Revitalize the Game World, Resetting Hearts.

#44 - Aug. 27, 2014, 3:42 p.m.

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

#87 - Aug. 27, 2014, 5:18 p.m.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anthony, can you tell me why karma seems much less important now that it has been at release?

We have added a few karma sinks along the way but typically new content comes with a new currency, eg. candy corn or geodes. I haven’t personally implemented all of this content or currency but if I had to guess I would say that this pattern exists because we actually want to give you specific rewards for specific content.

#203 - Aug. 28, 2014, 3:11 p.m.

Thanks for all your comments, everyone!

I’ve been checking in on this thread pretty regularly and I appreciate the thoughtful discussions. I wish I had time to reply to everything but it’s a busy day and the thread is growing larger so as a quick alternative I’ll throw out some potential takeaway points to summarize the discussion:

• The reward structure in Dry Top is desirable for many people. But Dry Top lacks some favorable elements from earlier open world maps such as chaining or random events. My thought here is that one does not exclude the other and in the future we could incorporate both the best of both designs.

• Some people would like to an option repeat hearts. Many people are opposed to being required to repeat hearts which is probably enough reason not to require it. In the future we ought to consider repeat rewards or even a prestige system for voluntarily replaying one-time content.

• Karma may be an underwhelming common event currency. Many people would like to see it applied towards a greater variety of personal reward goals such as crafting materials, more skins, etc. People seem favorable to region specific rewards, but at some point we have to reconcile the notion that it would probably further devaluate karma. I would also like to submit that karma has another issue which is that whenever you purchase something you are setting back your progress towards other purchases. Of course, that’s a fundamental aspect of currency and yet, it’s less intrinsically rewarding than gold because you can use gold to make more gold (gear upgrades, crafting, trading, etc). At the level 80 end especially, big karma sinks are largely cosmetic and will not help you earn more karma. Personally, I feel that effective reward systems regularly disperse rewards along the path to a longer term goal. (If you haven’t checked out PvP Reward Tracks, you should!)

Lastly this:

LunarNacht.8913:

@AnthonyOrdon.3926: How hard is it to create dynamic events? I thought to remember an article back at release that your systems allowed to create new events in a short time.

Good question! The answer: it depends. Largely on the complexity of the event and the experience level of the event designer. I can create a very simple event very quickly. Things such as interesting characters, voiced scenes, event criers, new mechanics, new items, finely tuned scaling, new bosses, new boss abilities, world impact, and chained events are examples of things that will give an event higher implementation cost. Some events feature none of those and some are all of the above. Complexity is also deceptively difficult to perceive. Clockwork Invasions, for example, appear to be many, many events but conceptually they were just one very large event, which is much less expensive. When I implemented those, I deliberately sacrificed depth to achieve breadth. In retrospect, a little more depth was definitely in order. But we were able to create what was more or less a brand new experience and we have those lessons to apply if we revisit the concept in the future (which I intend to do, at the right place and time).

But in specific regard to this thread, your question asks the possibility: could we keep maps fresh by adding tons and tons of events? In my experience, a large complexity factor in event implementation is other events. Any time an event is placed near another, we have to at least consider how they will interact. There’s one interaction between two events, two between three, five between four, nine between five, and so on. Returns definitely diminish. Over time we’ve come up with some effective techniques and patterns to mitigate this, but the cost is greater than zero.

Clearly I’m willing to ramble over this, so maybe someday we should have a thread on event complexity vs fun vs replayability. ;]