Guild Wars 2

I’ve played GW2 on and off for some time and only recently got HoT. I’ve been playing (again) for around 2 months now. My feedback thus is from the perspective of someone still relatively new to the expansion and the game in its current form.

Everything I want to do is locked behind something else, often not even remotely related.

I need to finish event chains in order to unlock activities. I need to unlock (high) scores in activities in order to unlock masteries. I need to unlock masteries in order to unlock map elements, or means of travel, or QoL changes. And so forth, and so on. Layer upon layer of stuff I need to do first in order to do the stuff I want.

Two specific examples that really grind my gears:

A) At 61 mastery points spent, Gliding and Legendary Crafting are the only ones that feel “worth it”. Almost all others I only unlocked because I had to, or because they were a means to an end (Exalted Mastery for the specialization collections is the worst offender here)

B) Jumping puzzles. I am sick and tired of them. There are too many, a ton of content is locked behind them. From mastery points to legendary crafting … jumping puzzles everywhere. Why? I am playing an MMO, not some indie platformer.

To a certain degree I understand the design, since there’s probably an interest in promoting other game modes. But it increasingly feels like a chore. What happened to “you can have fun instead of having to prepare to have fun first”?

There are only 2 (or 3 with the new one in Ember Bay, I believe) Jumping Puzzles that award Mastery Points. No need to do them all. I don’t know which ones are required for a particular Legendary, but Mesmers offer portals, especially on Daily Achievement days. Easy-peasy.

You can skip Adventures and still max out your Masteries. If you don’t feel a Mastery Track’s benefits are worth it, you can skip maxing that line. With each Living World Episode release, the surplus of Mastery Points grows, so you can skip more and more content you’d rather not do.

Good luck.

Fractal mastery is definitely worth it.

Simply sounds like GW2 isnt the game for you.
Move on to a better game.

mauried.5608:

Simply sounds like GW2 isnt the game for you.
Move on to a better game.

This may be news to you but the world isn’t black and white – I can voice criticism for aspects of the game I otherwise enjoy.

I find adrenal mushroom very very useful, in fact, I think I’ve found all the masteries useful at different times. I also haven’t done all the activities and still have 12 mastery points left over (haven’t opened the raid ones yet though). I think I could still get another 15-20 of them if I really needed to.

I agree about the Jumping Puzzles. Mainly cause I have problems with my hands. But usually I can find a Mesmer to help. Even the EB one, which you need the stupid checkpoints.

Shwyx.8190:

What happened to “you can have fun instead of having to prepare to have fun first”?

Interesting. I had fun the whole way through my mastery adventure. If you were to make changes, what would they be to not effect my enjoyment of the game negatively?

Shwyx.8190:

What happened to “you can have fun instead of having to prepare to have fun first”?

They already implemented ascended gear afterwards, in order to do higher tier fractals you’ll need to grind to get your armor and infusions first because of agony resistance.
In GW1 you just had to do one part of a story mission to infuse your armor.

And I can’t stand the endless collections in GW2: You almost completed one, but you have to complete another one first which requires another one to progress.

With HoT and the new Living World maps, you’ll see more of the x locks y locks z:
In order to get to a point of interest in the newest map, you’ll have to get an elixir which requires you to farm ingredients. These ingridients do only drop if your character did the story (even if another character already did it).

I disagree largely.

Masteries give goals and objectives in what was becoming a mindless zerg game. It is much better to have to level a mastery so I can stand in a poison cloud to achieve some task (mastery point, hp, event lane), then it is to have just instantly completed the task the day that HoT came out and then never thought about again. Even if that poison mastery is very specific and doesn’t change any real game play. I now have some end game grind and I have to plan for the future.

There aren’t that many JP requirements and they really do try to spread out to different things to add variety.

Very much agree. Masteries drain my desire to play the game. You need to complete nearly all of them to craft the new legendary precursors. So I grind to finish one mastery only to see the next one takes even more grinding. So then I quit for awhile until I can bare the tedious grind again.

My suggestions:

1. Drop mastery points. These are just unnecessary gates. If you want people to play that content, make it worth playing and give repeatable rewards. Now they are played once, the person says, “Glad that’s kitten is over with,” and never touched again.

2. Reduce the XP amount for later masteries. Make them the same as getting to level 80. This game and its predecessor was never a game about leveling. It was about getting the max level and then playing the game. In fact, I was hoping GW2 would have eliminated the pointless exercise of leveling altogether.

3. Finally, make all mastery progression global. Don’t separate HoT masteries from the others. For those who want their spirit shards, make that its own selection in the mastery menu.

Anet will do this anyway. Anets pattern has always been come up with a fun idea, suck the fun out of it, keep it like that for X years, then change it to fun concept that it should have started as. Let’s just skip ahead. I’m already dreading the masteries for the next X-pack.

I dunno what’s the big deal abt masteries.. rest I can understand, like u say how masteries r useless.. I mean I been saying this a long time but no1 cares. Doubtful masteries are ever gonna be useful (majority-wise) but thats a sad truth. Tbh only reason I max my masteries in all track so I could buy gifts I need for craft legendary.. otherwise literally no reason. Like zero incentive at all. Exalted gathering..? Dunno, maybe if gathering anything was worth it.. but it’s not so y do I care it’s call exalted or even legendary gathering.. exactly cos I don’t wanna waste my time gather to make coppers

I mean leik the adventures I only have gold in like 1 or two (iirc), those just easy ones and I have silver at best in few other. Then I don’t even have eb jump puzzle so ye u can skip it who cares (not me)

But ther easier ones for jumping leik th e mushroom spelunker one.. think in td or somthin. So I suck at jump that, but I manage solo it anyway. Got my mes to map (not even elite), drop portal every unlikely jump and I end up just logging out on top of shroom near end.. then I log back and two portals later km at end. So ye not big deal it’s ez u approach like so

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You can skip Adventures and still max out your Masteries.

No, you absolutely can NOT. you have to do at least 6 or 7 of the new minigames to fully max everything. there are not enough points in everything-else to make up all the tiers. granted, you can pick a handful of the easiest ones, but you still MUST do them if you want completion

Well, let’s see. You need 126 HoT Mastery Points to fulfill every HoT Mastery Track. There are 164 HoT Mastery Points available. Adventures give 30 Mastery Points total.

164 – 30 = 134. Looks like there are enough Mastery Points available to max out all tracks and never touch an Adventure.

And many of those mastery points are hidden behind very difficult jumping/gliding puzzles, which I can’t do. I hate jumping puzzles and I am not very good at them, and no desire to spend my time trying to get better at something I hate.

redcomyn.4651:

And many of those mastery points are hidden behind very difficult jumping/gliding puzzles, which I can’t do. I hate jumping puzzles and I am not very good at them, and no desire to spend my time trying to get better at something I hate.

What specific mastery points do you think are “hidden” behind jumping or gliding?

That aside, I always thought the idea behind the “mastery” system was to reward those people willing to stretch their mastery of the game across many areas, which is why some points are available in fractals, some in exploration, some in the personal story, etc. There are very few players who actively enjoy every aspect of the game, so each of those areas forces nearly everyone to try things that might not necessarily like.

Should the game be designed so that people can get full mastery without mastering out most aspects of the game? Regardless of my opinion, ANet seems to think not.

The problem with the mastery points approach is that almost all of them are “all or nothing” things. You can’t gradually earn one. You have to do the jump, reach the location, beat the time etc. Imagine if there was an alternative way to earn the masteries, like just requiring a (huge) amount of XP or Karma or currencies. You could progress a little each day on that sort of thing. Right now I’ve kinda got all of the MPs I am likely to get (about 116), because I can’t or won’t do the required tasks for the others. I just don’t want/need them enough to spend time doing stuff I don’t enjoy.

But if there was an alternative very S-L-O-O-O-O-W way to make a little progress each day I’d be doing just that.

Actually, there are masteries that are pretty necessary. Many of the Itzel ones, most, if not all of the gliding ones, and others in the other lines. I am currently stuck at getting advanced gliding. Without that, there is a mastery point in the Bloodstone Fens that I can’t reach. I am one MP short for getting it. That is an example. I am in a catch 22 position. I need Advanced Gliding to get this MP, but I can’t get the MP without Advanced Gliding. Aarghh!

Shwyx.8190:

I’ve played GW2 on and off for some time and only recently got HoT. I’ve been playing (again) for around 2 months now. My feedback thus is from the perspective of someone still relatively new to the expansion and the game in its current form.

Everything I want to do is locked behind something else, often not even remotely related.

I need to finish event chains in order to unlock activities. I need to unlock (high) scores in activities in order to unlock masteries. I need to unlock masteries in order to unlock map elements, or means of travel, or QoL changes. And so forth, and so on. Layer upon layer of stuff I need to do first in order to do the stuff I want.

Two specific examples that really grind my gears:

A) At 61 mastery points spent, Gliding and Legendary Crafting are the only ones that feel “worth it”. Almost all others I only unlocked because I had to, or because they were a means to an end (Exalted Mastery for the specialization collections is the worst offender here)

B) Jumping puzzles. I am sick and tired of them. There are too many, a ton of content is locked behind them. From mastery points to legendary crafting … jumping puzzles everywhere. Why? I am playing an MMO, not some indie platformer.

To a certain degree I understand the design, since there’s probably an interest in promoting other game modes. But it increasingly feels like a chore. What happened to “you can have fun instead of having to prepare to have fun first”?

Yea, you missed all the discussion about this when HoT came out. Anet has decided that they will decide not only HOW you should play the game but WHEN as well (Metas). And I completely agree about the platforming taking over the game.

You will get tons of responses from people that it doesn’t matter because getting MP is easy and there are more than necessary to unlock everything. They either are incapable or purposefully refusing to understand the point that some of us want to play the modes and at the times we choose (like Anet stated when they created this game…)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, let’s see. You need 126 HoT Mastery Points to fulfill every HoT Mastery Track. There are 164 HoT Mastery Points available. Adventures give 30 Mastery Points total.

164 – 30 = 134. Looks like there are enough Mastery Points available to max out all tracks and never touch an Adventure.

Stop that. You’re using math and being rational. That isn’t allowed here.

Masteries to me felt rewarding to unlock. I’d come across something I can’t interact with. So I’d have the mystery of what that content is until finally my character developed enough to be able to use it. I felt like my character grew and the amount of experience it required was all apart of the growth as a character.

Razor.9872:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, let’s see. You need 126 HoT Mastery Points to fulfill every HoT Mastery Track. There are 164 HoT Mastery Points available. Adventures give 30 Mastery Points total.

164 – 30 = 134. Looks like there are enough Mastery Points available to max out all tracks and never touch an Adventure.

Stop that. You’re using math and being rational. That isn’t allowed here.

What was I thinking? =P

No, really, one need only consult the Wiki for information about Mastery Unlocks.

Mastery Points do need done away with. They are very much a “preparing to have fun” limiter once you run out and have to start looking at the ones you don’t really want to do the content for. And yes, it’s called “Mastery”, but that’s not how it’s used in the game. When you’re required to have them to advance the core plot or navigate the main areas of a map, it’s no longer a good idea to lock them behind things.

Sadly, it’s too late now, and I doubt they’ll remove Mastery Points. Instead, they should create a new Mastery Track that takes the same EXP as a level 1 Mastery, and rewards a Mastery Point when completed. That way it’s always going to be faster to do other things to get Mastery Points (if you can), but nobody will “hit the wall” and stall out on character advancement. It will take longer, yes, but they can still slowly progress and eventually the Masteries will be theirs.

Shwyx.8190:

I’ve played GW2 on and off for some time and only recently got HoT. I’ve been playing (again) for around 2 months now. My feedback thus is from the perspective of someone still relatively new to the expansion and the game in its current form.

Everything I want to do is locked behind something else, often not even remotely related.

I need to finish event chains in order to unlock activities. I need to unlock (high) scores in activities in order to unlock masteries. I need to unlock masteries in order to unlock map elements, or means of travel, or QoL changes. And so forth, and so on. Layer upon layer of stuff I need to do first in order to do the stuff I want.

Two specific examples that really grind my gears:

A) At 61 mastery points spent, Gliding and Legendary Crafting are the only ones that feel “worth it”. Almost all others I only unlocked because I had to, or because they were a means to an end (Exalted Mastery for the specialization collections is the worst offender here)

B) Jumping puzzles. I am sick and tired of them. There are too many, a ton of content is locked behind them. From mastery points to legendary crafting … jumping puzzles everywhere. Why? I am playing an MMO, not some indie platformer.

To a certain degree I understand the design, since there’s probably an interest in promoting other game modes. But it increasingly feels like a chore. What happened to “you can have fun instead of having to prepare to have fun first”?

Real talk, most of the people who were displeased with the expansion left quite promptly after its release. You’re not going to see many older players who were enticed by the game’s launch ideology sticking around, especially more than a year later, who were of the mindset of preferring not to wait to have fun.

GW2’s gone totally-mundane-grindy-MMO now. Sales have dropped pretty tremendously despite all the cashgrab attempts since.

This thread is a magnet of negativity it really hurts. No agony resistance can handle that.

DaShi.1368:

2. Reduce the XP amount for later masteries. Make them the same as getting to level 80. This game and its predecessor was never a game about leveling. It was about getting the max level and then playing the game. In fact, I was hoping GW2 would have eliminated the pointless exercise of leveling altogether.

Excelsior.

I am here and slowly making my way because I enjoy leveling. As a lone wolf, I launch up GW2 to make progression. But then I can not raid (and will not), I can not do events (I mean, I can, but they are boring alone), I can not do Fractals and whatnot (for the reason mentioned above). But minding my own business, walking around the place and get XP meanwhile is the best thing that can happen.

As a former FF14 player, the level stop let me run into a wall. All the new progression was gated behind group content. Static raid groups I have no interest in (they consume time and force me to arrange my leisure time around it instead of being the other way around) or random groups full with kitten s that hope to get carried. Both turned me off so I just sat there and basically could not do nothing, only breadcrumps of the game’s content (e.g. “hunting logs” and stuff like that). Wow. No thanks.

Here I see my EXP bar filling up while killing stuff that crosses my path and I really, really enjoy this sort of “endless learning” – as in: My character is getting better and better and not just “Here, you are 80. Now let’s get stale!”. As the world evolves with expansions everywhere, I like my character to grow as well (no pun intended, Asura ftw).

As long as the majority of the playerbase are incappable and resistant to any sort of intelligent conversation (not talking about the forums, but to people I bump into ingame) or worthwile things apart from spamming “Events?” or “Need taxi to X” and overall mind-numbing tasks they put on themselves for whatever reason, I will always be a lone wolf, and thus I need solo player progression. Done trough an EXP bar for example.

The Mastery System is … interesting.

First of all it’s leveling without adding levels. Every MP requires an amount of XP equivalent to the XP needed to “level” once you were Level 80. To unlock all the Mastery tracks that were available day 1 of HoT, you need nearly 8 1/2 fully leveled 80 character’s worth of XP. Which isn’t all that bad since they are account unlocks.

However HoT also used the Mastery System as map unlocks. Back when LWS2 was going on, both Dry Top and Silverwaste maps were revealed incrementally as the episodes came out. Today of course it’s not at thing but back then it was used to gate exploration of the new zones. It’s my belief that one aspect of the Mastery system was to do the same with zones in HoT, gate exploration and slow progression through zones in HoT. You don’t need to unlock all of them but don’t expect map complete without all of the ones from the track(s) that zone’s entry unlocked.

As for Adventure MPs, they aren’t required, just another way to earn them.

Agree with the OP. 100%.

I really dislike the HOT maps and the verticality…. all the fun things and cool skins are locked behind masteries, which i will never complete.