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Originally posted by illmaculate

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Originally posted by itgrowls

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Originally posted by illmaculate

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Originally posted by itgrowls

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Originally posted by GeezerGamer  

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Originally posted by itgrowls Just love the nonsense posts here in these forums about games these people obviously don't play. Claiming that GW2 questing is linear is like saying that the earth is still flat or that it's the center of the solar system.   Wandering around one runs into the zones that DE events happen in, one doesn't get directed to go to the next town by a quest handed to you by the quest hub guy you just stumble onto them. Add the feature of hidden underground and underwater zones the mixup is complete. I went inside the norn mine via swimming underwater in their small river and ended up where the dredge were mining the mountain in the norn area instead of going the standard way through the heart area (hearts deplete over time so there eventually ARE no guides aside from the shield or boss symbols on the map as only SOME events are occurring), And Drops scale to your level, you don't get a level 1 item when you are level 80 fighting a level 15 vet/miniboss. So where these weird haters are fabricating these notions is beyond me. They really are getting tiresome spreading nonsense about a game they really have no intention of ever playing and need to spend their time playing some other title instead of lying about this one.   Quest hubs are dead, the holy trinity is dead. Get over it move on and have fun. That's my advice to them.

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  So, basically, you wrote a wall of text saying you stumbled into a quest hub only you don't want to call it a quest hub?

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So basically you didn't read a thing i wrote and assumed something? just like most here do. smh hearts disappear eventually, and they are only there to help transition the less fortunate (those lke you stuck in the past who want quest hubs to be everywhere and continue to claim quest hubs exist where there are none). It's okay tho, if those who claim quest hubs exist in gw2 actually played they would spend less time being monsters-under-the-bridge on these forums and more time killing monsters-under-the-bridge in game.

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You don't get it. The article is about quest hubs being dead. You're arguing there are no quest hubs when there clearly are. Just because you can do a particular zone once you've outlevelled it doesn't make it any less true. I'm sorry, I can't help you any further. No one is saying there aren't a multitude of things to do in the game if you choose to do so; but, you arguing there are no quest hubs is insane. I'm sorry you can't wrap your tiny brain around that.  

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Your cognitive dissonance is showing. If you actually played the game everyone who has will tell you that post level 30 the guides to help people who have the handicap of expecting hubs dissappears. sorry you can't understand how that works or why they put hearts there in the first place. Someone running up to you to yell at you about an event in the area is in no way the same as having a ! above the npc's head while he stands there dead to the world, where you have to talk to him to pickup the prohect to complete or where it directs you to the next are to talk to the next ! npc standing there waiting. Hearts are guides to help those who are stuck in the past learn how GW2 works. Nothing more. Eventually they are gone. Sorry you view everything in the world as exactly the same. There's only one tiny brain here and it's definitely not mine. Have fun drinking your koolaid that's exactly the same as your sandwich that's exactly the same as the photons coming from your lamp, that's exactly the same as your keyboard.

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Thanks for confirming that there are, in fact, quest hubs. Smoked. Next.

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In this illuminating brilliance of light complete with god rays and angel choirs in the back ground, I have experienced an epihphany. I must now concede to the elevated wisdom that dictates GW2 in fact did kill quest hubs.

We now have to work through radii of assigned tasks.

Originally posted by laserit

One thing thats missing from all these games is Mystery

 

My dream with the genre is to have an epic adventure.

I love quest's... well written quest's... to me there is a difference between a quest and  mundane tasks. I also like  DE's  and can see them grow and mature into something much greater then they are at this point in time

I like the concept of collecting the skill point's in GW2 but wish they were not marked and needed to be discovered by adventure and exploration. I wish that nobody knew how many there were.

I tire of level progression

 

 

Virtual hand-holding is also considered "industry-changing" and popular these days.

I like GW2. I really do.  Its beautiful and the world is fun to explore.  The complaint I have (and its personal) is the story is too light to pull me into the adventure.  When I do talk to an NPC I somehow don't get that connection or context to why they are there.  Half of them just say one word "Hi" "Hello" "Death to the enemy"  I would have prefered something a bit scripted.  Unless I am speaking to people in my personal story.  Which are the aspects I do like.  Its almost as if they dont want you to get lost in the story but lost in the world. I want to do both. Unfortunately its hard for me to do that if I dont have a dramatic reason or motivation to do so.

I like a hybrid.  Give me a quest hub or more specifically a flouring town(GW2 nailed this) Remove icons so I have to FIND the quest giver. Forcing me to interact with the NPCs. Bring back voice overs, just not to the overdone level of SWTOR.  Voice adds character. Or just have voice and no cut scene.  Talking is a definite improvement over reading text. Then let me explore the land and determine where I have to go to finish my quest.  I dont understand why it has to be ALL (linear quest based hubs with icons) or NOTHING (no quest based hub and full exploration).  Have a bunch of stuff for me to do if I get bored trying to fulfill a quest.  A competent crafting model.  (Vanguard had awesome crafting but the game is just dated). 

Im a sucker for housing.  Let me build a house. A boat. Then sail to another land for the next 'quest hub' Give me quests on the water. Underwater. etc.  Everywhere I go there should be something for me to do.

A good market so I can sell goods for coin. Tons of loot.  Lots of stats for me to calculate.  Let me build my own character.  I want to be a rogue/ranger/warrior.  I prefer to be given XP points and allocate them how I choose. Let my gear be a factor but my skill be the final say.

Part of the fun of role playing is understanding how the role fits within the world you are living in. I understand this can be difficult in an MMO with millions of others, but dont feel its impossible.  Coming from someone who is not a developer.

Is that thempark? sandbox? theme box? sand park? I dont know.. but its closer to what I would enjoy in the long term.  Though I am accutely aware the real deciding factors are the general public of who I find I tend not to agree with entirely.

It's not just the Events and exploration that makes GW2 so unique. It's how it all blends in together... One moment, you're throwing snow balls at kids, the next you are defending their town from an invasion of bears only to suddenly lead down to a huge epic boss fight on a frozen lake. That's all in one single hour or so of playing... The initial goal was just to get a few hearts done but instead, you've ended up at the other side of the map, fighting homeland lol. All this without even realizing that you were actually questing. 

What really wraps it up is that not only you had fun. You're now richer, full of loot, you have crafting matts for a few levels and you got tons of Karma and such.

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Yes, I will agree that "Quest Hubs" have been dealt a Death-Knell in GW2. However, zones are still horrbily linear, and quests are just "Prettied" up by hiding all the relevant data behind a "Progress Bar". However, the grindyness & ease of GW2 lends itself to a standard themepark, of which it fits perfectly into.

 

I will say that GW2 is the only themepark in the last 7yrs I paid for, and am still casually playing when I'm bored with DAOC, other side projects, and EQ.

Zones are not linear because there are multiple zones with any player can use to level in so you are not restricted to only one zone to use at a time.

I liked your article and it will be nice hearing from a developer as i love reading the developer perspective on things.  With that said, I hope this first article doesn't run you away honestly because some of the more prominent posters on this site will, and from what i've seen already, have torn your article to shreds because that is just simply what they live to do.  

I am personally glad you're here, but i don't want this to be be a "one and done" article for you.  I  play GW2 pretty heavily and will enjoy it and the original for years to come, however i can see why some people simply don't agree with the hub system being "gone" because it's not.  The responses did take your words and the title too literally, but again, some of these guys can't wait to take anything ever written on this site too literally.

Based on some of the responses regarding quest hubs, pretty much every game ever made can be called a quest hub.

Hell ,based on the logic expressed in the comments here, life itself is a questhub, therefore life sucks!

First quest - alarm clock triggers event - get out of bed.  Go Brush teeth.  Take shower.  Get dressed.  Quest complete! 

What's the next quest?  Oh yeah, drive to work!  Mother f*n quest hub!

Too funny.

Great article.

I have to ask, do people enjoy going from random unmarked NPC to random unmarked NPC to see if they have a quest or something interesting to say?

I hated doing that in single player RPGs, why would I want to do it in a MMORPG?

Originally posted by itgrowls

Originally posted by laserit

One thing thats missing from all these games is Mystery

 

My dream with the genre is to have an epic adventure.

I love quest's... well written quest's... to me there is a difference between a quest and  mundane tasks. I also like  DE's  and can see them grow and mature into something much greater then they are at this point in time

I like the concept of collecting the skill point's in GW2 but wish they were not marked and needed to be discovered by adventure and exploration. I wish that nobody knew how many there were.

I tire of level progression

 

 

you know there's places that are mysterious in game like a door I and others ran into that you had to do something special to open that was off the beaten path, or mysterious underwater caves with mazes in them. It's not all level progression in GW2 that's one of the things that makes it great, they didn't just make walls and not fill them with caves or mysteries.

I Have come across some very cool places also, Arenanet did a wonderful job at world design. I wish that they didnt show you where everything was. I love that everyone can farm a node but hate that they are shown on the map. Early this morning I walked behind a waterfall, swam through some tunnels and ended up in a cavern with a rich iron node, the only thing that destroyed this experiance from being totally awesome... was that I could see the node before i got there... it took away a nice surprise in what would have been an awesome feeling of discovery.

People can read wiki sites but that dosnt mean that I have to read and wreck my own experiance.

Originally posted by Yamota

Sorry but replacing something (quest hubs) with something which is quite similar (heart quests, clearly marked out on the map) is not killing the former thing. But it kind of shows why the state of MMORPG industry is so stale because changes are so small and minute that they really dont matter.

I mean what is the big difference between going to an NPC with an exclamation mark and getting a quest and going to a heart icon on the map to do a quest? Even dynamic quests are not that different, it is basically like a moving NPC with an exclamation mark except you dont need to click on the exclamation mark. It is different but more similar than different.

What should happen, and I have waited years for this to happen, is for public quests to have a real impact on the persistant world. For example, some NPC faction invades an area and the "quest" is to push them back, if people don't then these NPCs will push further and further, threatening NPC towns and even eventually the capital and it is only by people banding together and pushing them back that the zone will go back to the initial state. However it should not end there, because if you do that then another quest chain should be started where players get the opportunity to invade the invaders and have quests triggered from that.

This is what I expected Dynamic Events to be like, unfourtunately they are far from that... more like a small evolution from Rifts and Public Quests in WAR.

Heh, in case you don't know, what you have posted.. "NPC faction invades an area and the "quest" is to push them back, if people don't then these NPCs will push further and further, threatening NPC towns and even eventually the capital and it is only by people banding together and pushing them back that the zone will go back to the initial state" is pretty much what FireFall is going to be like :). These game mechanics are in their most basic states in the beta right now.

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

TSW questing. I like that, if you are observant you can find quests,  not every quest is part of the main storyline.  it's fun to just search around and explore, you never know what you may find.

Indeed. It's interesting how the questing in GW2 gets so much attention and praise, when at its core the questing in TSW functions in much the same way and is slightly better at that in my own humble opinion. 

TSW isn't hub based either, and designed so that your progression in a zone is fairly non-linear. You explore to find most of the missions in TSW as well, some are easy to find  others are hidden away to be stumbled upon when poking around. Just like GW2. Both also limit the amount of quests/missions you have at your disposal at any given time, though by different means and intents. DE or Mission, both also string you along for different objectives without the need to interact with any "hub" elements.

I guess my point here is that TSW is just as relevant if we are talking about the "death of the quest hub".

Originally posted by illmaculate
What a ridiculous article. Instead of talking to an NPC with a "!" above his head you wander into an area to do the same thing you'd do following talking to said NPC. Quest hubs in GW2 are entire zones. Derp.

And horray for that.  It makes a huge difference to the enjoyment of the game.  You should feel like you are in a game world, not Wal-Mart.

Dynamic events as made in GW2 are just same old grind. You pretty much have always to kill stuff. I dont see how anyone can like this more then quality quests in TSW. Idea is promising tho and I hope it will be used for future MMOs in more varied and interactive way. It also shouldnt be core game mechanic imo, just a thing to make world feel living and changing

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

However, zones are still horrbily linear,

Lol I love it. You can always tell when someone hasn't played GW2 because they get their assumptions 'horribly' wrong. GW2 has the least linear zone design since EQ. No game since then has offered so much to explorers since the early MMOGs like EQ, AO, AC and UO. It's like until GW2, MMOG designers forgot all about exploration. WoW did a decent job of this, but still not enough.

I'm not talking about map completion either. I've found beautiful locations in the game that were only put in for explorers, as they are often out of the way and hard to spot. When I lead friends there in game they are blown away by that simple fact. Hidden caverns, jumping puzzles, fun locations with interesting NPCs (like the pirate cove in Queensdale.)

It's so refreshing after the recent surge of lead-by-the-hand 'cardboar scenery' MMOGs like SWTOR and TERA.

Originally posted by Fion

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

However, zones are still horrbily linear,

Lol I love it. You can always tell when someone hasn't played GW2 because they get their assumptions 'horribly' wrong. GW2 has the least linear zone design since EQ. No game since then has offered so much to explorers either. I'm not talking about map completion either. I've found beautiful locations in the game that were only put in for explorers, as they are often out of the way and hard to spot. When I lead friends there in game they are blown away by that simple fact.

It's so refreshing after the recent surge of 'cardboar scenery' MMOGs like SWTOR.

Exactly this.  The only thing that is linear is the story line...and that is because all story lines must be linear, lol.

Ok first of all i hate you..lol /joking :)

That has been one of my biggest peeves in gaming is the hand holding and markers.I enjoyed FFXI which had NEITHER,no markers and no hand holding,so it felt like an adult game.

I might point out that Wow was/is not the heaviest questing game EQ2 imo is.We don't really even need to compare Wow and EQ2 they are both copies in 90% of the design from EQ.

It is obvious Mr.Kern copied other game ideas,especially EQ because FFXi was not a copy cat game,they did NOT offer xp for quests ,however Wow did,so they chose to copy rather than be creative or unique.

Now onto GW2.I see so many quick to make claim that they are different and it is the BEST idea.This all depends on the user because there are reasons it is not the best.

They still use map markers,so replacing npc markers for map markers is still un realistic and still hand holding.

Also their content can at times just magically float out of mid air just by walking up to a tree,again very unrealistic,it offers nothing to that immersive feeling.

Also i have no idea why so many are giving GW2 so much credit for ideas that were already done long before them,proof is my example of FFXI "NO quest hubs".So neither is it creative nor unique nor is it bringing us into new territory.The ONLY difference i have found is ANet has done a heck of a  lot more marketing and bragging  about it ,where as many have NEVER played FFXI to even realize they already been there donbe that and to a BETTER degree.

Now it will take too many examples and far too much to describe every detail,but i will chime on a couple.

This looting system is flat out a negative to the game.People are more concerned with how much damage they can do rather than fun or helping each other.Imagine this.....

You got to gether 5 random people to farm a dungeon.Then all a sudden some super elite drop falls from the boss.Now what would the other 5 players say if that one player said "I deserve this drop because i did the most damage' ??Seriously it would be met with a ton of anger,so why is this same approach accepted in GW2?I think again it is because Anet has done the most misleading sell job i have ever seen,they take every single aspect of the game and tell people how great it is.

One more small point is that in a ROLE playing game,you would not expect one to be staring at a map looking for an event,this is a linear design that drives players to follow the games push in one direction.There is of course the argument ,i'd rather run around chasing quests than just killing,i most certainly understand that,but saying GW2 way is the BEST way is far from the truth,it is imo EXACTLY like a quest hub game because you are following quests the same way.The fact they have progresion or mutiple lines is again far from being new,just about every game on the planet has already done that.