Guild Wars 2

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

Lol to Cerpin’s comment. But honestly, I suppose I can understand why they are doing it, but to be frank, it’s more “challenging” if they don’t change it.

its a good change. i don’t want anet to act like carbine, end up stuck in an echo chamber w/ these “hardcore or else” players and forget what made the franchise all it is. it was about making the whole game accessible for everyone, not the best for only these people and the rest of u can click off

I like the change, just thinking on getting the elite with my 5 alts was kind of painful, i got Chrono on my main, but my other ones have ~30 hero points each. Now i can go to the jungle and get the elites easily

I have to agree and I loved that it took 400 hero points to unlock the elite spec. An “elite” spec should be something that isn’t just given to you and honestly I really enjoyed the struggle of trying to unlock Herald on my Rev. Each step I unlocked felt like an achievement on its own.

I see people posting about how the game is too hard or how things like precursors are too hard to craft and I fear losing those battles as well. When it comes to the new legendary weapons and armor I hope they are super hard to get and when you see someone with it you get kind of excited. Kind of how legendary weapons used to be early in the game before everyone had one. I say this not as some elite player who has everything but as a player who doesn’t even have a legendary.

I, of course, still fully support Anet and would never dream of posting some of the nasty things I’ve seen on the forums since launch.

Cause it’s time to trivialize things!!! People have learned that with enough amounts of crying they can get WHATEVER they want.

I couldn’t be happier, 400 was too much, 250 is reasonable.

wolfram.8291:

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

Sorry I cannot agree with you here, and I would comment further, but I can finally play my reaper!!!

So see ya…

I was okay with the 400 point unlock, but a whole lot of people weren’t, so I can unerstand why anet went this direction. It’s a compromise that keeps the progression element, but adequately addresses the percieved lack of reward for doing all those old world hero points, and gives people the option of getting in to Hot and playing it with a fully functional elite spec on their belived and most accomplished characters.

It’s a good half measure. They’re still retaining the idea that the elites require significant play investment in a character, but better rewarding preparation and giving options.

I would have been sad to see them go account bound or permanent unlocks, but this method is pretty alright. You still have to put in a good amount of effort on a character to hit that unlock, but if you already put in a lot of effort it’s better rewarded now, and if it isn’t you have good options for the current and future elite specs. Get them fast by doing more challenging content, or get them slow by doing a lot of core points and a few easy 10 point challenges.

This means, as we move forward and more and more elite specs are released, you have good options for alts, and good long term progressions for characters you care about having every single one.

250 is a pretty nice sweet spot for still keeping it a meaningful amount of progression, but not making that progression feel like a lengthy gate with not much choice in how to accomplish it.

wolfram.8291:

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

They are folding on a game mechanic that promotes playing one main character… that is all they have done. They are being consistent by making this change, as it is consistent with other changes they have made throughout the past years to make the game more alt friendly which increases the longevity of the game. Get off your EQ horse.

You already complained in the other thread, but now you need to cry in your own thread too?

This is such a stupid thing to complain about, there was never any valid reason for elite specs to cost so much, them being reduced does in no way at all “nerf content”. Nobody was complaining that they were hard to get, since if you had map completion you only needed Verdant Brink and a couple in Auric to get the spec, thinking it’s hard is just hilarious.

The entire point and argument is that people want to go through the new content WITH their new spec, not do the content just to get it. That’s the point and it makes complete sense. There’s no reason for it to just be tedious when majority of the elite specs are not even good. Reaper and Chronomancer are the only ones even really worth using. Herald too but you can hardly consider that a new spec since the whole class is new.

I mean i don’t even have a personal stake in this since i already have my elite spec and i don’t even use it since Berserker is pretty useless anyway, just saying that thinking this is a nerf to content is laughable.

I think 250 is more reasonable than 400. You want to earn the spec, yes, but you don’t want to spend the entire HoT map not playing your spec! I want to have fun earning my HP and then unlocking the specs and I have -8- characters so if it was 400 points for each……that’s a lot of points

250 is fair, people want to play their new classes. Mastery are mostly for PvE which a lot of people don’t even play. I think another reason they did this is to get people back into playing WvW since the borderlands are pretty quiet while people slowly get HP. Plus there are people who didn’t get HOT and they don’t want them to lose interest because WvW is dead at the moment. It’s a good call on Anets part.

Mastery you can work on anytime, there’s no bouncy mushrooms in WVW lol

This is the best kitten thing they’ve done in relation to this expansion. They originally promised that we would unlock our elites if we had map completion, and this pretty much delivers on that promise.

Thank you ANet.

Gotchaz.7865:

Mastery you can work on anytime, there’s no bouncy mushrooms in WVW lol

I’m actually pretty sad that they didn’t add glider and mushroom mechanics to WvW.

They should really tie those in to the wvw ranking system at the low levels or something so they can design maps around cool new mechanics like that. I’d love to see, once they have enough borderland maps to have each borderland be a different one, a floating islands style BL with gliders, anti-air cannons, rank buffs to allow bombing from gliders or air vehicle upgrades from the new guild tactics system etc. Gliders would make a EOTM style map a lot more fun and tactically interesting.

Next up: Density of HoT nerfed a la Orr.
Followed by: Raids

wolfram.8291:

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

You’re in the minority clearly

250 for each character you have is reasonable.

As one who rides the line on “casual” (I guess you could call me upper casual?), this certainly means I’ll be able to fully fill my Specializations a bit quicker. Though I think 300 points may have been a better compromise.

XxsdgxX.8109:

Bryzy.2719:

Cerpin.9152:

I am also disappointed that the “I want it now and I’m going to cry until I get it”-fraction wins again…
And now they will feel justified and will keep whining until they get legendaries as login rewards.

Beautiful example of a ridiculous Strawman argument.

After the 250 HP update, people won’t get their Elite Specs right away. 250 HPs still require time and effort for most people to get.

In fact what we’re seeing is that only “hardcore” players who likely don’t have jobs, or are students, or are generally people with a lot of time spare to play this game were the only ones who were able to unlock their Elite Specs straight away.

People such as yourself who make childish non-arguments towards “whiners” (and by “whiners” you mean the majority of people criticising a legitimately bad game feature) most likely fall into the above category, and as such ignorantly fail to recognise the fact that many players cannot afford more than 1-2 hours per night to play this game due to real life responsibilities that consume a lot of time.

Many of the, as you say, “whiners” on here have in fact been saying the same thing: keep the “earning” aspect there, but reduce the unnecessary grind. Not a single person on here has asked for their Elite Spec to be handed to them straight away. Grow up.

Those people should not be playing a game if they barely have time for anything
Personal life problems of some people should never have any kind of impact on things like this, and it’s a shame cause most of the people who are also enjoying the expansion are playing the game or using their time with other important things, instead of flooding the forums and reddit with whining.

I’m really not sure what you just said there.

Regardless, trying to belittle people’s feedback by calling it “whining” doesn’t make it any less valid.

The biggest problem I have with it is that this is a sign that this will FOREVER be the standard.

GW2 will always be about instant gratifiaction. It makes me worried about raids.

The best solution would have been to restructure the training steps to give you all the utility skills first, the traits. I think that would have stopped a lot of complaints. It would also fix the problem Heralds had where they didn’t have alternative skills to use

wolfram.8291:

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

Nothing is stopping YOU from doing it as slowly as you like. So this doesn’t affect YOU at all.

PopeUrban.2578:

Gotchaz.7865:

Mastery you can work on anytime, there’s no bouncy mushrooms in WVW lol

I’m actually pretty sad that they didn’t add glider and mushroom mechanics to WvW.

They should really tie those in to the wvw ranking system at the low levels or something so they can design maps around cool new mechanics like that. I’d love to see, once they have enough borderland maps to have each borderland be a different one, a floating islands style BL with gliders, anti-air cannons, rank buffs to allow bombing from gliders or air vehicle upgrades from the new guild tactics system etc. Gliders would make a EOTM style map a lot more fun and tactically interesting.

Well, in reality something like that could gate WvW from not HoT players, particularly a floating island map.

Mainly though, a flying TC blob is the 2nd most terrifying image I can imagine.

I am very disappointed Anet starts to water things down a few days after release already.

Tonight, I shall quench my thirst on the tears of elitists.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

PopeUrban.2578:

Gotchaz.7865:

Mastery you can work on anytime, there’s no bouncy mushrooms in WVW lol

I’m actually pretty sad that they didn’t add glider and mushroom mechanics to WvW.

They should really tie those in to the wvw ranking system at the low levels or something so they can design maps around cool new mechanics like that. I’d love to see, once they have enough borderland maps to have each borderland be a different one, a floating islands style BL with gliders, anti-air cannons, rank buffs to allow bombing from gliders or air vehicle upgrades from the new guild tactics system etc. Gliders would make a EOTM style map a lot more fun and tactically interesting.

Well, in reality something like that could gate WvW from not HoT players, particularly a floating island map.

Mainly though, a flying TC blob is the 2nd most terrifying image I can imagine.

You misunderstand. I’m saying that in stead of masteries, stuff like that for use in wvw maps is tied to wvw ranks.

So, glider upgrades and such things in WvW would be from early wvw ranks (which were the original masteries really), not HoT masteries. That would mean players with a lot of WvW under their belt would have them already, and new players would spend a little time without them to better learn maps and core WvW mechanics.

That would allow them to design WvW maps when they add new mechanics like gliding, and use those mechanics without requiring people to go do hefty amounts of PvE to use them in WvW.

PopeUrban.2578:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

PopeUrban.2578:

Gotchaz.7865:

Mastery you can work on anytime, there’s no bouncy mushrooms in WVW lol

I’m actually pretty sad that they didn’t add glider and mushroom mechanics to WvW.

They should really tie those in to the wvw ranking system at the low levels or something so they can design maps around cool new mechanics like that. I’d love to see, once they have enough borderland maps to have each borderland be a different one, a floating islands style BL with gliders, anti-air cannons, rank buffs to allow bombing from gliders or air vehicle upgrades from the new guild tactics system etc. Gliders would make a EOTM style map a lot more fun and tactically interesting.

Well, in reality something like that could gate WvW from not HoT players, particularly a floating island map.

Mainly though, a flying TC blob is the 2nd most terrifying image I can imagine.

You misunderstand. I’m saying that in stead of masteries, stuff like that for use in wvw maps is tied to wvw ranks.

So, glider upgrades and such things in WvW would be from early wvw ranks (which were the original masteries really), not HoT masteries. That would mean players with a lot of WvW under their belt would have them already, and new players would spend a little time without them to better learn maps and core WvW mechanics.

That would allow them to design WvW maps when they add new mechanics like gliding, and use those mechanics without requiring people to go do hefty amounts of PvE to use them in WvW.

I see, but it would still have to get Anet to allow gliders for Non-Hot players in WvW.

I’m happy that they broke on this. I just don’t want to them break when it comes to raids.

Felahr.9830:

Bryzy.2719:

Cerpin.9152:

I am also disappointed that the “I want it now and I’m going to cry until I get it”-fraction wins again…
And now they will feel justified and will keep whining until they get legendaries as login rewards.

Beautiful example of a ridiculous Strawman argument.

After the 250 HP update, people won’t get their Elite Specs right away. 250 HPs still require time and effort for most people to get.

In fact what we’re seeing is that only “hardcore” players who likely don’t have jobs, or are students, or are generally people with a lot of time spare to play this game were the only ones who were able to unlock their Elite Specs straight away.

People such as yourself who make childish non-arguments towards “whiners” (and by “whiners” you mean the majority of people criticising a legitimately bad game feature) most likely fall into the above category, and as such ignorantly fail to recognise the fact that many players cannot afford more than 1-2 hours per night to play this game due to real life responsibilities that consume a lot of time.

Many of the, as you say, “whiners” on here have in fact been saying the same thing: keep the “earning” aspect there, but reduce the unnecessary grind. Not a single person on here has asked for their Elite Spec to be handed to them straight away. Grow up.

Complete rubbish. My first character/main had 213 after Map Completion and thats with maxing everything. at 250 he could have Druid almost immediately. An Elite spec, unlocked, 20 minutes into the release of the new content. thats bullkitten, thats too easy. it should be HARD. you shouldnt come out the gate at 90%. 250 HP to an elite is too easy and I hate that its to easy. Its not special anymore, it doesnt show you mastered Maguuma, multiple zones, and put 40 hero loci of work into your character. it cheapens it.

Congratulations you helped prove a point in my argument.

Bryzy.2719:

Felahr.9830:

Bryzy.2719:

Cerpin.9152:

I am also disappointed that the “I want it now and I’m going to cry until I get it”-fraction wins again…
And now they will feel justified and will keep whining until they get legendaries as login rewards.

Beautiful example of a ridiculous Strawman argument.

After the 250 HP update, people won’t get their Elite Specs right away. 250 HPs still require time and effort for most people to get.

In fact what we’re seeing is that only “hardcore” players who likely don’t have jobs, or are students, or are generally people with a lot of time spare to play this game were the only ones who were able to unlock their Elite Specs straight away.

People such as yourself who make childish non-arguments towards “whiners” (and by “whiners” you mean the majority of people criticising a legitimately bad game feature) most likely fall into the above category, and as such ignorantly fail to recognise the fact that many players cannot afford more than 1-2 hours per night to play this game due to real life responsibilities that consume a lot of time.

Many of the, as you say, “whiners” on here have in fact been saying the same thing: keep the “earning” aspect there, but reduce the unnecessary grind. Not a single person on here has asked for their Elite Spec to be handed to them straight away. Grow up.

Complete rubbish. My first character/main had 213 after Map Completion and thats with maxing everything. at 250 he could have Druid almost immediately. An Elite spec, unlocked, 20 minutes into the release of the new content. thats bullkitten, thats too easy. it should be HARD. you shouldnt come out the gate at 90%. 250 HP to an elite is too easy and I hate that its to easy. Its not special anymore, it doesnt show you mastered Maguuma, multiple zones, and put 40 hero loci of work into your character. it cheapens it.

Congratulations you helped prove a point in my argument.

I dont think you understand any of your own words. thats not a strawman. none of this is a strawman argument. Go back to tumblr and your overweening superiority complex

I was hunkered down for the long grind, but I welcome the change. Between all my IRL stuff, I just want to play Reaper when I play HOT

250 is good. Think about it for the long term. What happens when you get to your 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th character or more? I for one know I wouldn’t want to be doing 400HP for every character. It’s a good change. You get to spend a chunk of time playing through the new content with your spec. It’s still going to take people a fair chunk of time with lesser played characters. They keep making changes like this that echo the feeling of the base game and I may well buy the x-pac.

Stop saying elite this elite that there not elite at all …

wolfram.8291:

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

say that again once you have to unlock elite spec for 13 toons :S

400hp means grinding to get to the point where you can have fun.

250hp is balanced enough that it takes time but you can actually have fun while doing it, instead of thinking about this massive grind you still need to do, in order to have fun.

This change is inline with their philosophy of:

- No grind.
- No waiting to have fun.

250 is reasonable. 400 was just way too much.
Very happy with this change.

It’s becoming easier to point out who only uses one or 2 toons at most….

1-2 toons: “400 points is balanced, everyone else is a scrub and doesn’t want to work for elites”…

3-5 toons: “400 points is a little high, guess I’ll have to delete or forget a few to get this class to elite spec”

5-20 toons: “kjgkjhdfljhdglbhljbhdkfjgb WHY DID I BOTHER TO SPEND SO MUCH ON CHARACTER SLOTS ILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FREAKIN LEVEL OMGJGVADSKLJFH;KJ”

If they broke this easily, this early who knows what else they will give in on? I’m disappointed, but I have faith they’ll come around.

This is a good change for some people, and I’m glad that some folks are happy. But if the loudest get their way every time (a lot of posts in a thread is not a majority), who knows what will be next.

Come on Anet. It’s too early for this. Go back to being awesome, don’t be like Blizzard.

Felahr.9830:

Complete rubbish. My first character/main had 213 after Map Completion and thats with maxing everything. at 250 he could have Druid almost immediately. An Elite spec, unlocked, 20 minutes into the release of the new content. thats bullkitten, thats too easy. it should be HARD. you shouldnt come out the gate at 90%. 250 HP to an elite is too easy and I hate that its to easy. Its not special anymore, it doesnt show you mastered Maguuma, multiple zones, and put 40 hero loci of work into your character. it cheapens it.

I’m playing GW2 for wvw. I could care less about being a Maguuma hero, since it doesn’t mean much to me. I want my new spec to fight other people. Not to brag about my l33t pve skills in LA and/or forums.

I’m glad Anet changed it to 250, it will be easier to level my alts now.

Nausicca.6038:

Felahr.9830:

Complete rubbish. My first character/main had 213 after Map Completion and thats with maxing everything. at 250 he could have Druid almost immediately. An Elite spec, unlocked, 20 minutes into the release of the new content. thats bullkitten, thats too easy. it should be HARD. you shouldnt come out the gate at 90%. 250 HP to an elite is too easy and I hate that its to easy. Its not special anymore, it doesnt show you mastered Maguuma, multiple zones, and put 40 hero loci of work into your character. it cheapens it.

I’m playing GW2 for wvw. I could care less about being a Maguuma hero, since it doesn’t mean much to me. I want my new spec to fight other people. Not to brag about my l33t pve skills in LA and/or forums.

I’m glad Anet changed it to 250, it will be easier to level my alts now.

Great response, those l33t pvers need to have something to brag about I suppose…

The crybabies are beyond absurd, but I’ll admit that 400 hero points was a little too high. It’s worth noting that these hero challenges are considerably more difficult.

Basically this then:

“OMG I cant play that much per day in order to get my stuffz I deserve cause I gave them money!!!”
>Has 20+ level 80 characters

Wut, who even forced you to level so many characters? Like seriously why do people complain about having to invest time when they have already done such things like having dozens of lvl 80 characters … sigh*

This is really funny actually

XxsdgxX.8109:

This is really funny actually

What’s funny is that anet did the right thing
Hurray!

Please remember that to max out the elite spec, it requires both a lvl 80 and every hero point in core, which is almost map completion. That not a small effort. And then you have to do 4 hero challenges in HoT, very few of which that can be solo’d. Many of the ones that can be solo’d require a mastery to get to. And you have to get that on every character you want to use an elite on.

So, getting 250 points (beyond the points you use to max out all of your core specializations, which you have to do first) is not a walk in the park, nor is it something that “just happens” as a part of other game play. It is an effort! So I don’t think it cheapens it at all. Rather, it’s now a great reward for someone who has put in a lot of work on a character. And then if they want to use it on other characters, they have to do all of that work again.

This even assumes that the elite specializations are really huge improvements in terms of gameplay. I tend to agree with those that say they seem to provide different play styles as opposed to better ones.

Tregarde.6031:

As one who rides the line on “casual” (I guess you could call me upper casual?), this certainly means I’ll be able to fully fill my Specializations a bit quicker. Though I think 300 points may have been a better compromise.

I have a solution that I think will work for everybody:

Give us an option where we can set how many points we need to unlock the specialisation, ranging from 60 to 1000. Play as you like.

;)

XxsdgxX.8109:

Those people should not be playing a game if they barely have time for anything
Personal life problems of some people should never have any kind of impact on things like this, and it’s a shame cause most of the people who are also enjoying the expansion are playing the game or using their time with other important things, instead of flooding the forums and reddit with whining.

Nice, having a job and a family is now considered a personal life problem You do a very good job showing Bryce’s point.

250 is like an hour in the jungle if you have full map completion.

Should be 300.

This is a good thing, you now no longer need to grind the multiple 4 million exp masteries to unlock all the hero points on all four maps anymore.

wolfram.8291:

Please please please ANET. Stand your ground. Weren’t Masteries and Unlocking Elite Spec supposed to take longer than getting to level 80 in the base game? Why are you folding to the elite spec complaints and not doing anything about the mastery farming?

Yeah….the base game also had 5+ times as many maps, which drastically cut down on the amount of content you had to repeat to hit level 80 (actually, you don’t have to repeat anything, and would hit 80 long before repeating anything).

The same cannot be said about masteries and elite specs. Its a pointless grind that takes no effort except the amount of time you invest and Anet was smart to cut that amount down.

Malediktus.9250:

I am very disappointed Anet starts to water things down a few days after release already.

I’m very happy Anet starts to fix problems so quickly after the release.

Anowyyn.2304:

If they broke this easily, this early who knows what else they will give in on? I’m disappointed, but I have faith they’ll come around.

This is a good change for some people, and I’m glad that some folks are happy. But if the loudest get their way every time (a lot of posts in a thread is not a majority), who knows what will be next.

Come on Anet. It’s too early for this. Go back to being awesome, don’t be like Blizzard.

At least Blizzard knows where the majority of their money comes from (casuals) and usually changes things as they see fit. WoD was a terrible hardcore expac that lost 5+ million customers and they way they’re scrambling to implement successful older systems back into play says a lot. Legion looks like it’ll be one of th ebest casual expansions released yet.

Even saying that and with nerfs, Blizzard still makes the hardest PVE content of any MMO I’ve played. Sames goes for Diablo, try doing a 50+ greater rift as a monk or crusader solo.

I still hope Anet gets the common sense to make multiple difficulty raids as I still feel catering to one type of player is a foolish business decision and will be another hard lesson learned when they eventually have to change it.