Guild Wars 2

Xae Isareth.1364:

Well, how else would they handle it? If they just have you your elite spec with all the traits and utilities, why would anyone bother with the hero point challenges?

If you had all the useful masteries unlocked off the bat, why would people do events?

The matter of fact is that non-sandbox MMOs have always been driven by the carrot in front of players and GW2 isn’t a sandbox.

Map Completion.

Due to fact that you earn HP through WvW, could introduce NPC which is trading HP for various goods, both in PvE and WvW.

Problem lies within Anet wanting to do it.

bigbobpataki.4796:

A few months ago: We want harder open world content ArenaNet!

Decently challenging hero point challenges that require you to group in a MMO are implemented.

Forums this week: We want easier open world content!

It’s almost as if people didn’t like having their ability to unlock their elite specs and complete the map dependent on the whims of other people! Amazing, that.

Tao.5096:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Well, how else would they handle it? If they just have you your elite spec with all the traits and utilities, why would anyone bother with the hero point challenges?

If you had all the useful masteries unlocked off the bat, why would people do events?

The matter of fact is that non-sandbox MMOs have always been driven by the carrot in front of players and GW2 isn’t a sandbox.

Map Completion.

Due to fact that you earn HP through WvW, could introduce NPC which is trading HP for various goods, both in PvE and WvW.

Problem lies within Anet wanting to do it.

Map completion only matters to people who wants a legendary, which I would assume is a relative minority.

You’ll end up with two possibilities with introducing a vendor:
1. You provide a few cosmetics or very situationally useful items: it ends up being basically karma 2.0.
2. You have very useful items and resources for sale: it either makes it into a requirement to farm it, invalidates some other content in the game, or distorts the market. If it doesn’t do the above 3 in some form or the other, then it means it isn’t worth you time farming for them.

If you had all the useful masteries unlocked off the bat, why would people do events?

At this point people only do events because of the exp needed to unlock said masteries, and that is where the problems lie :

- in order to unlock a mastery to progress the story you need exp, which either takes a long grind or doing events (some of which require a mastery).
- players usually don’t want to grind or get the feeling that they’re forced to do it in order to progress through the game.
- the usual complaint is that it takes so much exp to unlock it all, with mobs giving crap drops and events that have to be completed over and over again.

As it stands now, certain parts of the maps are pretty empty, and i see a lot of people already returning to the regular maps to do WB’s or farming.

The only place the new masteries matter is the new maps, and you need to get all your hero points AND exp in the old maps in order to get those masteries and the class skills. 400 HP’s isn’t nothing, so players tend to go back and finish that.

Face it, the new maps look pretty awesome and the gliding and stuff is fun, but being forced into a grind ( no matter how you feel about it, it’s a fact) will take its toll.

Locking the storyline behind masteries doesn’t help either, whoever decided that didn’t really think it though imo. It’s just timegating all over again. Do story, do a lot of exping, continue story. Pretty much the same as from lvl 1-80 if you didn’t rush.
Boring.
Which means empty maps.

“Ow, i got things so i can buy stuff at an npc, nice. No, wait, i need a mastery first, back to grind. Awesome…”

Xae Isareth.1364:

Map completion only matters to people who wants a legendary, which I would assume is a relative minority.

You’ll end up with two possibilities with introducing a vendor:
1. You provide a few cosmetics or very situationally useful items: it ends up being basically karma 2.0.
2. You have very useful items and resources for sale: it either makes it into a requirement to farm it, invalidates some other content in the game, or distorts the market. If it doesn’t do the above 3 in some form or the other, then it means it isn’t worth you time farming for them.

For example Mistforged Hero Weapons.

With current WvW Tournaments it’ll take around 20 years to have all of them unlocked.

Renim.6921:

When I picked my profession at launch, I got to play as it. I didn’t need to play anything else to unlock it. I could use all of the weapons, and only with about a 5 minute commitment I could use all weapons.

No, actually … there are TONS of unlocks you need to do that take much longer than 5 minutes to get the full experience of the profession.

bigbobpataki.4796:

Do we think that everyone is going to stop complaining and calm down in a weeks time when they fully unlock their elite spec for their chosen mains?

Tao.5096:

Those Hero Points in Heart of Thorns are utterly bad.

5min for killing a champ solo which not only hit like a truck, also CC and heals up or stealth.

A few months ago: We want harder open world content ArenaNet!

Decently challenging hero point challenges that require you to group in a MMO are implemented.

Forums this week: We want easier open world content!

It’s not the challenge that I don’t like, it’s the massive grind. Locking hero points behind masteries, locking map progression behind masteries, locking story progression behind masteries, etc. Not to mention needing 400 hero points to fully unlock your elite spec. That’s more hero points than it takes to fully unlock all traits and skills for a core character.

Anet didn’t raise the level cap, but all this exp and hero point grinding sure makes it feel like they did.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

bigbobpataki.4796:

A few months ago: We want harder open world content ArenaNet!

Decently challenging hero point challenges that require you to group in a MMO are implemented.

Forums this week: We want easier open world content!

It’s almost as if people didn’t like having their ability to unlock their elite specs and complete the map dependent on the whims of other people! Amazing, that.

Hyper Cutter makes a good point. It’s day 3 of the expac and already I can’t get people to do hero challenges together.
Writing in map chat is ignored, and no one joins on the lfg.

I like the expansion so far, and obviously a ton of work went into it. Verdant Brink is stunning, and the dialogues add a lot to the experience. But I’m more and more concerned about depending on others to unlock the basic stuff.
I don’t know how things are in the na servers, in eu a lot of the times when I write something in /say chat people don’t answer… Sometimes I think they don’t speak English, sometimes I think they just don’t care.

jmoak.7821:

its the vocal minority again while the majority are having fun in the game. dust will settle in 2 weeks

Really? Because for being an opening weekend, the new maps have been underwhelmingly barren. I’m aware a lot of people are probably doing Halloween stuff right now, but even so the new maps have been pretty desolate and not indicative of a hyped up release weekend. People are already saying it’s difficult to find help gathering Hero Points since most of them are group challenges.

I had my chat box set to map chat for an hour and there were hardly ANY conversations going on… like, at all.

bigbobpataki.4796:

Do we think that everyone is going to stop complaining and calm down in a weeks time when they fully unlock their elite spec for their chosen mains?

Tao.5096:

Those Hero Points in Heart of Thorns are utterly bad.

5min for killing a champ solo which not only hit like a truck, also CC and heals up or stealth.

A few months ago: We want harder open world content ArenaNet!

Decently challenging hero point challenges that require you to group in a MMO are implemented.

Forums this week: We want easier open world content!

Except for anet doesn’t really know how to design challenging content.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Well, how else would they handle it? If they just have you your elite spec with all the traits and utilities, why would anyone bother with the hero point challenges?

There’s always the old “Go on quest to learn the secrets of the class” option.

Find NPC trainer, speak with NPC trainer about class, get assigned tasks, do tasks, bring proof back of having done task, get item that unlocks class, come to forum to complain about unoriginal UPS quest format.

I been using dare devil and…dying a lot if I use that staff. No instead I am using short bow and pressing 1, 99% of the time b/c going melee with pretty much any HoT mob as a thief results in instantaneous death. I have tried a mix of valk, soldiers, serker, clerics, etc now and it’s always the same thing; try to melee mobs and then get insto killed b/c mob flipped around and instantly hits me for over 16k in a blink of an eye. Then I watch a reaper solo champs and out heal them. Not all classes are meant to be equal I guess!

fixit.7189:

I been using dare devil and…dying a lot if I use that staff. No instead I am using short bow and pressing 1, 99% of the time b/c going melee with pretty much any HoT mob as a thief results in instantaneous death. I have tried a mix of valk, soldiers, serker, clerics, etc now and it’s always the same thing; try to melee mobs and then get insto killed b/c mob flipped around and instantly hits me for over 16k in a blink of an eye. Then I watch a reaper solo champs and out heal them. Not all classes are meant to be equal I guess!

I have exactly the same problem. Forced to go Pistols or Shortbow because even trash mobs in hot will reduce you to ash in melee as a thief.

There is no game balance. It’s all a mess of poorly designed combat abilities and game play. The combat is sloppy. Your either spamming 1 to win at ranged, rolfstomping anything on a tank/healer build or getting 1 shotted.

Odokuro.5049:

What do people have against putting in any real effort and time to do anything nowadays. Last several years, I see countless threads among the popular MMO’s Forums, all made by people up-in-arms, about how hard this is, or how much a grind that is, ect.

It’s called progression, to progress in this game you need to put in effort, and the desire to better your character such as unlocking your Elite Spec, and soon Raids, I really hope ANet keeps up with the challenging content, and doesn’t cave to the people who want everything streamlined, just log in, and BOOM, everything handed to them.

I like the challenge this expansion presents, please don’t kill it just because you can’t bring yourselves to invest yourself into working towards bettering your character.

This isn’t a challenge.

If I wanted a challenge, I would be playing WoW w/ a Mystic progression guild. I’ve left the whole hardcore raiding scene after WoW Vanilla. Nowadays, I’m getting my fix from From Soft games for the side of me that wants a challenge. GW2 is a complete joke for “Challenges”.

This is wasting time. I paid money for a game, which goes to bar me against all of the content which I paid for unless I grind the crap out of everything. I don’t like the Dragon Hunter, I feel it doesn’t suit the Guardian well at all, but I would like to mess around with it. After learning that it’s behind a 400 hero point wall, I’ve decided that I’d rather not waste my time.

If this is what “Horizontal Progression” is, then I guess GW2 is no longer worthy of my money anymore. Simple as that.

yeah its kinda boring, not worse than any other MMO though, im used to grind in MMOs and since gw2 combat is good, its more fun, but grind is grind, it WILL get boring at times

Lol at all the people who got tricked into thinking they have to grind for absolutely everything, no matter how little sense it makes. Especially in GW2 which was never meant to be a grind. The slavish-MMO-farming mindset knows no bounds.

Have you actually asked yourselves, what did you actually receive after spending your money? A treadmill that forces you to do same old things that will reward you with new stuff at some point in the future.

The fact is that HoT has hardcore features which were expected to be grinded and were advertised as such. But then on top of that the base game mechanics (specs) were gated as well. Leaving us with almost nothing new to do when we start.

Another fact is that nobody has yet asked to “get everything without effort”. People are simply asking to get anything for the money they paid.

bigbobpataki.4796:

Do we think that everyone is going to stop complaining and calm down in a weeks time when they fully unlock their elite spec for their chosen mains?

Tao.5096:

Those Hero Points in Heart of Thorns are utterly bad.

5min for killing a champ solo which not only hit like a truck, also CC and heals up or stealth.

A few months ago: We want harder open world content ArenaNet!

Decently challenging hero point challenges that require you to group in a MMO are implemented.

Forums this week: We want easier open world content!

I could see this coming, and hopefully they don’t neuter the new maps like they did with early Orr-HoT should be more challenging than base GW2, requiring help even on the “easy” overworld map. I am not “hardcore”, but really want a more challenging, even daunting maps experience that force people help each other beyond getting daily chests.

Balance things if you will, but don’t make HoT too easy, please.

Star Ace.5207:

I could see this coming, and hopefully they don’t neuter the new maps like they did with early Orr-HoT should be more challenging than base GW2, requiring help even on the “easy” overworld map. I am not “hardcore”, but really want a more challenging, even daunting maps experience that force people help each other beyond getting daily chests.

Balance things if you will, but don’t make HoT too easy, please.

Totally agree with you.

I’m also Daredevil and use shortbow for range/crowd attacks but the staff is fine one on one. I just have to get use to the skills after 2 years of D/P.

I’m personally loving it. I’m glad that I finally have something to work towards in this game.
Not to mention, the elite spec unlocks ridiculously quick. The game has been out for a weekend, and I know a few people who have already completely unlocked it. If you completed the base game, you already have the spec halfway unlocked. If you’re new to the game, it makes sense to play the base game first before moving onto the x-pack. Also, it’s not as if the hero points in the base game were hard to get.
As for the hero points in the expansion pack, some of the champs are definitely solo-able. Some are not. I agree that the time limits are bogus, and they should be scaled better overall, as there is a wide range of player skill in this game.

As for people saying that, “forcing people to play a base class before unlocking the elite spec is ridiculous,” where is this mentality founded? Plenty of games have profession/class unlocks that come from playing a base class. Pretty much every Final Fantasy game follows this formula, as well as several other MMOs. This is not some new trick that ANET threw out onto the playing field for the sole purpose of gating character progress. It’s an upgrade. Work towards it and unlock it.

niceusername.8745:

I’m personally loving it. I’m glad that I finally have something to work towards in this game.
Not to mention, the elite spec unlocks ridiculously quick. The game has been out for a weekend, and I know a few people who have already completely unlocked it. If you completed the base game, you already have the spec halfway unlocked. If you’re new to the game, it makes sense to play the base game first before moving onto the x-pack. Also, it’s not as if the hero points in the base game were hard to get.
As for the hero points in the expansion pack, some of the champs are definitely solo-able. Some are not. I agree that the time limits are bogus, and they should be scaled better overall, as there is a wide range of player skill in this game.

As for people saying that, “forcing people to play a base class before unlocking the elite spec is ridiculous,” where is this mentality founded? Plenty of games have profession/class unlocks that come from playing a base class. Pretty much every Final Fantasy game follows this formula, as well as several other MMOs. This is not some new trick that ANET threw out onto the playing field for the sole purpose of gating character progress. It’s an upgrade. Work towards it and unlock it.

I agree however I personally feel that the unlocking is gated behind a grind of HP/masteries and it unlocks bit by bit and that’s what truely ticks people off as compared to Final Fantasy’s questing and ding, you can unlock the whole package and then proceed to gearing it up.

As a rev, even with base class unlocked, it will suffer a setback when equipped with Glint legend and not all skills unlocked because a rev cannot switch skills on utility slots unlike other classses…. and this is just one example that things can better designed.

I don’t think people are asking to be handed everything on a silver platter. Look at it from a different angle. If Anet assigned the dev team now to fixing HoT’s gated grind problem, would any players complain that they liked it the way it was at release?? That said, tell me what it is you do want Anet to do? Exactly how could they fix this without making it a handout?

i dunno about you but i am owning enemies with my GS necro, i say it’s wonderful and you should stop complaining and start playing.
oh and while you might have bought it for 50 bucks, i bought it for €32,-……well worth the money.

sorudo.9054:

i dunno about you but i am owning enemies with my GS necro, i say it’s wonderful and you should stop complaining and start playing.
oh and while you might have bought it for 50 bucks, i bought it for €32,-……well worth the money.

Im playing my necro as reaper and only had enough points to get the first 2 skills unlocked. Having a lot of fun with it and im not sure as to why some of the players complain because they cant have everything right away.

Still of the opinion BWE’s are to blame for much of the animosity and frustration, especially when used to market full price pre-purchase.

I don’t think anywhere near as many players would feel aggrieved if they hadn’t been given the full specs to play around with in the first place and had never had that taste of what the specs are like with zero effort.

Its literally stealing candy off a baby.

I’ve played a few games that do that, give you all the power early then retroactively take it away in an attempt to motivate players through content but in all honesty it just seems to annoy more players than anything.

fireflyry.7023:

Still of the opinion BWE’s are to blame for much of the animosity and frustration, especially when used to market full price pre-purchase.

I don’t think anywhere near as many players would feel aggrieved if they hadn’t been given the full specs to play around with in the first place and had never had that taste of what the specs are like with zero effort.

Its literally stealing candy off a baby.

I’ve played a few games that do that, give you all the power early then retroactively take it away in an attempt to motivate players through content but in all honesty it just seems to annoy more players than anything.

Except it wasn’t to motivate players. BWE was to test out the elite specialization. They knew you wouldn’t be able to unlock it in the weekend and they needed all skills, all traits tried out. That’s perfectly reasonable in my book, it was testing not teasing. Because of the tests they made some substantial changes to each and are still refining them.

Now we have to work for it just as we worked for every other healing/utility and elite skill and trait line while you were leveling your profession to level 80 in core Tyria via play. HoT Mastery system is the new leveling and HP are earned via play now.

Welcome to the new Level 1.

Drow.2081:

Exactly how could they fix this without making it a handout?

Cut the number of hero points required in half, to 200, and cut the value of the hero challenges in Maguuma (and the costs of getting them in WvW) in half accordingly. Also retune the HoT hero points to be doable solo.

Now, earning all the hero points in core Tyria is enough to unlock your elite spec (and I emphasize “earning”, because people seem really keen to devalue the time and effort put into map completion), or you can unlock it in the new maps while ignoring central Tyria altogether, or do it in WvW, or use whatever combination of those methods you wish.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Drow.2081:

Exactly how could they fix this without making it a handout?

Cut the number of hero points required in half, to 200, and cut the value of the hero challenges in Maguuma (and the costs of getting them in WvW) in half accordingly. Also retune the HoT hero points to be doable solo.

Now, earning all the hero points in core Tyria is enough to unlock your elite spec (and I emphasize “earning”, because people seem really keen to devalue the time and effort put into map completion), or you can unlock it in the new maps while ignoring central Tyria altogether, or do it in WvW, or use whatever combination of those methods you wish.

Fully expecting this thread to get merged.
But this is what most agreed on in the other thread would be reasonable as well.

Renim.6921:

2.) Let me understand this: you want us to complete everything in the game to get our Elite spec so we can… sit around in Lion’s Arch? By the time me and any of the other people have our Elite Specs we will have completed ALL of the content of HoT, leaving us to do nothing but play repeat content in the game.

Yeah, nothing to do. No WvW, no raids, no nothing. Plus MMOs are built about everything but repeating content, so there really isn’t anything to do. And you weren’t playing the elite spekittenil you had everything bought, either.

sorudo.9054:

i dunno about you but i am owning enemies with my GS necro, i say it’s wonderful and you should stop complaining and start playing.
oh and while you might have bought it for 50 bucks, i bought it for €32,-……well worth the money.

I certainly hope 32 Euros is worth it! That is 35 USD. Anyway, it is not the cost of the game but it is the gem store. Even if you do not use it many people do. I know my average in it is well above the subscription fee in competing MMOs.

Even if I got the box for free I would not actually be playing for free.

Renim.6921:

2.) Let me understand this: you want us to complete everything in the game to get our Elite spec so we can… sit around in Lion’s Arch? By the time me and any of the other people have our Elite Specs we will have completed ALL of the content of HoT, leaving us to do nothing but play repeat content in the game.

I’m guessing this is your first MMO. If you can name me one MMO on the planet that you can play endlessly without repeating ANY content, then I will eat my hat.

MMO timeline: you get game, you binge play to level cap, you run raids/end-game, you repeat until next expansion, you buy expansion, you binge play to new cap, you run raids/end-game, you repeat until next expansion.

Nowadays if you play 3-4hrs/day, you will have completed all new content in an expansion in a couple of weeks.

Sounds like you want some kind of magical game where you hit level cap and then somehow there is novel content regularly coming out at a pace fast enough that you never repeat content.