Guild Wars 2

Stoaga.8190:

Hero point grind is an absolute joke thanks anet

Yep. Especially after all their comments on the new system in order to avoid the traditional armor grind. OMFG i would be way happier if there was new armor to grind for instead of MUSHROOM JUMPING MASTERY *FLIPS DESK*

Guild of 493 members, 150 online, hundreds more logged in since launch. Not one person has talked positively about this Hero Challenge situation.

We ain’t a wvw only guild either

hurrado.2346:

-Maybe then make the 400 hero point grind more for the skins, than for the class itself, I think this would be reasonable, and fashion is the content most folks enjoy working towards, whether you enjoy the new “progression” or not, people like working on their own unique wardrobe… and guess what it doesn’t damage the playing experience for any groups of players. Besides, the skins are pretty well done for the most part, I would joyfully play on the elite specs I find exciting for quite some time through normal wvw and what not to get those skins.

This is something that the developers don’t quite seem to have grasped. Want us to do every mastery in the new expansion and have us be happy about it? Just put shiny weapon and armour skins at the end of it. People, in my experience, have no problem grinding patiently for cosmetics.

Looking at the eSpecs as a reward is, I believe, a mistake. The eSpecs are a tool, skins (or exploring, or playing the game, or gold, or legendaries) are the reward.

binidj.5734:

This is something that the developers don’t quite seem to have grasped. Want us to do every mastery in the new expansion and have us be happy about it? Just put shiny weapon and armour skins at the end of it. People, in my experience, have no problem grinding patiently for cosmetics.

Looking at the eSpecs as a reward is, I believe, a mistake. The eSpecs are a tool, skins (or exploring, or playing the game, or gold, or legendaries) are the reward.

I agree with this 100%. Skills shouldnt be locked behind the grind, cosmetics sure why not since they are just rewards

As first impressions, I have a positive judgement of Heart of Thorn, because of many ideas really innovative, and I would like to suggest to hesitating people that to buy Hot is really worth.
But as far as I’m concerned, as many people, I’m far to be happy for the frustrating way to get a Specialization, and I would give my contribution in this discussion, hoping Anet will find a solution for this issue.
I’ve read here that some people would like more progression, but what do you mean for progression? Quests in PvE, maybe? Sure it’s the best way for a WvW player?
I honestly think the best progression it’s learning deeply the skills and the possibile uses that traits allow to do.
If you are a Pve player, put your nose out on a Wvw map, try to survive roaming and zerging and you will understand what I mean.
The first experiences in Wvw normally are a total failure for a Pve player, and you have to go deep into your profession to understand how to survive and how to be effective in fighting: that’s the real progression!
I’m far to be convinced that, for lovers of Wvw at least, it’s a good and rewarding progression’s way striving to reach a lv 80 in Pve maps or the 400 hp necessary for the Specialization, because normally could happen you are forced to play in ways you would prefer don’t do (PvE, or using the old profession), feeling for that a little frustrate.
So, I agree with people asking to developers faster ways to get Specializations.

ANet seems to be incapable of making something, which does not need hours, days, weeks of grind. Grind is not fun. Grind is boring. Especially if it is just for some skills. This is a huge turnoff looking at the elite specs.

ok so here are my 2 cents

i used to play a lot of gw for around 2-3 years and got around 1.5k hours logged. I stopped playing around a year a got and just started again 2 weeks ago because of the expansion.
In comparison to back then i now have a fulltime job where i spend 50-60 hours each week. Leaving me with about 1-2 hours playtime a day during the week and sometimes 5-6 hours on the weekend.

my mains are a warrior which i used for map completion and dungeons, a mesmer which i used for arah, Ta and fractals and my ele which i use for wvw where i am 90% if my time.

furthermore i got a engineer, necro and guard for which i would like to try the new specs as well.

now my problem with this expansion.

i bought it mainly to breath some new live into this game for me the points most interesting are :

new specs, new wvw map, new pve map

so i would like to spec my ele and go into wvw to play. now my problem is my ele got 17 hero points (cause i did map completion on my warrior), i played him in the magnum zone for around 6 hours yesterday evening and have now 44 hero points and 2 mastery points unlooked.

So if it continues like this i will be able to use the tempest spec in around 3 Months (and i am not even that existed about the tempest), i would like to unlook the chronomancer most but i dont like to explore on my mesmer and i only got 28 hero points on him so i dont feel like even starting unlooking him.
My warrior got some nice 190 heropoints but i am not interested in his spec.

So to make it short, i am interested to play the new area 1 time on one character, i dont have the time to grind 3 months to try a spec i might not even like.
I want to spend the few time i have when i can play this game with stuff i enjoy (wvw, exploring contend once, trying out different builds and characters)

So far i am already bored with the new map after one evening, when i was only able to unlook a tiny part of it. The thought that i need to repeat that multiple time including the old tyria doesnt feel like fun to me. on top of that the new zone feels really empty, most of the time i only see 2-3 people completing events with me (and that on launch day), i tried to solo a champion shroom hero and had him to around 85% hp after 5 minutes of kiting, everytime he hit me he dropped 50% of my hp. Finally after 5 minutes i missed a dodge and died. Completing these events without a team seems impossible and when there are already no people there on patch day…

So far i am very dissapointed.
Till now GW2 for me was “do whatever you want”.
Some dungeons when i want some gold or exotic,
some fractals when i want some accessories,
some guild missions for some other accessoiress
some WvW when i want to fight
some exploration when i want to see a new area
some World bosses when i want money
some cursed shore farming when i want money
etc.
now for the new expanision i am kinda forced to grind the new jungle because otherwise unlooking the one new thing for me (specialistations) will take even longer than 3 months if i do other things which i would like to do.

I love the new areas and all the events inside of them but i just can’t enjoy it while i’m trying to unlock all my specialization skills.

The main draw of the expansion for me was the elite specs but spending hours upon hours trying to reach these well hidden hero challenges only to find half of them basically one-shot me is hugely frustrating… I’ve honestly lost the motivation to play anymore.

Ok, so, I complained a few pages back about people not giving suggestions and I’m happy that the venom from before isn’t near as prevalent. There are still plenty of irritated folks, but not so much venom and raw hate. There have been some good suggestions about how to solve this problem. But the one I like the most is to bring back the Trait vendors, or at least their hero point refunding items. Make it cost a few silver each time and have it refund the hero points so they can be reused for new builds. This would allow those who only have a few hours a week to play the elite specializations without the months of grind it would take them while still allowing those who like that grind to get the extra hero points to avoid the vendors (This makes the grind for convenience, not core functionality). It serves as a small gold sink to help the economy, and gives people an option to alleviate their troubles. I can’t see any way this could be bad for the game. That’s my two cents.

Here is the point that I think a lot of people in here are trying to make, and that others are trying to ignore.

Nobody (that I found) is saying that all forms of progression should be cut from the game. All video games have progression in some form. What people wanted, and what people thought would be happening based on most previous MMORPGs (and since this unlock method was intentionally left until the last minute to be detailed due to obvious player distaste), was a very quick way to unlock the “elite” specs. Isn’t this what other MMOs do anyways? Do other MMOs lock the new classes behind much more than owning the expansion? They have level cap increase many times, but isn’t that what mastery is supposed to be?

1) This was obviously withheld until right before release because ANet knew that this would affect sales negatively. I don’t see any other reason to withhold this information for so long.

2) Calling these specs “elite” was probably a decision made in order to sell this overly long unlocking process. While these specs aren’t particularly “elite”, they do seem to have a gate to reflect the name, if not the content.

3) The story AND these specs (why even call them “elite” anyways?) are gated behind literal grinding. You must grind experience by repeating events/monster slaying until you filled a bar and can thus progress further. I don’t think that there is a better definition for grinding than boring repeated events and endless monster slaying to fill a bar.

But, it isn’t all bad, the Halloween event is fun…

Start seeking out hero points. Find one on minimap. 50 miles above me. Puzzle out how to get there over a period of 15 minutes. Go up there. Oops, I didn’t allocate enough virtual points into my mushroom garbage in order to do that one yet.

I have a few comments on this whole fiasco.

Upon first zoning into the map, I’m told I have to get a glider. Not by an npc, or in the story, but by some magical text floating above my head. Why isn’t it tied to the story at all, if the story is going to require it? I end up running around in the jungle, absolutely no clue what to do (the scout didn’t help at all, at this point I just want to continue the story) and after 40 minutes of wandering around I finally find the scrap event which nets me some mastery points. Great. Now, do I go to find a specialty npc that helps me craft a glider? No, after wandering around in the jungle for 40 minutes my character just inexplicably has a glider suddenly. For no reason at all. Why are you tying the story to this on a mechanical level if you’re not willing to integrate it at all? If the story-required grinds were actually integrated into the story I would feel much better about the grind.

Yes, it by definition is a grind, not “content.” The difference is that I’m doing an arbitrary, unrelated task that I don’t want to do, as opposed to gathering materials for a glider crafter guy that makes me a glider. It’s almost a subtle nuance, but an important one. I play and have played lots of mmos with ridiculous grind. And yet the time I’ve spent today has felt like a complete slog. Because of this simple reason. It doesn’t feel fun, rewarding, or engaging. To unlock the elite specializations, I’m not venturing into the depths of the jungle to learn new things and adapt my fighting style to the harsh environments of the jungle. I went and zerged events that I didn’t want to do and suddenly my guy knows how to use a hammer. Wow.

Also, about the hero points lockouts. You know Metroid? You run around and shoot stuff and unlock power-ups. Sometimes you see an item you can’t reach, and you might think to yourself, “Oh, I might backtrack later when I get the bombs, then I can get that item.” Some people find this fun. That’s okay. But when you take it to the extreme, like in this expansion, you literally end up with more content that’s locked out than there is to do. It’s not an exaggeration to say that 75% of the hero challenges I went to I couldn’t complete due to lockouts. I’d then just leave, disappointed, and having wasted my time, since it’s hard enough just to GET to some of these things. There needs to be content we can just DO, especially near the start. Or else what the hell else are we going to do? Wander around and just hope to dear god that this next hero point challenge is one we can do with our limited mastery track completion? Because that’s what’s been happening and it’s not fun. If you want to do mushrooms, exalted markings, poison walls, if you want to do those well? You make them 99% optional. You get treasure chests behind poison walls. You find vistas locked behind bouncing mushrooms. You don’t lock the majority of the content of the expansion behind this stuff. Some people bought the expansion solely to try out new elite specializations, and to not be able to play, and not even have an IDEA of how to start unlocking them, because of the terrible hero point system? That stings.

Related point: about the verticality of these maps. I’m not sure if you realized, but some people don’t like it. That’s a fact. And you made an entire expansion revolving around this weird platforming aspect. It’s incredibly difficult to navigate. There needs to be better guidance. Better scouts, better pathing, signs, whatever. I could never tell exactly how to get to a hero challenge because of how the map was laid out. And the only reason I cared about how to get EXACTLY to a hero challenge rather than wandering around, serendipitously finding them, (which I would highly prefer) is because you locked what I wanted to do behind them. So instead of casually and slowly enjoying the expansion it’s become a veritable grindfest of “let’s get this point, now let’s get the next one, I don’t want to be doing this but I have to do it to start enjoying the game.” At least help out the players if you’re going to do this. You’ve made something in GW2 no one has really seen before, so of course people are lost. And that easily turns into frustration, especially when we want to be playing specializations, not trying to figure out the map and the interface and the weird platforming aspects of your new maps.

Finally, I really want to address an argument. From all those players who think they’re special snowflakes and brag about how they can handle the grind, and everyone else should just suck it up and appreciate the “content”. They completely misunderstand the point. It’s not about the grind, it’s about how you presented yourself as a do-it-different company, it’s about how it’s enforced, and it’s about how unrelated the grind is to what we actually want, whether it be progressing the story or unlocking the specializations. It’s about how the things we are forced to do are incredibly terrible and soul-crushing, whether it be grinding for 2 million xp to use a mastery point we already own or finding yet ANOTHER hero challenge that’s locked out to us. Some of us went in with 0 hero points. We’d have to either do every single hero point challenge in Heart of Thorns before we’d get to play our elite specialization in full – which basically means we’d have no content to play the elite specialization as – or we’d have to go back to core Tyria to farm skill points, in order to play the expansion. It’s my deepest fear that these special snowflake apologists are the ones that end up being listened to over anyone else. I mean, you already have our money. For the majority of people, it’s unlikely that they’ll seek refunds if they’re dissatisfied, since that’s a hassle on the consumer’s part, compared to other games where cancelled subs would be a real risk and an immediate and direct revenue loss. It’d be too easy for the Arenanet devs to pat themselves on the back for a job well done and call it a day. You’ve got plenty of sycophantic players who would eat that up in a heartbeat. But you won’t have produced a good game.

By the way, does this post sound bitter? It’s because it is. The devs have already approached this issue, among many others, with a “wait and see” mentality which means that the game is yet again left to fester in an unappreciable state. Let me say I can appreciate the work that went into the expansion. It looks like it would be very fun to play, and sometimes it is. But all these small things add up to really dilute the enjoyable experience, and I hate that I have to live with the idea that the people at Arenanet will never quickly fix anything. It’ll be at least a month, or three, or never, before they fix any of these issues. That’s what we can expect, in no small part due to the people who blindly eat up anything you guys do. “Just enjoy the content slowly you guys! You shouldn’t expect to unlock everything in the first day!”

For a lot of my friends, there wasn’t a second day.

I too love the new areas, the look and the feel of them.
But I can’t enjoy them, as I was sold into to play a new build, a new way to enjoy content.
Now i’ve found myself trying to get the HP’s needed for the past hours, and now i’ve given up for the time… Worst money spent for a release of a expansion, i’ll take a breather, and come back. Who knows, in the future I might not step foot in PvE anymore and just stick to sPvP to get my full enjoyment.

Aegael.6938:

Start seeking out hero points. Find one on minimap. 50 miles above me. Puzzle out how to get there over a period of 15 minutes. Go up there. Oops, I didn’t allocate enough virtual points into my mushroom garbage in order to do that one yet.

I have a few comments on this whole fiasco.

So beautiful! +infinity (And I don’t mean the smallest infinity either, you deserve the biggest one!)

I got about 18 lv80 toons, one for PvE one for WvW. The fact that I need to grind my brains out to unlock them, is going to end me. If it was something like account based not character based then I’d understand but this…. A-Net you certainly didn’t make it easy, and this isn’t complimenting the current system you got in place.

I’m going to weigh in, though pretty much everything has been said in one regard or another.

1st, I’m a WvW player with 3 80’s of which 1 is a tome levelled Rev
2nd, only my oldest character has map completion.

Here’s how I feel this expac has impacted me.

I now feel like I have to try and unlock my elite on my Ele first (as tempest is going to be meta… you watch ) I cannot play my guardian, as HP are character specific and I can’t play Revanant as it will take far too long to unlock the elite.

to give people some idea of why having specs locked behind such a time gate, is that WvW is a competative environment. If you want to be able to compete, you really need to be conforming to the emerging meta, which in many cases requires elite specs.

In WvW you get 2-4 HP per wvw rank, each rank takes about 15-30 mins if you are farming EoTM or EB (forget the new maps… the levelling takes too long)
What this means is that at ABSOLUTE best case, I could not enjoy WvW the correct way, on the new maps for about 24 hours of play time for a new character. in reality, it would be closer to 50.
this is PER CHARACTER!!

As my wife is currently 38 weeks pregnant, my play time is about to vanish, maybe an hour a day… whilst this sounds like an isolated issue, Many people in my guild only log on for 7-8 hours a week, due to real life, work etc.
What this essentially means is that I cannot expect to play WvW with my guild and friends in the way it’s supposed to be played for at least a month… and even then it’s with only 1 character, not the 3 I had hoped.

Why would you make basically a class unplayable from the offset?! it’s baffling.
I suggest making the cost 60HP not 400, and make tomes grant HP too!!

It was a really stupid decision on their part that you effectively can’t play through the new content with elite specs.

You don’t hype up “Oh boy, look at this new way you can play because you’re bored of playing the same way you have for 3 years” and then put it behind a grind. And then by the time you get to actually play in a new way, you don’t have much of the new content left to do.

Put gear, trophies, achievements, etc behind a grind, that’s all fine. But new play styles? Hell no.

I don’t understand why everyone is crying about the number of hero points needed to unlock the elite specialization.

I find it perfectly normal that you need to progress an acquire experience in the jungle before you become stronger.

In fact I find it quite fun because contrary to regular tyria, in the jungle you feel weak if you use a new magic unknown to you until you get some hero points that makes you stronger and stronger. All of that without having a new level cap like in other mmos!

I really think Anet nailed it. It is normal to not unlock all the expansion in one day, and I believe that once you get a decent amount of masteries unlocked, it will be quite fast to get the elite spec with your other characters so the system seems really well thought if you really think about it!

The only real complaint I have is the Champions for the Hero Point Challenges. Some of them are fine(the ones on obvious paths), but the ones that are hard to get to in the first place that spawn Champs are a little over kill…especially on maps with very little people on them. I worry about alts when the hype dies down.

The gliding, once I had worked out how to get a mastery point, is quite fun. But the rest of it I am finding quite confusing. With the base game, one of the great things about it (design wise) was the way it taught you the game in a really simple quick way. With the expansion, it feels as though you are battling to learn anything. It took me an age to figure out how to start with an Elite Specialisation, and then another age to work out how to get a mastery point (it said I had one, but it wouldnt let me use it, which made no intuitive sense). Then you find adventures, that seem to have no bearing on anything, with rewards that are frankly rubbish (level 79 blue items from the base game as “gold” level), or rewards that vanish (I have won a ton of “Bag of Gear”s so far, but they all disappear when I loot them) – no explaination on how to find “crowbars” for the things dotted around, and worse of all, things you don’t seem to be able to use until you have gained the equivalent of another X levels.
And although I like they have upped the mob challenge, to go from “easily soloable with any old build” to “getting bottom kicked by single mob with full orange gear” is a bit of a leap. At least have it get harder as you go in.

Anyway – we’ll see. I’ve been playing ESO whilst waiting for the expansion recently, and am enjoying it a lot more, so may jump back to that whilst they spend a few weeks fixing this.

Regarding pve, the mastery/hero point system is a mess. I can get mastery points but can’t spend them without first getting a certain amount of xp?? This is just a glorified level cap increase. I thought the point of the mastery system was to be horizontal progression beyond lvl80? Forcing us to level up more is vertical progression. And you block hero points behind masteries, forcing those of us who don’t care about masteries to do meaningless grinds. Just trying to find where the hero points are on these labyrinthine maps is hard enough and what’s worse is going through the trouble of getting to a hero point and finding out we can’t do it because we don’t have a certain mastery so we gotta go back to grinding. Or the hero point is a champ. Do you really think these maps are going to be bustling with people forever?

Elite specs is a big selling point of this expansion but by the time we go through the headache of trying to get it, we’ve already completed the majority of the open world content. And before we even can get our elite spec, we have to complete all the masteries which have nothing to do with elite specs. Worst of all, this is per character. I’m sorry but one play through of Verdant Brink is more than enough for me.

Regarding WvW, getting 400 hero points is excruciatingly slow. The notion that I would essentially have to rank up 100-200 times to unlock the elite specialization for just one of my many characters is just silly. It’s going to take weeks to months to get it for just one character.

So far I really enjoy HoT and I’m totally fine with elite specializations being locked behind some effort. However, I feel that the steps in which the specializations unlock are weighted in a very unrewarding way. I’m also a bit frustrated when thinking about my alts which I all love but don’t got world completion on them.

My issue: Unlocking the specialization costs 60 points. My main is 2/3 through the whole tree now but he had map completion. However, I still do not use the elite specialization. Because it is pointless unless I got at least one Grandmaster Major trait. I won’t intentionally handicap myself.

This is where I feel that the needed investment is a bit skewed and unrewarding. I could just not unlock it at all because I won’t use it anyway. Which makes it feel like I didn’t actually unlock anything.

I think that traits should unlock first and be at least 5 points cheaper than they are right now. I’d be totally fine with the total amount of needed points staying the same – meaning utilities becomming more expensive etc. – but at least one could equip the elite specialization traitline earlier without losing 1/3 of the traits while playing HoT. We could also get used to the new class mechanic first and then later mix in the new utility skills.

binidj.5734:

This is something that the developers don’t quite seem to have grasped. Want us to do every mastery in the new expansion and have us be happy about it? Just put shiny weapon and armour skins at the end of it. People, in my experience, have no problem grinding patiently for cosmetics.

That would have required ArenaNet to actually work adding new skins to the game. Considering how HoT has released with just 2 new armor sets…

…But hey, have you seen the new Crystal Arbiter Appearance Pack? For “just” 2000 gems, you can buy a new outfit and part of a new weapon set! Despite how ArenaNet didn’t bother to even start the legendary weapon set for HoT.

The grind we have for the specializations is because ArenaNet knows they are incredibly ineffective at making content and skins. They have – obviously and unrepentantly – dedicated most of their art assets to the Gem Store, not to their $50,00 expansion. And they couldn’t make more than 4 badly designed maps for HoT despite not adding content to GW2 for quite some time now.

In this context – a company that is very bad at actually making the thing players want, content – they have little choice other than to add a massive grind and hope that players will waste a lot of time grinding while they try to scrap one more overpriced DLC.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I was excited when I got to the new map. I expected to have my elite in a few days or maybe a week. No biggie, I’ve been playing the same specs on toons for a long time. In fact I’m still pretty excited to log back in after I post here to just go explore and figure out how to get around. I personally like the time gating, it gives me time to actually get to see the new maps and just enjoy it on the first day. I’ll admit to a little grumbling but honestly almost every game has gating to some degree if nothing else to slow down progress and keep people from running through all of the content then just quitting or posting that there wasn’t enough to do and that is why they’re quitting. I think it was smart of Anet to acclimate players to the new content, especially those new or fairly new to the game by having them play specs they are familiar with. Even with this being the case I saw so many dead people in a lot of the boss encounters or heck even just the event champs that you can’t tell me an instant elite spec would have made it better for you. The content is more challenging, which is exactly what I would expect in a level 80 area. I should feel like I need to be aware of the environment and the mechanics of mobs. I want to feel like I have earned my spec and not just have had it handed to me in one day. Personally I’d be bored if that were the case. Call me delusional, stupid or whatever name you want to place on me, but I have had more fun in the past 24 hours than I’ve had in more than a year playing. The content is good, the encounters are challenging, heck even just putzing around from zone to zone is fun.

From my experience today, soloing champs isn’t going to be doable at least not on day one, but you can certainly duo most of them, so take a friend. Maybe take a step back and enjoy the content instead of looking for instant gratification. I will also mention you don’t have to stay on one map to get the hero points or mastery points, go explore and just enjoy yourself.

I’m sure some reading this would definitely say that if they’d have gotten their elite spec today they’d not have posted a complaint, as many postings I did read have said just that. I think the dissatisfaction goes deeper than not getting the elite, they don’t like the difficulty of the content, the fact that you have to invest a little time into the game because of work, real life, or whatever. Perhaps I’m just too used to time investment when it comes to games, you want a new piece of gear you grind for it, want a new shiny skin well you grind the gold for it. I just can’t understand the upset when this is basically the same thing. It doesn’t make the game unplayable nor does it make playing any aspect of the game impossible. Anet has already gone out of their way to put veteran and new players on a more even footing by eliminating ways for veteran players to bypass what a new player would have to encounter to obtain the same options. It seems fair to me and honestly the sense of entitlement and the amount of whining about it irritates me.

Anet I would like to thank you for all of the hard work and time you’ve put into making fun and challenging content.

Oh I enjoyed the new zones a lot but unfortunately playing that way brought me no closer to getting my “elite” specialization. This is what I resent about the 400 hero point cost. I have to stop enjoying the spontaneity of the new content to solely focus on these idiotic hero challenges. The really maddening think is these are just specializations to the professions there is nothing “elite” about them. They just used the word elite to justify running through all these hoops.

What is this about “it took me 4 hours to unlock all of the things I need”. That’s a statement without any worth.
My main character had 98% world completion, a 60 pvp rank and rank 833 in wvw. And I’m missing ~53,4% of the new elite specialization.

I spent 3-4 hours in the first maguuma area.

So, I don’t think it will be 10 hours for this toon and it won’t be 20 hours for a toon I leveled with tomes and which has a 2% world completion because it was made for a special purpose – wvw.

The best thing is that you made us use up our rank potions before which would have made this grind less grindy and which would have made me play maguuma once or twice while I still had the option for the other wvw only toons.

Why do masteries require both XP and mastery points to unlock.

My max level chars have barely enough skill points to unlock the specialization… Been running around the new area for a few hours and got no skill points either, guess I’m only supposed to unlock them fully once I’m done with the expansion? Cause that’s dumb, I want to play through the new content with new abilities.

#Anet. Hurrah !!!!!

Gaile Gray.6029:

No one — especially me — is diminishing the thoughts, concerns, and input on this subject being shared by our forum members. But I believe that it is premature to make a comment about “forever” in the context of a game that has been playable for less than 24 hours.

I stand by that, for it is what I believe. I believe that time will give everyone a better view of this situation. The outcome may be that it’s seen that yes, the difficulty is too high. The outcome may be that eventually, the number is seen as reasonable and properly attainable.

I think that all of us — players and developers alike — do not have sufficient information yet to know what the “sweet spot” is. I suggest we allow us — as players and devs — to attain the necessary info to analyze this situation through gameplay and the passage of time. I want to assure you that I don’t mean months and months, either, but some amount of time on which to base an informed opinion.

I say this especially when I see this post:

Nike.2631:

It been just over 18 hours and I’ve unlocked everything I wanted for my main including the GM I intend to use. Needed one mastery level of gliding and one mastery level of mushroom bounce. Still trying to pick some ‘low-hanging fruit’ Hero Challenges, but basically I’m good to go anywhere.

Day one Dragonhunter. I can live with it. Still need another 90 points for the armor/runes, but I don’t plan to use either so that’s just showing off .

I don’t think anyone feels that the difficulty is too high. Its just a timegate. I have 900 hours on my mesmer and pre-expansion full map completion (and thats not even a lot by some standards) and it sucks not being able to roll chrono right off the bat. I don’t have tons of time to play but im not a casual player either, I was really excited by the idea of pushing fractals past level 50 that its been capped at for a while, but I cant do that with chrono because it is gated behind either exploring the jungle or WvW. And Anet even recognized this by making the jungle HPs give 10. I’m not asking to be handed the spec on the alts that I havent played much, just that all of hero points I collected with map completion actually meant something instead of being devalued by the 10x inflation in the jungle.

So what about the people who doesn’t have time to grind? I have a family and I don’t have enough time to grind. I would like to play WvW. I will be more than happy to buy HOT if it wasn’t 400 HP.

The fact of the matter is by having the points so high you tried to avoid diminishing the value of the content but this worked completely opposite as everyone who wants to play in their elite spec will now blow through it all to get there. You’ll be seeing outcries of boredom one heck of a lot faster because of this and had you allowed everyone to get their specialization properly from the onset most everyone would likely have taken their time to work their way through the content, not blast through out of shear frustration and anger.
I actually feel sorry for the devs that put time into this now watching that work get ignored by many as their sole focus is grinding out these points.

Loony.3714:

I’m not asking to be handed the spec on the alts that I havent played much, just that all of hero points I collected with map completion actually meant something instead of being devalued by the 10x inflation in the jungle.

lol, I logged on with 182 hero points on my Ranger all psyched to play on the BL with the Druid only to me met with massive disappointment.

Now I’m faced with either not being able to play a decent role on the class I love in WvW for the next week or so, or having to blast through HoT to get all the hero points.

Neither is appealing and both together just make me want to play something else.

It is very disappointing. I really wish they change this ridiculously high HP for elite spec. Make elite spec the 4th trait and I will be fine grinding 400HP.

I don’t mind hero points being gated behind masteries, however Hero points should be solo-able. Champion spawns are nigh impossible to do on your own. This isn’t too much of a problem in areas with high traffic, but there are points for example; the vampire broodmother in the Verdant Brink canopy, where you’ll be on your own.

Hero points should be challenging, but not to this degree. The wyvern nest is a good example of a challenging hero point.

I would have designed the specializations as “matter of the races” and design quests around them to unlock.

Every race ingame got its own beliefs.

For humans e.g. there are the gods.

For necros e.g. theres grenth.

A human necro who wants to unlock reaper needs to visit a grenth shrine which gives the player a quest with a training story.

Playing the story tells something about the new specialization, the new weapon to use and after completing the questline the new spec is unlocked. Maybe even with a handout of the new weapon type with a new skin.

This way allows for easy unlock for a player and gives room for future unlocks when more specializations arrive.

Can design that for every race.

A norn warrior can visit a shrine of the great bear and get its quest there.

A charr can visit its legion trainer and so on and so on.

This would have been a nice possibility for the designers to add some new places to each races capital city and to add content into existing maps regarding the initial gw lore.

Cant understand why the initial guildwars lore is not used properly ingame to create a good players experience.

I can understand the people who say that they dont want to play the new content to unlock new skills to be able to repeat the content with the new skills then.

Substance E.4852:

Loony.3714:

I’m not asking to be handed the spec on the alts that I havent played much, just that all of hero points I collected with map completion actually meant something instead of being devalued by the 10x inflation in the jungle.

lol, I logged on with 182 hero points on my Ranger all psyched to play on the BL with the Druid only to me met with massive disappointment.

Now I’m faced with either not being able to play a decent role on the class I love in WvW for the next week or so, or having to blast through HoT to get all the hero points.

Neither is appealing and both together just make me want to play something else.

This is exactly how I feel. And don’t get me wrong, I was going to explore and 100% the hell out of the new maps, just in a month or two when I can really sit down and do it thoroughly. Now if I want access to chrono I really have to just power through it asap

Elite spec unlock points should be shaved to half. If you have 100% map completition you have earned your elite spec. If not, you can do some stuff on new maps and unlock the elite spec, no need to kitten do EVERY single hero challenge in order to get your 400 poinys

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

Guild of 493 members, 150 online, hundreds more logged in since launch. Not one person has talked positively about this Hero Challenge situation.

We ain’t a wvw only guild either

We had 55 online at one time last night, more of course during the evening. Not one person thought gating elite specs in this manner was a good idea.

Loony.3714:

Substance E.4852:

Loony.3714:

I’m not asking to be handed the spec on the alts that I havent played much, just that all of hero points I collected with map completion actually meant something instead of being devalued by the 10x inflation in the jungle.

lol, I logged on with 182 hero points on my Ranger all psyched to play on the BL with the Druid only to me met with massive disappointment.

Now I’m faced with either not being able to play a decent role on the class I love in WvW for the next week or so, or having to blast through HoT to get all the hero points.

Neither is appealing and both together just make me want to play something else.

This is exactly how I feel. And don’t get me wrong, I was going to explore and 100% the hell out of the new maps, just in a month or two when I can really sit down and do it thoroughly. Now if I want access to chrono I really have to just power through it asap

I did this in GW1 in Factions and Nightfall to blast to the end and grab the Elite armor but they made up for it by having so much extra stuff to do such as quests or largely superfluous, exploration areas.

I could go back and be all “Okay, time to be a hero and look super fly at the same time…” and not feel burned out or like there was nothing left to play around in.

With the HP’s I basically have to go everywhere and do everything to get them. There won’t be any roses to go back and smell because I already ran them over with my ATV.

I strongly dislike the fact that you have to put put stats in high mastery stuff to gain Hero Points in Verdant Brink, strongly dislike.

I find hero challenges fine in terms of getting to them, but WHY on earth they’re Champions and group events? Why not veterans? that could still take some player skills, while point would be solo-able too.

Could you, Anet, give a good explanation why you need defeat champion mobs on hero challenges, when they’re already gated by masteries?

One good solution could be just swap champions on challenges for veterans. Gating itself is fine, but mobs are too overtuned atm.

400 points is insane, especialy when alot of them are locked behind stupid mastery grind walls to even be able to navigate the map and claim the SP

It just does not feels like progression, it just immense grind for hero points, perfectly kills all fun for me and all nice and pretty maps does not fix it, i’m sorry for being bitter, but i better go play something else so far and just ignore expansion for awhile.

Avlaen.7241:

400 points is insane, especialy when alot of them are locked behind stupid mastery grind walls to even be able to navigate the map and claim the SP

Well, and then when you finally manage to get into Challenge point itself, you cannot solo it, due it being guarded or activating challenge gives you a champion mob to deal with. (ofc, that champion will one-shot you, and summon adds etc. who will weaken/cripple/bleed/torment etc.) you.

Sonrangeri.7645:

Avlaen.7241:

400 points is insane, especialy when alot of them are locked behind stupid mastery grind walls to even be able to navigate the map and claim the SP

Well, and then when you finally manage to get into Challenge point itself, you cannot solo it, due it being guarded or activating challenge gives you a champion mob to deal with. (ofc, that champion will one-shot you, and summon adds etc. who will weaken/cripple/bleed/torment etc.) you.

Yup…. i once found my way to a rather obscure point and it summoned a champion and 2 veterans…. so i waited there for 15 mins annnnd no one else arrived. it took me ages to get to the point, so do i jsut abandon it because no one else is able to find it? awful really.

OMG something you can’t get in one day of playing. OMG. It’s the end of the world. Why don’t they just hand you everything. Cause that’s all I see when I read this post

I no longer really care how many points it is to get… it is frustrating and angering that every single one of them (well, 90% or so) are a champ mob you have to kill. Now, sure, I can solo about 1/5, but that is still not enough and, since the maps are all dead, there is no chance of getting the rest. These things need to be scaled based on the number of people around them… not arbitrarily set as champs all the time. I am very discouraged and tempted to do something else for a while :/

I do not even want to think about the fact I have to suffer through them for all my alts as well

Avlaen.7241:

Yup…. i once found my way to a rather obscure point and it summoned a champion and 2 veterans…. so i waited there for 15 mins annnnd no one else arrived. it took me ages to get to the point, so do i jsut abandon it because no one else is able to find it? awful really.

Have you tried using the LFG tool or maybe ask in mapchat? Or guildies or friends?
This is an MMORPG after all…

Levi M.7428:

OMG something you can’t get in one day of playing. OMG. It’s the end of the world. Why don’t they just hand you everything. Cause that’s all I see when I read this post

Then I suggest you work on your reading and comprehension. There is not point in these elite specialistions if by the time they’re unlocked you’ve exhausted all of the expansion content. This is the point of endgame content, to give you something to do with the abilities you earned getting to max level.

Levi M.7428:

OMG something you can’t get in one day of playing. OMG. It’s the end of the world. Why don’t they just hand you everything. Cause that’s all I see when I read this post

Lol, yeah it does sound very whiny after 24h of game time. I’m holding off and will see in a few weeks time how it is going. I want to enjoy the game, and extending the playtime is fine.

Still, the problem raised about Hero Points being guarded by champions is an issue. A veteran is soloable. Most champions are soloable with skill. Combine that, and it gets hard really quick. And now there are a lot of people running around the maps. Over time this will decrease as the population spreads to the rest of the world.
So you need others to help you, and beside arranging that with Guildies it will be hard to get groups together or like the OP, wait around for others to show up.