i didn’t want to say anything until i actually played it and i had hoped it wouldn’t be as bad but locking map mechanics behind masteries is the worst kind of content stretching i have seen in an mmo for quite some while.
“oh look, that’s new what’s this, let’s click it” -> “please farm this and that over and over again in order to use this feature”
after an hour of the first map i was already so kittened that i just closed the game. now somebody will probably say that i am not entitled to an opinion unless i have spent half of my life in the verdant brink but for me that hour was enough to be completely demotivated. until now grind was optional, now it’s obligatory. now you farm in order to have full access to content. and i’m not even talking about the necessity of gear for raids or anything, that’s supposed to be hardcore stuff and i don’t mind at all. kitten that. what’s really disheartening is all the small stuff in the open world. when i want to explore and want to see whats up there or down there and the game tells me i have to do a specific amount of X before i am able to even get there that’s just bold.
i have no problem with a smaller amount of content if it’s good. lemme play the 4 new maps the way i want to, i won’t complain. what i will complain about is when you try to lengthen the time i need to do something artificially so i have to (not want to but have to) spend more time in the game. i don’t like being told that i can’t do something because that one bar isn’t filled enough. locking map mechanics, vendors (srsly, i need to master that? i need to actually train throwing coins at frogs? because you know, i already have bought stuff from frogs in the core game) and even mastery points (yo, dawg. i heard you like masteries so i locked masteries behind masteries so you can master while you master.) is just a cheap mechanic to make it look like there’s more content than there actually is.
i am disappoint.
PS: at least i can enjoy the new league system in pvp now that you made me lose interest in pve …. oh … wait …
edit: just to make it clear: i would be completely content with a small expansion that is well made and has replay value and i wouldn’t mind paying the price of a full game for it at all. it’s all those tricks and tactics that try to subconsciously bind me to the game that leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I agree 100% with the OP. Had a few things to do in game this morning but once I was done I headed straight to SW and began the story. Arrived at verdant brink and was looking forward to getting in the air on my glider. I noticed it said the required mastery was unlocked but I didn’t realise that I then had to do stuff to get to use the glider!
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t recall any other gw2 stories requiring me to learn something just to be able to continue the story!!!
I actually got quite wound up by it and had to rep my solo guild as all I was doing was moaning :-( I shall be trying again shortly but I get bored quickly of spending stupid time doing things JUST to let me continue a story.
Bravo OP, fair play to you for saying it. A lot of hidden stuff just to eek out the expansion. It will make it feel like it is a huge expansion when in reality, it’s just small.
Going way back to HoT’s initial reveal, the mastery system immediately screamed to me that the expansion was going to be very light in content. There’s few reasons to gate so many features behind a grind, and artificially padding the life of what little content there is is chief among them.
But hey, at least now those who want to throw the Manifesto at them can do so without worrying about being challenged by those who believe ArenaNet can do no wrong. “We don’t make grindy games” referred quite specifically to the notion of grinding before you could enjoy the game, and now that’s exactly what the mastery system forces players to do.
Want to explore these new maps? Too bad, you haven’t ground enough to unlock the gates that block your progress. Want to play as a Tempest? Too bad, you haven’t ground enough to unlock that specilization. These aren’t cosmetic features or minute gear upgrades; these are fundamental features of the expansion that have been locked behind a gate that can only be opened after the kind of grind this game was promised to be above.
PS – I’m sure there’s an incoming counterpoint that argues the semantics of what does and doesn’t constitute a promise, but that’s the sort of mental gymnastics I have no interest in participating in.
It’s a bit strange, I feel like by the time I’ve grinded the bar to unlock the ability to use most of these things, I’ll long be sick and tired of the map it actually matters in.
“yo, dawg. i heard you like masteries so i locked masteries behind masteries so you can master while you master.”
This.
Honestly I don’t even care much to say how I feel about these new maps. I’m not a PvE player, I’m a WvW/PvP’er. So how I feel about this new content isn’t that important. Regardless, I hate being there. I just want to tame my new Ranger pets, get out and never come back. But the pets are so absurdly hard to find right now I’m forced to figure out all these masteries and just… Ugh I don’t even want to think about it.
I appreciate all the work they put in to HoT. I’m not the kind of person to always be complaining about everything or always looking on the negative side. Some of the new WvW improvements have been really cool. But these new maps I just hate, haaaaaaate so very much, lol. I mean at least with Orr it’s only one layer. You have to deal with a lot of irritating creatures that will CC and chase after you but if you go the wrong way all you have to do is turn around. In the new maps… You’ve gotta deal with these awful enemies while you’re trying to figure out whether you’re on the right layer of the map or not then you have to worry about whether when you get to where you want to go you’ll have the proper masteries or not and the list just goes on and on, lol. You can’t just turn around if you go the wrong way because if you don’t have Updraft or something (which I currently don’t) then you’re force to waypoint and that 20 minute hack and slash through the jungle just became totally irrelevant.
I could whine about it for a good few paragraphs but I’m just gonna say for the people that like it, great. The people that don’t? Probably like myself and OP. It just makes you angry and confused and feeling like you’re being forced to do things you don’t want to do.
Leveling is actually fine in GW2: you have many maps to explore, so you can hop to a different one if you are bored of the current map. You don’t have to do the same content more than once to reach level 80.
that is indeed true. i have skipped that part with tomes on every character except my first one.
however, i would argue that leveling is such a traditional and engraved mechanic in rpg games that you just can’t make one without.
This mastery system is a pure kittenblock. Ive grinded for over 5h now and only unlocked the 2. Tier of gliding. I dont even have the mushroom jumping masteries now. Aside from the pretty map this AddOn has been pure disapointment until now.
Right. My point is that masteries are really just more customizable leveling that doesn’t screw you over on gear. it’s obvious they desigend these maps to be more “long haul” things, and yeah, masteries stretch the content in them. Then again, given the choice between haing content stretched, or having content be consumed quickly and simply given a grind that only poops out an armor skin, I’d pick the content stretch every time.
it tends to break up the grind my injecting it slowly with different stuff to do, while the “okay now you grind for a skin” setup just becomes a much more monotonous and tedious feeling thing for me.
This mastery system is a pure kittenblock. Ive grinded for over 5h now and only unlocked the 2. Tier of gliding. I dont even have the mushroom jumping masteries now. Aside from the pretty map this AddOn has been pure disapointment until now.
Why didn’t you get mushroom jumping before getting gliding 2? It is cheaper and easier to get, and TBH more useful.
Levelling can be done almost anywhere. If you don’t like one option for grinding, you can go do another instead.
Mastery points require you to grind specific piece of content to get the point. Then go grind somewhere else.
Then there are the pay to win elements. Masteries are a mechanical benefit to your character. Some mastery points require living story achievements. So if you don’t have the living story, you have a choice:
– Miss out on the mechanical benefits
– Buy the living story in the gem store.
Levelling can be done almost anywhere. If you don’t like one option for grinding, you can go do another instead.
Mastery points require you to grind specific piece of content to get the point. Then go grind somewhere else.
Then there are the pay to win elements. Masteries are a mechanical benefit to your character. Some mastery points require living story achievements. So if you don’t have the living story, you have a choice:
– Miss out on the mechanical benefits
– Buy the living story in the gem store.
I agree that masteries would be a more fun system if they weren’t region locked, but I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added. Like, let’s say we go forward in time to another expansion, and you could do all the materies with XP from anywhere. Now you can completely skip all the magumma jungle progression by getting XP in the new expansion, meaning magumma becomes a ghost town people only go to to click hero points or farm special mats.
They tried that approach when they made southsun, and as a result southsun in usually completely unpopulated, and thus not very interesting to run around. It becomes obsolete, wasted content just like low level zones in more traditional MMOs, and it gets even more wasted the more content is added to the game. That’s a problem, as it makes the early game extremely unfun for new players, and you see a lot of mmos getting around this system by giving people instant high level characters, effectively making that already barren content even more barren, basically giving in to the problem rather than attempting to fix it.
Masteries being region locked ensure there’s always some sort of legit reward for playing all the parts of the game, no matter when you start playing it. I’d love a different solution but I honestly can’t think of one.
When HoT was announced, I was excited and almost pre purchased as soon as it was available. I decided to wait a little longer though. Over time I thought about it and I started to realize time gating/locking stuff behind grind was sort of the direction things were going. I decided that I could easily enough wait and see how things went before purchasing. But, based on what I have heard so far, I’m thinking I can easily enough wait for a significant price drop before I am interested in paying for HoT. Not worth $50 to me personally.
I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added. L
Possibly if it was done well. But it wasn’t. What has ANET done to populate Southsun ?
What is the value in pushing lots of people into repeating living story instances ?
Dungeons are going to be pretty dead as ANET killed the reason people did them and didn’t give them any mastery points.
What’s the harm in letting old content become obsolete ?
It makes ever larger portions of your game world literally a waste of time and development effort, and generally means there is less overall content players want to do.
Content obsolescence is a huge problem in themepark mmos specifically for this reason. There’s nothing fun about having a world that is 80% completely devoid of other players, or having zones that literally get “used up” and never returned to again. It’s makes it very difficult to get new players in to the game the longer the game has been around, and generally makes the experience more grindy by basically shoehorning vereran players in to very small sections of content and encouraging them to avoid most of your world and just do only the one newest zone, dungeon, raid, or whatever.
I don’t agree with the treatment of dungeons and would have preferred to see them fixed rather than abandoned, but I understand from an economic standpoint why they felt it was better to focus on fractals, since the fractal system tends to let them make smaller chunks of content that tend to scale far longer in terms of player interest. Dungeons are exactly the kind of content obsolescence that needs to be avoided, and that the region locked mastry system is actually trying to avoid.
Levelling can be done almost anywhere. If you don’t like one option for grinding, you can go do another instead.
Mastery points require you to grind specific piece of content to get the point. Then go grind somewhere else.
Then there are the pay to win elements. Masteries are a mechanical benefit to your character. Some mastery points require living story achievements. So if you don’t have the living story, you have a choice:
– Miss out on the mechanical benefits
– Buy the living story in the gem store.
I agree that masteries would be a more fun system if they weren’t region locked, but I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added. Like, let’s say we go forward in time to another expansion, and you could do all the materies with XP from anywhere. Now you can completely skip all the magumma jungle progression by getting XP in the new expansion, meaning magumma becomes a ghost town people only go to to click hero points or farm special mats.
They tried that approach when they made southsun, and as a result southsun in usually completely unpopulated, and thus not very interesting to run around. It becomes obsolete, wasted content just like low level zones in more traditional MMOs, and it gets even more wasted the more content is added to the game. That’s a problem, as it makes the early game extremely unfun for new players, and you see a lot of mmos getting around this system by giving people instant high level characters, effectively making that already barren content even more barren, basically giving in to the problem rather than attempting to fix it.
Masteries being region locked ensure there’s always some sort of legit reward for playing all the parts of the game, no matter when you start playing it. I’d love a different solution but I honestly can’t think of one.
I see what you are saying however I do not think in ANY paid game there should be a mechanic that physically stops you from progressing because you haven’t grinded out something yet. It sucks. Grinding sucks. I would be fine with it if the masteries were not required to actually complete the zones but the fact that I cannot get a hero point or vista because I haven’t grinded out XP annoys me. I am the player that likes to 100% a zone before moving onto the next, I like to get every single waypoint, POI, Vista and hero point as I see them. Now MY way of playing the game is no longer viable because of some stupid XP wall. The point of the masteries was instead of raising the level cap and preventing people from loosing other progression such as gear and legendaries but now by placing a stupidly simple feature such as jumping behind a grind wall ruins the fun. That’s my opinion and I am annoyed by this decision, they could have had masteries that made it easier to maneuver around that map but by making it impossible to actually reach an objective because of an XP wall is just plain stupid.
I don’t agree with the treatment of dungeons and would have preferred to see them fixed rather than abandoned, but I understand from an economic standpoint why they felt it was better to focus on fractals, since the fractal system tends to let them make smaller chunks of content that tend to scale far longer in terms of player interest. Dungeons are exactly the kind of content obsolescence that needs to be avoided, and that the region locked mastry system is actually trying to avoid.
Can you justify the focus on living story instances ?
I agree that masteries would be a more fun system if they weren’t region locked, but I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added.
Idk…complete this map to unlock masteries you will need in next map? At least you dont have to redo the same map over and over.
Would have probably finish mapping Verdant Brink in an hour if it wasn’t for mastery XD.
Sugar coat all you want Anet “we don’t believe in attunement”, it’s very grindy lol. Same kinda of crap.
Levelling can be done almost anywhere. If you don’t like one option for grinding, you can go do another instead.
Mastery points require you to grind specific piece of content to get the point. Then go grind somewhere else.
Then there are the pay to win elements. Masteries are a mechanical benefit to your character. Some mastery points require living story achievements. So if you don’t have the living story, you have a choice:
– Miss out on the mechanical benefits
– Buy the living story in the gem store.
I agree that masteries would be a more fun system if they weren’t region locked, but I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added. Like, let’s say we go forward in time to another expansion, and you could do all the materies with XP from anywhere. Now you can completely skip all the magumma jungle progression by getting XP in the new expansion, meaning magumma becomes a ghost town people only go to to click hero points or farm special mats.
They tried that approach when they made southsun, and as a result southsun in usually completely unpopulated, and thus not very interesting to run around. It becomes obsolete, wasted content just like low level zones in more traditional MMOs, and it gets even more wasted the more content is added to the game. That’s a problem, as it makes the early game extremely unfun for new players, and you see a lot of mmos getting around this system by giving people instant high level characters, effectively making that already barren content even more barren, basically giving in to the problem rather than attempting to fix it.
Masteries being region locked ensure there’s always some sort of legit reward for playing all the parts of the game, no matter when you start playing it. I’d love a different solution but I honestly can’t think of one.
Players will play in zones they find fun. Southsun is a ghost town because it’s pretty boring imo. Masteries act as a funnel because if you could get mastery points by doing content in the core game, those players who prefer more ‘vanilla’ maps and world variety would drop the jungle like a hot rock.
I like the jungle, but I’d spend less time there if I had more of a choice. If you could level HoT masteries in the core game, and the jungle became a ghost town, it wasn’t good content to begin with.
“No grind” never meant you would never have to do anything to access content. It just meant there would be no gear grind (ie vertical progression), it didnt mean there would never be horizontal progression (ie what we have now). I mean yea, if you want to call it “content stretching” instead of horizontal progression, you arent wrong, but thats how the game was always intended to be.
Sorry you misinterpreted it and wasted your 50 bucks, but have fun in your next game.
Op, you hit the nail on the head. I didn’t buy the ex-pac because this is what it looked like they were going to do. No thanks, that kind of experience is not for me. If you like it then have at it. I pass!
I like masteries,better grind something then having no content and whine about on forums how THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO IN GAME.MMO’s are not for lazy people,if you don’t like it,you are on wrong genre so feel free to leave.
I like masteries,better grind something then having no content and whine about on forums how THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO IN GAME.MMO’s are not for lazy people,if you don’t like it,you are on wrong genre so feel free to leave.
why do you assume that anybody is whining about no content? i f.e. have not once complained about a lack of content.
Masteries. The name should have trigged a bad memory but alas it didn’t Any of you who played DaOC back in the day they had a PvE expansion pack called Trials of Atlantis. Guess what it had, master levels. See the connection? PvE/Raid content that you had to do, originally in order, which gave you abilities. Said abilities broke the RvR/PvP system beyond repair and it sadly tore apart the game so much it died a rather quick death. Not only master levels they also introduced artifacts. Powerful weapons that you needed to farm some more, in groups in most cases, for the scrolls to make them…
I don’t know about HoT. I can see the OP’s issue and concern. I have map complete on my Guardian, so he has 200+ points. Ranger, not complete and tomb’s leveled but it is my main more or less now. Can’t really do much with regards to the Druid with 23 hero points sadly. Enter new area after doing the initial story, and, well, frustrated to say the least. I’ve always leveled slow so this isn’t my thing…
I mainly do WvW so this is a bit of a ball buster. More so when you are ignorant of the actual content and route/path necessary to make reasonable use of your play time. When it feels wasted, or forced, it really isn’t fun.
That is my issue personally. Forcing one to PvE or play a format that you are not used to or want to…
Main – Laaz Rocket – Guardian (Ehmry Bay)
Johnny Johnny – Ranger (Ehmry Bay)
Hárvey Wallbanger – Alt Warrior (Ehmry Bay)
OP is correct in every way.
Awful way to put specializations behind such junk content. Could not stand the new maps. WvW maps have way way too much wasted space and gimmicky mechanics. Just turned the game off and don’t know if I can bring myself to turn it back on. So disappointed in every way imaginable.
Masteries. The name should have trigged a bad memory but alas it didn’t Any of you who played DaOC back in the day they had a PvE expansion pack called Trials of Atlantis. Guess what it had, master levels.
If I were to drop dead in say 80 years and Peter were to ask me at the pearly gates “So, you still mad at what they did to DaOC?”, I could only reply with “Yes”. I will never not be mad at this.
Name an MMO that offers endgame without some form of content stretching.
Most have it, but most also have actual new content at the end of it and not just stuff that’s just been ripped from the core game.
While it’s true that most MMO’s do not re-incentivize older content, ANet needed to because the older content is part of their endgame. New content? Well, there’s HoT zones, story and raids. <shrugs>
I like masteries,better grind something then having no content and whine about on forums how THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO IN GAME.MMO’s are not for lazy people,if you don’t like it,you are on wrong genre so feel free to leave.
why do you assume that anybody is whining about no content? i f.e. have not once complained about a lack of content.
The people who complained about lack of content left, quietly in most cases. Some of those people have returned, myself included.
I agree that masteries would be a more fun system if they weren’t region locked, but I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added.
Idk…complete this map to unlock masteries you will need in next map? At least you dont have to redo the same map over and over.
this right here – stop asking players to do one thing many times in order to progress, give them many things to do once in order to progress
or have both ways, so ppl who enjoy grinding can still do so
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t recall any other gw2 stories requiring me to learn something just to be able to continue the story!!!
i will correct you there, all the other story segments with the original personal story were level gated i.e. you cant start till you level 10, 20,30 etc
this is the same except instead of you being locked out until your level is high enough you are locked out until you have leveled a feature you are probably going to be able to use a lot across all the new maps.
Most wanted in game additions: Beastiary, readable books
I was frantically searching for hero points in the first map in order to unlock the elite spec on my necro. After wiping at several of them, I finally found an unguarded one by gliding down toward the bottom of the map.
I was so happy when I discovered it, the feeling of exploring and being rewarded for it was almost overwhelming. Then I found out I couldn’t click on it and the npc kept saying I wasn’t worthy. Locked behind some mastery I assume. Instantly turned the game off.
I sadly have to wholeheartedly agree to the OP. This is exactly my feeling after playing this addon now for two days.
In addition to that the artificial “barriers” that are made in between every little step are disheartening and demotivating. It wouldnt be so bad if i could chose the way i want to play and get my exp. Instead, everything has gotten nerved to oblivion (dungeon exp as example, even though they said it would only be ‘liquid’ reward) and the separation between Tyria and Heart of Thorns Masteries makes everything even more bitter. Instead of letting me play old content, i have to run in circles in the Maguuma Jungle. Instead of being able to play Fractals to level my Masteries, i cant.
I can just hope that my motivation for this game doesnt suffer to hard from it.
Name an MMO that offers endgame without some form of content stretching.
GW1 expansions did it right adding whole new continents, full story to them, new starter zones, two new classes each, loads and loads of weapons and armor, lots of new skills easy to acquire as you progress, and new end game.
With GW2 they decided to break away from their ideas that were actually good, sadly.
As someone who was still on the fence about getting the expansion and after hearing what it’s really all about, i guess i could only come to this conclusion:
50 dollars for eternal grinding? … I’d be happier with the dollars.
today again i was just slapped in the face by the mastery system. on the second map i was actively participating in close to every event there is on the map in order to push it towards the meta event. then, close to the end the system tells me that i’m not able to particiapte in the event because i don’t have the exalted mastery.
at this point i closed the game and i’m not sure i will start it again that soon.
i’m furious. this is not how i would allow anybody to treat me.
Name an MMO that offers endgame without some form of content stretching.
GW1 expansions did it right adding whole new continents, full story to them, new starter zones, two new classes each, loads and loads of weapons and armor, lots of new skills easy to acquire as you progress, and new end game.
With GW2 they decided to break away from their ideas that were actually good, sadly.
The MMO purists will doubtless tell us that GW was not an MMO. As it happens, I agree that the original was a great game that did an awful lot right — for my tastes. With GW2, well, the ANet I knew is gone.
that is indeed true. i have skipped that part with tomes on every character except my first one.
however, i would argue that leveling is such a traditional and engraved mechanic in rpg games that you just can’t make one without.
Leveling systems in RPGs is relatively new, didn’t become the mainstay until after the WoW/EQ era. Prior to that it was mostly a skill system, which is more RPGish, leveling is just easier to design and creates a more linear gameplay.
It’s a bit strange, I feel like by the time I’ve grinded the bar to unlock the ability to use most of these things, I’ll long be sick and tired of the map it actually matters in.
Exactly this. Now repeat that grind like 9 (or 18 times with old world grindo points) to unlock the class upgrades.
