Guild Wars 2

According what the Heart of Thorns will offer:

We’re reimagining progression with our new Mastery system. Explore new training opportunities for your character beyond level 80 and master abilities like hang gliding in the jungle, tearing the bark off of heavily armored Mordrem, or building new collections that earn precursors to a legendary weapon.

Does this mean most of the masteries will be limited to the jungles in that we can’t use them to great effect in the other areas?

Im sure they will be usable in other areas.. it sounds like they will unlock new trait trees and such.. would be silly to restrict that kind of mechanic in just one or two zones.

That’s cool. Because I would so love to fly around Black Citadel. XD

well, the gliding doesnt seem to be a profession specialty, but more of a zone specialty (more akin to the zepherite crystals)

I wouldnt count on gliding in other areas just yet.

I doubt it personally. A major theme of the game in the past many months is spreading the community out. The mega-server system, the new daily system, etc are all in the game to help spread the community to the various mid-level zones.

So I think Masteries will most than likely involve content in the entire game, not just the new stuff.

They didn’t actually say.

For all we know it might depend on the specific mastery. Maybe some will work everywhere and some only in the new maps.

I really hope the gliding works everywhere though. I’d love to be able to glide through the Shiverpeaks.

I’m pretty sure that Masteries are limited to the jungle.

Don’t know about Specailizations though (does a Ranger become a Druid only inside the jungle?).

I’d love this. But however with what they’ve told us about mastery (being able to change combat mechanics) I imagine it would require a lot of reworking of non HoT bosses and mechanics. So I’m not sure.

This is what will concern me about this expansion. Specializations will definitely work on all maps, that’s safe to assume. But this does raise an eyebrow in that the Masteries may only play a factor in the jungles only.

I don’t think we’ll be able to fly outside the new zones, only because it would ruin the jumping puzzles experience in the low level areas.

Yoone.9461:

I don’t think we’ll be able to fly outside the new zones, only because it would ruin the jumping puzzles experience in the low level areas.

But how many jumping puzzles would be ruined with gliding? I think Gliding would be wonderful to prevent falling damage in some of those jumping puzzles.

gliding is a mastery, not a class specialization. they are totally different.

mastery will be for the new areas only. class specialization will likely be global.

I’m pretty sure the masteries are going to be specific to the jungle.

I mean, realistically, most of them HAVE to be jungle specific because they just wouldn’t be useful elsewhere.

You get a mastery specific to fighting a certain type of creature found in the jungle, its not going to be useful anywhere else anyway because you can only find those in the jungle.

Ancient languages? I guess that could be stretched out to certain other areas, but I don’t think the races specifically in the jungle would be found anywhere else.

Gliding could technically be used elsewhere, but it would break so much stuff. Jumping puzzles are the obvious big one, but it would also just break the maps themselves. There are already ways to get outside of certain maps, but with gliding it would be super easy to just break out of the playable area of various maps.

I don’t see gliding getting added to old maps that weren’t built with that in mind. A lot of terrain features are “false fronts” meant to be seen only from certain angles.

So maybe gliding only works in the thicker hot moist jungle air?

Though it would be amusing to at least see crashed gliders in other regions courtesy of Priory scholars trying to make them work.

Gaile, are you able to say when some answers will be forthcoming? Like, “this week we’ll start answering your questions,” as opposed to “in the time before the expansion, we’ll answer all your questions.” After all, we could be a year away from HoT.

I’m sure some systems are still under development (guild halls had a lot of line art in the trailer) and final answers cannot be provided, but it would be oh so nice to know when we can start learning more.

I think it will depend on the specific Mastery. Some could be jungle-only, others could be universal.

I wonder if they’ll introduce masteries to other maps and areas. So we know about Jungle Masteries, yes, but why not Dungeon Masteries, Kryta Masteries, etc?

They did say there would be Masteries for crafting.

Another question, will spending Mastery points require choosing, or will we eventually be able to Master all the mastery lines?

If I have to choose between gliding, crafting, and combat masteries, I might weep. Choice tends to paralyze me!

I’m pretty sure the theory behind Masteries is that with each new region they would introduce new Masteries…that would lead to more horizontal progression for our characters that way.

Masteries were stated to be means of surviving in the jungle environment and had no other context of the rest of Tyria surrounding them. Since the expansion is also not required to play in the base game, it is expected they will only be used in expansion content zones.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are Far Shiverpeak Masteries when we go fight Jormag a few more years down the line or Crystal Desert Masteries when we go after Kral, or Deep Sea Masteries when we go after Bubbles (I can’t decide if an entire expansion underwater would be a good or bad thing… I think it would be good if they had 4-5 new weapons to use underwater but can’t think of what they could be aside from staff and sceptre/focus)… etc. Maybe they’ll even put masteries in for Orr from LS updates as a way to help clean up the place (even though it doesn’t actually clean it up).

The specialization is where you get skills that can be used outside of the mastery zones.

About masteries, sure some of them could probably be global but think hangliding for example that would be potentially game breaking in maps and environments not set up for it.

While this is just speculation right now, it makes sense to assume that most masteries will be primarily region specific if they play into the map design heavily (ie. exploration masteries and ones that focus on unlocking areas), however, combat masteries that we know next to nothing about at this point could easily become more global than just be restricted into the new region (the emphasis being on could easily become)-

They did specifically refer to them as “skills of the jungle” that could mean they are all region specific right now but that doesn’t exclude them from applying to older zones in the future. Or some of them could be global because there is no mechanical reason to restrict them.

DeceiverX.8361:

Masteries were stated to be means of surviving in the jungle environment and had no other context of the rest of Tyria surrounding them. Since the expansion is also not required to play in the base game, it is expected they will only be used in expansion content zones.

This is what I fear, and if that’s the plan it should be reconsidered a bit.

Zone skills are zone skills. They’re not true progression, really. I can see glider being locked to the jungle for tons of technical reasons, but if there’s other stuff that’s more like traditional skills and is locked people won’t be amused.

DeceiverX.8361:

Masteries were stated to be means of surviving in the jungle environment and had no other context of the rest of Tyria surrounding them. Since the expansion is also not required to play in the base game, it is expected they will only be used in expansion content zones.

The mastery system is stated to include collections that lead to getting a precursor.

Hmmmm… this is going to be a major flaw with the expansion assuming Arenanet decides to commit to that idea. While it IS good on paper, the problem is that I’d love to see those skills (even some of them) applied throughout the entire map. I mean think about it. Gliding through the air after unlocking a vista for the first time.

I would adore if the Exploration and Lore Masteries could open up new tidbits in existing zones. There’s lots of potential there!

Please pass on to the team how much it is appreciated that Mastery isn’t going to just focus on weapons and combat.

The room for speculation is limitless at this point, really. That the given definition of Masteries ranges from hanging gliding in the jungle, to ripping bark of a mordrem, to building precursor collections, makes it sound like they can be virtually anything that Anet wants them to be.

They did say one of the new ways to get precursors is a cross game scavenger hunt. Some of the items required may only be able to be found using masteries?

I imagine that masteries will be pretty much like WvW rank points, that you also gain them account-bound but you spend specifically in each character.
Also, it can be made limitless by making some things very expensive (like the last level of mastery on WvW abilities).
I guess that most of them will be specific to Maguuma, but some of them can apply for Mordrem mobs everywhere or be expanded to other content on other maps.

It will be a difficult decision, to choose between rank up on gliding, ancient languages, or in something useful for the precursor scavenger hunt… Specially if those 2 other skill are useful for the precursor scavenger hunt! I guess I can rank up in 1 line for each character, and in the end I can get my precursor.

I think a better comparison than wvw rank points are achievement points. From what I read you get points through challenges and story missions, and those points will be account bound.. That sounds, like there will be a limited amount of points, only to be extended whenever new content gets introduced.