Guild Wars 2

I’ve had some interesting talks with friends over the past day or two about the current state of Central Tyria Mastery farming and what has been going on with CoF. My question is this, is it true what ANet has come out and openly stated that the current farming method being used is within game guidelines or is it something that will likely be patched out?

A number of friends and guildied have stated their extreme unhappiness about this issue and a couple have gone as far as saying they want to just quit the game altogether. Personally I look at Mastery as something that should take players a good long time to completely finish, but CoF farming doesn’t really bother me to be honest.

Any info on this is appreciated!

If people quit the game because of other people choosing to use some method to get their Tyria masteries faster… I don’t know, that just seems really silly to me.

Wait your guildies are quitting because people are being human… What a world we live in

The masteries are intended to be long term horizontal progression, however

“Central Tyria Masteries were designed with older content in mind, how quickly you level and obtain those masteries is your choice.”
https://twitter.com/Shazbawt/status/658092329962573824

It seems they understand some people really don’t want to take the slow approach and are okay with it.
I’m interested in the autoloot myself once it gets fixed, so who knows, I may grind a bit myself, which is not something I usually do.

These people are going to burn through this stuff and go back to whining there’s nothing to do. That can’t be helped without hard locks that hurt everybody to try to help one group not hurt themselves, and its not worth it.

We can only hope more masteries aren’t too slow to show up.

I’m considering doing it.

I (and a bunch of other people I bet) was going to do the same thing, but with the Halloween content by killing mobs in the Labyrinth. Now that that’s bugged, that’s not possible. ANet gave it the all clear and all I want from the Tyrian Masteries is the loot vacuum so….

How fast does the leveling actually go with this method compared to leveling in Silverwastes?

seen people do it in 7 hours or so. just depends on your dedication to it.

I will say that if they haven’t hotfixed it by now, they’re not going to start actioning accounts because of it. They may eventually fix the farm, but every day they don’t makes it less attractive for them to do so.

Also, I find it hilarious that yet another farm that breaks up “intended” play ended up in CoF. That dungeon is becoming legendary for its easy and borderline exploit farms. If I was the flame legion I’d be super embarrassed.

PopeUrban.2578:

I will say that if they haven’t hotfixed it by now, they’re not going to start actioning accounts because of it. They may eventually fix the farm, but every day they don’t makes it less attractive for them to do so.

Also, I find it hilarious that yet another farm that breaks up “intended” play ended up in CoF. That dungeon is becoming legendary for its easy and borderline exploit farms. If I was the flame legion I’d be super embarrassed.

CoF is the dungeon king haha

Should have been patched on the very first day in my opinion.
It’s really careless of Anet to take a “it doesn’t matter, do what you want” stance on this.
If that’s how its going to be, why have central tyria masteries at all? Why not patch us all to max and spare us of this farce of gameplay?

I personally refuse to do it. And before anyone asks “Why do you care about what other people do?”: I have to care, because exploits like that invalidate any legit types of gameplay simply by being an option.
I’m glad to see that most of the people I play with dislike the thought of doing this farm, but still other will do it and they will be far ahead to those that don’t want to be a part of this lameness.

I’m not asking for bans or rollbacks or something like that, but Anet should reevaluate if it is really in their interest that this will become a “normal” part of GW2 gameplay…

Yea, it’s crappy, but quitting over something like this? Really?

You know another option is to just realize that people with massive Mastery numbers wasted their time farming mobs in old content while you explored the new awesomeness of the expansion and realize that you’re the true winner.

I’ve done it, and will do it again. There’s no loot, I have to burn through boosts, and it’s mind-numbingly unfun. But I can’t play in HoT zones, or Mad King’s because that bar won’t fill. So… yeah. If you won’t let me play the content I WANT to play to fill the bar, when I’m going to go where it’s the easiest.

It is boring. They’re being rewarded for the Maplestory level of boredom of grinding that one spot for hours.

Like, I want to do it… But i can’t bring myself to do something I KNOW will make me experience levels of boredom i have never in my life before! Hahaha

The cof xp farm is great. You can max all tyria mastery in about 8h. We can be happy the cof farm exist!
As a veteran I had instantly closely all available tyria mastery points. Why did I instantly have them? Because I played gw2 more than 3 years since release. During that time I earned literally billions of xp already. Now after xp got decreased and after a lot mobs don’t give xp anymore I’m supposed to grind not only ~50 million xp in Hot (which is kind of fine because it’s something new), no I should grind hours to get another ~32 million xp from content I already did for 3 years?

That’s the great thing about the cof p1 xp farm: You can do it for ~8h and you are done! No need for doing the maps for the 15th time, no need to grind events that either get stalled or have been done hundret times, no need to do boring content for dozens of hours!
No you just farm 8h and after that you can have fun again: Fun actually getting some reward in fractals, fun using a autoloot feature that should have been available since release, fun doing the precursor hunt’s!

So I don’t know what you hope to go for in this thread, but basically cof p1 xp farm is something awesome that anet gave us veterans so we wouldn’t have to spend hundrets of hours again in the same old content.
If you think about it, it’s great for everyone^^ Veterans can “rush farm” it, new players get it while they are playing the content veterans have already done and f2p player’s have the grind that they are looking for. So everybody wins.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m considering doing it.

I (and a bunch of other people I bet) was going to do the same thing, but with the Halloween content by killing mobs in the Labyrinth. Now that that’s bugged, that’s not possible. ANet gave it the all clear and all I want from the Tyrian Masteries is the loot vacuum so….

I’m on much the same page as you. Was thinking about giving this a go tonight if I can get online (and get all the necessary boosters). We’ll see how it goes

Choosing such easy way to raise your mastery points is disgusting, but it is not worth leaving over it.

Lévis.5489:

Choosing such easy way to raise your mastery points is disgusting, but it is not worth leaving over it.

You do realize that the Halloween content was originally set up so that people could level Masteries by going in the Labyrinth and killing endlessly spawning mobs, don’t you? ANet said that it was supposed to give Tyrian exp but it’s bugged and they are afraid something else will break so they’re not fixing it for this year.

Killing endlessly spawning mobs in the labyrinth or CoF. Looks like about the same to me.

Anet patch mushroom farm in maguma but doesnt patch this

I would have been totally fine with farming masteries in the labyrinth and I was planning to do so. There is definitely a difference though.
The Labyrinth is temporary, has atleast bit more varied gameplay, has a chance to drop loot and reward dailies and – most of all – is designed to be a farm! It’s not the same as abusing this infinite respawn.
I know it’s tempting to find any kind of justification for “the easy way”, which is why I feel that Anet should have done something about this quickly – instead of legitimizing it per twitter…

Live and let live. If people want to farm for all the masteries so be it, they will be the bored ones in a week. As for myself I unlocked pact mastery so I don’t have to buy a new keyboard but I left the others alone. I don’t do many fractals and I don’t want any legendary due to the grind. If the jungle is barren by the time Halloween is over I don’t mind, I build tanky and once I get a few of the masteries I should be fine.

I am currently sitting on 21 mastery points and I’ll work on the jungle ones when Halloween is over.

saeleth.3915:

I’ve had some interesting talks with friends over the past day or two about the current state of Central Tyria Mastery farming and what has been going on with CoF. My question is this, is it true what ANet has come out and openly stated that the current farming method being used is within game guidelines or is it something that will likely be patched out?

A number of friends and guildied have stated their extreme unhappiness about this issue and a couple have gone as far as saying they want to just quit the game altogether. Personally I look at Mastery as something that should take players a good long time to completely finish, but CoF farming doesn’t really bother me to be honest.

Any info on this is appreciated!

Why be unhappy? Why quit? How is this taking anything away from anybody?

Why do you care that the person who has max fractal mastery spent 20 or 5 hours grinding it. How does it affect you?

Do your friends want to quit also because some other players farm more gold? Or do more stuff in the game?

Cerpin.9152:

Should have been patched on the very first day in my opinion.
It’s really careless of Anet to take a “it doesn’t matter, do what you want” stance on this.
If that’s how its going to be, why have central tyria masteries at all? Why not patch us all to max and spare us of this farce of gameplay?

I personally refuse to do it. And before anyone asks “Why do you care about what other people do?”: I have to care, because exploits like that invalidate any legit types of gameplay simply by being an option.
I’m glad to see that most of the people I play with dislike the thought of doing this farm, but still other will do it and they will be far ahead to those that don’t want to be a part of this lameness.

I’m not asking for bans or rollbacks or something like that, but Anet should reevaluate if it is really in their interest that this will become a “normal” part of GW2 gameplay…

I agree with you – Tyria masteries should have been unlocked by simply having the mastery points – without the added XP grind.
After all – if you have all the mastery points then why be forced to grind central Tyria again – you’ve already proved you played it. Why force players to level up over and over and over again just to access features that should have come with just the price of Mastery points.

Initially – when the first reveals came regarding Mastery tracks – I don’t remember being told that we would have to grind xp in order to unlock things – just that we would need the points.

Also what exactly are people exploiting? They are not making use of any game glitch or bug or anything of the sort.
They are playing a dungeon – in the exact way the developers made it – but simply choosing to approach it differently than the “usual” way.

how is this exactly damaging the game experience of your friends? They must be really fun to be around, like the type constantly telling you how you have to do things according to their convictions I guess.

I’ve also been farming cof p1 for mastery experience. It’s great!
fast exp? yes
Boring? yes
Would I rather gather mastery experience at a much slower rate by doing the same content I have been doing for the past 3 years? no!

Lévis.5489:

Choosing such easy way to raise your mastery points is disgusting, but it is not worth leaving over it.

You’re confusing easy for efficient. Unless you plan on getting your central masteries through grinding high level fractals, then every way you farm mastery xp is going to be earned through easy content.

I think Anet is only leaving CoF farm in to burn through people’s backlogged tyrian mastery points so that when they release the real good stuff people will have to go out and earn the mastery points all over again.

Solo.9027:

I think Anet is only leaving CoF farm in to burn through people’s backlogged tyrian mastery points so that when they release the real good stuff people will have to go out and earn the mastery points all over again.

That’s distinctly possible. If you’re not going to make a legendary or if you don’t do high level fractals, then the Tyrian mastery lines are very short of content. Just one that offers something that everyone would want.

i still had 20 points left over after I finished mine, so they will need to introduce alot of new masteries if they are gonna run us out of points. But it could be possible.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Solo.9027:

I think Anet is only leaving CoF farm in to burn through people’s backlogged tyrian mastery points so that when they release the real good stuff people will have to go out and earn the mastery points all over again.

That’s distinctly possible. If you’re not going to make a legendary or if you don’t do high level fractals, then the Tyrian mastery lines are very short of content. Just one that offers something that everyone would want.

Yeah. The major weakness of the core mastry unlike the HoT ones is that there doesn’t seem to be any choice in it really. The whole point of mastries was, if I remember correctly, supposed to be a very lengthy progression system, but one with multiple paths so players got to make choices about how they’d like to progress in stead of, like levels, being simply told “now you do this”

The problem with the core masteries is really that lack of options that makes it feel like “my” progression in stead of the progression the game told me to do.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

i still had 20 points left over after I finished mine, so they will need to introduce alot of new masteries if they are gonna run us out of points. But it could be possible.

How? I had 3 left – and have 100% map completion in core. What was I missing?

Don’t think it is intended to be able to kill infinitely re-spawning mobs this way. I mean you go to any world event and when these end, so do the spawning of mobs thus I have to go searching around for the next chain. Also the exp in the world over all has been nerfed it seems too. I am sure they will fix this eventually but only when booster sales start to drop off since they are more than likely raking in the cash from those now.

So if CoF is intended, I request that world exp from mobs/events have the exp gains increased to match so we have more options b/c currently doing world things gives pathetic exp compared. Fair is fair!

fixit.7189:

Don’t think it is intended to be able to kill infinitely re-spawning mobs this way. I mean you go to any world event and when these end, so do the spawning of mobs thus I have to go searching around for the next chain. Also the exp in the world over all has been nerfed it seems too. I am sure they will fix this eventually but only when booster sales start to drop off. I guess the new direction they got going here is that boosters are now mandatory, just like any other F2P title. ie exp/loot rates are lowered to ‘encourage’ you to buy CS boosters. Lame.

So if CoF is intended, I request that world exp from mobs/events have the exp gains increased to match so we have more options b/c currently doing world things gives pathetic exp compared.

The mobs in CoF actually give less experience in comparison to the Orrian hordes and Magumma wildlife/Mordy creatures. Its just a faster return, a boring and mundane cycle, but its efficient. Personally i maxed out my masteries doing both Cursed Shor and CoF

Must be missing something, I been running CS for 2 days now and gained 2 levels total. Conversely, many guildies have capped MR in less than 8 hours in CoF. Thing about CS is that DR for loots/exp kicks in rather quickly so I cannot simply farm there forever, I have to move to a new map every 30-60 mins or exp/loots dries up. I am going to assume you spent most your time in CoF then.

I tried the CoF farm and literally started to fall asleep, face-plant, on the keyboard. If some want to spend their time mindlessly killing the same dozen or so mobs for hours on end, I say, “here’s a pillow.”

I’m not sure why some people are bothered by this — it’s not conceptually any different from the mindless farming for Silverwastes chests or Frostgorge champs or (near launch) CoF/1 path running. Plus, in the case of CoF/XP farm, there’s no loot, so people are actually reducing their income.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I tried the CoF farm and literally started to fall asleep, face-plant, on the keyboard. If some want to spend their time mindlessly killing the same dozen or so mobs for hours on end, I say, “here’s a pillow.”

I’m not sure why some people are bothered by this — it’s not conceptually any different from the mindless farming for Silverwastes chests or Frostgorge champs or (near launch) CoF/1 path running. Plus, in the case of CoF/XP farm, there’s no loot, so people are actually reducing their income.

Try running the torches, while I finished my masteries, I felt massively nauseated in tandem to feeling sleepy. Logged almost immediately after the fact xD

Now you PVErs know how people un WVW felt during the Golem Rush week when there was a bug being exploited nonstop and A net did nothing about it.

I really don’t get why some people have an issue with this.

I am fully done with my Tyria Masteries. 5/5 Pact, 4/4 Fractal, 4/4 Legendary. I also did ZERO dungeons. It was all gained spending my first 4 days in game on my Revenant doing world completion.

My first and foremost question is how does anyone else farming COF diminish what I accomplished? The typical argument is that the COF farm goes much faster. However what does that matter? I did World Completion and I still have to spend inordinate amounts of time in Central Tyria farming SIlverwastes and Drytop as well as Fractals and numerous other kinds of content.

See that’s the problem with COF. It’s just XP. It’s no loot, no karma, just mastery XP. Mastery XP you’re going to get abundance of while farming the loot and karma. It’s the fastest yet least efficient route possible.

Let people just play the game they want. If it isn’t adversely affecting you it seems like a huge waste of energy being upset over something that really doesn’t matter.

The biggest reason people have a problem with this is that it removes some of the weight the mastery system might have been able to give to their character progression. Honestly, I don’t agree with that argument at all because I’m in the “I’ve been doing this content for years” club. Other people farming doesn’t invalidate anyone’s work completing masteries in whatever way they (the players) determine to be legitimate. Let players play how they want

Alteraphim.4629:

Let players play how they want

Gee, I’d like to run a bot and do the mastery grind entirely afk.

So with that statement, I should be able to right? lol

Alteraphim.4629:

Let players play how they want within the games own defined ruleset as long as it isn’t using exploitation of a software bug

Fixed it for you

I did this farm with staff guard. it was great. set my self to autorun from one corner to the next, causing each to spawn. then i was simply hitting Z (reverse key)every 3-4 seconds and spam 1, z-1-1-1-1-1-z, repeat. All while watching a few movies. Easy day lvl58 mastery

Ah now I understand, thought I had used one those 50%/kill streak boosters but apparently not. It does not matter where you go, with these boosts MR will fly super fast. 700 exp per mob to up to 5k was an eye opener. Thought CS boosts were not supposed to be so strong but apparently that’s changed. I apologize. Don’t nerf nothing. wink

Personally I dislike CoF farming but I do not dislike those who farm CoF. I warned people about possible banning before I noticed the message on Twitter.

Anyway, a Guilde of mine has been CoF farming for two mornings and he allready have around 40 Tyrian Masteries… I think it takes alot less than 7 hours.
I think allowing this is so stupid as it is rather close to an exploit and this is just a bad way to warn people about exploiting. If now Anet thought that their content where so bad that they would have people farm masteries in one single instanced map why not just give every player who have the title ‘been there done that’ an auto max mastery boost.

I don’t like the idea of the CoF farm and I will not do it because it is, although Anet said it wasn’t an exploit, definitely not playing the game as intended and I would rather level my masteries through normal gameplay. It doesn’t even matter to me at all right now though, because I will not be playing any central tyria content at all for a LONG time now HoT is out.
I would like to see the farm gone and all exp drops removed so people can’t farm it, but that is mostly because I have played 8hrs a day since launch and only have a mastery rank of about 25 and then I see people on rank 60+ who have farmed CoF.
If it is left in game though, I won’t mind because I will get the masteries eventually I am sure and I don’t really care is other people want to play the game like that if they want to.

It is an abuse of an oversight in CoF’s mob spawn mechanics, but so what? It’s just experience, you still have to do map completion and achievements to get the Mastery points to actually progress in the tracks (experience only fills up the bar for one Mastery tier, to gain experience in the next tier you need to unlock it with a Master point first).

If someone has enough Mastery points to fully unlock all the core masteries, they deserve it. The experience wall is just an arbitrary time gate that many people have already pre-paid for in spades through playing the game for the past three years, the CoF farm serves as a means to avoid having to do it all over again just to unlock features (not even new content).

I did it in ~7 hours with boosts stacked and the TV on so that I could get it out of the way and focus on HoT. I already had most of the mastery points I needed and could easily get the others from TT which idk why they weren’t awarded to me since I did complete TT before. I don’t think they’re going to fix it anytime soon, they don’t seem to care from the tweet. The longer they take the less effect its going to make too since many people have already gotten their tyrian masteries maxed out and more are finishing everyday.

I did get my first level of the legendary mastery through cursed shore before doing CoF which wasn’t anymore fun to me. Even though the CoF grind made me feel like puking a couple of times it’s still way better than spending days or months grinding the xp from cursed shore/sw.

Also, if someone is going to quit just because some random strangers whom they didn’t even know existed did something that doesn’t affect them in anyway at all then.. lel ok hf.

You know the saying, if you can’t beat them, join them!

Bomber.3872:

The cof xp farm is great. You can max all tyria mastery in about 8h. We can be happy the cof farm exist!
As a veteran I had instantly closely all available tyria mastery points. Why did I instantly have them? Because I played gw2 more than 3 years since release. During that time I earned literally billions of xp already. Now after xp got decreased and after a lot mobs don’t give xp anymore I’m supposed to grind not only ~50 million xp in Hot (which is kind of fine because it’s something new), no I should grind hours to get another ~32 million xp from content I already did for 3 years?

This.

I’m playing since the first BETAs. Did 100% map completition on 3 characters. Spent over 3k hours on housand and thousands of normal events, world events, boss events, karka farming, silwewaste farming, Teq, Triple Trouble, and every single festival and now with the huge XP nerf they want me to go back that part of the of the game I find boring and GRIND another 32M Xp if I want to gain the right like those who plays the game since yesterday.

If someone wish to do this on the old fashion ways I can understand. The same with those who are not using tomes to lvl up from1-80. We all play differently and ppl has to accept that.

Personally I really enjoy autoloot as that is the only good thing coming from masteries in Tyria.

fixit.7189:

Alteraphim.4629:

Let players play how they want

Gee, I’d like to run a bot and do the mastery grind entirely afk.

So with that statement, I should be able to right? lol

No because bots are third party software that is against the rules.
What’s not against the rules is becoming your own bot – standing there pressing 1 ( or holding down left click on action camera) and killing the mobs that way.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Personally I dislike CoF farming but I do not dislike those who farm CoF. I warned people about possible banning before I noticed the message on Twitter.

Anyway, a Guilde of mine has been CoF farming for two mornings and he allready have around 40 Tyrian Masteries… I think it takes alot less than 7 hours.
I think allowing this is so stupid as it is rather close to an exploit and this is just a bad way to warn people about exploiting. If now Anet thought that their content where so bad that they would have people farm masteries in one single instanced map why not just give every player who have the title ‘been there done that’ an auto max mastery boost.

It takes around 7 hours or more depending on whether the parties you’re with are good and if you have full xp boosts.

It can take around 7 hours with good parties and full boosts (birthday, xp, old xp), food, drake tails, xp amulet.

I’m not sure myself why they chose to gate things behind xp for regular Tyria.

suffish.4150:

I don’t like the idea of the CoF farm and I will not do it because it is, although Anet said it wasn’t an exploit, definitely not playing the game as intended and I would rather level my masteries through normal gameplay. It doesn’t even matter to me at all right now though, because I will not be playing any central tyria content at all for a LONG time now HoT is out.
I would like to see the farm gone and all exp drops removed so people can’t farm it, but that is mostly because I have played 8hrs a day since launch and only have a mastery rank of about 25 and then I see people on rank 60+ who have farmed CoF.
If it is left in game though, I won’t mind because I will get the masteries eventually I am sure and I don’t really care is other people want to play the game like that if they want to.

The people that are farming it are doing so because they don’t have 8 hours a day to play.
Heck – if I had that kind of time on my hands ( and I used to) I would probably level in regular Tyria too.

Like I always used to say : Everything in an MMO is easy if you can play 10 hours a day.