No more chore-I mean "hearts" please!

[DanAlcedo.3281]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I dislike hearts immensely. I think they're absolutely the worst content in the game. I understand why they were introduced, but the fact is they weren't actually meant to be in the game and the first two betas didn't have them. They were only added in the third beta because apparently people from other games couldn't function without marks on their map telling them where to go.

Hearts were intentionally removed as was always the plan.

But people on these forums asked for hearts. They didn't just ask for hearts, they asked for repeatable hearts.  People say Anet doesn't listen to the community but that time they listened, and I believe they shouldn't have. Hearts serve no real purpose in the game except to slow down map completion, by doing something mundane. 

Fortunately most hearts can be filled or mostly filled by doing events in the corresponding areas, but even then, hanging around a heart area waiting for an event, when I could be doing something else is annoying.

 

It's not like we have 3 hearts in the game we have to do. There are 303 hearts in the core game. Having done over 15 world completes, I have to tell you, hearts aren't fun for me, they're a terrible drag. I seriously doubt anyone can like them more than I dislike them.

I just did 6 Map completions in a row. Basically speed running them. 

Most hearts ar OK but good God some are awefull. 

Be it:

Buggy. As in you kill Enemy in the area but they don't count while the same enemy next to it counts. Mostly krait for some reason. 

Extremely low % participation gain. Looking at you heart next to tequatle with 2% per kill with a weapon that doesn't one shot in full dps gear and a global CD for some reason. 

Hearts that not only give low % per action but there is not enough to do to get 100% and you have to wait for respawns. 

(Almost) All transformation Hearts. 

Some hearts have kittened up borders.  This bush you are supposed to interact with, which is like 3m from the heart vendor? Not in range for some reason. 

And the worst of the worst: When multiple problem combine. 

The only map without a single bad heart is Field of ruin.

 

Thank God I have to never do this again. 

 

 

[Vayne.8563]

7 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

I just did 6 Map completions in a row. Basically speed running them. 

Most hearts ar OK but good God some are awefull. 

Be it:

Buggy. As in you kill Enemy in the area but they don't count while the same enemy next to it counts. Mostly krait for some reason. 

Extremely low % participation gain. Looking at you heart next to tequatle with 2% per kill with a weapon that doesn't one shot in full dps gear and a global CD for some reason. 

Hearts that not only give low % per action but there is not enough to do to get 100% and you have to wait for respawns. 

(Almost) All transformation Hearts. 

Some hearts have kittened up borders.  This bush you are supposed to interact with, which is like 3m from the heart vendor? Not in range for some reason. 

And the worst of the worst: When multiple problem combine. 

The only map without a single bad heart is Field of ruin.

 

Thank God I have to never do this again. 

 

 

Okay so what you're saying is some hearts aren't that bad, but what do they actually add to the game? Really? They do very little as well as events. They're all separate. They don't chain. They don't have pass fail events that spawn off them. Most of them can be completed passively. At best they're a merchant and a way to get certain rewards.

Which makes repeatable hearts a double chore if you ever have to get anything from those merchants again.  For a game that's friendly to alts, the hearts are the one thing I absolutely can't stand doing when completeing any zone and some collections make you run those hearts multiple times (I'm looking at you Wayfarer's Henge).

If the devs never did anything but leave the hearts there, but not add them to collections, particularly the repeatable ones, I might not mind them as much, but that's not always been the case.

When they're not non-content, hearts are simply bad content...in my opinion.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Vayne.8563

[Randulf.7614]

I enjoy hearts and repeating them. They give me more thngs to do in a map and some extra flavour dialogue as well.

 

They don't suit every map which is why HoT and meta maps work better without them breaking up the flow, but they are fine when sed correctly. Hopefully we will see more in EoD

[Jukhy.2431]

4 hours ago, yoni.7015 said:

I like the hearts. 

Same, I enjoy doing map completion including the hearts.

 

And I always 'cheese' that stealth heart too, likely the only heart I do not like doing. But doesn't take that much when done the fast way.

[Paralux.6714]

I actually think the hearts makes a map better. It adds something personal to it. Sure, when it comes to the repeatable ones it can feel "grindy" at times. Like when doing the Skyscale collection for example.

[Devildoc.6721]

2 hours ago, Pifil.5193 said:

But that's untrue. Dynamic events can't be literally the entire design of the game when the game also contains hearts, can it?

Hearts were not the intended game, they were an afterthought to cater to WoW players

[Devildoc.6721]

2 hours ago, Sir Alric.5078 said:

Do you mean the one where you have to slip past Ash legion scouts unnoticed? If that's the one then i agree, it's probably the most frustrating heart quest in the game. 😩

That's the one, and you can't do nearby events to progress it or kill nearby mobs.

You can only progress it by doing the stealth minigame.

[Devildoc.6721]

44 minutes ago, Paralux.6714 said:

I actually think the hearts makes a map better. It adds something personal to it. Sure, when it comes to the repeatable ones it can feel "grindy" at times. Like when doing the Skyscale collection for example.

Yeah just the personal touch of "go dance for my starving cows"  yes that is just what a hero who killed Zhaitan needs to do.. you know.. just go dance for some farmer's cows.

or wake up 50 drunk pirates with buckets of water

yeah nothing says adventure to me like doing some farm chores and other busywork.

[Kraggy.4169]

5 hours ago, Devildoc.6721 said:

This game was supposed to not be like other MMO's where you go to some quest hub, pick up a bunch of grindy chores, then do them and turn in.

but in beta players coming from World of Warcraft couldn't figure out what to do when they didn't have "quests" so..

In spite of the WOW player meme you insist on spouting it wasn't only WOW players it was largely anyone who hadn't been a GW1 player .. and face it, GW1 DID have quests they were just not called thar!

 

Before hearts were added the beta was a desert, there was little 'content' to be discovered and leveling would have been a big chore without them as the only alternative was typical MMO mob-grinding or dungeon grinding, both of which are a big turn-off for many.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Kraggy.4169

[Gehenna.3625]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Okay so what you're saying is some hearts aren't that bad, but what do they actually add to the game? Really?

What they add is a pass-time to reach a certain goal. Map completion in this case. Any MMO will come back to the staple kill x mobs, fetch x items, etc. Here they just hide it behind events and tasks.

[felix.2386]

problem is that hearts are just lazy quests..

with 0 narrative, minimum texts and still function as quest and is auto accepted.

 

story quests are still very quest like with green star icon.

quests will provide more content in opposite of hearts.

quests can provide interesting side quest with high quality story and lore or even epic side adventure to kill some mini bosses which you have to travel across maps, w/e.

while heart is just..map dailies...while every game have those.

this game definitely doesnt have decent side quest.

 

the only side quest they have is in form of achievements..which has less narrative potential then real side quests...and really, break immersion..but it's in the end side quest non the less...

literally..just make them side quests and this game will feel less empty.

Edited August 25, 2021 by felix.2386

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Too bad you can not see the forum when HoT released and people complained about there not being any hearts to guide them through the maps.

Hell repeatable Hearts were praised when Ember Bay was released.

So my question for you is what is making you do the hearts? The new meta? Sorry gathering 30 wood ore and plants seem more of a chore than killing mobs in the general area to progress a bar.

[mtpelion.4562]

While repeatable hearts are tedious, I'd rather have merchant inventories locked behind those than behind events. I can show up and do a heart at any time, events require you to wait around on timers and potentially fail making access to merchants substantially more tedious than hearts are.

[TwiceDead.1963]

See, I used to be of the same opinion, but..

The past 3 weeks I've been playing FFXIV. And I've been spending 80% of my gameplay time running between/- and "talking" to NPC's, with probably only 10% of that time going to actual combat gameplay and the other 10% fiddling with the HUD.

 

It is atrocious, and it really makes me miss what I had with Hearts in GW2. Just TAKE IN THE SCENERY and smash some stuff up then move along... It is MUCH better than running from A to B ad-nauseum.

 

But it's OK, they're telling me it gets good eventually... I swear these people have a seriously bad case of stockholm syndrome. Worse is I am beginning to feel it to when I know it is objectively BAD quest design.

 

So yeah the questing in FFXIV is kittening terrible. The rest of the game I kinda dig.

Edited August 25, 2021 by TwiceDead.1963

[Vayne.8563]

50 minutes ago, Kraggy.4169 said:

In spite of the WOW player meme you insist on spouting it wasn't only WOW players it was largely anyone who hadn't been a GW1 player .. and face it, GW1 DID have quests they were just not called thar!

 

Before hearts were added the beta was a desert, there was little 'content' to be discovered and leveling would have been a big chore without them as the only alternative was typical MMO mob-grinding or dungeon grinding, both of which are a big turn-off for many.

This is factually untrue. The devs gave us the reason in perfectly clear English why they were added, and I'll paraphrase here.

There was a dev watching a player run past a burning field and he asked the player why they didn't stop to put out the fires and he said because he didn't have a quest to do it.

The devs reasons without marks on the map, players from other MMOs wouldn't understand the nature of dynamic events. Hearts were put on the map, not to give people more to do, but to keep people in areas where events spawned.  That's the long and short of it. That's a direct quote from the development team.

I played beta one and two and there were tons of things to do. Just people from other MMOs didn't understand the dynamic event system. They  needed a bit more help.

 

That's why Orr didn't have them, and it's why none of HoT had them and even Bloodstone Fen.  Its' why we had over 1500 dynamic events at launch and 300 some odd hearts (a few were added later).

[Gibson.4036]

5 hours ago, Devildoc.6721 said:

or worse.. the stealth one in blazeridge.  that one is always awful

Funny, I found that one refreshingly challenging. Yeah, it can be frustrating, but challenge can be.

 

I wonder if that one's just set up to be frustrating because the vast majority of other hearts can be quickly knocked out by killing  a dozen local mobs or running back and forth several times. It gets me into the mindset of "hey, I'll take care of completion on this zone real quick" which then makes that heart feel like a roadblock instead of a challenging puzzle to figure out.

[Vayne.8563]

45 minutes ago, felix.2386 said:

problem is that hearts are just lazy quests..

with 0 narrative, minimum texts and still function as quest and is auto accepted.

 

story quests are still very quest like with green star icon.

quests will provide more content in opposite of hearts.

quests can provide interesting side quest with high quality story and lore or even epic side adventure to kill some mini bosses which you have to travel across maps, w/e.

while heart is just..map dailies...while every game have those.

this game definitely doesnt have decent side quest.

 

the only side quest they have is in form of achievements..which has less narrative potential then real side quests...and really, break immersion..but it's in the end side quest non the less...

literally..just make them side quests and this game will feel less empty.

Dynamic events were meant to be the quests in this game and they tell stories.

Dragon Stand after all is just a giant event chain. Nothing more. The quest chain to get to the Temple of Balthazar in Straits tells a story. They even tell short stories, like when you collect firefly essences to light the lamps in Caledon Forest and then the mosquitos are attracted to the lamps, teaching people about event chains early. It's almost one of the first events you run into.

Dynamic events are escorts, defence, gathering, boss fights, all the same stuff that quests were, without having to talk to a quest giver.  This game launched with over 1500 dynamic events. The devs said they were meant to be the quests in the game.

[Vayne.8563]

For those who don't believe me about the nature of quests and hearts, here's a link to an article on IGN written around the time GW2 came out.  It explains that dynamic events were meant to be the quests in this game.

 

https://www.ign.com/wikis/guild-wars-2/Dynamic_Events

Edited August 25, 2021 by Vayne.8563

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

Not all hearts are good.  Some are great and others are god awful slogs.  That being said, short of "needing" map complete for a legendary, you don't need to do them if you don't want to.  Like at all. More so, if you're a vet that has done at least two map completes you have more than enough for 4 legendary weapons at that point, and I would argue that the hearts are the least of your issues when it comes to tedious gameplay while grinding out a legendary.

 

So yes, when someone says "don't do them" if you don't want it, its not to be dismissive of your disdain.  Its a literal solution to your immediate gripe.

 

The hearts serve a purpose on core maps of pushing new players through the zone to potential repeating events, and on some of those other maps with the repeating hearts as a way to continue engagement on the maps for rewards so those areas don't become dead zones.  Now we can debate the over all efficiency of that design idea, sure, but without their (Anet's) numbers on this we would all basically be talking out our kittens.

 

tl;dr :  Don't do the hearts.

[Vayne.8563]

1 minute ago, PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

Not all hearts are good.  Some are great and others are god awful slogs.  That being said, short of "needing" map complete for a legendary, you don't need to do them if you don't want to.  Like at all. More so, if you're a vet that has done at least two map completes you have more than enough for 4 legendary weapons at that point, and I would argue that the hearts are the least of your issues when it comes to tedious gameplay while grinding out a legendary.

 

So yes, when someone says "don't do them" if you don't want it, its not to be dismissive of your disdain.  Its a literal solution to your immediate gripe.

 

The hearts serve a purpose on core maps of pushing new players through the zone to potential repeating events, and on some of those other maps with the repeating hearts as a way to continue engagement on the maps for rewards so those areas don't become dead zones.  Now we can debate the over all efficiency of that design idea, sure, but without their (Anet's) numbers on this we would all basically be talking out our kittens.

 

tl;dr :  Don't do the hearts.

And repeatable hearts? What about those. I know I needed to redo hearts to access merchants in new zones. I shouldn't be able to buy the pieces I need for collections for example. They're not all legendaries.

[Devildoc.6721]

32 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Too bad you can not see the forum when HoT released and people complained about there not being any hearts to guide them through the maps.

Hell repeatable Hearts were praised when Ember Bay was released.

So my question for you is what is making you do the hearts? The new meta? Sorry gathering 30 wood ore and plants seem more of a chore than killing mobs in the general area to progress a bar.

and I thought the HoT maps were great aside from one problem, when you have to get into Tarir for story quests but the event is going and the map is basically dead because it's several years old now.  Maps like Orr and HoT are what got me excited for this game in the first place, zones that you just explore on your own and find events happening and do them spontaneously, or large mapwide meta events that bring everyone playing together.  Hearts don't do the thing that GW2 does better than any other game which is that "playing WITH the people around you" feel, where you're not competing over nodes or enemies or quest objectives, you're helping each other without having to formally invite them to group.  Other games don't do this with their "quest" based design that makes everyone selfish and competing over quest objectives and getting into kill stealing scenarios.

When the GW2 Manifesto first hit that was amazing that was hitting everything right, hearts were the first thing to go wrong in GW2's design.  It was an afterthought added that was not a part of that original design, it was a step backwards towards your cookie cutter MMO's.

 

First time i saw ember bay having hearts, and realizing they were repeatable.

I cursed up a storm, and hoped some really awful things happened to people who were suggesting such things on the forums.

I can't hate them enough for getting hearts added back into the game and much less, making them repeatable.

24 minutes ago, TwiceDead.1963 said:

See, I used to be of the same opinion, but..

The past 3 weeks I've been playing FFXIV. And I've been spending 80% of my gameplay time running between/- and "talking" to NPC's, with probably only 10% of that time going to actual combat gameplay and the other 10% fiddling with the HUD.

 

It is atrocious, and it really makes me miss what I had with Hearts in GW2. Just TAKE IN THE SCENERY and smash some stuff up then move along... It is MUCH better than running from A to B ad-nauseum.

 

But it's OK, they're telling me it gets good eventually... I swear these people have a seriously bad case of stockholm syndrome. Worse is I am beginning to feel it to when I know it is objectively BAD quest design.

 

So yeah the questing in FFXIV is kittening terrible. The rest of the game I kinda dig.

I'm not suggesting this game go to FFXIV like questing

I'm suggesting this game do what it initially promised to do 

now mind you your main story quests that's fine, they're instanced, and it's for the narrative.  To put a story in it that's all good.

 

But I just want more maps like Orr, HoT, Dragonfall, etc, maps that you just explore on your own, do events, and they have meta events that bring everyone together.

I'd taken a break from the game for awhile and came back just as the Marionette had come back into the game, and that was a lot of fun, I want more of that, less tedious chores.

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

2 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

And repeatable hearts? What about those. I know I needed to redo hearts to access merchants in new zones. I shouldn't be able to buy the pieces I need for collections for example. They're not all legendaries.

you literally quoted my response.  So let me re quote myself with regard to those hearts.  i said:

 

"on some of those other maps with the repeating hearts as a way to continue engagement on the maps for rewards so those areas don't become dead zones."

[Vayne.8563]

Just now, PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

you literally quoted my response.  So let me re quote myself with regard to those hearts.  i said:

 

"on some of those other maps with the repeating hearts as a way to continue engagement on the maps for rewards so those areas don't become dead zones."

I stay off maps with hearts by choice, and tend to stay on maps without them. I've completed Verdant Brink 40 times, but I haven't completed Crystal Oasis nearly that much. In fact, HoT maps tend to be more generally populated than PoF maps, in my experience.   In the core game, Orr was constantly busy with no hearts and remains pretty busy to this day.  Silverwastes is one of the business maps in the entire game, and you know..it has no hearts.

Sorry but I don't think there's any evidence that having hearts makes maps busier.

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

1 minute ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I stay off maps with hearts by choice, and tend to stay on maps without them. I've completed Verdant Brink 40 times, but I haven't completed Crystal Oasis nearly that much. In fact, HoT maps tend to be more generally populated than PoF maps, in my experience.   In the core game, Orr was constantly busy with no hearts and remains pretty busy to this day.  Silverwastes is one of the business maps in the entire game, and you know..it has no hearts.

Sorry but I don't think there's any evidence that having hearts makes maps busier.

 

And to that final sentiment i will requote myself...again.

 

" Now we can debate the over all efficiency of that design idea, sure, but without their (Anet's) numbers on this we would all basically be talking out our kittens."

 

Fact is, we can't say for certain whether or not those hearts kept people going to those maps or not.  I'd argue (personally) that unless I absolutely need something from those heart vendors I've not been back to those maps with the repeatable hearts or in the case of PoF, re-did those hearts unless I was bored/needed something from them as well.  However, I am only one player and MY experience is not the overall metric of the GW2 community and to assume it is would be arrogant.

[Randulf.7614]

It doesnt really matter that events are the backbone of the game and hearts were a late addition to launch. Hearts have existed for 9 years now so the point is moot. They are as much part of the game as anything else and were readded to the game due to feedback from players wanting them.

That doesn't mean they cant be improved or used better or perhaps once completed once, the vendor is perma open. But they arent bad content, they just arent everyone’s cup of tea. They must be popular though since they were readded from S3 onwards and they compliment events in the more relaxing maps rather well