Guild Wars 2

I realize this thread is a little old, but I wanted to clarify a few things that people are getting confused – the discussion itself is still relevant:

Personally, it is unlikely at this point in time that I would buy the expansion. In part because I lack the extra funds and also because I’m not sure I’m loyal enough to the franchise to do so, even if I had the funds.

I don’t mean that as a dig at the game – just explaining my thought process.

It’s important to note that there is a difference between whether someone “should” buy the expansion, or developers “should” get paychecks, as determined by one’s worldview – and whether the model will be a healthy long-term decision for the game.

As I said previously, I’m sure the GW2 team has assessed the options in detail already: I’m not trying to tell them how to do their job.

However, for those of us who are not the GW2 team, let’s try to keep in mind the distinction between the drawbacks of a model and how we feel others should act.

The chosen model does have its potential drawbacks, as all models do: New areas that are only accessible by having an expansion will be populated – at least in the short-term – by players who have bought the expansion. If these areas become the new, popular stomping ground for most players who have the expansion, then those who don’t have the expansion will be left with a significantly lower pool of players to interact with.

Further, the expansion players will also have less players to hang with, if their stomping ground is an expansion area, because of the number of players who have not purchased the expansion.

i.e. a splintered playerbase

A drawback like this won’t be changed by people insisting that developers need money or that buying a game expansion is affordable. It will either happen or it won’t and no amount of “shoulds” will change that. Keep in mind that we are talking large numbers of players in percentages – thousands at least – not Billy the Expansion Purchaser vs. Suzie the Frugal.

There are thousands of Billys and thousands of Suzies and their decisions are not all going to come back to whether the expansion cost is perfectly reasonable or whether developers need to be properly supported.

Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!

Pagan Highlander.5948:

So, if I remember correctly, Arenanet said we would never have to pay for an exspansion for GW2. We would get the exspansions periodically for free.

Just want to comment on this perticular part. They never stated they wouldn’t do paid expansions, simply that at the time they weren’t looking into it but focusing on the living story.
This is simply one of the many examples of anet saying one thing and the readers making it into something different.

BilboBaggins.5620:

Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!

Gear score and the mastery system are worlds apart. I’m not sure how anyone can compare them.

Gear score specifically adds up all your gear to give you a number. This is not really any different from achievement points which are already in the game.

Basically anyone who parties with you can see your achievement points right now. So I’m not really sure what you’re on about.

Vayne.8563:

BilboBaggins.5620:

Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!

Gear score and the mastery system are worlds apart. I’m not sure how anyone can compare them.

Gear score specifically adds up all your gear to give you a number. This is not really any different from achievement points which are already in the game.

Basically anyone who parties with you can see your achievement points right now. So I’m not really sure what you’re on about.

Often enough it was stated, that you will not be able to overcome the challenges in HoT until you unlock a certain amount of mastery skills.

So the content is gated behind your mastery score which is sort of just a replacement for a gear score.

It is an artificial gating which has nothing to do with personal skill but with the system behind it.

So this means:

Game A: Not high enough gear score = you can not complete the content
Game B: Not high enough mastery score = you can not complete the content

There is a difference in how to aquire the scores, but the result is the same. A bit like old radiance in LotRO.

While I understand that gating makes sense in MMOs for it will make the content last longer than it would without, I am still not happy about potential progress blocking for more casual players.

Edit: Proof from IGN interview

“With combat, it’ll be more like a reveal like you might see in a game like Zelda where there’s a feeling like wow, I got this tool and now I remember when I was trying to fight this creature before I couldn’t get past this one ability; this tool clearly tells me this is the key to that lock and now I’m going to open it,” adds Mastery design lead Crystin Cox. “That feeling is one of the things we’re really going: now I have more power, not because a number went up but because I can actually do this thing.”

The problem with this system: A really skilled player can overcome the gear score, but you have no chance against a mechanic that is required to beat an encounter that is locked behind a mastery.
In this regard, the mastery system is worse of a gating than a gear score.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

BilboBaggins.5620:

Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!

Gear score and the mastery system are worlds apart. I’m not sure how anyone can compare them.

Gear score specifically adds up all your gear to give you a number. This is not really any different from achievement points which are already in the game.

Basically anyone who parties with you can see your achievement points right now. So I’m not really sure what you’re on about.

Often enough it was stated, that you will not be able to overcome the challenges in HoT until you unlock a certain amount of mastery skills.

So the content is gated behind your mastery score which is sort of just a replacement for a gear score.

It is an artificial gating which has nothing to do with personal skill but with the system behind it.

So this means:

Game A: Not high enough gear score = you can not complete the content
Game B: Not high enough mastery score = you can not complete the content

There is a difference in how to aquire the scores, but the result is the same. A bit like old radiance in LotRO.

While I understand that gating makes sense in MMOs for it will make the content last longer than it would without, I am still not happy about potential progress blocking for more casual players.

Edit: Proof from IGN interview

“With combat, it’ll be more like a reveal like you might see in a game like Zelda where there’s a feeling like wow, I got this tool and now I remember when I was trying to fight this creature before I couldn’t get past this one ability; this tool clearly tells me this is the key to that lock and now I’m going to open it,” adds Mastery design lead Crystin Cox. “That feeling is one of the things we’re really going: now I have more power, not because a number went up but because I can actually do this thing.”

The problem with this system: A really skilled player can overcome the gear score, but you have no chance against a mechanic that is required to beat an encounter that is locked behind a mastery.
In this regard, the mastery system is worse of a gating than a gear score.

An interview isn’t proof of anything. Because the words you take absolutely literally may not mean what you think they mean. We’ve seen it time and time again, even with just the word grind in the manifesto. What Anet said they were saying wasn’t what everone assumed they were saying.

It’s entirely possible that this is something to take literally. It’s entirely possible that it’s not impossible to beat the odds if you’re a very skilled player. We simply do NOT have enough info at this point.

Until we have enough info, I’m not going to rely on a couple of words in an interview which might be literal and might just be there to give you an idea of how hard the content is.

But we do know that there is one thing that is gated. There are going to be areas you can’t reach if you don’t have mastery points.

By the same token, the level 70 personal story is gated, because you can’t get to it until you do the level 60 personal story. It means that that content is linear.

Linear content is always gated. You must do X before you do Y.

It may mean nothing more than that.

BilboBaggins.5620:

Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!

/shrug

Sounds like you will either be moving on to another game or spending the rest of your gw2 gaming time running (and rerunning) old content in the original maps. If this works out the way they want then this is the future for this game. Any new maps will feature further elaborations of the Mastery system, meaning you won’t be going there either and will be stuck in the old content.

Sounds boring to me. I guess I’d be moving on if I had your view of the matter. Hope you find your mmo without content gating.

Pagan Highlander.5948:

So, if I remember correctly, Arenanet said we would never have to pay for an exspansion for GW2. We would get the exspansions periodically for free. Additionally, it sounds very much like if you don’t buy it, you will get left behind, no longer have a living story, and really get screwed on WvW (what guild would want half the members that can’t enter all the maps and support their guild).
You can add a lot of flash, but making WvW unbalanced (the new map does that by limiting it to people with the exspansion) even more. You never made Jewelry and cooking to 500, never listened to the players to find out what they wanted, especially in WvW. WvW has been totally ignored by Anet, except when you tinker with it and screwed it up with stupid cannons in EOTM, no white swords, and siege disablers.
These are the reasons people have lost interest. I won’t be spending money on mostly PvE flash, which they should have given us for free like they promised anyways. You want to increase interest, listen to the people who play. Fix the problems, and see what people want

You remember incorrectly :Colin directly said (in 2012)(on these forums no less)that there will be monthly free content (living world) then in the next sentence he said they will be making full fledged expansions as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-wars-2-content-update/first#post86706

…and even before that is was a “nothing is off the table” line. Stop pulling these quotes out of nowhere people.

Pagan Highlander.5948:

So, if I remember correctly, Arenanet said we would never have to pay for an exspansion for GW2.

I’m betting you can’t find a quote were they ever actually used the word ‘never’ in any context, much less what you’re FANTASIZING you heard.

Living World Season 2 rewards will pop up with HoT or before? Jocasta asked for my laurels.
Will be there new utility infusion that will have boost to mastery progression in laurel vendor?
Will be there there sinister amulet with utility infusion slot? you gave us 2 with offensive and defensive slots. So it lack there one like that. And again before HoT or when HoT is.
If there will be chance to gain precursor in HoT, will you also raise for them to drop from monsters or in Mystic Forge? to others players who won’t buy to make kind of balance? or opposite you will decrease this rate to make HoT more important?
Will you make gold farm/drop rate more important? in new content.

5 questions, if there will flash something in my mind I will add more.

Astral Projections.7320:

Sounds boring to me. I guess I’d be moving on if I had your view of the matter. Hope you find your mmo without content gating.

Yep, personally I prefer this method of content gating to a gear based one. I also think that people are assuming that this will be some kind of punitive grind to “unlock” the first set of mastery related content then the next then the next, I don’t think that will be the case. I suspect that it will be far more accommodating than people think, so for example, mastery level one in gliding will get you to and around the canopy but mastery level 100 will make it a lot more convenient and allow you to take greater short cuts and so on.

As for the fear that it will be a “gear score” because people will see your mastery level on your name plate, use that to judge you and put it on LFG messages “Arah p1 mastery level 60+ only” or whatever. Well, I think the idea is daft but I’ve got absolutely no doubt that some (small) portion of the player base will feel that way. They feel that way about achievement points already so they will about this too.

Personally, I like it when they make it that obvious; it means that they separate themselves from the reasonable people who know that it means very little. Time spent playing a game is no indication that you can play it well and as the mastery level shown will be the same for all your level 80s, it’s certainly no indication that you can play a particular profession well).

I think after so much free content people are spoiled.

It’s an expansion for an MMO, while it’s fair to assume some features might be coming for free, it’s best to just consider all of this is paid content.

For the people mentioning PvP imbalances, the new profession masteries aren’t spouse to be more powerful than what’s currently available, so it shouldn’t be any more difficult to handle them.

Dean Calaway.9718:

For the people mentioning PvP imbalances, the new profession masteries aren’t spouse to be more powerful than what’s currently available, so it shouldn’t be any more difficult to handle them.

I think you’re mixing up specialisations and masteries. Masteries are PvE only.

roachsrealm.9284:

just please remember to put an option to purchase through the gem store. some of us have more in game gold than real world money..

Or more time to play to get said gold than real world money!

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Edit: Proof from IGN interview

“With combat, it’ll be more like a reveal like you might see in a game like Zelda where there’s a feeling like wow, I got this tool and now I remember when I was trying to fight this creature before I couldn’t get past this one ability; this tool clearly tells me this is the key to that lock and now I’m going to open it,” adds Mastery design lead Crystin Cox. “That feeling is one of the things we’re really going: now I have more power, not because a number went up but because I can actually do this thing.”

The problem with this system: A really skilled player can overcome the gear score, but you have no chance against a mechanic that is required to beat an encounter that is locked behind a mastery.
In this regard, the mastery system is worse of a gating than a gear score.

The unanswered question in there is whether a skilled player will be able to get by without the mastery, much like a Zelda player might choose to do a more difficult dungeon first.

Gaile Gray.6029:

You guys are asking really good questions, and I wish I had the answers, but I don’t. We are going to start up on a lot of “deep dives” in the future, and I’m going to gather questions from the forums over the weekend and pass them along!

Gaile the promises of “deep dives” doesn’t really mean anything at this point with how little information Anet gives out before something goes live. Especially since one of the Feature Packs involved a week of reveals that basically over hyped very minor things and most of which just forcing us to be on par with the China client.

As for needing to buy the expansion I wouldn’t be surprised if dungeon groups start requiring people to be in the new specializations of the class and fractal groups will probably require you to have X in the fractal mastery for the lfg groups so basically yes you will likely have to buy the xpac to continue having fun in the game.

Nyres.6254:

Gaile the promises of “deep dives” doesn’t really mean anything at this point with how little information Anet gives out before something goes live. Especially since one of the Feature Packs involved a week of reveals that basically over hyped very minor things and most of which just forcing us to be on par with the China client.

As for needing to buy the expansion I wouldn’t be surprised if dungeon groups start requiring people to be in the new specializations of the class and fractal groups will probably require you to have X in the fractal mastery for the lfg groups so basically yes you will likely have to buy the xpac to continue having fun in the game.

Deep dives have already started, they’re on the main page and they seem to have a fair bit of information.

You won’t need the pack to have fun, but like you said, there may be stricter group requirements with the release of the specialisations.

What about this scenario?

You buy the expansion with real currency and get everything.
You buy the expansion with gems and only get things that are not directly tied to the new PvE maps (like the WvW map, some mysteries, etc.)

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

What about this scenario?

You buy the expansion with real currency and get everything.
You buy the expansion with gems and only get things that are not directly tied to the new PvE maps (like the WvW map, some mysteries, etc.)

Sure, if it was like…half or less than half of the cost of the full expansion. otherwise it just would not make any sense.

Dante.1763:

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

What about this scenario?

You buy the expansion with real currency and get everything.
You buy the expansion with gems and only get things that are not directly tied to the new PvE maps (like the WvW map, some mysteries, etc.)

Sure, if it was like…half or less than half of the cost of the full expansion. otherwise it just would not make any sense.

That would depend on the total amount of content in the expansion and the amount of parts available in the store.