is why I stick to objective stuff. zing!

[raspberry jam]

Step up from quests.

I think questing in GW1 would be more fun with quests that you could complete in one or many of several ways.

GW1 was great though, I'm not going to say that GW2 is better because that depends a lot on factors such as "do you prefer to control a team or not" or "do you prefer instanced or persistent. GW2 is better for me, but I can totally see and understand people who prefer GW1.

The thing about being able to complete hearts in multiple ways is that the way you complete a heart doesn't matter. It's all anonymized anyway, just like xp are.

The problem with levels based on xp was always that you ran around hitting things with a sword and suddenly something said poof and you learned to cast Fireball. Or some similar thing. Sometimes you just get more health. Same thing really though. The thing that your progress is based on is an anonymous number.

In GW2, the hearts do the same thing. You can be bloodthirsty and only kill things. Or you can pick apples. In the end it doesn't matter how you completed the heart. In a way, it's a good thing. In another, it's bad. What I would like is to have an objective other than filling up the progress bar.

As an example, consider a mission to get into a centaur camp and steal back the apple pie that they stole from a farmer. There could be multiple ways to do this. You could lure the centaurs out of the camp and when they are gone, dart in and grab the pie. You could take the frontal charge route and kill everything in your way to the pie. Or you could sneak in, splinter cell style, get the pie from right under their nose and sneak out again.

I'm not saying that every heart needs to be a retrieval mission. But it would be cool to have something to actually do instead of stopping to pick apples in the middle of saving Divinity's Reach just because you need some more xp for the next personal story mission.

(Of course in a persistent world game you could set up a cool plan to sneak into the centaur camp and then have that ruined by some retard who alerts all the centaurs when he too is trying to do the heart. And that could be either very annoying or completely awesome.)

[sorudo]

actually the progress bar is nothing more then a helping hand, if they didn't add this you would never know if you completed it or not until the reward pops up.

[raspberry jam]

actually the progress bar is nothing more then a helping hand, if they didn't add this you would never know if you completed it or not until the reward pops up.

Well that's true, and it would be a good thing I think. Makes it more immersive to interact, even with NPC, rather than looking at a progress bar.

[Alaris]

I have to agree that missions tend to be a lot more fun than hearts.

[Arutima]

I always considered the renown hearts to be quests that give the player the choice on how to complete it. Most renown hearts have :

1-Kill count quest
2-Destroy x
3-A whacky objective, like giving cows food

And you can complete the heart the way you want.

[Skyy High]

The problem with levels based on xp was always that you ran around hitting things with a sword and suddenly something said poof and you learned to cast Fireball. Or some similar thing. Sometimes you just get more health. Same thing really though. The thing that your progress is based on is an anonymous number.

In GW2, the hearts do the same thing. You can be bloodthirsty and only kill things. Or you can pick apples. In the end it doesn't matter how you completed the heart. In a way, it's a good thing. In another, it's bad. What I would like is to have an objective other than filling up the progress bar.

Hearts are designed to be simple. They're designed to be the filler content that you always know where to go and what to do in order to complete, the content that is completely instanced for you and you alone, the content that is "safe" and "normal" and "basic". They're just supposed to get people out in the world and playing. Might I remind you that hearts were not originally in the game; originally, ANet wanted to just have DEs being the only open-world PvE content, but they discovered through testing that people wanted this kind of "safe" content to fall back on, to structure everything else around.

So yeah, it's filling up a progress bar by doing "stuff". Sometimes that stuff is fun in and of itself, sometimes it's running around a field stomping on wurm mounds. Point is that it's in the game for a reason, and that reason is not necessarily to be the most dynamic / exciting / thought-provoking content in the game.