XP caping and rewards
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Except of course for how hard it is to get into raids for those mastery lines.
We would all like something better than spirit shards. But at least they are better than nothing, when we can actually get them.
The first encounter in wing 3 is easy. Players that need the line just have to create their own LFG and specify what the purpose is in the description.
It’s certainly not a big obstacle to anyone committed to unlocking the mastery line. (I wouldn’t call it “easy” to people who aren’t among the target audience for raids.)
It’s just a higher end escort event that has some mechanics. As long as players can kill the warthogs, and pay attention to the land mines, they’ll be fine.
It has gotten easier and easier with every LWS3 release so far though….. The 3 releases have come with 18 new mastery points, and only require 7 to max the 3 new masteries they introduced. That is 11 extra mastery points you can achieve in these releases, and most of them are absolutely trivial to complete. You need 127 HoT mastery points to max every HoT mastery line. The 3 new releases in LWS3 have provided you with 18 of those, almost 10% of what you need, and almost all of them require 0 effort to achieve.
This argument is quite simply no longer valid. According to the Wiki there are 165 HoT mastery points available, of which you only need 127. Of those 165, only 0 are obtained through adventures (which is what most people complain about when they say MP are too hard to get), which leaves you with 8 extra Mastery Points available. Even if you don’t want to do Migraine mode on Hearts and Minds, or do skip up the volcano you can still max your mastery points without ever even touching an adventure.
I see you missed my post where I said I hate grinding out achievements just to “progress” on ANet answer to a higher level cap. They where added to stop people maxing them the first week of HoT and to drag out the content, we know there are players out there that k.
I think the point of the MP’s was to get players to do various content on the expansion maps rather than just grind XP on a single map and not really touch the others. The majority of the MP’s are fairly reasonable to obtain.
I’m sure they are, but I don’t want to play adventures, or chase achievements, yet if I want to "P’s, they where put in to adventures so people would play them, its the only reason people play them, and that none have been added since.
It’s more than just getting players onto the maps. You are free to skip all mastery points from adventures as there are more than enough available mastery points to do so.
So your telling me, that I can walk around a map and channel MP’s and have enough to fill everything out, I don’t have to do achievements at all? I’m going to call lies on that. The adventure achievements are some of the “easy” options according to some. I’m not seeing your point here at all. MP are unnecessary.
That’s not what I said and you know it. It’s easy to call lies on something that you made up. There are 37 excess mastery points in Maguuma which is increasing with each LS episode. If there are specific ones that you don’t want to do, such as adventures, you have the flexibility to skip them.
And my point about MP is that i don’t want to chance achievements to get them, yet your telling me they are easy to get achievements are not easy to get for everyone. The fact that MP block progression is the reason XP is getting wasted. I don’t find grinding out achievements fun at all. That’s why in all my time playing since launch I’ve only just got over 15k ap.
I never said they were all easy so please read my post again. The word I specifically used was reasonable. According to this thread, it seems the reason that XP is being wasted is not because of MP acquisition but raid mastery line unlock.
You’ll have to accept that mastery points are part of the mastery system and that it is very highly unlikely that this will change. Not all of them are going to be communes either although quite a number of the ones from the LS episodes are as such. You may prefer masteries to just be another leveling system like you did to get to level 80 but Anet has addtional goals with this post-80 system. It was designed to accomplish those goals.
The raid lock isn’t accomplishing any goal but kittening people off and making the raiding community toxic.
The raid lock isn’t accomplishing any goal but kittening people off and making the raiding community toxic.
We don’t know whether there even was a goal or whether no one considered the impact of putting Raid Masteries in the same Mastery Category as the rest of HoT.
We do know that it can’t possibly have made the “raiding community toxic” — it certainly doesn’t prevent anyone from raiding and it’s not likely to be used as a benchmark for inviting people.
I agree that it serves no useful purpose — at best, it annoys people without offering a commensurate benefit to even a tiny portion of the community. I agree it should be changed, if it’s not “too difficult” to program.
But I can’t agree with the theory that it’s the root of any major issues with the game.
In short, it’s a weird/poor choice or perhaps an accident and should change; there’s no particular urgency, because the negative impact is economically & socially negligible.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I think there is a particular urgency. People are not playing due to it.
We do know that it can’t possibly have made the “raiding community toxic” — it certainly doesn’t prevent anyone from raiding and it’s not likely to be used as a benchmark for inviting people.
It does create a motivation for people who would otherwise have no interest in raids, and may lack the skill and gear for raids, to feel pressured to try to raid to be able to resume progression. They get frustrated for being excluded, raiders get frustrated at dealing with scrubs, everyone’s unhappy.
Ceterum censeo Sentim Punicam esse delendam
I think there is a particular urgency. People are not playing due to it.
Have you any sources? Or this is just an opinion? I’ve not met anyone in-game that told me they were quitting because they could not attain a Mastery Point. Of course, that has as much weight as someone saying they did meet someone in-game who said they were quitting because they could not attain a Mastery Point.
We do know that it can’t possibly have made the “raiding community toxic” — it certainly doesn’t prevent anyone from raiding and it’s not likely to be used as a benchmark for inviting people.
It does create a motivation for people who would otherwise have no interest in raids, and may lack the skill and gear for raids, to feel pressured to try to raid to be able to resume progression. They get frustrated for being excluded, raiders get frustrated at dealing with scrubs, everyone’s unhappy.
How does it create motivation for people who would otherwise not want to raid? There are lots of other sources for spirit shards.
I agree it’s a source of irritation for non-raiders — it makes little sense to me why ANet would gate something so noticeable behind an activity they designed to appeal to the minority. But it’s a gross exaggeration to say that this is an important reward, let alone critical enough to get people to change their mind about raiding.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The raid lock isn’t accomplishing any goal but kittening people off and making the raiding community toxic.
We don’t know whether there even was a goal or whether no one considered the impact of putting Raid Masteries in the same Mastery Category as the rest of HoT.
Anet is not some little indie game company that has never created a game before.
it’s this luck based mystic toilet that we’re all so sick of flushing our money down. -Salamol
I really doubt Spirit Shards was supposed to be the carrot to entice people to raid. Lol.
The raid lock isn’t accomplishing any goal but kittening people off and making the raiding community toxic.
We don’t know whether there even was a goal or whether no one considered the impact of putting Raid Masteries in the same Mastery Category as the rest of HoT.
Anet is not some little indie game company that has never created a game before.
And they’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. They might have intended it and not realized all the ramifications or they might simply have failed to consider what grouping raid & general HoT masteries together would mean down the road — both of those are exactly the sort of mistakes that ANet (as well as other game companies) have made in the recent past.
I’m not saying your necessarily mistaken; I’m saying we don’t know. As a consequence, it distracts from whatever argument you might be making.
Let me try to put this another way: I don’t think it should matter why ANet did this. It’s irritating at best for anyone who doesn’t raid. They should change it, because it is a blemish on their pride & joy. But I don’t think it’s urgent: we have plenty of sources of spirit shards.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The raid lock isn’t accomplishing any goal but kittening people off and making the raiding community toxic.
We don’t know whether there even was a goal or whether no one considered the impact of putting Raid Masteries in the same Mastery Category as the rest of HoT.
Anet is not some little indie game company that has never created a game before.
And they’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. They might have intended it and not realized all the ramifications or they might simply have failed to consider what grouping raid & general HoT masteries together would mean down the road — both of those are exactly the sort of mistakes that ANet (as well as other game companies) have made in the recent past.
I’m not saying your necessarily mistaken; I’m saying we don’t know. As a consequence, it distracts from whatever argument you might be making.
Let me try to put this another way: I don’t think it should matter why ANet did this. It’s irritating at best for anyone who doesn’t raid. They should change it, because it is a blemish on their pride & joy. But I don’t think it’s urgent: we have plenty of sources of spirit shards.
My answer was to the concept that Anet had put zero thought into what would happen, which is essentially what you said. Whether their idea of how it would work was correct, I believe that they DID think about it.
But you are correct that it is irritating either way. It is obvious to me that the reason Anet did it was the same reason they put Masteries behind every other game mode: get people to do those modes.
it’s this luck based mystic toilet that we’re all so sick of flushing our money down. -Salamol
(edited by Djinn.9245)
How does it create motivation for people who would otherwise not want to raid? There are lots of other sources for spirit shards.
I’m not suggesting it’s rational, but game design should take into account predictably irrational behavior.
Ceterum censeo Sentim Punicam esse delendam
The raids should really be completely independent in terms of masteries, since the ones from raiding are not in any way related to anything outside the raids. Linking it to HOT make only the most tangential sense in the first place, and given that a large percentage of the player base does not raid, causes more problems than anything else.
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