Guild Wars 2

I know, I know, it’s been asked for a million times, but I feel it needs to be asked for yet again. If the admins have responded to it already, I’m having a heck of a time finding that, so apologies if that’s the case.

Simply put: please change the EXP / Mastery progress bar on the bottom of the screen to either be two separate bars or a toggled display!

Why is this necessary? Opinion, really, but there are a few hiccups I’ve found in the game that are mild frustrations:

• Can’t see my level: probably the most frustrating, because now I have to check my Hero tab every time I wander into a new zone in a map (or change maps) to see what level I’m scaled to. Not a huge problem as a Lv. 80 in full exotics, but sometimes it’s nice to know that you’re actually at the level you think you are by simply glancing down in the corner where my Mastery Rank now shows instead.
• No sense of EXP: I’m still earning EXP, obviously, but I’ve no way to track that any more. I still earn Spirit Shards when I level up (instead of skill points, which is a separate rant), but I have no idea when that is. If there’s another way to check my EXP progression, I’ve yet to find it.
• Maxed out bar gives illusion of no progress: furthermore, I’m stuck in that awful state of not having enough Tyrian Mastery Points to finish up the ranks I’ve maxed out, so it honestly looks like I’m making absolutely no progress whatsoever unless I’m in an expansion map. And while this is really just preference, it does make it hard for me too feel like anything I do is worthwhile. That little EXP bar gave me a nice little visual indicator to show that something as simple as logging or mining or punching a cliff bat in the face was working me steadily towards something.

Both myself and a few friends have expressed similar feelings about that last point there — it really does feel like we’re “stuck” in the game unless we go to the Heart of Thorns maps and grind. None of us particularly enjoy them (and I don’t have the points to finish my Fractals line anyway, so that feels moot too), and don’t have enough chances to play together to make the greater challenge feel worthwhile, especially now that everyone has moved on to LS3 content.

As a result, we’ve all kind of drifted away from the game because there’s really nothing left to say that we’re making progress beyond grinding in Hearth of Thorns or crafting, neither of which I (and others) have much like for.

So … yeah.

I get why it’s the way it is, and it does work — I just want to be vain about my own take on grinding and seeing a little meter progress across the bottom of my screen over and over to validate why I’m still playing the game. That’s literally it.