Guild Wars 2

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

I see the complaints over and over again. I know what the complaints are. Gated behind HoT maps, can’t play the expansion content right away using the elite specs, ect. I’ll even grant that they’re valid complaints, at least in so far as that they’re accurate to the situation.

What I don’t understand is why the expectations are what they are.

Elite specs are HoT content. They’re part of the character progression of the expansion. Why is it that so many people expect and even demand that they be given them without ever touching the HoT maps? And then when that’s not the case, they raise a crap storm? What is it about GW2 or HoT in general that gave people the idea they’d be maxing their elite specs hour 1?

What expansion adds new stuff and then just gives it all to you before you even touch the expansion itself? Just download it and boom, you can get all the new skills right off the bat. Seems to me GW2 letting you get any of the elite spec at all without so much as looking at the jungle areas is beyond how most expansions would handle their new progression, and yet no one is happy with a start, they want the whole spec right here and now.

And yes, before someone brings it up, the elite specs aren’t “everything”. But they are part of the content. What makes them so different from everything else that people are willing to play HoT itself for the skins, the story, the raids, guild halls, whatever, but elite specs, nope. There was literally a topic yesterday where the entire premise was exactly that. Fine with working for everything else, but elite specs being locked in HoT is some inexcusable sin of design. I don’t understand why elite specs alone are singled out in such a way.

I get that a ton of people were super excited about elite specs. I was too. I get that it’d be fun to experience the content in a new way. But this goes beyond “well, it’d be nice”. This is “I need to experience it with my elite spec, period”.

Is it just because the beta gave everyone the elite specs right off the bat, so its a case of “well, I had it before so you can’t take it away from me now!”? Or is there something else that makes people feel like they “deserve” to get elite specs outside of the rest of the HoT content?

Some players wanted to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing fully unlocked elite specs.

With this change, most players have to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing either a core spec or a partial elite spec.

ANet didn’t communicate that they felt the elite specs were part of the end game character progression. So many people assumed that what unlocks it had, if any, would not take as long as they’ve discovered the current method takes.

I think many are also disappointed because they know that the “elite” spec’s are not at all elite.. They are just grinding for a trait line that, once opened, they may or may not use.

Grinding does have a place in the game — in the form of Legendaries. You can then choose if you want to grind or not for the very little incremental advantage they give you in level 80 content.

Look at it this way. If being able to even create a Revenant was gated in the same manner, how would you feel? Elite specs are not a big accomplishment, they are a base game mechanic.

And so if even this is locked, what am I actually supposed to do here? Have we paid all this money just a for a treadmill that will reward us at some point in the future? What are my new toys to play around here? A new pretty, but poorly thought-out zone which I can run around while doing the same old stuff?

I don’t remember base GW2 being this way. In there I created a character and had fun with it from the start. In HoT “fun” is a distant prospect.

It cost 400 hero points to fully unlock an elite spec for a single toon. Now imagine, if you have 10 toons; wanna unlock elite specs for all of them? U have to perform each individual hero challenge 10 times over. And many of these hero points challenges require a decently sized group; that would be a serious issue in the near future, when the hype wears off and map becomes dead.

U have to think long term.

And I don’t understand how people like you can press a button endlessly and get joy out of it as long as they can watch some progress bar go up.

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

You know who said that? President of Arenanet, when talking about the design philosophy behind GW2. You know what else he said?

“GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.”

People are mad because this expansion is everything GW2 is not supposed to be.

Here are some links for you, in case you want to look it up yourself:

http://www.guildmag.com/mike-obrien-on-monetization-of-guild-wars-2/
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Design_Manifesto

Skye.4983:

And I don’t understand how people like you can press a button endlessly and get joy out of it as long as they can watch some progress bar go up.

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

You know who said that? President of Arenanet, when talking about the design philosophy behind GW2. You know what else he said?

“GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.”

People are mad because this expansion is everything GW2 is not supposed to be.

Here are some links for you, in case you want to look it up yourself:

http://www.guildmag.com/mike-obrien-on-monetization-of-guild-wars-2/
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Design_Manifesto

Couldn’t have said it better than this, its a grind, and a painfully long one at that.

Unknown.3976:

It cost 400 hero points to fully unlock an elite spec for a single toon. Now imagine, if you have 10 toons; wanna unlock elite specs for all of them? U have to perform each individual hero challenge 10 times over. And many of these hero points challenges require a decently sized group; that would be a serious issue in the near future, when the hype wears off and map becomes dead.

U have to think long term.

Indeed, I want every spec. Getting 9×400 hero points is going to suck.
Especially since most of them can’t even be solo’d.

Skye.4983:

And I don’t understand how people like you can press a button endlessly and get joy out of it as long as they can watch some progress bar go up.

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

You know who said that? President of Arenanet, when talking about the design philosophy behind GW2. You know what else he said?

“GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.”

People are mad because this expansion is everything GW2 is not supposed to be.

Here are some links for you, in case you want to look it up yourself:

http://www.guildmag.com/mike-obrien-on-monetization-of-guild-wars-2/
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Design_Manifesto

Research Consumer Laws, then apply this post to it. Scary huh?

on topic: I’m honestly annoyed I paid for new class mechanics to enjoy in the new content, I’m also feeling punished for buying so many character slots…
There is nothing to do about it though, Anet want to show us their hard work so much they locked it behind content….

on a side note: for once PvE is entertaining as a solo player, wish I had elite specs to mob hunt with, but that will have to wait another 14 hours? or how ever long to unlock my 1st weapon on my 1st toon out of 17 or so…

To add to this, they added an option to get the hero points through WvW rank ups. But it takes 30-40+ hours to get the 400 points required… per character.

Acetone.4793:

Look at it this way. If being able to even create a Revenant was gated in the same manner, how would you feel? Elite specs are not a big accomplishment, they are a base game mechanic.

And so if even this is locked, what am I actually supposed to do here? Have we paid all this money just a for a treadmill that will reward us at some point in the future? What are my new toys to play around here? A new pretty, but poorly thought-out zone which I can run around while doing the same old stuff?

I don’t remember base GW2 being this way. In there I created a character and had fun with it from the start. In HoT “fun” is a distant prospect.

last time i checked the revenant was not an Elite Spec but an out right class, the rev has the herald as there elite spec and i have yet to get my rev to level 80 but i think the herald would be just the same as the rest of the elites.
in the core game if i remember right you create the toon and it starts at level 1 and then you level it all the way to level 80 how is that any diffrent from HOT you start hot with a level 80 toon the proceed to level the elites.

Skye.4983:

And I don’t understand how people like you can press a button endlessly and get joy out of it as long as they can watch some progress bar go up.

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

You know who said that? President of Arenanet, when talking about the design philosophy behind GW2. You know what else he said?

“GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.”

People are mad because this expansion is everything GW2 is not supposed to be.

Here are some links for you, in case you want to look it up yourself:

http://www.guildmag.com/mike-obrien-on-monetization-of-guild-wars-2/
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Design_Manifesto

so what would you rather how would you fix it? give every one every masterie fully level the elite and then last of all send them a ton of mails with every item they need to finish every achievement and a copy of each legendary as they come out? last time i checked there is no time limit as to how long it takes you to get every thing maxed out that’s not a grind its a long term goal, now if tomorrow they came out and told us that they where shutting down the gw1 servers in a month and you sat there for 18 hours a day getting HOM points then that’s a grind.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Unknown.3976:

It cost 400 hero points to fully unlock an elite spec for a single toon. Now imagine, if you have 10 toons; wanna unlock elite specs for all of them? U have to perform each individual hero challenge 10 times over. And many of these hero points challenges require a decently sized group; that would be a serious issue in the near future, when the hype wears off and map becomes dead.

U have to think long term.

Indeed, I want every spec. Getting 9×400 hero points is going to suck.
Especially since most of them can’t even be solo’d.

I agree, especially about the “not-soloable” part. The fact that they put skill acquisition behind group content gates is the worst part of this xpac.

Electro.4173:

What I don’t understand is why the expectations are what they are.

For almost the entire nine months between announcement and release, the only info available about what it would take to unlock an Elite Spec was: the cost to unlock a core spec and a data-mined amount which was still within the amount of HP gained via core world exploration.

What this led to was a long-held expectation to immediately jump into play on the new spec on the part of people who’ve waited as much as three years for something new. The reaction you’re seeing is called disappointment, fueled by ANet’s last minute reveal. This reaction was inevitable with the way it was handled, and avoidable with up-front communication about the intention to make players progress in HoT to gain access. Anet continues to demonstrate that its management does not understand people.

Seera.5916:

Some players wanted to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing fully unlocked elite specs.

With this change, most players have to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing either a core spec or a partial elite spec.

ANet didn’t communicate that they felt the elite specs were part of the end game character progression. So many people assumed that what unlocks it had, if any, would not take as long as they’ve discovered the current method takes.

I wanted enough money to buy a legendary the day I started playing. The question is, is that want a reasonable thing. I don’t believe it is.

People also wanted progression and for years have complained about lack of progression. The Elite spec is the character progression, and the masteries are the account progression BY DESIGN.

So people can want anything they want, but it isn’t going to affect design decisions that run much deeper.

I have five characters with world complete and another that’s almost completed the world. If they significantly lowered the point total,, I’d have no character progression. And that’s good for some people and not good for others. Furthermore there are a lot of people it’s good for that don’t think it is.

Both my sons played Guild Wars 2 until they got their max level gear and stopped playing. They came back only when ascended gear came out. They got their ascended gear and stopped playing again.

Too many people need stuff to work for that’s linear, to max out their power. It’s unfair but that’s how it is in this genre. If you want to blame someone, blame WoW who set up that situation and everyone ended up copying it.

It’s what players have come to expect when playing an MMO.

Anet’s first responsibility to the game is to keep people playing it. And the masses, unfortunately, have been programmed by other games to need something specific to work towards.

Because it’s a not a problem for Vayne, it’s not a problem for others. Haven’t heard this one many many many times before.

freedomgeass.4756:

Skye.4983:

And I don’t understand how people like you can press a button endlessly and get joy out of it as long as they can watch some progress bar go up.

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

You know who said that? President of Arenanet, when talking about the design philosophy behind GW2. You know what else he said?

“GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.”

People are mad because this expansion is everything GW2 is not supposed to be.

Here are some links for you, in case you want to look it up yourself:

http://www.guildmag.com/mike-obrien-on-monetization-of-guild-wars-2/
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Design_Manifesto

so what would you rather how would you fix it? give every one every masterie fully level the elite and then last of all send them a ton of mails with every item they need to finish every achievement and a copy of each legendary as they come out? last time i checked there is no time limit as to how long it takes you to get every thing maxed out that’s not a grind its a long term goal, now if tomorrow they came out and told us that they where shutting down the gw1 servers in a month and you sat there for 18 hours a day getting HOM points then that’s a grind.

I’m so tired reading the same response over and over again.I will explain to you but I know someone else will do the same thing you did soon after on a different thread. We DONT want to have everything on day one. We DONT have a problem farming for our legendary for months. We DONT want to play with one hand while drinking coke with the other in a raid boss fight. We WANT the challenge of the end game. BUT we DONT want a core mechanic like a spec to be so unreasonably troublesome to get.What’s next?Mastery for bank access?Dude,please.

DaShi.1368:

Because it’s a not a problem for Vayne, it’s not a problem for others. Haven’t heard this one many many many times before.

This seems to be the argument that most folks like Vayne seem to be using: “I’m fine with it, you all should be also.”

When in reality folks playstyles vary greatly. My brother disagrees with me and tells me I should just try out the new PVE, I did, and did not enjoy it. He just doesn’t understand why, because he finds it enjoyable. But he really has no alternative for me that I would enjoy to get the hero points, seeing as the only alternative is ktrain, which is what I’ve been doing with minimal results.

freedomgeass.4756:

Acetone.4793:

Look at it this way. If being able to even create a Revenant was gated in the same manner, how would you feel? Elite specs are not a big accomplishment, they are a base game mechanic.

And so if even this is locked, what am I actually supposed to do here? Have we paid all this money just a for a treadmill that will reward us at some point in the future? What are my new toys to play around here? A new pretty, but poorly thought-out zone which I can run around while doing the same old stuff?

I don’t remember base GW2 being this way. In there I created a character and had fun with it from the start. In HoT “fun” is a distant prospect.

last time i checked the revenant was not an Elite Spec but an out right class, the rev has the herald as there elite spec and i have yet to get my rev to level 80 but i think the herald would be just the same as the rest of the elites.
in the core game if i remember right you create the toon and it starts at level 1 and then you level it all the way to level 80 how is that any diffrent from HOT you start hot with a level 80 toon the proceed to level the elites.

If you took a little time to read the posts the arguments are all there listed over and over again. Read the main topic that has 60k+ views and over 2500 posts. If you still don’t get it then, you probably won’t.

1st. Elite specs aren’t progression they’re a class. Progression is the mastery system and that’s what was communicated. Many planned on playing HoT on our new toys after 3 years of the same classes.

2nd. The slow pace of the xp bar has driven many including me to farm COF mindlessly tagging as it’s superior to playing the new maps. Think about that, 3 days after launch and we’re grinding COF.

3rd. The elite specs themselves aren’t all that elite. The Druid in particular is a train wreck.

Vayne.8563:

I wanted enough money to buy a legendary the day I started playing. The question is, is that want a reasonable thing. I don’t believe it is.

People also wanted progression and for years have complained about lack of progression. The Elite spec is the character progression, and the masteries are the account progression BY DESIGN.

So people can want anything they want, but it isn’t going to affect design decisions that run much deeper.

I have five characters with world complete and another that’s almost completed the world. If they significantly lowered the point total,, I’d have no character progression. And that’s good for some people and not good for others. Furthermore there are a lot of people it’s good for that don’t think it is.

Both my sons played Guild Wars 2 until they got their max level gear and stopped playing. They came back only when ascended gear came out. They got their ascended gear and stopped playing again.

Too many people need stuff to work for that’s linear, to max out their power. It’s unfair but that’s how it is in this genre. If you want to blame someone, blame WoW who set up that situation and everyone ended up copying it.

It’s what players have come to expect when playing an MMO.

Anet’s first responsibility to the game is to keep people playing it. And the masses, unfortunately, have been programmed by other games to need something specific to work towards.

So let me get this straight, your argument for why this is okay is because most people are sheep, or perhaps a better phrase is Pavlov’s dogs? And then you wonder why so many people are mad? We’re not sheep, at least I am not, I don’t know about you. I don’t want linear progression, I want the new skills so I can play with them and theory craft and test new builds in wvw. I don’t want to grind for a month or two to earn each one. Does that make me entitled? Perhaps. Spending a $100 on an expansion that’s barely worth $20 will do that to a person, I thought I earned my elites when I gave Anet my money.

Vayne.8563:

Seera.5916:

Some players wanted to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing fully unlocked elite specs.

With this change, most players have to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing either a core spec or a partial elite spec.

ANet didn’t communicate that they felt the elite specs were part of the end game character progression. So many people assumed that what unlocks it had, if any, would not take as long as they’ve discovered the current method takes.

I wanted enough money to buy a legendary the day I started playing. The question is, is that want a reasonable thing. I don’t believe it is.

People also wanted progression and for years have complained about lack of progression. The Elite spec is the character progression, and the masteries are the account progression BY DESIGN.

So people can want anything they want, but it isn’t going to affect design decisions that run much deeper.

I have five characters with world complete and another that’s almost completed the world. If they significantly lowered the point total,, I’d have no character progression. And that’s good for some people and not good for others. Furthermore there are a lot of people it’s good for that don’t think it is.

Both my sons played Guild Wars 2 until they got their max level gear and stopped playing. They came back only when ascended gear came out. They got their ascended gear and stopped playing again.

Too many people need stuff to work for that’s linear, to max out their power. It’s unfair but that’s how it is in this genre. If you want to blame someone, blame WoW who set up that situation and everyone ended up copying it.

It’s what players have come to expect when playing an MMO.

Anet’s first responsibility to the game is to keep people playing it. And the masses, unfortunately, have been programmed by other games to need something specific to work towards.

While I agree asking for changes to have most players get the elite spec fully unlocked on day 1 of trying is a bad decision, leaving it at 400 with the current time needed to get to the hero challenges (masteries and waiting for groups for the ones that require it) may not be the best thing for the game in the long term.

People are already saying that when they’ve asked the map for help on a hero challenge the responses they get are “sorry, I’ve done that one before” and we’re still in the launch weekend. What’s going to happen in 6 months when player population isn’t as skewed toward the new maps as it is on top of launch? When most players have done all the hero challenges they need to unlock their elite specs on the characters they’re interested in getting them for.

So maybe taking it down to 300 hero points. Or resetting everyone’s skills and traits and saying you don’t need to fully unlock every trait to unlock the ability to train the elite. Or resetting the skills and traits in the elite spec line and rearranging them so that you can at least get a complete trait line and a skill or two before going after every possible adept trait.

Or adding in new ways to get hero points.

Adjusting the WvW conversion to be a little bit easier (say 100 to 150 rank ups total instead of 200).

They don’t need to completely remove the progression from fully unlocking the elite spec to make many of those complaining happy.

I’ve seen very few ask for it to be fully unlocked upon reaching level 80 alone (I have unfortunately seen that be asked for).

IndigoSundown.5419:

Electro.4173:

What I don’t understand is why the expectations are what they are.

For almost the entire nine months between announcement and release, the only info available about what it would take to unlock an Elite Spec was: the cost to unlock a core spec and a data-mined amount which was still within the amount of HP gained via core world exploration.

What this led to was a long-held expectation to immediately jump into play on the new spec on the part of people who’ve waited as much as three years for something new. The reaction you’re seeing is called disappointment, fueled by ANet’s last minute reveal. This reaction was inevitable with the way it was handled, and avoidable with up-front communication about the intention to make players progress in HoT to gain access. Anet continues to demonstrate that its management does not understand people.

I…have to agree with this. I believe I read during their extremely earlier reveals about elite specializations that they would require some effort to unlock, so I assumed in my own mind that we might not likely get the entire thing until we participated in Heart of Thorns some more.

They never clearly established how much work would be involved until days before the reveal, and as much datamining as there was, a lot of players don’t look at that and so their judgment was thus presumed “We will get sub-classes going straight into the first area! Woohoo!”.

Hence, the forum debacle.

I suppose it was just a miscommunication, I personally expected this kind of thing before launch, my mind was braced for attempting the hero points to fully access my specialization which I have. I guess it just wasn’t clear enough…

I am just shocked at the utterly shameful display by the playerbase over this. There are plenty of veterans who have been through the stagnation we have had for years, yet they feel so opposed to what Heart of Thorns is, which is essentially ‘Orr at Launch 2.0 with actual difficulty’, and demand certain things they know kill the answers to their woes:

- ‘Can we have Masteries not be tied to accessing certain content?’ Masteries are Arenanet’s answer to raising the level cap. You earn experience as a level 80 to give you practical capabilities in certain regions. If you don’t want VERTICAL progression to happen, this is how GW2 should move forward.
- ‘Hero Points are just too difficult, reduce their difficulty, they should be soloable!’ I actually agree to this at a point. Given a 5 minute timer, the encounter seems catered to be soloable however the health pool is just too high for even the most experienced players, hence they call for help. I don’t think it would be wrong to make some of these high health hero point bosses have less health to make it feasible to win on its own. But it’s also clear to see that given the ‘repeatable HP system’ they have to reward players for contributing to a hero point they already done, they want these to be tackled by more than one player.

There are some valid arguments, but I am more saddened by our community than the devs. Players are doing quite well despite these grievances and want to raise a stink just to get what they want without effort rather than work on it. It depresses me to even consider that the average GW2 player thinks that an entire launch weekend if dedicated to playing the game, should give an expansion’s worth of full content before the weekdays as to not have things to do at that point forward.

Aidenwolf.5964:

1st. Elite specs aren’t progression they’re a class. Progression is the mastery system and that’s what was communicated. Many planned on playing HoT on our new toys after 3 years of the same classes.

Someone finally gets it! I want to kiss you! Uhm… on the cheek of course.

:)

Apologists’ main line here is them just sticking to repeating that “it’s character progression” mantra that was fed to them, instead of actually looking at what elite specs are in reality. They are tools to play with, not a longterm/end-game goal.

I wonder… if unlocking Revenant was gated behind the last, big Mastery tier and called “a form of account progression”, would those same people defend it? Probably and sadly yes, because no amount of grind seems to be bad for them.

People want to do the new content with their elite specs, not for their elite specs. This is not a difficult concept to comprehend! Especially when HoT’s marketing leaned so very heavily on them (while conveniently leaving out the “grind your kitten off in the jungle” part of actually unlocking them).

People keep saying “grind”. I really want a definition because “grind” has always meant doing repetitive boring tasks over and over again to achieve a goal. This isn’t grind. This is what GW2 has always been, but ramped up. It’s events. It’s exploration. It’s adventuring. If you find it boring, then it’s not worth it. Go do something else.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

People. Want. To. Play. The. New. Content. With. The. Elite. Specs. They’ve. Been. Anticpating. For. Months. This is not a difficult concept to comprehend!

You. Can. Play. The. New. Content. With. Elite. Specs. When. You. Get. Them.

It’s a matter of how soon really, I had zero issues unlocking my first elite spec fully last night, it took me under a full day essentially to do so, and that was without the full Masteries required for some of them unlocked. Dragonhunter will be easier on my second run.

Furthermore, some elite specializations depending on what you really want don’t require the full 400, I didn’t need the last 60 points in my Berserker Specialization Tree to play what I wanted for instance.

Sykper.6583:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

People. Want. To. Play. The. New. Content. With. The. Elite. Specs. They’ve. Been. Anticpating. For. Months. This is not a difficult concept to comprehend!

You. Can. Play. The. New. Content. With. Elite. Specs. When. You. Get. Them.

It’s a matter of how soon really, I had zero issues unlocking my first elite spec fully last night, it took me under a full day essentially to do so, and that was without the full Masteries required for some of them unlocked. Dragonhunter will be easier on my second run.

Furthermore, some elite specializations depending on what you really want don’t require the full 400, I didn’t need the last 60 points in my Berserker Specialization Tree to play what I wanted for instance.

Some people have been assuming players who say that they want to play the elite spec mean just the trait line selected. The point where you’ve only got 60 points invested into it. You obviously get what they’re saying. Just many on the forum do not and assume. Hence Hyper Cutter making it more noticeable what he means.

BeardRex.6739:

People keep saying “grind”. I really want a definition because “grind” has always meant doing repetitive boring tasks over and over again to achieve a goal. This isn’t grind. This is what GW2 has always been, but ramped up. It’s events. It’s exploration. It’s adventuring. If you find it boring, then it’s not worth it. Go do something else.

Would you be upset if you spent money on something that you thought was going to be fun but turned out not to be? Would you remain silent about your being upset if there was a way for you to constructively voice your opinion?

Also, even the most fun activity can become a grind if you do it long enough. Some people reach that “long enough” faster than others.

Vayne.8563:

Seera.5916:

Some players wanted to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing fully unlocked elite specs.

With this change, most players have to experience the new content (excluding elite specs) while playing either a core spec or a partial elite spec.

ANet didn’t communicate that they felt the elite specs were part of the end game character progression. So many people assumed that what unlocks it had, if any, would not take as long as they’ve discovered the current method takes.

I wanted enough money to buy a legendary the day I started playing. The question is, is that want a reasonable thing. I don’t believe it is.

People also wanted progression and for years have complained about lack of progression. The Elite spec is the character progression, and the masteries are the account progression BY DESIGN.

So people can want anything they want, but it isn’t going to affect design decisions that run much deeper.

I have five characters with world complete and another that’s almost completed the world. If they significantly lowered the point total,, I’d have no character progression. And that’s good for some people and not good for others. Furthermore there are a lot of people it’s good for that don’t think it is.

Both my sons played Guild Wars 2 until they got their max level gear and stopped playing. They came back only when ascended gear came out. They got their ascended gear and stopped playing again.

Too many people need stuff to work for that’s linear, to max out their power. It’s unfair but that’s how it is in this genre. If you want to blame someone, blame WoW who set up that situation and everyone ended up copying it.

It’s what players have come to expect when playing an MMO.

Anet’s first responsibility to the game is to keep people playing it. And the masses, unfortunately, have been programmed by other games to need something specific to work towards.

So you’re saying that you’re perfectly fine that the game is taking a WoW-esque carrot on a stick approach to progression?

I imagine a lot of people play this game because they know that once they get their gear, they’re done and can actually enjoy the content that’s in the game, where progression comes from improving your ability to play the game well, to learn to new, accomplish new dungeons and achievements.

But no, you want the game to become WoW-lite. After all, progression is everything to you.