Guild Wars 2

It’s insanely boring, but fast. I’ve done it once and got the second half of tier 4 pact commander finished at around 45 minutes (with a lot of exp boosts). The group fell apart right then and we left. If people are doing this for hours on end they are made of sterner stuff than I am.

6 hours and my Tyrian masteries were complete. Spent most of my time running, because being in the stack was boring.

I loved it! It reminded me of “old-school” pulling in games like FF11, and it was fun to hang out and kill everything with guildies. I don’t feel bad about grinding CoF because I didn’t get any drops. It seemed like a harmless way to fill up the bars.

I bought HoT because I wanted to play HoT; the Tyrian masteries were just there and “things to do.” I’m too poor for the Legendaries, too low for the Fractals, I just wanted those things done and out of the way so I could focus on the new stuff.

Autoloot IS nice, though.

(You CAN drop banners in dungeons; I dropped a few Experience banners inside.)

I didnt do all my grind in one session. I split it up into halves… did 3 hours sunday and 3 hours monday. It was tolerable for me that way… if i had done it all in one go Iwould have been a bit burned out i think. I burned thru like 70 boosters overall i think. stil got a full stack of the multiboosters left to waste on whatever they come out with next too! i only used 7 of my celebration boosters (the 1 hour ones), and still have 64 left. Havent touched any of my birthday boosters yet, got 35 of em left.

I’m a little disappointed that Arenanet did not foresee this or make any effort to prevent the masteries from being completed in this way, because I think it would be better for the game for high-level players to have some reason to commit time to the old world zones. And it does devalue Mastery levels a bit… up to a point, at least.

Quitting over it, though? lol. Such drama.

Klaugh.7415:

6 hours and my Tyrian masteries were complete. Spent most of my time running, because being in the stack was boring.

I loved it! It reminded me of “old-school” pulling in games like FF11, and it was fun to hang out and kill everything with guildies. I don’t feel bad about grinding CoF because I didn’t get any drops. It seemed like a harmless way to fill up the bars.

I bought HoT because I wanted to play HoT; the Tyrian masteries were just there and “things to do.” I’m too poor for the Legendaries, too low for the Fractals, I just wanted those things done and out of the way so I could focus on the new stuff.

Autoloot IS nice, though.

(You CAN drop banners in dungeons; I dropped a few Experience banners inside.)

Guild banners or banners bought with commendations? It wouldn’t let me drop a guild banner earlier. I repped my personal guild. Pulled up the panel with the banners and nothing happened when I clicked on one.

I don’t think it matters how others choose to master their masteries; that said, they do bear no “prestige” (for the few that cares about numbers attached to stars), since it’s no secret a shortcut is being used in the community. This is the only “problem” I have (which doesn’t apply to me and many others, because I don’t care about e-prestige) the farm devalued them as “desirable”, other than for their practical benefits. Hopefully no one ever uses the “I have more masteries than you!” as a valid comeback for any sort of argument, but my faith in human-kind tends to be low.

In short, having 2 or 45 masteries makes no difference whatsoever between players, save for the perks (which should be common knowledge, of course, but humans tend to be egocentric.)

Edited to add: quitting over how others choose to play is an emotional choice-I am not one to mock “emotions” as the more rational-driven folks tend to, but think it through-is it worth to stop enjoying the game because some partake in in-game activities you wouldn’t? Should I have quit long ago because I dislike JPs, the job-like approach to the game that many have, the Queensdale champ train, etc.? Let others enjoy or work through the game however they want-if you want to earn your masteries over time, why not? It’s not stupid to play the game “normally”, so to speak. That others farm the XP doesn’t make your slower progress a silly option (and anyone who tries to peer-pressure you into going into this farm IS being silly, as there’s no reason most people MUST have all of these in a day.)

It’s absolutely ridiculous people care where other players get experience from. If someone wants to grind mobs for 12 hours straight, that doesn’t affect you at all.

I can never agree with taking existing old standard “Features” removing them from you and then placing them behind an xp grind wall as prestegious or new content tbh… but you can call it whatever you like.

Fluffball.8307:

It’s absolutely ridiculous people care where other players get experience from. If someone wants to grind mobs for 12 hours straight, that doesn’t affect you at all.

Depends. If people can farm CoF for HoT masteries, many people will be inclined to go there instead resulting in less people in the HoT maps. That does affect me and my enjoyment. This assuming you were referring to HoT masteries.

they are separate masteries, you cannot cross grind them.

Nike.2631:

Harper.4173:

Stay mad – the way it was handled was a choice.

To be clear, I’m not mad at the players. I’m irritated at the Designers throwing another total farce of design with their complete failure of in-house hostile testing, bringing us up to 3 egg-on-face episodes in three months.

You can almost hear the snickering from other studios… Once again ANet’s been outfoxed by their players: a long term progression system burned to the ground in days.

Well done.

Like I tried to point it out – this was intended – if it wasn’t it could have been patched on day 1.

Not many people know this but there was actually an infinite mob spawning event in the jungle too – people were farming some skales or something.
It was patched very very quickly – it never became a thing and most people never heard of it ( I only heard about it today because I was searching for the best way to level up masteries in the jungle).

So yeah – the way that was almost immediately addressed and “nipped in the bud” – the CoF thing could have been addressed as well – a simple tweak to make the mobs not give XP or just a dungeon shutdown until they could fix it would have been all they needed to do.

But unlike the jungle (where they care about things and patch them quickly) central tyria is no longer a focus point or of major relevance – so they let unfold.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Guild banners or banners bought with commendations? It wouldn’t let me drop a guild banner earlier. I repped my personal guild. Pulled up the panel with the banners and nothing happened when I clicked on one.

Mine were bought with commendations.

Nike.2631:

Could you be any more defensive about what you know is a gross mismatch between intended progress and what’s being squeezed out of one tiny corner case where they forgot they set the respawn rate to nigh-instantaneous?

Yes, yes. The unmatched geek factor. I’m sorry, but its one thing to make a mistake, and another to repeat the same dang mistake over and over. And that’s what’s happening here. Somebody tried to use unchecked respawning to create pressure and players turned it into a buffet table — LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO.

Which is part of a recurrent and growing problem that ANet is so pressed for time validating the code works at all, they aren’t testing for a fundamental question — “how will players try to subvert this?”

Unless maybe you thought the tag a few mobs and move on stunts run rampant during the Mordremoth Invasion event where another totally valid/legit tactic that no one should care about? Because I’d say the new lose credit for wandering off code we see in the jungle is a hint maybe Anet thought that’ really didn’t go how it should have…

See my post above – even if this was initially a “slip” it could have been fixed quickly.

And if they wanted more testers players would gladly test stuff for them – for a few hundred gems or some gold or even nothing at all I bet there would be many who would volunteer to test stuff out and point out the flaws.
The problem with developer testers is that they don’t go into the content with the specific mindset “how do i break this for profit” or if they do they aren’t “desperate” enough to find the cracks in the game.

Offer a good enough reward and I guarantee you good players will find the cracks – if for no other reason than their own benefit.

Look at what EA’s doing with Battlefield 4 and their CTE ( Community Testing Environment) where players have become testers and offer great feedback on how to improve the game.

Harper.4173:

Nike.2631:

Harper.4173:

Stay mad – the way it was handled was a choice.

To be clear, I’m not mad at the players. I’m irritated at the Designers throwing another total farce of design with their complete failure of in-house hostile testing, bringing us up to 3 egg-on-face episodes in three months.

You can almost hear the snickering from other studios… Once again ANet’s been outfoxed by their players: a long term progression system burned to the ground in days.

Well done.

Like I tried to point it out – this was intended – if it wasn’t it could have been patched on day 1.

Not many people know this but there was actually an infinite mob spawning event in the jungle too – people were farming some skales or something.
It was patched very very quickly – it never became a thing and most people never heard of it ( I only heard about it today because I was searching for the best way to level up masteries in the jungle).

So yeah – the way that was almost immediately addressed and “nipped in the bud” – the CoF thing could have been addressed as well – a simple tweak to make the mobs not give XP or just a dungeon shutdown until they could fix it would have been all they needed to do.

But unlike the jungle (where they care about things and patch them quickly) central tyria is no longer a focus point or of major relevance – so they let unfold.

To be fair, there’s a difference between ANet not patching it because they intended it and not patching it because it’s not worth the effort to fix something that only affects a handful of people in content they all but abandoned.

If I recall correctly the jungle’s infinite spawn was triggered by preventing an event from finishing, which would fall under ANet’s definition of exploiting. The real litmus test to whether or not ANet considers infinite mob exp farming not kosher is if they patch the veteran spider spawns near Jaka Itzel waypoint, because those spawns are not associated with any events and are out of the way enough that it doesn’t interfere with other players.

It’s almost been 2 weeks now, sooooooooooooooo who cares? It’s not even a huge deal to have half the population quit lel

Okay, so besides COF, what have you found to be the most efficient mastery farming techniques? I saw COF faaaaar too much at launch (I’m sure a lot of us did) and honestly, I don’t care how fast it is, I just won’t do it.

I’m not in a huge hurry to level my mastery – I’d just like to vary it up a bit so it doesn’t feel so grindy, so I’d like Ideas! I’ve near-completed one of the Tyria masteries (through the autoloot (woot!)) by just getting a few (3) of my toons their 189 hero points and way points – should have just gone for world complete as there’s good xp in POIs and hearts if you’re there anyway… (soooo glad we get something for xp now and glad I waited to advance my less important toons! Just getting something for any effort feels better than getting nothing.)

i tried CoF and it’s boring .. if you can get a good Cursed Shore map with a commander on the roll with a zerg … it’s faster than CoF because you get the XP from the mobs AND from doing the events .. 12-18 K Xp per events help a lot

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s insanely boring, but fast. I’ve done it once and got the second half of tier 4 pact commander finished at around 45 minutes (with a lot of exp boosts). The group fell apart right then and we left. If people are doing this for hours on end they are made of sterner stuff than I am.

It took me about 3 hours (across 2 play sessions) to completely max out the legendary crafting line (started out with nothing in it). I was mildly surprised.

I may or may not do a bit here and there for the other core tracks, but yeah, I’m with you regarding definitely not being one of those that can stand there and just do it all in one go. I’d pass out from boredom.

@OP, why would your friends quit the game because other people choose to do certain things? Are these guys easily irritable? Why does it cause these guys frustration? What possible pain and suffering seeing a guy with 100 mastery level could have caused to your friends to consider quitting? Really, when I saw a guy with a legendary sword that they bought off TP (you know, the quick way) I don’t see why it is my business, I don’t see how that would cause me sleeplessness.
Even if the CoF way is frowned upon as boring or brain-dead, well, you do have a choice to do it legitimate way, don’t you? Boring or not, folks does spend their time in it. It is not something you can bot. Exp don’t drop automatically. How is it different from running SW endlessly for gold and exp because SW events are endless, just like CoF mobs? Does it occur to you that, maybe, just maybe, the frustration these guys feel is actually the sheer amount of exp Anet requires you to top out mastery instead ?

I totally understand people’s frustration when others use an exploit to quickly advance or attain items and then the game developers don’t roll back their progress, but that is not what this is. This is people having choices.

Overall, Anet has done the best job of any game I’ve played (pretty much all of them) of evening things out… per hour of dedicated playing/crafting/grinding/etc… gold and xp gains are relatively equal. The differences are primarily how much downtime YOU choose to have between events that offer XP. You can take it slow like I am; gaining Tyria mastery solely by running toons that leveled in holiday events or PVP trains through Tyria getting hero points, Waypoints, gathering, etc… (which is likely the SLOWEST method) or you can spam Run COF with a group of like-minded people (arguably the fastest).

It’s a personal choice that I, for one, feel lucky to have – many games wouldn’t give you a choice. Think about rep gains in linear MMO’s… Being forced into taking particular paths is stupid. Hell, if you wanted to, you could farm herbs to get all your mastery… there are gains everywhere. I love it!

Farming Flats.5370:

it’s faster than CoF because you get the XP from the mobs AND from doing the events .. 12-18 K Xp per events help a lot

Actually it’s not ^^
With different XP boosts you get ~2000 XP per mob in CoF and you can spawn 12 at a time every 5-10 seconds.

That’s 24k XP all 10 seconds.

Meh, those that wanted it all and wanted it NOW mostly have it. Those that wanted to take their time will have it eventually. I’m in the latter camp and while leveling another alt, I am already 3/4 the way though fractal mastery; although truth be told I did a bit of SW for the pack mastery line; less boring. CoF would have made me want to carve my eyes out with a spoon due to the boredom.

Live and let live, I will get them all eventually, but I won’t begrudge those that are impatient either.

Ayrilana.1396:

Fluffball.8307:

It’s absolutely ridiculous people care where other players get experience from. If someone wants to grind mobs for 12 hours straight, that doesn’t affect you at all.

Depends. If people can farm CoF for HoT masteries, many people will be inclined to go there instead resulting in less people in the HoT maps. That does affect me and my enjoyment. This assuming you were referring to HoT masteries.

But you can’t farm CoF for HoT masteries. So…..it doesn’t affect you or your enjoyment.

I can understand both sides of the argument. I did a few hours of the CoF farm, simply to expedite my Tyria masteries so I could unlock the collections a bit faster, so I could start getting some of the bits and pieces for legendaries etc. This has meant that I can play more in the HoT maps, where I would’ve been spending a lot more time in central Tyria trying to get the masteries in the first place. I’ve left the rest because I’m happy with a slower sense of progression- I’ll get them eventually.

Excuse me if I’m wrong here, but the argument against farming CoF seems to be summarised quite easily:
1) It’s an exploit/it’s not intended/not allowed
2) It gives players an advantage over others
3) It stops people playing the game/enjoying the game
4) People shouldn’t rush through content because they’ll get bored sooner than others

Ok… counter argument time:
1) A-net are OK with it. There will always be a way to get exp faster than “normal” play, this just happens to be the most effective/easiest so far. If they wanted to nerf CoF, it wouldn’t make much of a difference as people will find somewhere else to do the very same thing.

2) This farm isn’t exclusive to particular groups. The choice to participate is down to personal preference. If you want the very minor advantages that the tracks give you fast, do the farm. If you don’t want to do the farm, you’ll still get the masteries by playing how you want to play.

3/4) These are the two perspectives I have the most problems with. Essentially you’re questioning other players’ decision making. Some players like to have the best they can get as soon as they can, and get great satisfaction from that. There’s little evidence to suggest that reaching goals sooner will mean sooner departure from the game- what’s to say they won’t set their sights on another goal to invest their time in, perhaps one they find more interesting?

Tl;dr: As long as it’s not affecting you or other players or breaking the rules, you shouldn’t worry yourself over other people’s business.

Can a moderator PLEASE close this “No Value Added” thread and topic ?

PLEASE !