Guild Wars 2

People are QQ’n left and right about Masteries gating story breaking immersion and so forth. Also that to a degree there are also gating where and how you can get exp to level those Masteries.

These are all issues however I see a greater issue that doesn’t get mentioned probably because it is a future problem with HoT. Masteries are account-bound as you only need to level them once which means you alt will blaze through the maps and story no problem. Your alts also won’t have to collect mastery points on the world map since those too are account bound. The reason raising Masteries takes so much exp to level is because you only need to do it once.

Problem is they did this for GW2 core then leveling to 80 probably would’ve taken 4x as long as it normally would be all your alts would practically be 80 on creation. After trudging through with your initial toon all the gameplay is pretty much done and there is no longevity in that sort of thing. If every alt you had instantly had map completetion and all there skills would creating an alt be fun at all since everything is there from the start. An alt for HoT doesn’t have to do anything and can blaze through the story at record time with zero gates whatsoever.

Masteries should have had less exp need to level and they shouldn’t have been account bound as I forsee the current set up being incredibly boring for the altoholic. The cost upfront is higher than it needs to be and the price paid after is none existant even the most vacant of the older maps still has people leveling alts in HoT they’ll be able to glide and hop mushrooms like a champion with such low reward for events they’ll have no reason to do those. New players who purchase this game months from now will no doubt a hellish time when no one around them has to grind for a gate or do events with little reward.

A huge part of why is they are tied to achievements … which are account bound. I like them being account bound and I think you will get a lot of people feeling that way, especially from us altoholics.

Do achievements give progress on Tyria ot HOT masteries? For e.g, sword master, crab toss, LS stuff. As they don’t give xp.

I’m glad they are account bound, I would just walk away from the game if I had to level them with every character I have. It’s taking long enough with one character to level it. I personally find it very boring leveling the masteries. I wasn’t a fan of the silverwasts, I think I did that map 4-5 times total. Lets face it, HoT is just SW, with extra bits.

on the other hand, there’s room in the system to add new masteries – both to the existing mastery chains, and perhaps even new mastery categories entirely.

They must have considered collapsing WvW masteries into the existing system, but decided against it for some reason. Probably to keep character-specific allocations.

I feel the amount of exp needed to level Masteries was probably increased in the first place since they are indeed a one time deal though. So to some of the people who are simply glad there done and out of the way the grind more than likely would’ve been somewhat faster if they weren’t account bound.

It’s not so much that they are account bound but what reason would anyone have to come back to these maps. Alt playthroughs will be quick brief visits to the maps probably a bit boring too and these maps require groups in some degree. The reward system isn’t that great and new people aren’t going to find a SW or DT when they come to these maps but rather they’ll be doing the mastery grind alone.