Guild Wars 2

Part 1: How did the expansion go?

Part 2: The content drought

Part 3: Season 3 and major overhauls

Part 4: Masteries

Part 5: Elite Specializations

Part 6: Raiding

Part 7: Guild Halls

Part 8: new Profession: Scribe

Part 9: The Revenant

Part 10: PvP and WvW

Part 11: The Heart of the Maguuma and its Adventures

Part 12: Legendary Equipment and Breakbars

Part 13: The Summary

I am sharing this here because I believe WP did an awesome job, no, grande job in wording the thoughts many of us had. A few more videos are incoming, I’ll update this list. I personally agree with the majority of what he’s said so far, possibly we’re optimistic gamers. But there are less optimistic people out there and their judgements are equally valid. Please, discuss as you see fit, but keep it civil.

Cool, he mentioned these in a vid yesterday but it looks like I know what I will be watching tonight.

I don’t agree with a lot of what he says, but then again, I’ve never (personally) rated him as any sort of GW2 authority anyway.

The biggest problems I have with Wooden Potatoes are that, first, while he is very knowledgeable about the game, he does let ArenaNet influence his opinion more than he should (being straight up told on twitter that he should focus on the last raid when it dropped even though he had not originally planned to do so, for instance) and his tendency to blow off other opinions as trivial and temporary (again, we see that clearly in his second video here when he shrugs off raiding concerns as solely a result of the content drought – when those concerns persist heavily today).

And to be clear – I’m not saying he is a paid Anet shill. He definitely isn’t. But it is obvious that he takes at least some probably unintentional direction from them in what and how he covers things, probably from his respect for people at the company (which can be both a bad and a good thing).

That said, I do agree with some of what he said. I absolutely love season 3 of the living story and see the great work the anet teams are doing.

Except the bits that aren’t facts of course, like fractals being an utter disaster at HoT’s launch, which is subjective, entirely subjective.

Randulf.7614:

Except the bits that aren’t facts of course, like fractals being an utter disaster at HoT’s launch, which is subjective, entirely subjective.

You do realize that fractals were pretty abandoned right?? He basically said that fractals got so much attention that it has become one of the best parts of the game and that he loves fractals now. Did you even finish the videos?? sigh if you didn’t, then technically you haven’t even earned the right to comment on the material.

Blaeys.3102:

The biggest problems I have with Wooden Potatoes are that, first, while he is very knowledgeable about the game, he does let ArenaNet influence his opinion more than he should (being straight up told on twitter that he should focus on the last raid when it dropped even though he had not originally planned to do so, for instance) and his tendency to blow off other opinions as trivial and temporary (again, we see that clearly in his second video here when he shrugs off raiding concerns as solely a result of the content drought – when those concerns persist heavily today).

And to be clear – I’m not saying he is a paid Anet shill. He definitely isn’t. But it is obvious that he takes at least some probably unintentional direction from them in what and how he covers things, probably from his respect for people at the company (which can be both a bad and a good thing).

That said, I do agree with some of what he said. I absolutely love season 3 of the living story and see the great work the anet teams are doing.

Video 4 has some very good critiques on the mastery system. I am personally a very optimistic person, so I’m not quickly annoyed or bothered by an anet decision, more than that I just think “shame”.
But some points I am peeved about. The underwhelming mastery system, the lack of lore in unlocking stuff, or involvement of events in the story. And thirdly, the playerbase attitude. I feel like people have been a lot more negative than they needed to be, especially the unlocking of the elite specs. I had no trouble unlocking them before the exp nerf, I consider myself a regular casual.

Adry.7512:

Randulf.7614:

Except the bits that aren’t facts of course, like fractals being an utter disaster at HoT’s launch, which is subjective, entirely subjective.

You do realize that fractals were pretty abandoned right?? He basically said that fractals got so much attention that it has become one of the best parts of the game and that he loves fractals now. Did you even finish the videos?? sigh if you didn’t, then technically you haven’t even earned the right to comment on the material.

Yes, I watched them all. Fractals were not “awful, like really terrible” regardless to whether they are now in an even better state now or whether he acknowledges it. I loved fractals back then, I love fractals when they first launched and I love them now. At no point in their history is it a fact to say that they were “really terrible”.

I also don’t agree that HoT was bad on launch, although I appreciate that is his opinion and that of many others in the game, so that’s just a difference of opinion (one of many I have when I view his videos).

I also don’t agree the Current Events are “fantastic”. We have had some great ones with Caladbolg and the bandit bosses and executioner. But, whilst I agree with him the Current Events are a structurally nice idea, the quality has varied considerably and that has been reflected in pretty much every forum feedback thread I have read on them.

Was 2016 the best year for the game? Hugely subjective and perhaps slanted more to the pve side of things. 2013 felt stronger – we had a huge number of new features, new fractals, living story (despite the obvious issues with LS1), the start of more challenging boss mechanics with Teq, Marionette and Breachmaker, more festivals and a more lively WvW. 2016 was not WvW’s finest year imo.

Yes, I have watched the videos, but they are his opinions. They are not (all) statements of facts (there are some facts in there ofc) and I don’t really think he passes his reviews off as such.

Randulf.7614:

Adry.7512:

Randulf.7614:

Except the bits that aren’t facts of course, like fractals being an utter disaster at HoT’s launch, which is subjective, entirely subjective.

You do realize that fractals were pretty abandoned right?? He basically said that fractals got so much attention that it has become one of the best parts of the game and that he loves fractals now. Did you even finish the videos?? sigh if you didn’t, then technically you haven’t even earned the right to comment on the material.

Yes, I watched them all. Fractals were not “awful, like really terrible” regardless to whether they are now in an even better state now or whether he acknowledges it. I loved fractals back then, I love fractals when they first launched and I love them now. At no point in their history is it a fact to say that they were “really terrible”.

I also don’t agree that HoT was bad on launch, although I appreciate that is his opinion and that of many others in the game, so that’s just a difference of opinion (one of many I have when I view his videos).

I also don’t agree the Current Events are “fantastic”. We have had some great ones with Caladbolg and the bandit bosses and executioner. But, whilst I agree with him the Current Events are a structurally nice idea, the quality has varied considerably and that has been reflected in pretty much every forum feedback thread I have read on them.

Was 2016 the best year for the game? Hugely subjective and perhaps slanted more to the pvp side of things. 2013 felt stronger – we had a huge number of new features, new fractals, living story (despite the obvious issues with LS1), the start of more challenging boss mechanics with Teq, Marionette and Breachmaker, more festivals and a more lively WvW. 2016 was not WvW’s finest year imo.

Yes, I have watched the videos, but they are his opinions. They are not (all) statements of facts (there are some facts in there ofc) and I don’t really think he passes his reviews off as such.

I understand you have a personal opinion, but in general terms….it wasn’t.

Adry.7512:

I understand you have a personal opinion, but in general terms….it wasn’t.

Translation: “You are wrong and your opinion does not matter.”

humm i actually wanted to rush the pve content wich made me quitting pve and keep getting stopped due the requirements of the materies, since i was playing just for the sake of ending the main story wich i didnt care that much, pve is a “bit ugly in a way” due is spam cleave/aoe (to catter bad players) gameplay.

Raids felt another aoe spam race… wich a more mandatory builds if u wanted to have a party.

i just hope Anet reduces the aoe and cleave skills so the game gets better….pve need to be nerfed (since classes are dumbly designed to make player feel good in pvespamway) so pvp can prevail with less 111111 spam, and players get better overall.

WP videos are well-constructed and presented, but I gotta disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, especially concerning raids (to clarify, I’m not against raids, I think there is room for them in GW2, but he tends to imply that it’s the best thing to ever happen to GW2, which is highly subjective)

Anyway, it brings more publicity to GW2, so it can’t hurt, as long as it’s not the only voice that is heard.

I agree with most of what wooden potatoes said in his first 3 videos. However, I have to say that I’m against most of what he says on his masteries video. He makes is sound like masteries were one of the worst parts of the expansion, which I believe they were far from it. You know what would have been worse? Just leveling to get levels so that you can play the next story episode. Sounds ridiculous, right?, but that is how most mmos do it and that is how gw2 did it before HoT. In fact, I have to say I almost completely disagree with him. I am one of those who believe it DID take too much experience to lvl masteries before the HoT overhaul. Saying that masteries are account bound makes no logical sense to me as a reason for why they should require more experience. If you play and experience all the HoT dynamic events, story, and meta events and lvl your masteries along the way evenly with your game progression than that is perfect. While you are playing the content, at the same time you are feeling progression from the masteries. However, if you finish all the dynamic events, story, meta events, and are still required to grind meta events again and again to gain enough experience for a mastery than I find that bad whether the masteries are account bound or not. Why? Because I find repeating the same content over and over again boring and feel you shouldn’t feel forced to do this. It doesn’t matter if masteries are account bound or not, “fun” has the same definition for me regardless, and thats the objective of a game for developers, to make the audience have fun (not to make the audience put in more time simply because they feel like “account bound” features should require more time). I believe another major downfall of the masteries were the points locked behind gold on adventures. I believe getting gold in all the adventures in HoT is one of the hardest things to do in the game, and masteries are locked behind them. The adventures themselves weren’t that bad, it was just being forced to play them to a high level. If people want to compete on the leader boards for adventures, thats one thing. However, in certain adventures, there is not much leeway around getting gold and ranking high on the leaderboards. If mastery points are required for leveling than everyone should be able to acquire them. I have a hard time believing everyone at Anet got gold on all the adventures. Finally, yes, some of the masteries were boring and mostly just “gates”. However, I found a lot of them very good. I found all the gliding line amazing. Itzel language should have had more benefits than just a vendor. It should have allowed you to speak to many Itzel that you couldn’t understand before to get lore and other information from them. The same thing could be said for Nuhoch language and Exalted exceptance. However, that is really a small fix. Even today they could add more npcs that require Nuhoch and Itzel language. However, it would have been nice for them to give you useful advice at the beginning of the expansion like explaining that Wyverns are vulnerable to their own eggs. I don’t believe it was the actual mastery that was bad, it was just its implementation. Itzel poison wasn’t the best, but it was better than nothing. I believe once again that just having more areas to explore that had itzel poison would have made it fine. Yes, I have to agree that all the boss “challenge” masteries and exalted assistance were bad and felt like feelers. However, these were a small percent of the masteries. I believe ideas behind all the rest of the “map” HoT masteries were good. I didn’t think the raid masteries were that bad either. After all, they should only be in raid areas. I guess the video made it sound like he was complaining an awful lot about many of the actual masteries themselves (and not saying it was mostly implementation). I think its fine if you have this opinion. However, if you have it, you should explain why this is your opinion and give an example of a mastery you would like to see that fits your opinion. I didn’t see wooden potatoes do this. It definitely would have been nice for him to give us multiple examples of masteries that he would have liked in the game.

Myhr.9108:

WP videos are well-constructed and presented, but I gotta disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, especially concerning raids (to clarify, I’m not against raids, I think there is room for them in GW2, but he tends to imply that it’s the best thing to ever happen to GW2, which is highly subjective)

Anyway, it brings more publicity to GW2, so it can’t hurt, as long as it’s not the only voice that is heard.

I personally love raids, they give me a bit of challenge I have been yearning for. My experience in the personal story has been one of low concern. I mean that in the sense that “it doesn’t matter what I do, I win”. You understand what I mean, I can completely slack off, and still “win” and that doesn’t sit right by me. GW2 lacks something GW1 had and that is a fail condition. Missions reset when an important NPC dies, or when an objective lost or not captured in time. But in GW2 you can endlessly try again and again, ressing (or downright ignoring) important NPCs, with only the breaking of your armor as a real limiter. So for me raids have been very welcomed as it’s content I have to actively pursuit progress and have true fail conditions.

But I agree, not everyone may see it that way, for some people the bar may be too high. I personally just see them as fractals T5 (if I won’t get a rain of rotten tomatoes for saying that) and think that anyone who’s decent in T4 fractals really should try getting into raids because they’re actually not that much harder, the only difference is that they require a little more organizing.

But yes, they may not be the “best thing for gw2 since sliced bread” but they’re one of the best things in my opinion.

Randulf.7614:

Adry.7512:

Randulf.7614:

Except the bits that aren’t facts of course, like fractals being an utter disaster at HoT’s launch, which is subjective, entirely subjective.

You do realize that fractals were pretty abandoned right?? He basically said that fractals got so much attention that it has become one of the best parts of the game and that he loves fractals now. Did you even finish the videos?? sigh if you didn’t, then technically you haven’t even earned the right to comment on the material.

Yes, I watched them all. Fractals were not “awful, like really terrible” regardless to whether they are now in an even better state now or whether he acknowledges it. I loved fractals back then, I love fractals when they first launched and I love them now. At no point in their history is it a fact to say that they were “really terrible”.

I love fractals, have done them since the 2nd week when they were introduced way back, capped on the max fractal level every time and spent weeks/months playing them daily. No they were never terrible, but they were certainly NOT in a good place. The fractal community was tiny and people did not play them. This changed over time with rewards and multiple reworks.

So while WP might be exagerating a bit and fractals sure were fun, I think he is refering to the state they were in compared to where they should have been at the time (the major pve endgame dungeon content).

Myhr.9108:

WP videos are well-constructed and presented, but I gotta disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, especially concerning raids (to clarify, I’m not against raids, I think there is room for them in GW2, but he tends to imply that it’s the best thing to ever happen to GW2, which is highly subjective)

Anyway, it brings more publicity to GW2, so it can’t hurt, as long as it’s not the only voice that is heard.

This is exactly the way to look at raids from a non raider perspective. Raids have added another layer of content to open the game up to more players. As long as there is enough open world and non-raid content to go around, it should be fine. Now before someone comes along and yells:“but the raid loot and rewards and legendary armor”… ascended gear availability was also slowly introduced into the game.

All in all I enjoy WPs videos (even when they do tend to be on the lengthy side) and while I do believe he does cut arenanet some slack here and there, he has been very critical on issues in the past. Remember, one does not have to be ecstatic about something to be okay with it.

Cyninja.2954:

Myhr.9108:

WP videos are well-constructed and presented, but I gotta disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, especially concerning raids (to clarify, I’m not against raids, I think there is room for them in GW2, but he tends to imply that it’s the best thing to ever happen to GW2, which is highly subjective)

Anyway, it brings more publicity to GW2, so it can’t hurt, as long as it’s not the only voice that is heard.

This is exactly the way to look at raids from a non raider perspective. Raids have added another layer of content to open the game up to more players.

There’s another side to this though. They scared away a lot of players as well. Remember, that, while for some potential players Raids are a content that can help bring them in, for others it will work in exactly opposite direction. They will hear about raids, and decide it’s not a game for them.

And, before someone will speak up about how Raids are only a part of the game, and there’s so much other things to do, remember that this won’t matter. It’s the perception of things that will decide whether those players will want to join. As far as the outside world is concerned, GW2 is now a raid game. With all the positive and negative consequences of that classification.

So, from non-raider perspective, it doesn’t mean that the game will bring in more people. It means that the game population profile will shift away from the playing style the non-raiders prefer.

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Myhr.9108:

WP videos are well-constructed and presented, but I gotta disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, especially concerning raids (to clarify, I’m not against raids, I think there is room for them in GW2, but he tends to imply that it’s the best thing to ever happen to GW2, which is highly subjective)

Anyway, it brings more publicity to GW2, so it can’t hurt, as long as it’s not the only voice that is heard.

This is exactly the way to look at raids from a non raider perspective. Raids have added another layer of content to open the game up to more players.

There’s another side to this though. They scared away a lot of players as well. Remember, that, while for some potential players Raids are a content that can help bring them in, for others it will work in exactly opposite direction. They will hear about raids, and decide it’s not a game for them.

And, before someone will speak up about how Raids are only a part of the game, and there’s so much other things to do, remember that this won’t matter. It’s the perception of things that will decide whether those players will want to join. As far as the outside world is concerned, GW2 is now a raid game. With all the positive and negative consequences of that classification.

So, from non-raider perspective, it doesn’t mean that the game will bring in more people. It means that the game population profile will shift away from the playing style the non-raiders prefer.

Sounds like a really good thing then.

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Myhr.9108:

WP videos are well-constructed and presented, but I gotta disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, especially concerning raids (to clarify, I’m not against raids, I think there is room for them in GW2, but he tends to imply that it’s the best thing to ever happen to GW2, which is highly subjective)

Anyway, it brings more publicity to GW2, so it can’t hurt, as long as it’s not the only voice that is heard.

This is exactly the way to look at raids from a non raider perspective. Raids have added another layer of content to open the game up to more players.

There’s another side to this though. They scared away a lot of players as well. Remember, that, while for some potential players Raids are a content that can help bring them in, for others it will work in exactly opposite direction. They will hear about raids, and decide it’s not a game for them.

And, before someone will speak up about how Raids are only a part of the game, and there’s so much other things to do, remember that this won’t matter. It’s the perception of things that will decide whether those players will want to join. As far as the outside world is concerned, GW2 is now a raid game. With all the positive and negative consequences of that classification.

So, from non-raider perspective, it doesn’t mean that the game will bring in more people. It means that the game population profile will shift away from the playing style the non-raiders prefer.

From my completely anecdotal and subjective experience, that’s not at all the perception of GW2. All of my friends that have played GW2 have only been casual fans of the game, and when they heard of raids, they still thought of the game as “GW2 with raids”, not “Raid centrilized WoW clone #xxx”. They still think of Fractals and WvW as the primary endgame content(although a couple of them aren’t aware of them), with expectations of living story updates.

One of my buddies, a big WoW player, is the exception, and he got the game with a HoT sale. Even he didn’t buy the game with the expectation of a “raid game”.

These should be interesting to think about when they’re all out. I like WP’s videos because I agree with some of his opinions, but greatly disagree with others – it’s often food for thought and nice to see the opposing view presented in a good manner. So far, aside from mention of raids, I’m agreeing with a lot of what’s been said so far. Although, that last link made me quite hungry.

Blaeys.3102:

The biggest problems I have with Wooden Potatoes are that, first, while he is very knowledgeable about the game, he does let ArenaNet influence his opinion more than he should (being straight up told on twitter that he should focus on the last raid when it dropped even though he had not originally planned to do so, for instance)

While I disagree with a fair chunk of his personal opinions, I don’t think this is true at all. In this particular case, he was guided to look at the raid wing because the lore was literally designed for him – they outright said it on a dev stream. I know that if I made something with one person in particular in mind, I’d want that person to see it. Likewise, if something had been made for me, I’d be glad when directed to it.

^I know….what’s with the Sandwich? Am I out of the loop?

i believe his review of se3 in terms of content is kindoff biased and carried by the overall improvement in the story department other than that i mostly agree with his claims

I think he’s correct on most account. It’s a good recap of what happened since season 2, if anything.

I will watch his video on elite specs when it’s out.

Amaimon.7823:

Part 1: How did the expansion go?

Part 2: The content drought

Part 3: Season 3 and major overhauls

Part 4: Masteries

Part 5: Elite Specializations

I am sharing this here because I believe WP did an awesome job, no, grande job in wording the thoughts many of us had. A few more videos are incoming, I’ll update this list.

Umm, your “part 5” link leads to a google search of sandwiches…

got to say after watching all the videos and listen to what woodenpotatoes and not trying to read any thing into it at all . yes for the most part i will say he got a lot of it right cases in points

A. masteries systems should not ever been and for new players it can be a pain , even more so with meta events and almost like raids bosses tied into it . when you do hot stuff . maybe the masteries system will be updated or not or maybe wiped out in updates

B. content while we got some new content in the last two years . still tho it feels like the main part of the game is lacking in content still . and could use more with out meta events or boss tied to them . think this is where it really hit for me after playing the first guild wars since it first came out to the gw2 . going from questing all the time to no questing all the time now. and just doing these hearts with no story or anything tied to them at all .boring for me . and it is made even far more worse am sure for the new players as well. when they try to do this and maybe get side tracked by all the meta and world boss stuff in the pve maps today .

C. Fractals should been put with dungeons . it would made the dungeons far more better maybe .

D. dungeons left to die . but could have should have been so much more

E. Current Events meta events made the game far more worse in my opinion these things should have been put with the raid stuff and keep fully out of pve maps and stuff all together .

F. leather farming well i think we all know how well that went or did not go . and needs to still really be fixed more then it was with the ls story stuff really bad way to fix it.

G. raids could be a good thing or they can be a bad thing. no matter how you look at it tho they should not done it the way they did and let the rest of the game just die or fall off the map if you will

H. gold does not flow well enough in this game unlike other games like wow eso and so forth . alone with upping prices in game to buy things great way to kill the flow of gold and not encouraging players to go after and spend it like water . great job there well very done .

the rest i will wait for when it comes out and update then . but for now this is my opinion of the videos so far i seen and with out any thing read into or add into this at all ,.

i forgot also soul and acount bound stuff should be changed and made shareable across the whole acount . for the other toons to use some of the items instead of making them go out and do it all over again taking up more bag and bank space . just make it all acount bound and also make it more easy to get rid of items once done with them or not wanting to use that item no more

Core Tyria Mastery points are pain in the behind to get and there should be more of them. Those Living Story Season 2 Achievements are complete garbage to try and get even if you own it.

Swagger.1459:

Amaimon.7823:

Part 1: How did the expansion go?

Part 2: The content drought

Part 3: Season 3 and major overhauls

Part 4: Masteries

Part 5: Elite Specializations

I am sharing this here because I believe WP did an awesome job, no, grande job in wording the thoughts many of us had. A few more videos are incoming, I’ll update this list.

Umm, your “part 5” link leads to a google search of sandwiches…

yup, it’s just a placeholder of the next announced video. I think he said there were going to be 6, but he doesn’t anounce the next title until the end of the video so I don’t know the title of the 6th video yet.
And who doesn’t love sandwiches?

I’ll replace the link with something sadder

Vyrulisse.1246:

Core Tyria Mastery points are pain in the behind to get and there should be more of them. Those Living Story Season 2 Achievements are complete garbage to try and get even if you own it.

Are you na or eu I could help you with them if your the later, need to shake the rust of and they were fun the first time I did them

I listen to my own opinion from playing the game myself. Does not matter what anyone else decides they like to not. I like what I play and no one can tell me something is wrong or terrible or bad about it if I enjoy it. So nope sorry not gonna listen to someone’s opinion, it’s theirs and theirs alone.

PyrateSilly.4710:

I listen to my own opinion from playing the game myself. Does not matter what anyone else decides they like to not. I like what I play and no one can tell me something is wrong or terrible or bad about it if I enjoy it. So nope sorry not gonna listen to someone’s opinion, it’s theirs and theirs alone.

Especially when his opinion is self-inflated and lasts for, what, 30+ minutes per entry?
No thanks.

PyrateSilly.4710:

I listen to my own opinion from playing the game myself. Does not matter what anyone else decides they like to not. I like what I play and no one can tell me something is wrong or terrible or bad about it if I enjoy it.

So if you like it and there’s absolutely no chance of him changing your mind, where’s the harm in listening differing opinions? How do you even know what he said if you didn’t listen to it?

PyrateSilly.4710:

So nope sorry not gonna listen to someone’s opinion, it’s theirs and theirs alone.

I don’t know how old you are, but this is bad recipe for reality. Humanity would still live in caves if we didn’t exchange opinions.

It is just natural that you would tend to agree with Woodenpotatoes on some parts and to some extend and disagree with him on other parts.
Therefore I just want to address only two of his statements

1. Raids being awesome

As a casual player with a full time job (unlike Woodenpotaoes, who’s full time job is to dedicate his time to Youtube/Twitch and GW2 content, IIRC), Raids have been nothing I was looking forward to and would rate significant for the vast majority of players. It is a niche aspect of the game, that is bound to specific times to play (organization of the team, fairly long game time to finish without a pause etc.) , very specific build & group composition and a very complex game play.
For such a small part of the game, the actual (and perceived) Dev time devoted to it was huge and general PvE and QoL updates + balancing seem to have been set to a lower priority. This has contributed to the “content drought”.

2. Character bound masteries

I agree that masteries should matter more and the acquisition was gated behind some strange walls and concepts, but character bound masteries would be a nightmare for me. The fun of the unlocking process will never outweigh the repetitiveness of getting MPs on each character and gaining XP for levelling up that mastery.

Gorani.7205:

It is just natural that you would tend to agree with Woodenpotatoes on some parts and to some extend and disagree with him on other parts.
Therefore I just want to address only two of his statements

1. Raids being awesome

As a casual player with a full time job (unlike Woodenpotaoes, who’s full time job is to dedicate his time to Youtube/Twitch and GW2 content, IIRC), Raids have been nothing I was looking forward to and would rate significant for the vast majority of players. It is a niche aspect of the game, that is bound to specific times to play (organization of the team, fairly long game time to finish without a pause etc.) , very specific build & group composition and a very complex game play.
For such a small part of the game, the actual (and perceived) Dev time devoted to it was huge and general PvE and QoL updates + balancing seem to have been set to a lower priority. This has contributed to the “content drought”.

2. Character bound masteries

I agree that masteries should matter more and the acquisition was gated behind some strange walls and concepts, but character bound masteries would be a nightmare for me. The fun of the unlocking process will never outweigh the repetitiveness of getting MPs on each character and gaining XP for levelling up that mastery.

Couldn’t agree more, Gorani. +1.

Gorani.7205:

It is just natural that you would tend to agree with Woodenpotatoes on some parts and to some extend and disagree with him on other parts.
Therefore I just want to address only two of his statements

1. Raids being awesome

As a casual player with a full time job (unlike Woodenpotaoes, who’s full time job is to dedicate his time to Youtube/Twitch and GW2 content, IIRC), Raids have been nothing I was looking forward to and would rate significant for the vast majority of players. It is a niche aspect of the game, that is bound to specific times to play (organization of the team, fairly long game time to finish without a pause etc.) , very specific build & group composition and a very complex game play.
For such a small part of the game, the actual (and perceived) Dev time devoted to it was huge and general PvE and QoL updates + balancing seem to have been set to a lower priority. This has contributed to the “content drought”.

2. Character bound masteries

I agree that masteries should matter more and the acquisition was gated behind some strange walls and concepts, but character bound masteries would be a nightmare for me. The fun of the unlocking process will never outweigh the repetitiveness of getting MPs on each character and gaining XP for levelling up that mastery.

He is by no means the first person to champion the idea of character bound masteries in fact many people felt that way when HoT launched. I know many people who don’t even bother trying to unlock Masteries. Anets answer to this was to increase exp slightly which really didn’t do much.

Many people have mains and the exp required to unlock masteries is bloated for the sol sake of being account bound. If it was character bound then obviously that much exp would no longer be required thus they would be gotten much faster and it wouldn’t be so much of a nightmare to redo them on other characters at all.

The mastery points obviously would remain account bound since mastery points are tied to achievements. One would think masteries would unlock with exp at a rate that an alt can unlock all the required masteries for story while playing the story itself and never hit a wall in that regard. Masteries are supposed to replace levels after all and levels aren’t account bound so masteries would in theory be as fast as normal leveling to unlock if they were account bound. Oh and usable with tombs and other exp items as I have way to many of those as it is.

People used to post those recommendations all the time on these forums but just because people stopped here doesn’t mean those flames died down on the rest of the internet.

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

OriOri.8724:

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

Agreed.

Adry.7512:

OriOri.8724:

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

Agreed.

That all depends on how many characters a person has and while its true many people have used up all their character slots there are many that still have a single main and use those slots for mules. So while account bound sounds alright for altoholics it’s not that great for the single main toon user. I beat HoT by grinding to get over the mastery gates pre patch and then when everything was done I was still no where near close to maxing masteries. Some single users grinded dungeons while others loaded up on the exp boosters whenever they did DS and yet other used holidays. You can even look around while playing the game and you’ll notice many people are not at the mastery cap of 181. They bought HoT of course to even get mastery level by their name in the first place but many are no where near the cap and the ones I know went and beat HoT but had no desire to sit around and grind out masteries doing the same content they already did on their single toon. Those people quit but eventually came back like myself due to LS3 and had no problem leveling the much smaller exp cap needed for the ancient magics mastery line. If their going to reduce the exp caps for mastery anyways like they have then it might as well be character locked. A mule or rarely played alt doesn’t need fully unlocked masteries anyway its the same as making your character level account bound.

I know you guys are entitled to your opinions, but when I read these comments I envision a bunch of oil baron monopoly-guys scoffing and struggling to keep their monocle from falling out.

“Harumph! I cannot approve of this plebeian Wooden Potatoes. What a crass, uncouth, boorish man! I certainly don’t agree with all he says, wot wot!”

Xenon.4537:

I know you guys are entitled to your opinions, but when I read these comments I envision a bunch of oil baron monopoly-guys scoffing and struggling to keep their monocle from falling out.

“Harumph! I cannot approve of this plebeian Wooden Potatoes. What a crass, uncouth, boorish man! I certainly don’t agree with all he says, wot wot!”

Some people here never played mmo’s before so anything that Anet does looks AAAAMMMAAZZZINNG!

actually.. they artwork is amazing ._., still could have a more natural feel for building design.

Alot of WP vids I open and close within 30sec. Lots of repetitive speculation with pretty much nothing to go on. Sometimes though I do like them.

Adry.7512:

OriOri.8724:

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

Agreed.

I think the best aproach would’ve been a combination of the current exp grind, and an unlocking point that’s character bound. That way it would make some sense.
“don’t glide until you did the story chapter where get the glider”
“don’t eat mushrooms until you’ve actually learned to”
“don’t autoloot around you until you killed a demon who gave you a million long invisible arms”

Justine.6351:

Alot of WP vids I open and close within 30sec. Lots of repetitive speculation with pretty much nothing to go on. Sometimes though I do like them.

like the content of any other gamer streammer

Gorani.7205:

For such a small part of the game, the actual (and perceived) Dev time devoted to it was huge and general PvE and QoL updates + balancing seem to have been set to a lower priority. This has contributed to the “content drought”.

Uhhh raid content and “general pve and qol updates + balancing” are handled by completely different developers. It’s not one set of devs choosing to focus on raids over everything else. This has been said ad nauseam. Please stop conflating.

Amaimon.7823:

Adry.7512:

OriOri.8724:

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

Agreed.

I think the best aproach would’ve been a combination of the current exp grind, and an unlocking point that’s character bound. That way it would make some sense.
“don’t glide until you did the story chapter where get the glider”
“don’t eat mushrooms until you’ve actually learned to”
“don’t autoloot around you until you killed a demon who gave you a million long invisible arms”

If you mean gather the experience once, and then as soon as you get the points on another character they can immediately unlock that mastery, then yes. That would have been a substantially better approach than character bound masteries. But it would still introduce needless grind for mastery points unless they were handed out like candy.

There are 9 classes, so its not unreasonable to expect to be able to run through the content with your main and 8 toons to experience it on all 9 classes. Yet if we had to re-grind for mastery points for every toon, it would be a huge chore, and would drive a lot of players away.

OriOri.8724:

Amaimon.7823:

Adry.7512:

OriOri.8724:

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

Agreed.

I think the best aproach would’ve been a combination of the current exp grind, and an unlocking point that’s character bound. That way it would make some sense.
“don’t glide until you did the story chapter where get the glider”
“don’t eat mushrooms until you’ve actually learned to”
“don’t autoloot around you until you killed a demon who gave you a million long invisible arms”

If you mean gather the experience once, and then as soon as you get the points on another character they can immediately unlock that mastery, then yes. That would have been a substantially better approach than character bound masteries. But it would still introduce needless grind for mastery points unless they were handed out like candy.

There are 9 classes, so its not unreasonable to expect to be able to run through the content with your main and 8 toons to experience it on all 9 classes. Yet if we had to re-grind for mastery points for every toon, it would be a huge chore, and would drive a lot of players away.

no, I meant unlock with exp and points as usual now, but the mastery doesn’t work until you’ve also done a mission or passed a story step that involves that mastery. Some masteries as easy as unlocking it by purchasing at a specific merchant, or given as a reward after an event, and some are part as a reward of story steps. Say the nuhoch mastery doesn’t unlock until you as an individual character saved the nuhoch village (random example), you unlock merchants by doing an X number of events associated by the people, or you unlock gliding by visiting a master who crafts you your first glider.

He made a lot of very strong points about elite specialization.

100% agree that they’re basically handing roles to the wrong classes.

It’s great that chronomancers and scrappers get the option to be good tanks with their elite specialization, but warriors and guardians should also be competent tanks (their class fantasy) and yet they are not, because their tanking does not come from an elite specialization.

The same goes for healing, nobody made a ranger to heal. Instead you’d expect that to be given to water elementalists and guardians, yet those are poor healers in comparison because it comes from an elite specialization, while the elementalist and guardian healing is a core class component.

In the long term, elite specialization could create a strong dissonance between the class fantasy and what they are actually good at. It seems to point to my warrior being more likely to get competitive at healing than at tanking, which is complete nonsense. And if that’s how it’s going to be, I would prefer elite specializations to enhance a core function of the class instead of expanding into new roles and areas of expertise that are more or less related to the players expectations of what that class can do.

OriOri.8724:

I disagree that character bound masteries would have been a better approach. All it would have done is spread out the grind somewhat. But eventually it would require more grind to get all of your characters their masteries than it currently requires.

Not necessarily. Make it 1/9th the required XP and they would have effectively matched the experience, with the exception of altoholics(like me) who have multiples of the same class.

Bearhugger.4326:

He made a lot of very strong points about elite specialization.

100% agree that they’re basically handing roles to the wrong classes.

It’s great that chronomancers and scrappers get the option to be good tanks with their elite specialization, but warriors and guardians should also be competent tanks (their class fantasy) and yet they are not, because their tanking does not come from an elite specialization.

The same goes for healing, nobody made a ranger to heal. Instead you’d expect that to be given to water elementalists and guardians, yet those are poor healers in comparison because it comes from an elite specialization, while the elementalist and guardian healing is a core class component.

In the long term, elite specialization could create a strong dissonance between the class fantasy and what they are actually good at. It seems to point to my warrior being more likely to get competitive at healing than at tanking, which is complete nonsense. And if that’s how it’s going to be, I would prefer elite specializations to enhance a core function of the class instead of expanding into new roles and areas of expertise that are more or less related to the players expectations of what that class can do.

I just want to point out that the original Ranger, Aragorn, was a healer. Short of Mythic tier characters like the Elf-Lords, Rangers were the best healers in that setting.

Aeolus.3615:

Xenon.4537:

I know you guys are entitled to your opinions, but when I read these comments I envision a bunch of oil baron monopoly-guys scoffing and struggling to keep their monocle from falling out.

“Harumph! I cannot approve of this plebeian Wooden Potatoes. What a crass, uncouth, boorish man! I certainly don’t agree with all he says, wot wot!”

Some people here never played mmo’s before so anything that Anet does looks AAAAMMMAAZZZINNG!

actually.. they artwork is amazing ._., still could have a more natural feel for building design.

And some people have played a bunch of MMOs thought they all basically sucked and like this better. Liking this better than other MMOs I’ve played isn’t a function of me love this game unconditionally. It’s a function of not liking the way other MMOs were laid out.

I hated competing for resource nodes in any game where that was a thing. Didn’t like it at all. I don’t really like quest hubs, and what quest hubs do to a game. Follow the arrow, talk to the guy, wall of text, here’s a reward you may or may not need. No thanks.

As for the WP review, he’s entitled to his opinion but it is, after all, just one mans opinion. I agree with some of what he says, not all of it. It’s a good review, all things being equal.

I don’t agree with a lot of what he says, but I watch him because his enthusiasm is infectious.

I think his opinion is considerably more informed than the average player, as he takes suggestions on what to cover from his fanbase, and therefore plays in ways he’s not personally inclined to.

The big thing HoT did wrong was making raids way too important to the over all game. Classes live and die off of the balancing to raids aimed builds but for some reason it effects both wvw and open world pve. In a way anet is giving up there old game types for a new one and much smaller / less played. HoT kind of messed things up in that way.