Guild Wars 2

I want to say up-front, I’m not unhappy with the masteries. It’s good that xp is going towards something and it’s satisfying working towards and finally unlocking new skills.
But it also makes me wish the process of training a mastery wasn’t so divorced from what the mastery was about.

The process of training any mastery is the same: gather the necessary xp and mastery points by participating in events, killing things, ressing players. It’s possible, and in fact mandatory, to train in a mastery by doing anything except what the mastery is about, which is at odds with our real world experience. Imagine if learning to play the guitar required you to take part in marathons, plant trees or deliver phonebooks door to door. (That used to be a thing)
That wouldn’t make sense. You’d expect learning to play the guitar would require lots and lots of practice at playing the guitar.

In the same way, it’s disconcerting that gaining higher levels of mastery in gliding requires killing and not practicing gliding. Gaining the acceptance of the exhalted doesn’t require you to perform noble deeds to prove your worth to them; it just requires killing things. Learning how to get through poison fields should require learning how to gather various components to create an antidote or maybe how to hold your breath longer, but instead requires only killing. Even bouncing on mushrooms doesn’t require any practice in bouncing. You just need to kill things.

I get it. Developing that kind of sophisticated and unique training experience for each mastery track is prohibitively difficulty and not cost-effective for the company. I accept that, thought I reserve the right to dream. Maybe the Mawdrey scavenger hunt spoiled me for how progression can have interesting complexity.

Then again, maybe the game has it right and real life is flawed. Maybe I’m struggling to learn the guitar because I’m just not killing enough critters.

Well, in real life, learning to draw or play an instrument is often frustrating and monotonous, even to get the basics right. I mean yeah, it feels good to hit a milestone and actually not only stay there, but improve upon it, but ultimately…

…If I could become a master artist from jogging and delivering phone books, I would partake in these activities and make art 100% fun, instead of a hit or miss slow as hell process that in the end, I’ll just create something easily eclipsed by someone younger than me anyway.

Basically, to apply to this mentality to the game – I’d rather have a reason to continue running around Tyria and progress than to bottle up in some quiet little corner because it was decided grinding in area X was the only way to earn mastery B.

I get what you’re saying, but the alternative is basically a form of collections for everything.

The mastry system may not be immersive, but it does a pretty good job of being rather freeform in terms of how you progress it, and for a system that’s supposed to essentially replace leveling it does a pretty good job. I’m already seeing a lot of divergence among my friends in how we’ve chosen to progress various masteries and how it has individualized the leveling experience while still allowing us to do pretty much all the content available to us together.

I have a guy that went hardcore gliding, and one that went hardcore mushrooms, and one that went hardcore fractals, and one that went hardcore legendary crafting in my guild. We’ve all still been playing all the content together, but the way masteries are set up we were able to pick what felt important to us to progress.

In a system where you were more railroaded, if we didn’t all want to progress, say, exalted mastry, we wouldn’t be able to play together very much as we did masteries unless we all wanted to progress the same lines at the same time. We’d either all do content for exalted masteries, or we’d all be off soloing various different stuff. In the current system, the choice is simply “do you guys want to do HoT or Core stuff?” and we can all play together and still progress in the ways that are most attractive for us.

True, learning something new can be tedious or frustrating. But think what a strange world it would be if I could deliver 100 phone books and come out of it a brain surgeon! It sounds like the basis for an interesting fantasy story…

Anyway, that’s intriguing but it’s beside the point. I’m definitely not advocating “grinding in area X”. If anything, I’m suggesting the exact opposite. If you were to train gliding by actually gliding, you could glide anywhere in HOT to improve this mastery, and in fact you’d be practicing it as you play the game.

Likewise if you were to gather components for a poison antidote from across the entire jungle to improve your poison mastery. Or explore various areas at the behest of the exhalted (to receive their acceptance) that you normally wouldn’t have any reason to visit because there aren’t any events there.

As you can see, these things would actually give you more incentive to travel around Tyria and do unconventional things, as opposed to repeating events in the same areas.

PopeUrban.2578:

I get what you’re saying, but the alternative is basically a form of collections for everything.

The mastry system may not be immersive, but it does a pretty good job of being rather freeform in terms of how you progress it, and for a system that’s supposed to essentially replace leveling it does a pretty good job. I’m already seeing a lot of divergence among my friends in how we’ve chosen to progress various masteries and how it has individualized the leveling experience while still allowing us to do pretty much all the content available to us together.

I have a guy that went hardcore gliding, and one that went hardcore mushrooms, and one that went hardcore fractals, and one that went hardcore legendary crafting in my guild. We’ve all still been playing all the content together, but the way masteries are set up we were able to pick what felt important to us to progress.

In a system where you were more railroaded, if we didn’t all want to progress, say, exalted mastry, we wouldn’t be able to play together very much as we did masteries unless we all wanted to progress the same lines at the same time. We’d either all do content for exalted masteries, or we’d all be off soloing various different stuff. In the current system, the choice is simply “do you guys want to do HoT or Core stuff?” and we can all play together and still progress in the ways that are most attractive for us.

That is a good point.

Sounds good on paper, but how would you train gliding, except by repeatedly jumping off cliffs and dying hundreds to thousands of times? If you think people scream now about grind when they can do whatever they want in the right area, just make them jump off a cliff a few hundred times, die and have to waypoint back.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sounds good on paper, but how would you train gliding, except by repeatedly jumping off cliffs and dying hundreds to thousands of times? If you think people scream now about grind when they can do whatever they want in the right area, just make them jump off a cliff a few hundred times, die and have to waypoint back.

I’m not sure what you’re saying. Why would you die hundreds of times? All I’m saying is, once you unlock the glider you would just fly around normally (as you do now) but every second that you’re in the air you’re improving your mastery of gliding to get gliding tracks II, III, etc.

To be accurate, that’s not even my idea. It was previously suggested by someone else on the forums, but I don’t remember who or I would give them the credit.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sounds good on paper, but how would you train gliding, except by repeatedly jumping off cliffs and dying hundreds to thousands of times? If you think people scream now about grind when they can do whatever they want in the right area, just make them jump off a cliff a few hundred times, die and have to waypoint back.

I’m not sure what you’re saying. Why would you die hundreds of times? All I’m saying is, once you unlock the glider you would just fly around normally (as you do now) but every second that you’re in the air you’re improving your mastery of gliding to get gliding tracks II, III, etc.

To be accurate, that’s not even my idea. It was previously suggested by someone else on the forums, but I don’t remember who or I would give them the credit.

How would you unlock gliding in the first place, except by trying to glide? (That is, jumping off a cliff and dying, until you gained enough training to start gliding). The only other way I can think of is what your post was talking about, doing things unrelated to gliding to learn gliding.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sounds good on paper, but how would you train gliding, except by repeatedly jumping off cliffs and dying hundreds to thousands of times? If you think people scream now about grind when they can do whatever they want in the right area, just make them jump off a cliff a few hundred times, die and have to waypoint back.

I’m not sure what you’re saying. Why would you die hundreds of times? All I’m saying is, once you unlock the glider you would just fly around normally (as you do now) but every second that you’re in the air you’re improving your mastery of gliding to get gliding tracks II, III, etc.

To be accurate, that’s not even my idea. It was previously suggested by someone else on the forums, but I don’t remember who or I would give them the credit.

How would you unlock gliding in the first place, except by trying to glide?

There’s really two topics here: I) how to get a glider, ii) how to get better with the glider. The suggestion of receiving further mastery experience by gliding, which we’ve been discussing, addresses the latter. My OP was specifically about practicing to get the higher glider levels, but getting the glider is an interesting subject in itself.

Here are some ideas to unlock gliding while still making the player work for it:

1. Someone on the forums suggested unlocking the glider as a reward on one of the early story missions.

2. I could see there being a trainer located somewhere in the jungle that would teach the first level of gliding. He would be reachable on foot, but you’d have to fight your way through the jungle critters to get there.

3. Unlock a recipe for a glider from a story mission, or a vendor, and allow the player to craft the first glider with some basic components that could only be found in the jungle (maybe flax?)

4. Maybe unlock the glider with a solo-able hero point?

5. Some combination of the above.

A limited version of this would be cool without destroying the ability for people to still play a broad selection of content though.

Warframe had this cool system for leveling up where you’d gain XP to qualify for the next rank, but to actually rank up you had to complete a trial. So, you’d go do all these missions with your friends, however you liked, but when you hit what is the equivalent of the mastry system’s “spend hero points to train” button, you’d be sent to a solo instance where you had to demonstrate proficiency in various game systems.

This was a linear system, but it could be adapted for mastries so, for instance, in stead of just hitting a button for updrafts, when you got all the XP and mastry points you need to train it, you in stead got a little story-esque popup that said “you are prepared to modify your glider to take advantage of the jungle’s updrafts, talk to pact glider technician Nalla Skytinker to test your modifications”

Talking to the NPC would start a trial instance which would allow you to use the updrafts there, on some sort of time limited race course. Complete the trial, and you get a signoff from the NPC “Your modifications look solid Commander, I think these are ready for field work” and bam, now you have trained updrafts (and in a perfect world got a new glider skin, but that’s another topic)

This would be a much smaller amount of content, but would help the mastries feel a little more immersive without breaking the “do whatever you like to get xp and mastry points” model that makes it so friendly for group play, as well as perhaps enhancing the narrative or sense of accomplishment from leveling the various masteries.

You could also phase the rial NPCs in to ambient dialogue similar to how some of the story NPCs comment on your decisions in HoT. Like, how if you chose to defend with ibli, you and ibli have a little ambient conversation when you pass him in the world. if you run across Nalla skytinker she might comment on your mastry “How are those modificaions working out Commander?” “Just fine Nalla, The sky’s the limit!”

I completely agree, Zoltar. Every mastery can be mastered by doing things that are completely opposite of what defines that mastery, and that to me is a big problem going forward in Guild Wars 2 with no change in sight.

P.S. My idea for mastering the Gliding Mastery would be to base the Gliding Mastery off minutes players spend gliding around rather than experience from killing or doing events. For example, Glider Basics would require players to do 30 minutes of gliding, and so on…

That would be interesting.

I think that in a perfect world, some of the adventures would have been themed around the mastery skills. So, for instance, when you completed that first bar in Maguuma, you would have unlocked an adventure that requires you to glide. You would then be given some training wings to use in that adventure and the adventure would teach you the basics of what you needed to know about that skill. By earning the equivalent of Bronze, you would get the wings permanently and unlock that adventure for repeat play.

I think something like that might have been a decent compromise allowing players to earn XP how they like but having to complete a thematically-related task to actually unlock the ability. This might not have worked perfectly for every rank, but it would have worked for a lot of them.

@PopeUrban – that’s a clever way to build on what’s there. Let’s just hope we never hear Nalla say, “I’ve seen your face in my dream!” That would lead me to jumping off a cliff with no glider.

@Misguided – nice one!

@Eidolonemesis – now that you mention it, I’m trying to imagine what will happen when future masteries are added. Given the way it works now, it seems likely we’ll be doing exactly the same things to get those as we are to get the current ones. I don’t want to think of it as grind, but I dread that a day might come when it starts to feel that way to me.

I think there’s a way to make masteries a little more immersive and I think it can be achieved without taking anything away from the current system, forcing anybody to do more work or undermining the work already done by players.

I think all it needs is bonus experience in performing various activities. So, when you’re gliding, you’re accruing a small amount of experience towards your gliding mastery. When you’re fighting alongside the exhalted, you’re accruing a little xp towards exhalted acceptance. Something like that. You can still gather experience anywhere in the jungle, as you do now, to unlock these masteries, but you could also focus on one you’re interested in (e.g. exhalted acceptance) and feel like you’ve really worked towards it specifically. Just my 2c.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

@PopeUrban – that’s a clever way to build on what’s there. Let’s just hope we never hear Nalla say, “I’ve seen your face in my dream!” That would lead me to jumping off a cliff with no glider.

@Misguided – nice one!

@Eidolonemesis – now that you mention it, I’m trying to imagine what will happen when future masteries are added. Given the way it works now, it seems likely we’ll be doing exactly the same things to get those as we are to get the current ones. I don’t want to think of it as grind, but I dread that a day might come when it starts to feel that way to me.

I think there’s a way to make masteries a little more immersive and I think it can be achieved without taking anything away from the current system, forcing anybody to do more work or undermining the work already done by players.

I think all it needs is bonus experience in performing various activities. So, when you’re gliding, you’re accruing a small amount of experience towards your gliding mastery. When you’re fighting alongside the exhalted, you’re accruing a little xp towards exhalted acceptance. Something like that. You can still gather experience anywhere in the jungle, as you do now, to unlock these masteries, but you could also focus on one you’re interested in (e.g. exhalted acceptance) and feel like you’ve really worked towards it specifically. Just my 2c.

The ideas you mentioned for mastering other masteries sound good, but what do you think of basing the Gliding Mastery off of minutes spent gliding vs. experience gained killing or doing events?

Eidolonemesis.5640:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

@PopeUrban – that’s a clever way to build on what’s there. Let’s just hope we never hear Nalla say, “I’ve seen your face in my dream!” That would lead me to jumping off a cliff with no glider.

@Misguided – nice one!

@Eidolonemesis – now that you mention it, I’m trying to imagine what will happen when future masteries are added. Given the way it works now, it seems likely we’ll be doing exactly the same things to get those as we are to get the current ones. I don’t want to think of it as grind, but I dread that a day might come when it starts to feel that way to me.

I think there’s a way to make masteries a little more immersive and I think it can be achieved without taking anything away from the current system, forcing anybody to do more work or undermining the work already done by players.

I think all it needs is bonus experience in performing various activities. So, when you’re gliding, you’re accruing a small amount of experience towards your gliding mastery. When you’re fighting alongside the exhalted, you’re accruing a little xp towards exhalted acceptance. Something like that. You can still gather experience anywhere in the jungle, as you do now, to unlock these masteries, but you could also focus on one you’re interested in (e.g. exhalted acceptance) and feel like you’ve really worked towards it specifically. Just my 2c.

The ideas you mentioned for mastering other masteries sound good, but what do you think of basing the Gliding Mastery off of minutes spent gliding vs. experience gained killing or doing events?

I am all for getting extra xp towards gliding mastery for every second (or minute) you spend in the air, but I think it’ll have to be a bonus on top of what’s already there so as not to disadvantage players who have already done the hard yards in the existing system, or those who like the system the way it is.

Eidolonemesis.5640:

For example, Glider Basics would require players to do 30 minutes of gliding

I had previously proposed receiving some small xp for every second you spend in the air. I think, if I understand you correctly, you’re proposing getting an appropriately larger chunk of xp every time a player accumulates 30 minutes of gliding (though they don’t necessarily have to glide for an entire 30 minutes)?

Either way is fine, as long as the 30 minutes is not lost in case of a DC.