I played GW2 and there is nothing unique about it's questing system. They basically took rifts dynamic rift events and tailored them to the GW2. So yeah you still need to go talk to quest givers (denoted by a heart instead of exclamation point) until you wonder into a dynamic event. What ANet did was brain washed the masses into thinking they were doing something way different by shoving down our throats that there are no more quest hubs (which there are but not with exclamation points).
Where this game shines is in the personal story line but like many others have said once you hit max level this game leaves a lot to be desired.
P.S. - IMO, this game should not to be used as a blue print for any game.
I loved how GW2 strings a series of dynamic events. My best leveling experience was around level 78. I started a dynamic event that lead to a series of events, the next thing I knew I was level 80 when all was said and done. You know you're having fun when you're not watching the leveling bar. There was no quest to join. You just start fighting and follow the zerg.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Some of you are going off-topic in this article, by citing other aspects of GW2 that you dislike.
This article is specifically talking about the first few hours of the game, by discussing how the player is introduced with Heart Quests, and how it differs from other MMOs.
In other MMOs, you are introduced with linear progression right at the start, and are bombarded with quest hubs with the infamous exclamation point (!).
GW2 does this too somewhat, but it's very different. There are multiple objectives of Heart Quests, and they don't require you to run across the map to complete them. They are confined in the same area. Archeage actually has multiple objectives for a few of their quests too, which was a good thing, but it still felt too tradtional with their quest hubs.
GW2 also got rid of the "accept/decline" aspect of questing. You no longer have to interact with the NPC to accept a quest. There are exceptions though. For instance, you only really have to interact with an NPC, when you need to turn in quest items that you gather.
Overall though, GW2 could've been better served without Heart Quests. I remember during launch, people were saying it was another "wow-clone-themepark" because of Heart Quests, even though they weren't required at all. Archeage does the same thing, and that's why it deserves the scorn of players that are fed up with the linear "exclamation-point" quest hubs.
I totally agree. People aren't actually reading the article and posting what they dislike about the game. It's pretty standard on this website though.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I feel that GW2 is a great game and I also know that it isn't for everyone. To the point, sure in a few ways gw2 could be a breeding ground for new mmos but not in everyway.
There action combat could be something that I think many upcoming mmos will try to go with and I also think that the oldschool and more traditional combat is also here to stay. I just think that there will be more games with other forms of combat and not everything will be the usual tabtarget combat play. I don't think it will be a dominating factor for a long time if ever, but I feel that it's here to stay.
Questing, sure gw2 questing system wasn't revulotionary but the masked the usual questing in a good way making it more fun to do even if it wasn't very fun either but thats my opinion. I do feel that upcoming mmos will try to go for more unstandard questing in the future and try more to make it more versitale.
Dungeons are far better in other games no news there.
The non trinity is something I think will be in other games aswell but I don't think this will either be any dominating factor on the market. Lots of people still like the tank, healer and dps gameplay and I don't think many companys are brave enough to try and change this, but some will try.
Jumping puzzels and other smaller stuff is something I think will be added to more games cause the fill out alot of time.
But the one thing I think will be guild wars 2 biggest influence on the mmo market is the update rate. Sure some people will say that the living story sucked and sure parts of it did but the get new content every two weeks is incredible. Other games like wow release big expansions and sure this is really fun to but when you have played through it in 2-3 months and you have nothing more to do then level alts then that living story would be fun insteed of waiting for 14 months more until something new comes.
I also know that gw2 should have focused on an expansion aswell so there could come new classes and other stuff but still getting free new content every two weeks is amazing and nobody can tell me otherwise. Sure you can hate gw2 and the living story but think of it like this:
If you are a wow player, how fun wouldn't it be to get this but in wows model of gamestyle, like new small zones, maybe a new dungeon or raid once a month, new factions to grind and new stuff for crafting. I think you would love it, I really do.
So if Anet can deliver more qualitiy living story like the have started on now with season two then this game is here to stay and this could be a rolemodel for upcoming games.
like others have said the Leveling experience in GW2 was pretty cool especially in the upper level zones. just running along doing events was a lot more fun then jumping from quest hub to quest hub.
But then again i was a big fan of Rifts in Rift and Public Quests in Warhammer Online.
but also like others said once you hit 80 the game turned to crap real fast.
I played GW2 and there is nothing unique about it's questing system. They basically took rifts dynamic rift events and tailored them to the GW2. So yeah you still need to go talk to quest givers (denoted by a heart instead of exclamation point) until you wonder into a dynamic event. What ANet did was brain washed the masses into thinking they were doing something way different by shoving down our throats that there are no more quest hubs (which there are but not with exclamation points).
Where this game shines is in the personal story line but like many others have said once you hit max level this game leaves a lot to be desired.
P.S. - IMO, this game should not to be used as a blue print for any game.
They didn't take anything from Rift. GW2 was being developed as far back as 2006 or earlier, when it was going to be another expansion for GW1, and when it became GW2, more videos were shown of their dynamic events around 2010. Rift was being developed around 2005, but that doesn't mean either company ripped each other off. If anything Warhammer Online had their Public Quest system before either of them, which was really fun, and was the first mainstream MMO to break away from the traditional Exclamation Questing Hubs.
I don't see how you can say it's not unique. You're very misinformed. You do not need to talk to NPCs to accept any quest. They are automatically given, and that's why there's a UI indicator on the top-right of the screen. They are not quest hubs either. They don't offer you multiple quests, instead they offer you multiple objectives, and yes, there's a big difference between the two. In the former, each quest is varied with different objectives and stories, and GW2's heart quests all relate to an overall theme of the area, within the same story. They are vastly different as to how they approach "questing". Nobody is being brainwashed here. Some of us can recognize the differences between the two systems, and others such as yourself, cannot.
It is, if nothing else, a prototype for the perfect MMO. It brought in a lot of mechanics that can turn a good MMO into a good game (whereas these two are often mutually exclusive). Downscaling. Action combat + mobile skill use. Sustain and skill use that isn't reliant on a faulty potion system. Dynamic content. Free-form group design.
The trick is going to be implementing these into a game with a compelling end game. An MMO that can do this effectively is going to take the genre by storm.
like others have said the Leveling experience in GW2 was pretty cool especially in the upper level zones.
I don't know about that. All I remember from it was jumping into a quest, 3 other players join, quest ends everyone goes their way. No one talks, no one feels the need to form a party.
I went into a new zone and start doing all these quests, helping people, liberating some area whatever. 1 hour later everything resets. Nothing I did really changed anything. That lack of impact you have in the world becomes even bigger when you take into account you use the same skills from lv 1 to max lv. You still struggle to kill a lv 1 rabbit because content scales.
When I reached max lv I realized that I was the exact same as when I was at low lv and the world was the same too. The whole leveling process felt pointless.
like others have said the Leveling experience in GW2 was pretty cool especially in the upper level zones.
I don't know about that. All I remember from it was jumping into a quest, 3 other players join, quest ends everyone goes their way. No one talks, no one feels the need to form a party.
I went into a new zone and start doing all these quests, helping people, liberating some area whatever. 1 hour later everything resets. Nothing I did really changed anything. That lack of impact you have in the world becomes even bigger when you take into account you use the same skills from lv 1 to max lv. You still struggle to kill a lv 1 rabbit because content scales.
When I reached max lv I realized that I was the exact same as when I was at low lv and the world was the same too. The whole leveling process felt pointless.
You described every mmorpg ever made.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Not really no. GW2 lacked any sense of progression. I mean I would get this new piece of armor, it had bigger numbers but that meant nothing. Because I would scale down I would still struggle with a low lv mob. The only thing that changed with that new armor was that I looked differently, just vanity. Skills, you get them all at the start. Quests, they're repeatable infinitely. It doesn't matter for you if you do them or not.
Not every mmo ever made works like that so I don't know wth you're talking about.
Not really no. GW2 lacked any sense of progression. I mean I would get this new piece of armor, it had bigger numbers but that meant nothing. Because I would scale down I would still struggle with a low lv mob. The only thing that changed with that new armor was that I looked differently, just vanity. Skills, you get them all at the start. Quests, they're repeatable infinitely. It doesn't matter for you if you do them or not.
Not every mmo ever made works like that so I don't know wth you're talking about.
I can't think of any game were leveling felt nothing more then boaring or pointless waste of time to keep players online. Difference in GW2 is I liked the scenery.
However I am sure there is some game made were leveling is fun and not just a grind, plz enlight me on one so I can try it out.
They didn't take anything from Rift. GW2 was being developed as far back as 2006 or earlier, when it was going to be another expansion for GW1, and when it became GW2, more videos were shown of their dynamic events around 2010. Rift was being developed around 2005, but that doesn't mean either company ripped each other off. If anything Warhammer Online had their Public Quest system before either of them, which was really fun, and was the first mainstream MMO to break away from the traditional Exclamation Questing Hubs.
I don't see how you can say it's not unique. You're very misinformed. You do not need to talk to NPCs to accept any quest. They are automatically given, and that's why there's a UI indicator on the top-right of the screen. They are not quest hubs either. They don't offer you multiple quests, instead they offer you multiple objectives, and yes, there's a big difference between the two. In the former, each quest is varied with different objectives and stories, and GW2's heart quests all relate to an overall theme of the area, within the same story. They are vastly different as to how they approach "questing". Nobody is being brainwashed here. Some of us can recognize the differences between the two systems, and others such as yourself, cannot.
Ok so for starters I wasn't saying they "ripped off" rift, I was saying that dynamic events were done in RIFT as well as Warhammer so they were nothing unique to GW2.
Instead of being a "hub" you walked around NPCs and were given "objectives" which felt very much to me like quests, "help my pigs need feeding!", feed pigs until you complete objective. Not so much different from feed x of y, or am I missing something? Listen I wanted GW2 to be awesome I went out and purchased an new gaming machine to play it, it wasn't awesome for me, heck it wasn't even mediocre for me, I played to max level did some PvP and haven't logged on since.
I can't think of any game were leveling felt nothing more then boaring or pointless waste of time to keep players online. Difference in GW2 is I liked the scenery.
However I am sure there is some game made were leveling is fun and not just a grind, plz enlight me on one so I can try it out.
I didn't say that other MMOs have a fun levelling process. I said levelling on GW2 lacked a sense of progression and as such it felt completely pointless.
Progression, you know that one thing every RPG has and makes it unique to other genres. That is what I'm talking about.
They didn't take anything from Rift. GW2 was being developed as far back as 2006 or earlier, when it was going to be another expansion for GW1, and when it became GW2, more videos were shown of their dynamic events around 2010. Rift was being developed around 2005, but that doesn't mean either company ripped each other off. If anything Warhammer Online had their Public Quest system before either of them, which was really fun, and was the first mainstream MMO to break away from the traditional Exclamation Questing Hubs.
I don't see how you can say it's not unique. You're very misinformed. You do not need to talk to NPCs to accept any quest. They are automatically given, and that's why there's a UI indicator on the top-right of the screen. They are not quest hubs either. They don't offer you multiple quests, instead they offer you multiple objectives, and yes, there's a big difference between the two. In the former, each quest is varied with different objectives and stories, and GW2's heart quests all relate to an overall theme of the area, within the same story. They are vastly different as to how they approach "questing". Nobody is being brainwashed here. Some of us can recognize the differences between the two systems, and others such as yourself, cannot.
Ok so for starters I wasn't saying they "ripped off" rift, I was saying that dynamic events were done in RIFT as well as Warhammer so they were nothing unique to GW2.
Instead of being a "hub" you walked around NPCs and were given "objectives" which felt very much to me like quests, "help my pigs need feeding!", feed pigs until you complete objective. Not so much different from feed x of y, or am I missing something? Listen I wanted GW2 to be awesome I went out and purchased an new gaming machine to play it, it wasn't awesome for me, heck it wasn't even mediocre for me, I played to max level did some PvP and haven't logged on since.
"They basically took rifts dynamic rift events and tailored them to the GW2"
Actually, you did. You used the word, "took", which is synonymous with "ripped off".. but whatever. That's not really important.
If you want to take uniqueness into account, then let's differentiate the two systems. In Rift, events are regulated to one spot, which worked almost exactly like Warhammer's. The mobs would spawn, and the events were always the same, where all you do is defeat mobs in a certain amount of time (this is how they were when i was playing, so it might've changed). In GW2, events chain into other events, and mobs & NPCs are mobile. In GW2, certain hubs are controlled by mobs, until players come and clean them out. There are actually consequences if players fail an event, or succeed. Vendors unlock, other events open up, waypoints unlock, boss npcs spawn, escort quests, etc. I could go on, but saying that it's not unique is just being dishonest. I'll admit, it's not really amazing anymore, but that's because i've gotten used to them, but they really were unique when they first came out, and players are expecting an ever-changing event system that is currently impossible to implement.
You need to re-read what i wrote, i said that multiple objectives were part of Heart Quests. If you don't want to feed pigs or whatever, then do the other objectives associated with the task, or skip the Heart Quest altogether. In a traditional system, sometimes you need to complete some of those quests to unlock even more. Sometimes, it's the only way to progress. In GW2, this isn't true. They really are optional.
I wish people would stop acting like the hearts were the only events in the game. Those aren't even a quarter of all the events in the game. Those are barely a fraction of the events.
You literally just wander around and things happen and you join in. I really wish they had never put the hearts in because the haters saw this and use it as fuel constantly. Completely ignoring the majority of the content delivery system.
Every time someone even mentions the hearts I automatically assume they never even played the game. Or they are purposely just ignoring the rest of the content because they're an $&@.
Personally dynamic events are by far a much much much better content delivery system than traditional quests. Yes, it's true if you do the zones several times you begin to realize the content is limited but... Duh. It was still a huge step in the right direction one that was started by Warhammer with their public quest system.
Hopefully EQNext and Storybricks can pull off their truly dynamic AI and we might actually see a vastly improved and less predictable version of dynamic events.
“Bill Murphy's recent article on ArcheAge's major flaw – that it focuses too much on themepark questing... “
Major flaw??? The best part of any MMO for me (and I’m sure for majority of players) IT IS questing.
“ The first comment, from DMKano, raises the perfectly valid point that MMO players have grown so accustomed to seeing “!” over NPCs' heads that there's no other way to “steer” players, especially new players through the early – and some would say “all” – parts of the game.”
Yes, yes, ... and where is the problem? That “!” is one of best evolutional results in MMO world. Does any1 miss times when cars did not have air conditioning? No? Sure nobody does unless mazochist.
““But wait,” you'll say, “Guild Wars 2 has hearts, which are basically the equivalent of theme park-y 'kill 10 rats' quests!” You're correct.”
Nope, you are NOT correct. Hearts are terribly worse equivalent. Not to mention that “dynamic random events” that are all but dynamic or random. Main reason I left Gw2 (but played and enjoyed for nearly half year in one shot) is they are bad replacement for good old questing progression with hubs and alike. Yet have to be invented better system.
Etc, etc, etc, ....
At the end ... there is a reason Wow is still by large measure No.1. Learn something from that.
Not really no. GW2 lacked any sense of progression. I mean I would get this new piece of armor, it had bigger numbers but that meant nothing. Because I would scale down I would still struggle with a low lv mob. The only thing that changed with that new armor was that I looked differently, just vanity. Skills, you get them all at the start. Quests, they're repeatable infinitely. It doesn't matter for you if you do them or not.
Not every mmo ever made works like that so I don't know wth you're talking about.
Here test this out. Get your exotics armor weapons trinkets etc etc, you know the good ol' BiS gear. Go back to Queensdale for example and kill a bunch of lvl 1 bandits.
Now logout to character screen, create a level 1 character, get the weapon skills so you wouldn't be inferiour to your lvl 80 character, try to kill the same bunch of lvl 1 bandits, come back here and tell me which one was harder
CAUTION: You might die if you do the ranch event alone.
CAUTION: You might die with the lvl 80, it will just take longer. But Gw2 is not about stats playing for you, its about you playing the game.
The sole purpose of downscaling in Gw2 is to make the whole game challenging, not just the end zones. That and being able to tag along with your friends without gimping their exp gain. Being able to actually HELP them progress, not stumble their progression. You know, doing story instances with them and whatnot
And then there are thsoe people that will have you say that Gw2 is the most anti-social game ever made. Yup, bunch of *#$@#s if you ask me.
How often in your "real", "true" MMOs you see a high level character swooping through all the quest and robbing you of any progress you could've had? Why do you have to endure that? That is why I prefer most Gw2's system compared to any other MMO. We all progress, even without a freaking party
[mod edit]Most games, subscription and free-alike, you join in party and you do your shit, there is no talking unless the usual "do you know what to do" type of things. Why would I need a party to feel pressured to talk to 5 other assholes? If i want to talk I'll use the freaking map chat...
I think the game has alot of great features I really enjoyed the leveling experience, it seemed really relaxing mostly cause anything you did got you xp. The dynamic events were a great idea but seemed to fall short, I think they should of focused on less events that had more to them. One thing that it did well was keep me from being bored in the main hubs, once the meta events started, they'd never seem to end. I have yet to do fractals and work on ascended gear soo, can't really comment on endgame much, except dungeons feel hectic without the traditional trinity system. All in all I enjoy returning to this game for its updates, but don't stay too long till the next update arrives.
Comments
I played GW2 and there is nothing unique about it's questing system. They basically took rifts dynamic rift events and tailored them to the GW2. So yeah you still need to go talk to quest givers (denoted by a heart instead of exclamation point) until you wonder into a dynamic event. What ANet did was brain washed the masses into thinking they were doing something way different by shoving down our throats that there are no more quest hubs (which there are but not with exclamation points).
Where this game shines is in the personal story line but like many others have said once you hit max level this game leaves a lot to be desired.
P.S. - IMO, this game should not to be used as a blue print for any game.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I totally agree. People aren't actually reading the article and posting what they dislike about the game. It's pretty standard on this website though.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I feel that GW2 is a great game and I also know that it isn't for everyone. To the point, sure in a few ways gw2 could be a breeding ground for new mmos but not in everyway.
There action combat could be something that I think many upcoming mmos will try to go with and I also think that the oldschool and more traditional combat is also here to stay. I just think that there will be more games with other forms of combat and not everything will be the usual tabtarget combat play. I don't think it will be a dominating factor for a long time if ever, but I feel that it's here to stay.
Questing, sure gw2 questing system wasn't revulotionary but the masked the usual questing in a good way making it more fun to do even if it wasn't very fun either but thats my opinion. I do feel that upcoming mmos will try to go for more unstandard questing in the future and try more to make it more versitale.
Dungeons are far better in other games no news there.
The non trinity is something I think will be in other games aswell but I don't think this will either be any dominating factor on the market. Lots of people still like the tank, healer and dps gameplay and I don't think many companys are brave enough to try and change this, but some will try.
Jumping puzzels and other smaller stuff is something I think will be added to more games cause the fill out alot of time.
But the one thing I think will be guild wars 2 biggest influence on the mmo market is the update rate. Sure some people will say that the living story sucked and sure parts of it did but the get new content every two weeks is incredible. Other games like wow release big expansions and sure this is really fun to but when you have played through it in 2-3 months and you have nothing more to do then level alts then that living story would be fun insteed of waiting for 14 months more until something new comes.
I also know that gw2 should have focused on an expansion aswell so there could come new classes and other stuff but still getting free new content every two weeks is amazing and nobody can tell me otherwise. Sure you can hate gw2 and the living story but think of it like this:
If you are a wow player, how fun wouldn't it be to get this but in wows model of gamestyle, like new small zones, maybe a new dungeon or raid once a month, new factions to grind and new stuff for crafting. I think you would love it, I really do.
So if Anet can deliver more qualitiy living story like the have started on now with season two then this game is here to stay and this could be a rolemodel for upcoming games.
like others have said the Leveling experience in GW2 was pretty cool especially in the upper level zones. just running along doing events was a lot more fun then jumping from quest hub to quest hub.
But then again i was a big fan of Rifts in Rift and Public Quests in Warhammer Online.
but also like others said once you hit 80 the game turned to crap real fast.
They didn't take anything from Rift. GW2 was being developed as far back as 2006 or earlier, when it was going to be another expansion for GW1, and when it became GW2, more videos were shown of their dynamic events around 2010. Rift was being developed around 2005, but that doesn't mean either company ripped each other off. If anything Warhammer Online had their Public Quest system before either of them, which was really fun, and was the first mainstream MMO to break away from the traditional Exclamation Questing Hubs.
I don't see how you can say it's not unique. You're very misinformed. You do not need to talk to NPCs to accept any quest. They are automatically given, and that's why there's a UI indicator on the top-right of the screen. They are not quest hubs either. They don't offer you multiple quests, instead they offer you multiple objectives, and yes, there's a big difference between the two. In the former, each quest is varied with different objectives and stories, and GW2's heart quests all relate to an overall theme of the area, within the same story. They are vastly different as to how they approach "questing". Nobody is being brainwashed here. Some of us can recognize the differences between the two systems, and others such as yourself, cannot.
It can absolutely be used as a template.
It is, if nothing else, a prototype for the perfect MMO. It brought in a lot of mechanics that can turn a good MMO into a good game (whereas these two are often mutually exclusive). Downscaling. Action combat + mobile skill use. Sustain and skill use that isn't reliant on a faulty potion system. Dynamic content. Free-form group design.
The trick is going to be implementing these into a game with a compelling end game. An MMO that can do this effectively is going to take the genre by storm.
I don't know about that. All I remember from it was jumping into a quest, 3 other players join, quest ends everyone goes their way. No one talks, no one feels the need to form a party.
I went into a new zone and start doing all these quests, helping people, liberating some area whatever. 1 hour later everything resets. Nothing I did really changed anything. That lack of impact you have in the world becomes even bigger when you take into account you use the same skills from lv 1 to max lv. You still struggle to kill a lv 1 rabbit because content scales.
When I reached max lv I realized that I was the exact same as when I was at low lv and the world was the same too. The whole leveling process felt pointless.
You described every mmorpg ever made.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Not really no. GW2 lacked any sense of progression. I mean I would get this new piece of armor, it had bigger numbers but that meant nothing. Because I would scale down I would still struggle with a low lv mob. The only thing that changed with that new armor was that I looked differently, just vanity. Skills, you get them all at the start. Quests, they're repeatable infinitely. It doesn't matter for you if you do them or not.
Not every mmo ever made works like that so I don't know wth you're talking about.
I can't think of any game were leveling felt nothing more then boaring or pointless waste of time to keep players online. Difference in GW2 is I liked the scenery.
However I am sure there is some game made were leveling is fun and not just a grind, plz enlight me on one so I can try it out.
Ok so for starters I wasn't saying they "ripped off" rift, I was saying that dynamic events were done in RIFT as well as Warhammer so they were nothing unique to GW2.
Instead of being a "hub" you walked around NPCs and were given "objectives" which felt very much to me like quests, "help my pigs need feeding!", feed pigs until you complete objective. Not so much different from feed x of y, or am I missing something? Listen I wanted GW2 to be awesome I went out and purchased an new gaming machine to play it, it wasn't awesome for me, heck it wasn't even mediocre for me, I played to max level did some PvP and haven't logged on since.
I didn't say that other MMOs have a fun levelling process. I said levelling on GW2 lacked a sense of progression and as such it felt completely pointless.
Progression, you know that one thing every RPG has and makes it unique to other genres. That is what I'm talking about.
"They basically took rifts dynamic rift events and tailored them to the GW2"
Actually, you did. You used the word, "took", which is synonymous with "ripped off".. but whatever. That's not really important.
If you want to take uniqueness into account, then let's differentiate the two systems. In Rift, events are regulated to one spot, which worked almost exactly like Warhammer's. The mobs would spawn, and the events were always the same, where all you do is defeat mobs in a certain amount of time (this is how they were when i was playing, so it might've changed). In GW2, events chain into other events, and mobs & NPCs are mobile. In GW2, certain hubs are controlled by mobs, until players come and clean them out. There are actually consequences if players fail an event, or succeed. Vendors unlock, other events open up, waypoints unlock, boss npcs spawn, escort quests, etc. I could go on, but saying that it's not unique is just being dishonest. I'll admit, it's not really amazing anymore, but that's because i've gotten used to them, but they really were unique when they first came out, and players are expecting an ever-changing event system that is currently impossible to implement.
You need to re-read what i wrote, i said that multiple objectives were part of Heart Quests. If you don't want to feed pigs or whatever, then do the other objectives associated with the task, or skip the Heart Quest altogether. In a traditional system, sometimes you need to complete some of those quests to unlock even more. Sometimes, it's the only way to progress. In GW2, this isn't true. They really are optional.
I HOPE every mmo used gw2 as a template they could learn something.
GW2 as a whole? No.
Aspects like combat, events, underwater movement, world story progression? Yes.
You literally just wander around and things happen and you join in. I really wish they had never put the hearts in because the haters saw this and use it as fuel constantly. Completely ignoring the majority of the content delivery system.
Every time someone even mentions the hearts I automatically assume they never even played the game. Or they are purposely just ignoring the rest of the content because they're an $&@.
Personally dynamic events are by far a much much much better content delivery system than traditional quests. Yes, it's true if you do the zones several times you begin to realize the content is limited but... Duh. It was still a huge step in the right direction one that was started by Warhammer with their public quest system.
Hopefully EQNext and Storybricks can pull off their truly dynamic AI and we might actually see a vastly improved and less predictable version of dynamic events.
“Bill Murphy's recent article on ArcheAge's major flaw – that it focuses too much on themepark questing... “
Major flaw??? The best part of any MMO for me (and I’m sure for majority of players) IT IS questing.
“ The first comment, from DMKano, raises the perfectly valid point that MMO players have grown so accustomed to seeing “!” over NPCs' heads that there's no other way to “steer” players, especially new players through the early – and some would say “all” – parts of the game.”
Yes, yes, ... and where is the problem? That “!” is one of best evolutional results in MMO world. Does any1 miss times when cars did not have air conditioning? No? Sure nobody does unless mazochist.
““But wait,” you'll say, “Guild Wars 2 has hearts, which are basically the equivalent of theme park-y 'kill 10 rats' quests!” You're correct.”
Nope, you are NOT correct. Hearts are terribly worse equivalent. Not to mention that “dynamic random events” that are all but dynamic or random. Main reason I left Gw2 (but played and enjoyed for nearly half year in one shot) is they are bad replacement for good old questing progression with hubs and alike. Yet have to be invented better system.
Etc, etc, etc, ....
At the end ... there is a reason Wow is still by large measure No.1. Learn something from that.
Here test this out. Get your exotics armor weapons trinkets etc etc, you know the good ol' BiS gear. Go back to Queensdale for example and kill a bunch of lvl 1 bandits.
Now logout to character screen, create a level 1 character, get the weapon skills so you wouldn't be inferiour to your lvl 80 character, try to kill the same bunch of lvl 1 bandits, come back here and tell me which one was harder
CAUTION: You might die if you do the ranch event alone.
CAUTION: You might die with the lvl 80, it will just take longer. But Gw2 is not about stats playing for you, its about you playing the game.
The sole purpose of downscaling in Gw2 is to make the whole game challenging, not just the end zones. That and being able to tag along with your friends without gimping their exp gain. Being able to actually HELP them progress, not stumble their progression. You know, doing story instances with them and whatnot
And then there are thsoe people that will have you say that Gw2 is the most anti-social game ever made. Yup, bunch of *#$@#s if you ask me.
How often in your "real", "true" MMOs you see a high level character swooping through all the quest and robbing you of any progress you could've had? Why do you have to endure that? That is why I prefer most Gw2's system compared to any other MMO. We all progress, even without a freaking party
[mod edit]Most games, subscription and free-alike, you join in party and you do your shit, there is no talking unless the usual "do you know what to do" type of things. Why would I need a party to feel pressured to talk to 5 other assholes? If i want to talk I'll use the freaking map chat...
Yeah, WoW's subscription is 12 euro, not 15 euro as other recent MMO cash grabs. I respect that.
I think the game has alot of great features I really enjoyed the leveling experience, it seemed really relaxing mostly cause anything you did got you xp. The dynamic events were a great idea but seemed to fall short, I think they should of focused on less events that had more to them. One thing that it did well was keep me from being bored in the main hubs, once the meta events started, they'd never seem to end. I have yet to do fractals and work on ascended gear soo, can't really comment on endgame much, except dungeons feel hectic without the traditional trinity system. All in all I enjoy returning to this game for its updates, but don't stay too long till the next update arrives.