Guild Wars 2

DeceiverX.8361:

Because they don’t actually have a real argument?

Its not fun. It is annoying and stupid. There is the real argument.

runeblade.7514:

DeceiverX.8361:

Because they don’t actually have a real argument?

Neither do you.

Read my post history?

Thank you!! This where I was stuck. Was getting tired of leveling the mastery on the same maps.. just wandering aimlessly looking for events :/

I would like to commend the launch team.

You guys have been doing an amazing job.

Fox.3469:

Slowpokeking.8720:

Fox.3469:

I don’t think this is good at all, this forced people to actually run events over and over again, and it’s about the only mastery that really did.

Fixed

…these events are the most amazing thing about hot, they are the best events gw2 has ever had, if you don’t like doing events, why are you playing GW2? And no it doesn’t force yyou to run them over and over, at least not if you actively participate, the kill xp is what levels your masteries the fastest.

The BEST events guild wars 2 has EVER had?
What of the Twisted Marionette?
What of the Jungle Wurms?
What about Christmas? Halloween? Super Adventure Box?
What about Queens Jubilee?
What about Scarlet Briars full on Lion Arch invasion?
What about Kessex Hills Invasion of the Tower of Nightmares?

Anet has pushed out some of the most amazing content in past years for absolutely 0 dollars past the base game price. The fact that we are paying 50 dollars or more to simply run around for hours at a time with very wonky day-night cycles with barely anything to “farm” to grind our mastery levels

What’s that arenanet? You got something you want to say?

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

I think it is safe to say that no this content is not really up to par with our expectations.

I’m not saying this content sucks.
I’m just saying that the way they presented it more or less needs improvement that toppled with the Halloween being dropped directly on top of it it’s kinda hard to focus on one thing at a time including the fact that it’s 100% grind no “fun”

Too little buddy. Too late? Who knows.

This is a good move, but it’s a bit of a shame it wasn’t anticipated before release. I liked how the story tied in with the live gameplay, but gating the experience caused me to continue advancing through the maps while the story fell behind (massively so with chapter 14). It’s a bit weird going back and continuing the missions when I already know what’s ahead.

Ahhhhhh! Good to hear.

There is progression… and then there is gating content.

Now look at a certain group of points that require a certain # in the hundreds. They remind me of attunements in World of Warcraft.

And we don’t need that here.

I’m loving HoT, and thank you guys for this change.

I know folks are really upset about having to work for the specialization, but honestly I think people are forgetting what this is. It’s an expansion. Normally you level, getting abilities as you do so, getting your best one at max level. I see this as the same thing, only GW style because they won’t ever raise the level cap and some people don’t realize this. When this game launched your abilities weren’t handed to you, you earned them. I’m glad to see that the expansion is what it should be, a renewed feeling of a launch with it’s own twist.

Thanks Arenanet. Most of your community is incredibly happy, keep fixing your bugs, making QoL changes and we’ll keep trekking.

<3

Blainy.4718:

Zaklex.6308:

So how are you addressing the players being able to pass through the poison fields deeper in Magus Falls, as that was the point of having this gate in the first place? Players don’t seem to understand it’s integral to the story line that you have that Mastery first…in this case I disagree with this change and will wait until I have that Mastery to continue onwards…that’s my honest opinion.

Rytlock destroys them much earlier on…

Why can’t he do so now?

I haven’t seen Rytlock destroy a single poison field up to this point, as a matter of fact the only thing that resembles a poison field I’ve come across is the underground lake. If you’re referring to Rytlock slicing open the vine walls like they were paper, that’s entirely different from wading through a field of poison.

Secondly, I actually don’t mind having to wait between story steps, do you know why…time, it takes time to go from place to place, so in essence by using the Mastery system to place an artificial barrier between story steps it enforces an artificial time barrier as well, sort of like making you RP when you hate doing RP…if you look at it from one perspective.

As for the Elite Spec…for all of you that didn’t expect it to take a lot of HP to unlock, you didn’t pay attention very well. It was stated early on that you would need HP to unlock the Elite Spec, and if you had thought about, it would take a lot of it. That’s why some of us were smart enough to amass a small amount of HP on all of our characters before changes prevented us from using ToK, etc. from gaining levels and stockpiling SP/HP. It was known that you would have to EARN your Elite Spec, everyone should have been expecting this from the beginning.

P.S. – you can unlock the complete Elite Spec in Verdant Brink, if you had half the HP to begin with, that only leaves the skins for Auric.

How about letting us unlock elite specs BEFORE we’ve played through all of the content? We want to play the content with the elite specs, not our old builds.

the bigger issue for me more than story being mastery gated, is the hero points being mastery gated.
masteries were supposed to be the long term system, they shouldn’t be gating anything!
least of all the elite specs we are so eager to play but can’t because of mastery grind-walls.

Khristophoros.7194:

How about letting us unlock elite specs BEFORE we’ve played through all of the content? We want to play the content with the elite specs, not our old builds.

+1

I like exploration, I like the playing the story, I like experimenting with the Elite-Specs, I like doing events with other people.

The problem being that the structure of Hearth of Thorns regards one thing as core activity and all the others as rewards you get in small increments after doing the core activity for quite a while. There is no balance between the things you do and there is no player choice when to do them. I feel like having little to no player agency and feel confronted with rather steep time gating. And if I do go off-rails, so to speak, there is no shortage of raptor mobs insisting on you turning around and rejoin the zerg.

I bought the game, I brought my time, but this world, which looks incredibly open, still funnels me down a path that is more akin to homework than anything else.

Malediktus.9250:

buh. Why do you cave in to complainers?

Because they are the ones paying the bills.

Looks like one of the two issues I have with the expansion is gone. I’ll check back in a few weeks to see if the other has been dealt with.

Thank you for listening A-net!

This is not working at all for me
I still need Poison Mastery to get through personal story

Do NOT cave on Elite specializations. Everyone already gets access to the new weapon skills that can be used to further unlock the rest of the traits by PLAYING THE GAME. Unlocking your elite traits is no different than how you would progress new characters in other mmos. You get skills every other level by…PLAYING THE GAME. Just like in GW2 you get traits and skills by playing the game. You only need 40 HP…less if you prepared yourself for this expansion. Are you guys new to MMO’s? And once you unlock the mysteries needed to get to the HPs on your first character the rest of your characters won’t have to unlock anything.

GW1 was the same way. You had to go out and do quest to obtain skills or save all of your plat and buy your skills from a vendor. Everybody just wants to race strait to the end.

Scourge.4317:

Do NOT cave on Elite specializations. Everyone already gets access to the new weapon skills that can be used to further unlock the rest of the traits by PLAYING THE GAME. Unlocking your elite traits is no different than how you would progress new characters in other mmos. You get skills every other level by…PLAYING THE GAME. Just like in GW2 you get traits and skills by playing the game. You only need 40 HP…less if you prepared yourself for this expansion. Are you guys new to MMO’s? And once you unlock the mysteries needed to get to the HPs on your first character the rest of your characters won’t have to unlock anything.
.

Using the weapon at that stage leaves you with an empty traitline, for level 80 content (and harder content for HoT) that just doesn’t work.

I don’t mind putting in effort, but I’d rather put that effort into playing the game for masteries, the story and exploration rather than having to go out of my way to farm hero points if I want to play (a viable) elite spec.

It just takes a bit too long, 200 hero points would be more than enough. New characters would need to put in a lot of effort, spending a fair few hours unlocking it and older characters with map completion etc would need to do a little effort to unlock it.

Asheron.1865:

This is not working at all for me
I still need Poison Mastery to get through personal story

It hasn’t been patched in yet; they’ve said they’ll do it later today.

A step in the right direction, ANet. Now let’s see this done for masteries and elite specs and we’ll be a lot closer to where it needs to be!

How bloody marvelous i almost finish the most horrid grind in my life and now its no longer needed.And no chance il get that 5mill xp back to spend on the mastery i want.
Way to go ANET stick it to the players who actually done the dam grind you expected of us.

MatthewMedina.5419:

Hey all,

I just wanted to pop in here real briefly to let you all know that the team discussed the complaints we’ve been seeing here about the masteries gating story progression, and with tomorrow’s patch we’ll be removing the Itzel Poison mastery gate from chapter 14 “Sign Cutting”. If you were already on this step, when you next log in, your story step should automatically advance as though you had earned the mastery. If you haven’t reached this point, you shouldn’t notice anything different (apart from the fact that you can progress the story faster). If you’ve already advanced past this point by earning the mastery, well there’s just no other way to say it: you’re a rock star, and you deserve an ice cold beverage and a toast from the story team at Arenanet! :-)

I don’t have an exact ETA on when this fix will go Live, but we just wanted to get the word out there ASAP so that if you’re currently on this step, you might want to wait as you will have the ability to bypass this gate sometime tomorrow.

We wanted to use mastery gating as a way to try and prepare you for the challenges ahead the deeper into the Maguuma that you went, but we realize that in this particular scenario, it ended up not being the experience we wanted for all of you and we wanted to correct it.

See you in the jungle!

….

I expect that drink and meal in my mail by tonight

Thank you so much! I’d actually stopped up on that story point due to needing to progress the mastery - something I don’t actually have much issue doing outside of the story - and it felt the gating really held up the immersion, and, without wanting to give any spoilers, the urgency of the story in this particular case.

I was a sad panda, but now I’m cheered up again! I shall wait for the update before continuing, and shall have some Halloween fun in the meantime.

I just hate how you’ve done the new maps, it’s just awful. I’m currently gated in my story because I need some mushroom rubbish to reach the area I need to get to. Why can’t I just play more story?

runeblade.7514:

Khristophoros.7194:

How about letting us unlock elite specs BEFORE we’ve played through all of the content? We want to play the content with the elite specs, not our old builds.

+1

+1

xp is just players time and Anet have no problem with wasting that. they gave us 5 mill xp to grind for the itzel poison mastery then after me and probably lots of other players spend hours grinding out the xp they change it. At the moment i can only think of one word to some up how i feel DISGUSTED.

awesome, i was on the side that gating with masteries was fine up until this one which just expected me to go form 1-4 of itzel which is tonnes of xp and completely exponentialised the curve to epic proportions.

so glad to hear this news

eldrin.6471:

xp is just players time and Anet have no problem with wasting that. they gave us 5 mill xp to grind for the itzel poison mastery then after me and probably lots of other players spend hours grinding out the xp they change it. At the moment i can only think of one word to some up how i feel DISGUSTED.

I wouldn’t feel disgusted. Lets face it, eventually you’ll be getting it anyway, since at least one mastery point I know requires you to have it to access it. I’m not sure if there are other areas barred off yet by vines, but if you run into one, you can just go on through. Not to mention, the next one is to fight the champion once a day for a reward. So there’s that too.

Its more akin to just doing something out of the order you were planning.

psizone.8437:

Scourge.4317:

Do NOT cave on Elite specializations. Everyone already gets access to the new weapon skills that can be used to further unlock the rest of the traits by PLAYING THE GAME. Unlocking your elite traits is no different than how you would progress new characters in other mmos. You get skills every other level by…PLAYING THE GAME. Just like in GW2 you get traits and skills by playing the game. You only need 40 HP…less if you prepared yourself for this expansion. Are you guys new to MMO’s? And once you unlock the mysteries needed to get to the HPs on your first character the rest of your characters won’t have to unlock anything.
.

Using the weapon at that stage leaves you with an empty traitline, for level 80 content (and harder content for HoT) that just doesn’t work.

I don’t mind putting in effort, but I’d rather put that effort into playing the game for masteries, the story and exploration rather than having to go out of my way to farm hero points if I want to play (a viable) elite spec.

It just takes a bit too long, 200 hero points would be more than enough. New characters would need to put in a lot of effort, spending a fair few hours unlocking it and older characters with map completion etc would need to do a little effort to unlock it.

That’s the problem. You want it all now. How does it take to long though when the expansion has only been out for 2 days? Relax and stop trying to rush. HoT’s not going anywhere.

Look if you really want to get it done fast just go do the Mad King instance, or EoTM and just buy all of the HP’s if you are dead set on rushing yourself through everything. But trying to get Anet to get rid of character progression thats been a part of GW since 2005 is just….no.

You only need to get the unlocks on your first character. The others can just go straight to the HP’s ( the ones that don’t involve champ slaying ) without worrying about whether or not you have poison mastery or updraft ect ect.

Nice change.

Was really hoping to hear at least something about the elite spec discussion by now though.

Jordo.5913:

runeblade.7514:

Khristophoros.7194:

How about letting us unlock elite specs BEFORE we’ve played through all of the content? We want to play the content with the elite specs, not our old builds.

+1

+1

+1

eldrin.6471:

How bloody marvelous i almost finish the most horrid grind in my life and now its no longer needed.And no chance il get that 5mill xp back to spend on the mastery i want.
Way to go ANET stick it to the players who actually done the dam grind you expected of us.

Here is your ice cold beverage and a toast from ANET !

Hexalot.8194:

eldrin.6471:

How bloody marvelous i almost finish the most horrid grind in my life and now its no longer needed.And no chance il get that 5mill xp back to spend on the mastery i want.
Way to go ANET stick it to the players who actually done the dam grind you expected of us.

Here is your ice cold beverage and a toast from ANET !

So as soon as your done with Masteries you are going to quit playing in Maguuma? Because that is what this argument is making.

You will continue to earn EXP and unlock other Masteries as you play naturally, if you don’t plan on playing maguuma, why even both unlocking the Masteries that are only useful there?

Scourge.4317:

That’s the problem. You want it all now. How does it take to long though when the expansion has only been out for 2 days? Relax and stop trying to rush. HoT’s not going anywhere.

Look if you really want to get it done fast just go do the Mad King instance, or EoTM and just buy all of the HP’s if you are dead set on rushing yourself through everything. But trying to get Anet to get rid of character progression thats been a part of GW since 2005 is just….no.

You only need to get the unlocks on your first character. The others can just go straight to the HP’s ( the ones that don’t involve champ slaying ) without worrying about whether or not you have poison mastery or updraft ect ect.

Well I primarily play WvW, I rarely play PvE content. So my ideal is to play through the story, do a little mastery and then head back to WvW.

Even if I was to farm EoTM, it’d take 30+ hours to complete the Elite spec and for WvW you can’t really use an incomplete traitline.

Having masteries for character progression is more than enough, but for a fair chunk of the playerbase, playing the elites was the main draw of HoT (especially WvW players). Having the elites take 200 HP for a new character would take just as long as it takes to level from 1-80 if not a little longer, that seems like enough.

I haven’t gotten round to playing the mad king stuff, but for knowledge, how do you get HP from it?

Hexalot.8194:

eldrin.6471:

How bloody marvelous i almost finish the most horrid grind in my life and now its no longer needed.And no chance il get that 5mill xp back to spend on the mastery i want.
Way to go ANET stick it to the players who actually done the dam grind you expected of us.

Here is your ice cold beverage and a toast from ANET !

They force me to grind 5mill xp then have a little meeting and come back and laugh at the players dum enough to do it.

When will this patch come out?

any ETA on this today? Is there a time they usually roll out patches?

Scourge.4317:

psizone.8437:

Scourge.4317:

Do NOT cave on Elite specializations. Everyone already gets access to the new weapon skills that can be used to further unlock the rest of the traits by PLAYING THE GAME. Unlocking your elite traits is no different than how you would progress new characters in other mmos. You get skills every other level by…PLAYING THE GAME. Just like in GW2 you get traits and skills by playing the game. You only need 40 HP…less if you prepared yourself for this expansion. Are you guys new to MMO’s? And once you unlock the mysteries needed to get to the HPs on your first character the rest of your characters won’t have to unlock anything.
.

Using the weapon at that stage leaves you with an empty traitline, for level 80 content (and harder content for HoT) that just doesn’t work.

I don’t mind putting in effort, but I’d rather put that effort into playing the game for masteries, the story and exploration rather than having to go out of my way to farm hero points if I want to play (a viable) elite spec.

It just takes a bit too long, 200 hero points would be more than enough. New characters would need to put in a lot of effort, spending a fair few hours unlocking it and older characters with map completion etc would need to do a little effort to unlock it.

That’s the problem. You want it all now. How does it take to long though when the expansion has only been out for 2 days? Relax and stop trying to rush. HoT’s not going anywhere.

Look if you really want to get it done fast just go do the Mad King instance, or EoTM and just buy all of the HP’s if you are dead set on rushing yourself through everything. But trying to get Anet to get rid of character progression thats been a part of GW since 2005 is just….no.

You only need to get the unlocks on your first character. The others can just go straight to the HP’s ( the ones that don’t involve champ slaying ) without worrying about whether or not you have poison mastery or updraft ect ect.

The problem is it is not progression, it is a flat out grind. Progression was getting to level to 80 in whatever game mode you choose, whether toming up through pvp reward tracks, or smashing zergs in wvw, or PVE content…. etc. While being able to play a class that is new and is viable for the level/area you are at.

Now at level 80 unlocking the new trait line (that is not inherently better, just a new way to play) at an excessively slow pace compared to prior trait lines you are left playing WvW or PVE with an extremely sub-par spec for a VERY long time if you choose to equip that line, thus forcing players to rush through and grind, grind, grind in a Ktrain, or do new zone, and again grind. I have to grit my teeth to do anything out of pvp/wvw/fractals/dungeons/event minigames, and would rather be able to unlock the profession reasonably, in a gamemode I enjoy. Is that too hard to ask? (and no ktraining through EOTM does not count as enjoying WVW)

Remember also many players have to grind on 8+ players, so they have to suffer through content they may not enjoy many, many times. Why not allow progression through just being able to play the game as you want? Because right now doing that you may have one elite spec unlocked by next year at this time if you don’t get bored of playing as the same old spec for that long.

The underlying assumption all the folks that discount the issue have is that: “This pve zone isn’t too bad, just do the long mastery grind once, then grind through the near impossible zone to navigate, do hero challenges, and then do those again on all your characters, don’t you just love this progression? Oh and by the way, screw anyone who doesn’t do the map completion stuff, they don’t belong on guild wars anyway because what I enjoy should be what they enjoy.”

Can we get a clear ETA?

Pls tell us when will the patch come out.

What about the elite specialization? Please reduce it

Even with the Itzel mastery I can’t even do this quest at the moment. It just stops updating the quest markers and blocks progress after the third or so step. Posted in the bug report thread hoping for it to be noticed, but with the requirement removed it might not be a problem after the patch.

runeblade.7514:

Where is the changes to the Elite specialization gating???

Who cares about the story gating.

Seems like most of the people posting before you.

What a silly question…

eldrin.6471:

Hexalot.8194:

eldrin.6471:

How bloody marvelous i almost finish the most horrid grind in my life and now its no longer needed.And no chance il get that 5mill xp back to spend on the mastery i want.
Way to go ANET stick it to the players who actually done the dam grind you expected of us.

Here is your ice cold beverage and a toast from ANET !

They force me to grind 5mill xp then have a little meeting and come back and laugh at the players dum enough to do it.

Dude, your insecurity is showing.

Just asking, how long is the last 3 missions going to take? I’m right at the Sign Cutter mission.

eldrin.6471:

They force me to grind 5mill xp then have a little meeting and come back and laugh at the players dum enough to do it.

I’m sure it’s frustrating to have the requirement removed after you’ve already completed it, but they’re not doing this for their own fun – they’re doing it because something in their game isn’t working well for players and they’ve decided it needs to be adjusted.

They can’t go back in time and change the past, but it doesn’t make sense not to fix issues that arise just because some people have already pushed through them.

One of the risks of being among the earliest players of any game is you might not benefit from changes that are made as the result of player feedback, that’s just a fact of life and a risk we take.

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

eldrin.6471:

They force me to grind 5mill xp then have a little meeting and come back and laugh at the players dum enough to do it.

I’m sure it’s frustrating to have the requirement removed after you’ve already completed it, but they’re not doing this for their own fun – they’re doing it because something in their game isn’t working well for players and they’ve decided it needs to be adjusted.

They can’t go back in time and change the past, but it doesn’t make sense not to fix issues that arise just because some people have already pushed through them.

One of the risks of being among the earliest players of any game is you might not benefit from changes that are made as the result of player feedback, that’s just a fact of life and a risk we take.

He also gets the benefit of having the skill before everybody else. Yes he had to grind it, but now he has it forever, so it worked out in his favor regardless.

Do we have ETA now?

hurrado.2346:

Scourge.4317:

psizone.8437:

Scourge.4317:

Do NOT cave on Elite specializations. Everyone already gets access to the new weapon skills that can be used to further unlock the rest of the traits by PLAYING THE GAME. Unlocking your elite traits is no different than how you would progress new characters in other mmos. You get skills every other level by…PLAYING THE GAME. Just like in GW2 you get traits and skills by playing the game. You only need 40 HP…less if you prepared yourself for this expansion. Are you guys new to MMO’s? And once you unlock the mysteries needed to get to the HPs on your first character the rest of your characters won’t have to unlock anything.
.

Using the weapon at that stage leaves you with an empty traitline, for level 80 content (and harder content for HoT) that just doesn’t work.

I don’t mind putting in effort, but I’d rather put that effort into playing the game for masteries, the story and exploration rather than having to go out of my way to farm hero points if I want to play (a viable) elite spec.

It just takes a bit too long, 200 hero points would be more than enough. New characters would need to put in a lot of effort, spending a fair few hours unlocking it and older characters with map completion etc would need to do a little effort to unlock it.

That’s the problem. You want it all now. How does it take to long though when the expansion has only been out for 2 days? Relax and stop trying to rush. HoT’s not going anywhere.

Look if you really want to get it done fast just go do the Mad King instance, or EoTM and just buy all of the HP’s if you are dead set on rushing yourself through everything. But trying to get Anet to get rid of character progression thats been a part of GW since 2005 is just….no.

You only need to get the unlocks on your first character. The others can just go straight to the HP’s ( the ones that don’t involve champ slaying ) without worrying about whether or not you have poison mastery or updraft ect ect.

The problem is it is not progression, it is a flat out grind. Progression was getting to level to 80 in whatever game mode you choose, whether toming up through pvp reward tracks, or smashing zergs in wvw, or PVE content…. etc. While being able to play a class that is new and is viable for the level/area you are at.

Now at level 80 unlocking the new trait line (that is not inherently better, just a new way to play) at an excessively slow pace compared to prior trait lines you are left playing WvW or PVE with an extremely sub-par spec for a VERY long time if you choose to equip that line, thus forcing players to rush through and grind, grind, grind in a Ktrain, or do new zone, and again grind. I have to grit my teeth to do anything out of pvp/wvw/fractals/dungeons/event minigames, and would rather be able to unlock the profession reasonably, in a gamemode I enjoy. Is that too hard to ask? (and no ktraining through EOTM does not count as enjoying WVW)

Remember also many players have to grind on 8+ players, so they have to suffer through content they may not enjoy many, many times. Why not allow progression through just being able to play the game as you want? Because right now doing that you may have one elite spec unlocked by next year at this time if you don’t get bored of playing as the same old spec for that long.

The underlying assumption all the folks that discount the issue have is that: “This pve zone isn’t too bad, just do the long mastery grind once, then grind through the near impossible zone to navigate, do hero challenges, and then do those again on all your characters, don’t you just love this progression? Oh and by the way, screw anyone who doesn’t do the map completion stuff, they don’t belong on guild wars anyway because what I enjoy should be what they enjoy.”

What is a very long time to you? Expansion launched 12:01A.M Friday. Its Sunday. No one is forcing you to rush anything mate. You just wait to have it all unlocked now. I feel like the BETA weekends are the reasons for this; people got to comfortable with instantly having access to the elite specs and now that they added progression to them (just like every mmo in existence) its seen as a problem. Oh and it won’t take a year to unlock one elite spec lol. Im about 70% done with my Scrapper already through playing through one zone that im not even done with yet.

I have 9 level 80s. I only need the mysteries completed on my main. After that my other 8 will have easy access to the 40 HPs. I would never tell someone they don’t belong in GW because they don’t like what i enjoy. But you do realize that other people actually do enjoy seeing their character become stronger as they play through the game unlocking masters and traits? And you guys want to get rid of it so you can have instantly access only 2 days after the expansion released.