Do Heart of Thorns adventures need an update?

It's been more than 2 years already, and some Heart of Thorns adventures are still a mess. Some have even gotten worse, due to bugs or stealth changes.

In the other hand, the new Path of Fire adventures, even if less popular and original, feel really better. You feel less pressure, and gold is generally easier to achieve, leaving a lot of room for competition above it, instead of everyone having the same single score at top. Personally, I barely struggled with them. Some took a few tries, but you learned from your mistakes easily. If you haven't tried them yet, for fear of the HoT experience, I really encourage you to check them out. They don't give a lot of achievement points, but they can drop unique (and expensive) miniatures. Trying to find new shortcuts is really fun too.

So, what went wrong with HoT adventures? And more importantly, what can we learn from PoF adventures to improve HoT ones?

Let's start with some data, courtesy of GW2 Efficiency, to show how bad this is. Note that these numbers only reflect players registered there. Since we can't know if everyone registered in there owns Heart of Thorns, I used the population of the most completed HoT achievement instead, the first step of the story, Rally to Maguuma, with 129.390 of 140.398 (92,159 %) of the registered players having completed it.

Sorted by zone and total silver completion:

Sorted by gold completion:

Note that bronze score doesn't have any achievements, so we can't tell if someone completed it in bronze or didn't complete it at all. Those two are covered by the same field, called Other.

Some adventures seem to be doing fine, but others have really terrible numbers. Look at Fallen Masks, almost 40% of the sample population is stuck in silver, less than 5% having achieved gold. Scrap Rifle Field Test, Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle, and Shooting Gallery are doing really bad too. Even Tendril Torchers, one of the first ones, has a wide gap between gold and silver.

So, how do we improve HoT adventures?

The major problem with all the adventures above is time, and that's exactly what PoF did right. You almost never run out of time in PoF, but you're still encouraged to be fast to get gold and also to get higher in the ladder. Adding 30-90 seconds to most HoT adventures would pretty much fix their problems, and let people get gold easily, focusing on competition after that. This would be an easy change, and it would really improve the experience with them.

No one likes having to watch and learn a guide step by step for the optimal path to gold, adventures should be doable by just playing and trying. That's what make PoF ones fun, and that's where HoT ones fail. You can do them on your own way, and discover a valid path to gold by just trial and error. In many HoT adventures, it's barely impossible to find the viable path without the guide, and that's sad.

So yeah, the solution is simple, just give them more time.

There's other problems, that are bad, but not as bad as running out of time:

• Remove the time limit from fixed-amount collection adventures (The Floor Is Lava?, Salvage Pit). Your score is the time it takes to get all of the collectibles, so the time limit is pointless. Removing it would help people try their own new strategies without being cut off by the timer, and get bronze easily.
• Remove the time limit from race adventures (Sanctum Scramble, Flying Circus, A Fungus Among Us, Drone Race). Same as above, your score is how long it takes you to reach the finish line. The time limitation is pointless here too.
• Improve the random spawn of targets (Fallen Masks, Shooting Gallery). With more time gold is easier and RNG isn't really a problem anymore, but it can still be annoying. A possible solution is to spawn multiple targets, like two or three instead of just one. This way, you have less chances of getting too many bad targets, ruining your score.

Well, that's it. I really like adventures, and I'm sad they've fallen from grace after HoT. I believe there's a big problem with them, as the data shows, and that a change as simple as nerfing the time limit would really improve their situation.

So, what's your opinion?

Some adventures seem to be doing fine, but others have really terrible numbers. Look at Fallen Masks, almost 40% of the sample population is stuck in silver, less than 5% having achieved gold. Scrap Rifle Field Test, Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle, and Shooting Gallery are doing really bad too.

There's nothing wrong with some achievements being difficult. On the contrary, I think it's more interesting for the game if some achievements are difficult enough to discourage some people from trying. It helps bring a great sense of achievement for those willing & able.

I don't like the system: I don't think solo accomplishments should be part of an MMO, plus if I wanted to play console games, I'd, you know, buy a console. But since adventures are in the game, I don't think ANet should alter the requirements just to satisfy an arbitrary need for some players to have all things look equal.

The data doesn't show a problem; it just shows that the numbers aren't even. That's a problem for the OP, not necessarily a problem for the game.

I would have voted for:

Minigames like HoT adventures are not worth the expenditure of additional resources.

Not sure if I care enough. I still don't have gold on some HoT adventures, and I don't need it because related achievements don't interest me enough and I already got all HoT masteries unlocked. Haven't done many adventures in PoF. I understand value in variety, but honestly they don't interest me that much.

Maybe they should be changed that you can do them on the fly kinda a bit like the bounties, because if I have to pick racing across the desert or helping others kill things or do some random other events I probably pick the latter. I'm not sure if adding additional time would be beneficial. I have tried doing some adventures only because I don't have them on gold, and have never touched those where I have it anymore unless they were dailies. The competitive aspect about it I totally don't care about. I see some scores on them, from guildmates I guess, but I don't care.

Those adventures seem to be a kind of hit or miss similar to how Jumping Puzzles are seen by the community, only that they don't seem to be tied to other things like Token Collector or crafting Legendaries I think, and thus people don't end up bitching about them as much but simply skip/forget about the adventures.

This is the first time I hear about these."Adventures".

I haven't played HoT "adventures" in years. I don't really care what happens to them because I'm done with them forever.

Having said that, I found several of them pretty entertaining, which is more than I can say of the PoF ones.

I am with Ashen in this question. Minigames were a terrible and unfitting idea to begin with. I can very well live on without having all the MPs of HoT as i visit it very rarely lately, and who needs adrenaline mushrooms anyway.

You should have included a fourth option....I don't care about Adventures and never play them.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Some adventures seem to be doing fine, but others have really terrible numbers. Look at Fallen Masks, almost 40% of the sample population is stuck in silver, less than 5% having achieved gold. Scrap Rifle Field Test, Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle, and Shooting Gallery are doing really bad too.

I don't have an issue with people wanting achievements, but too much mastery content is blocked using HoT's achievement system. And being an online game, there are a lot of variables that need to be accounted for in order to pass the adventures (technical and skill), including event tiers to even temporarily unlock the damn thing to begin with. I need 12 more mastery points to unlock the last tier, but I have pretty much given up on that.

I think minigames are fine, though maybe in a different amount and different format. Even though i don't see a reason to change the current ones. I don't really mind that they are tied to certain further achievements, but at the same time I find that was where they went beyond what minigames really are.

A different format I have in mind is: Like a set of minigames in the casino wouldve been completely fine, or even one or two in the jungle as a "temple puzzle"kind of thing like fallen masks, or thematically bound like that. Somewhere where it would provide that distraction in the right place, part of exploration (the dwarven puzzle in PoF is one of the better ones, yet they decided it's not repeatable for some reason.) or things like kegbrawl in hoelbrak, the shooting gallery that should've been in divinity's reach rather than in HoT or the moa racers in Lion's arch.

Such minigames, might seem like complete waste to some, but I do think that if done right they can add a great deal to the game.

I am pretty sure that they will never revisit HoT content except to fix exploits or new bugs that crop up due to changes to the engine. Development on HoT is long over, heck development on PoF is over at this stage; the devs have long been moved on to LS4 and expansion 3.

ArenaNet's all about pushing forwards now. They're definitely not going to waste resources on old adventures, nor do they have any reason to change them. They were already nerfed once and there's more than enough mastery points, plus most masteries aren't even needed and raids blocked off completion anyways.

@Lonami.2987 said:Even Tendril Torchers, one of the first ones, has a wide gap between gold and silver.

That is one of the easiest adventures, but it requires jumping mushrooms, which they're not going to have at the start. Most people likely don't care and either skip adventures entirely, or try it once and move on. 27% didn't even finish the story.

@Healix.5819 said:ArenaNet's all about pushing forwards now. They're definitely not going to waste resources on old adventures, nor do they have any reason to change them. They were already nerfed once and there's more than enough mastery points, plus most masteries aren't even needed and raids blocked off completion anyways.

@"Lonami.2987" said:Even Tendril Torchers, one of the first ones, has a wide gap between gold and silver.

I have to say, these numbers are really meaningless. If you look up the average popular steam game there's many acheivements in there that very little people have. So what? I don't see that as a reason to change achievements, simply because "people don't have this and that acheivement yet.

It just really shows the way achievement s in this game are viewed imo.

In the other hand, the new Path of Fire adventures, even if less popular and original, feel really better

The HoT ones traumatized me so much that I did not even try the POF ones, based on this information I'll take a look. thanks.

Note that bronze score doesn't have any achievements, so we can't tell if someone completed it in bronze or didn't complete it at all.

u can measure it, by elite spec professions weapons completion, they require at least some bronze adventure, only in HoT. In Pof they removed adventures from weapons elite spec requirments.

I truly wish they fix the time on all these mini games or take the item you need for a collection out of them then I can just ignore these incredibly annoying and in my opinion stupid things. I like the PoF ones , they may take time and effort but are doable . the HoT ones are not doable due to lack of time , lags in the game and other such things, but I am forced to do them because I want the item I need for the collection and I consider it to be highly unfair of them. Sent in at least 6 complaints and all they say is go to the forums, well here I am now lets see if they will now just ignore me like they have been doing since HoT came out. Give us more time to actually do it 2 and a half minutes is not enough for those games, and if your not gonna give us more time then let me get the items for the collections in an other way.

Eh... All HoT adventures is still goldable.

I actually got all gold in HoT adventure with constant 200+ping. So it's totally doable with training and effort.

If it isn't completely broken then I rather have dev focus on something new instead.

At this point, they can really do whatever they want with HoT (and PoF) adventure timers.People who don't like them often think they are a waste of resources and many times get frustrated because one time rewards (mastery points and, to a minor extent, AP).For people who like them, on the other hand, the replay value is laughable so they will be mostly ignored anyways (never heard about adventures dropping rare minis tbh) .

@Vargamonth.2047 said:(never heard about adventures dropping rare minis tbh) .

Some do. Drop rates are very low and people who do the adventures tend not to publicize these (as it diminishes the limited value of drops even further).

So, for context, I'm one of the people with gold on all of the adventures.That said, I think most of them are fine, but three in particular felt unfair during my attempts at gold.Shooting Gallery has problems with RNG and time limit; more so the time.Fallen Masks has massive RNG problems, though a more lenient time limit could help.Scrap Rifle Field Test is buggy. Chak AI seems to differ between players; some have chak that form tight groups, others don't. Also, the flamethrower skill only channels for part of the intended time.

Personally, I think the best solution is to move the achievements and Mastery Points from Silver and Gold to Bronze and Silver, adding new 1 AP achievements for Gold. That makes the Mastery Points easier to get (the main complaint I hear) while maintaining the prestige of Gold.

Seems like a well-thought out and detailed analysis. Considering there are mastery points linked to silver and gold on these, adding a bit of time might be a great plan to get some people to "go back" and do HoT content.

I believe adventures as a concept are a fail and waste of resources.

They should be removed from the dailies pool. That would be nice.

While I agree that some adventures are extremely hard to achieve gold, it's not impossible. It's just about whether you're willing to put in more time to learn the mechanics of them. I'm totally fine with minor reworks too, but I simply don't think they're necessary.

@Takoyakii.2146 said:Eh... All HoT adventures is still goldable.

I actually got all gold in HoT adventure with constant 200+ping. So it's totally doable with training and effort.

If it isn't completely broken then I rather have dev focus on something new instead.

You don't even need gold in everything. I am missing some and still have 28 spare points ...

At bare minimum, achievements and collection items related to adventures should only require bronze tier (they actually did this for some of them, but others like Hivemaster still require silver in Scrap Rifle and haha screw that).