Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone!

I was playing some other game, Destiny this time, since the latest DLC was on sale not too long ago.
I did all the stories to get my new Subclasses and I was very impressed the way they introduced them.

Before that I also got all the new elite specs in Gw2 on every class and I wasn’t impressed.
All we do is commune with some Hero Points in (possibly) the jungle and we can suddenly use new weapons and skills. No story behind it whatsoever.

I think Anet really missed a good opportunity to introduce these new elite specs with a good story, where you gotta go on a journey in search for secret techniques or a legendary NPC from the old days that will teach you about your elite spec.
Add some specific goals that you gotta complete with your elite spec too.
And also a good reason to why it was such a good idea to start learning about this new thing.

Make the player feel powerful and special once he/she has obtained his/her new elite spec with some pretty cutscene.

All-in-all, I hope Anet will consider to add some lore behind the elite specs and rethink the introduction of them.

I feel you. Other than stand at some random locations to gather special points, there is nothing that really makes you a Scrapper or a Chronomancer. That is a loss.

Then again, what you propose could be seen just as grindy (or even more so) by a lot of people because they are forced to do certain sequence to be able to play the spec. Then you get the question why we cannot not use Hero Points to unlock it? Then I can gather them as I play along.

Besides, this would also require them to create profession specific scavenge hunt and even instances that will be done once, or not at all, on each account.
Its probably a lazy way out by ANet to do it this way, and hopefully focus their resources on better quality replayable content.

They could have done a combination of the two. Have a short story quest chain that unlocks the spec and introduces you to a few skills and the basic theme of the spec, then they could send you out into the world to master it through challenges (hero points) and general experience fighting as that spec.

Simply unlocking it via some arbitrary currency (hero points) didn’t feel very exciting to me. I felt no connection to learning this new spec. The same is true of learning new masteries. I can learn how to speak a new language by killing monsters with my staff! I’m all for allowing players to play their way, but there needs to be some connection to why you do things, otherwise it just becomes a meaningless themepark ride.

I know GW2 is very much a theme park simulator these days, but it could be so much more. GW1 had a good balance of themepark and immersion, while GW2 is lacking on the immersion side of things in my opinion. Take the way we used to unlock weapon skills for example. The original system in GW2 was to unlock each weapon skill, one by one, by defeated mobs. It was a good system and felt much more organic than the system we have now. It felt like you was learning how to use the weapon. Then they removed that system and replaced it with a generic ‘gain new skills at certain levels’ system, which didn’t feel fun at all. I have never understood that change, it really wasn’t difficult to understand.

GW2 has some great ideas, great combat and some great innovations to the genre, but it does seem to be moving towards a more themepark experience lately, which for many lacks soul.

luzt.7692:

Hello everyone!

I was playing some other game, Destiny this time, since the latest DLC was on sale not too long ago.
I did all the stories to get my new Subclasses and I was very impressed the way they introduced them.

Before that I also got all the new elite specs in Gw2 on every class and I wasn’t impressed.
All we do is commune with some Hero Points in (possibly) the jungle and we can suddenly use new weapons and skills. No story behind it whatsoever.

I think Anet really missed a good opportunity to introduce these new elite specs with a good story, where you gotta go on a journey in search for secret techniques or a legendary NPC from the old days that will teach you about your elite spec.
Add some specific goals that you gotta complete with your elite spec too.
And also a good reason to why it was such a good idea to start learning about this new thing.

Make the player feel powerful and special once he/she has obtained his/her new elite spec with some pretty cutscene.

All-in-all, I hope Anet will consider to add some lore behind the elite specs and rethink the introduction of them.

I agree. The revenant class at least gets rytlock barging in all epic-like. I have said several times on forum posts it would have been cool to actually see braham evolve into a dragonhunter story wise instead of just alluding to it. Think the same idea could have applied to us. Or how like majory got her greatsword that was a neat little story.

Even something kind of short and simple-ish would have been better than nothing. Personally would have loved a starter zone for revs similar to wow’s zone for dk’s at the beginning of WotLK. Start at a higher level or even 80, and enjoy a few rev only quests or something in the mists to get to tyria.