Guild Wars 2

Test.8734:

Really, everyone should go to the Metacritic site and give HoT a low score. Then maybe ArenaNet will feel motivated to fix this faster than the months it took them to improve the trait system.

That’s the second time you’ve posted that Test and it’s a real kitteny thing to suggest. ArenaNet got one thing wrong, which was the amount of HPs it takes to fully unlock skills and traits for eSpecs. Everything else in this expansion has been marvellous so far, indeed it’s been quite a bit better than I was expecting it to be. I’m not going to mark an entire expansion down because of one problem and your suggestion that I should will do no good for the game and is almost certainly reportable. Do it again and I’ll check to see if that last theory is true.

By all means be critical of areas of the game you feel could be improved but trying to sabotage it does none of us any favours at all and just makes you look like a kitten.

Engage in the discussion or kitten off, this forum doesn’t need childish negativity from either side of this issue.

chaosdurza.3291:

Saying herald takes 2 hours to unlock is stating a fact, not an opinion. Learn the difference.

You didn’t follow this did you?

Each elite spec takes an average of 20-25 hours to unlock. I have 11 toons. So kindly, go kitten yourself if you think it’s entitled or whining for wanting elite specs at a lower rate.

Raziel.4216:

BTW my elite spec (on rev) didn’t take even 15% of the time you said it’d take, can I pull a number out of the same place you pulled yours to support my argument?
If so, elite specs take 2 hours.

I’m doing the same thing you’re doing and calling you out on it, so no thanks keep your challenge.

The elite specs DO take 20-25 hours on average. That is not an opinion, that is a statement backed up by the 60+ page mega thread that I’m confident you avoid.

Pezz.4758:

heres the difference, i pay for the fairies in guild wars 2, and no bodies argument no matter HOW good it is can make me keep giving them money. ive made up my mind, i left feedback so my opinion could be heard by those who make decisions.

Everyone else paid too, you’re not entitled to special treatment.
Those who disagree with you are simply pointing out why your request is out of place, if you’re able to counter such arguments you’d have a fruitful discussion.

If you don’t want others to counter what you say and go back and forth then maybe you should avoid a public forum.

You wouldn’t avoid the challenge if you could prove me wrong. Walk away, you’re quickly losing this argument.

Would it kill Anet to allow players to fully use the Elite spec at 80 and locking the skins/runes/sigils behind HP?

What are they trying to accomplish by gating the elite spec? Gate players from rushing through the content? But masteries are there for that reason…I just don’t get it…

chaosdurza.3291:

The elite specs DO take 20-25 hours on average. That is not an opinion, that is a statement backed up by the 60+ page mega thread that I’m confident you avoid.

You mean 60+ page mega thread with a sample size ample enough to represent the 7m gw2 accounts?
Ok ok, those 7m ain’t active all the time, we had 3.5m paid accounts before f2p, is the sample size large enough to represent that?
No. Therefore it’s worthless, the only one with actual useful data is Anet.

The thing that is most bothersome to me is that all of the training is all on one “wheel”. This isn’t done with the rest of the traits/skills and it shouldn’t be done here. I should be able to unlock the Scrapper traits separately from the gyro utilities the way I can unlock the Tools traits separately from the gadgets. To add the actual hammer skin into the mix is maddening.

I don’t want to spend my hero points on a hammer, thank you. I already have a hammer. I’ve had just the hammer and skin I want to use on my Scrapper since the week after you showed the initial trailer. But, charging me hero points to unlock a skin… I don’t understand. This is completely against the concept of hero points. That’s not what they do or what they should be used for.

They’ve taken all control and decision making away from the player. It sucks.

15% of 20 is 3 hours, and you said it didn’t even take that. No wonder you declined the challenge. Thanks for the laugh.

chaosdurza.3291:

You wouldn’t avoid the challenge if you could prove me wrong. Walk away, you’re quickly losing this argument.

LOL you pulled a number, I pulled one out of the same place, you expect me to spend hours to prove the number I pulled out of nowhere to point out how pathetic that tecnique is when used in arguments?

10/10 for trying.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

15% of 20 is 3 hours, and you said it didn’t even take that. No wonder you declined the challenge. Thanks for the laugh.

Your inability to comprehend the point made in that post is amazing.
Thanks too

Do you think any time a survey used to describe the general population is made, they sample even .001% of the population? This happens in real life (it exists!) EVERY. DAY. And I’m sure you accept that without batting an eye or throwing a fit over it. So yes, the sample size is actually more than adequate.

chaosdurza.3291:

Do you think any time a survey used to describe the general population is made, they sample even .001% of the population? This happens in real life (it exists!) EVERY. DAY. And I’m sure you accept that without batting an eye or throwing a fit over it. So yes, the sample size is actually more than adequate.

It happens a lot, sure, doesn’t make it right.

You’re basically saying “there’re lots of ppl who don’t care about sample size, so we shouldn’t either”
Mmmk that’s pretty pathetic.

[quote=5662657;Raziel.4216:]

Raziel.4216:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

15% of 20 is 3 hours, and you said it didn’t even take that. No wonder you declined the challenge. Thanks for the laugh.

Your inability to comprehend the point made in that post is amazing.
Thanks too

“BTW my elite spec (on rev) didn’t take even 15% of the time you said it’d take”
Stated as fact. I comprehend quite well, thank you.

Where are people getting this 7 million number? It sounds like an absolute fairy tale.

Raziel.4216:

Pezz.4758:

heres the difference, i pay for the fairies in guild wars 2, and no bodies argument no matter HOW good it is can make me keep giving them money. ive made up my mind, i left feedback so my opinion could be heard by those who make decisions.

Everyone else paid too, you’re not entitled to special treatment.
Those who disagree with you are simply pointing out why your request is out of place, if you’re able to counter such arguments you’d have a fruitful discussion.

If you don’t want others to counter what you say and go back and forth then maybe you should avoid a public forum.

The changes you want would affect everyone, not just you.
There’s the reason to argue, the arguments have been already made.

Its an easy refute. You cant compare GW2 to other MMOs. So the Ive yet to see any MMO argument is null. That’s because GW2 has built its brand on not being like that. So score one you like other MMO’s now.

Also they have always promoted play how you want, dont grind experience the content how you want but now they are forcing you to play pve or play wvw for ludicris amounts of time. In the original game they let you lvl obtain all skill just through crafting. Tomes of knowledge skill scrolls, PVP, PVE, WVW. This is no longer the case.
You all would have great points if this was another MMO, I wouldnt bat an eye if this happened in WOW or Final Fantasy, But when you built your brand counter to this and a day before launch reveal the 400 HP req it feels like your slapping everyone who loved you in the face

Guess what? You’re already one of those people. So am I. We all are. There’s nothing wrong with that, it is what it is. But it DOES mean that you don’t need to question the entire population to get an opinion on something. Please rate my comments from now on, I value the level you think I respond with. I feel the last one was at least a 7/10. Carry on.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Raziel.4216:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

15% of 20 is 3 hours, and you said it didn’t even take that. No wonder you declined the challenge. Thanks for the laugh.

Your inability to comprehend the point made in that post is amazing.
Thanks too

“BTW my elite spec (on rev) didn’t take even 15% of the time you said it’d take”
Stated as fact. I comprehend quite well, thank you.

Did you?

Raziel.4216:

can I pull a number out of the same place you pulled yours to support my argument?
If so, elite specs take 2 hours.

I am making it very clear that I’m going to use unsupported data there, just like yours.

Kulvar.1239:

But… It’s not grindy!
You have to do hero challenge once per character.
Many can be done without fighting.

In grindy MMO, unlocking a point would be like “kill 10 000 kittenty weak foes”.

That’s where I disagree. It very much is a grind especially for returning players who left around or before fractals and ascended gear. When we left the core principles were somewhat still in place, and the game was very casual friendly.

I returned to new gear, new currency, new UI, completely different spec layouts and progression. Not only that the expansion or something somewhere has added hero points and masteries I have to figure out just to progress. Want to glide, well you have to train gliding “Sounds like Eve, I hate Eve.” You have to do that for literally every new aspect of the new expansion. On top of that I can’t even max out my build on my maxed out character, I need to spend hero points to get there, and I’m starting at the daunting number of 20 of those completed.. None of the new zone is casual friendly it’s almost entirely group driven, and now hidden behind jump things and glide things and poison things.. You name it….

That is a complete 180 from what this game was supposed to be about..

By the time you get your elite specialization up and running your practically already done with the expansion. Explored all of the new zones hunting for HP points or basically removed all incintive to even bother including Elites with this expac. For those stating PvP or WvW there basically telling you to go to a completely different mode of play and grind nonstop to unlock all abilities just so you can explore a new expansion with a new set of abilities? That’s a rather white knightish statement in itself because they refuse to acknowledge the rather obvious runaround involved to make something right. Using that line of thinking then it’s obvious to see how Anet is never wrong because you can twist and turn anything to make yourself seem correct.

Elite specs shouldn’t have been a focus with the Expansion the Revenant fits the bill as you get a new class from the start.

Gw2 isn’t like GW1 and HoT isn’t like GW2 so a traditional new class going through an expac the same way as any other MMO is present for the one particular class. However the elite specs are about as broken as healing as a viable means for this game. The create these elites like druid for healing yet neglect to fix healing power or count healing for event completion. Just like they added new skills to the elite specs only but made the content hard enough to the point it’s not viable to play them until you’ve unlocked all it’s abilities. By the time you’ve gotten to that point you’ve already explored the game or completed the story so the should’ve just made elites baseline for the core game. A rather simple complaint and feel sorry for the knights who have been working overtime its obvious that Anet didn’t think this through and the forums are wall to wall QQ as a result and there is a hint of truth in every complaint I’ve read thus far that makes me feel sorry for all parties involved.

I consider myself a higher end casual player. Maybe 10 – 15 hours per week on GW2. Have been playing on and off since the game was released. Took a long break after Southsun because I was so disappointed with the content of that release. Came back about 6 months ago. I do WvW for about 3 hours a week to get dailies. Fractals rarely and PVP never. 80% of the time I’m in PvE.

Like many others I really like the expansion. Mastery was really well done and having it account wide works very well. The new maps are great. Gliding is a lot of fun. Yes the new maps are challenging, but I don’t have a problem with that. There is lots of other content that is less so and a game should have areas that are challenging.

However there is one aspect that like a lot of people has me disappointed. That is the Elite Specializations. For someone who is not a total GW addict the requirement of 400 HP per character plus the structure of the new HP is totally outrageous.

I have a character for each profession. One has world completion, three others are level 80, and the rest are mostly just crafters or bagholders. I would like to have all my level 80s get Elite specializations so I can play all of their aspects which is after all what I paid for when I bought the expansion. I don’t NOT see how that is going to happen in any reasonable period of time. Even the character with world completion is a good way short from completing his Elite Specialization. Furthermore do so is quite difficult because the hero points in Maguuma are either gated or impossible to solo. Getting together a group to take on a HP is utterly impractical.

Seriously I think a character with World Completion should NOT have to grind for HP in the new maps. For WC you already have had to grind in a major way.

Taking multiple characters through the grind to get Elite Specialization the way it is structured now is totally unreasonable for someone who has to work for a living. I view it as a barrier high enough that if it isn’t changed it is an incentive for me to look at other games.

Something needs to be changed with HP requirements for Elite Specializations. Nerfing the Champs behind HP in the new maps. Some other prolific source of HP. Reducing the requirements so that old fashioned World Completion is enough.

Come on Anet. Use your imagination. This process should be fun and draw players in, like masteries does. A Long March repeating content many times across multiple characters is not fun. It becomes a chore that drives people away.

Making Hero Points soloable would fix the problem.

binidj.5734:

That’s the second time you’ve posted that Test and it’s a real kitteny thing to suggest. ArenaNet got one thing wrong, …

This isn’t the only thing wrong. It’s just the one thing that’s on topic for this thread. ;-)

The story is great, the zones are beautiful and fun to play. So far I am enjoying the expansion.
My only real issues are with the grinding/gating(and low pop zones). I can deal with obtaining hero points for a character or two, but after that it is going to destroy any desire I have to continue “progressing” my characters. I just can’t help but feel that this is extremely alt unfriendly. The “progression” should not have been with the elite specs like this.
It’s unfortunate that a good expansion is getting so much negative feedback ingame and out because of this.
I’m not sure how I would fix this. Masteries are fine because they are account bound. I guess drastically reducing hero points needed to get all skills/traits would be okay.

Unfortunately I am at work so I will have to revisit this thread later. OP, don’t give up. It’s becoming more and more clear a large (and growing) number of people are not happy with the high cost of elite specs. Never give up! This can still be turned around.

Raziel.4216:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Raziel.4216:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

15% of 20 is 3 hours, and you said it didn’t even take that. No wonder you declined the challenge. Thanks for the laugh.

Your inability to comprehend the point made in that post is amazing.
Thanks too

“BTW my elite spec (on rev) didn’t take even 15% of the time you said it’d take”
Stated as fact. I comprehend quite well, thank you.

Did you?

Raziel.4216:

can I pull a number out of the same place you pulled yours to support my argument?
If so, elite specs take 2 hours.

I am making it very clear that I’m going to use unsupported data there, just like yours.

My data? Ok I’ll type slower and louder.

He said 20-25 hours.

You said you completed in less that 15% of that.. so, less than 3 hours.

Then you stated you would pull an imaginary number of 2 hours.

And I’m done, because your need to convince yourself how right you are will drag this on for hours.

Aye.8392:

They’ve taken all control and decision making away from the player. It sucks.

Very well said. With over 2,800 responses and now the most viewed thread on the forums, do you all honestly think that Anet will change the mechanics of the expansion?

I’m actually kind of surprised that they haven’t at least said something yet.

chaosdurza.3291:

Unfortunately I am at work so I will have to revisit this thread later. OP, don’t give up. It’s becoming more and more clear a large (and growing) number of people are not happy with the high cost of elite specs. Never give up! This can still be turned around.

im trying man but this thread is giving seriously bad flashbacks to wildstar 1 year ago.

and look how that turned out.

actually its even more funny. because back then , the casual players used GW2 as an argument about how succesful a game could be when it was “play how you want”
the financials were on the same page as it was both ncsoft and GW2 was the example we used as a game done right.

it didnt change for far to long, so i actually came to guild wars 2 instead of talking about it like some holy grail

and i loved the kitten out of it since janurary, and now i cant be bothered to log in without constatly thinking about how once i FINALLY get that mastery i need ill have the hero point…..that i need 4 people for….and have to do 6 times on 6 characters…..just to start playing how i want.

actually looking at it like thats, its almost humourous in a way

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Raziel.4216:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Raziel.4216:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

15% of 20 is 3 hours, and you said it didn’t even take that. No wonder you declined the challenge. Thanks for the laugh.

Your inability to comprehend the point made in that post is amazing.
Thanks too

“BTW my elite spec (on rev) didn’t take even 15% of the time you said it’d take”
Stated as fact. I comprehend quite well, thank you.

Did you?

Raziel.4216:

can I pull a number out of the same place you pulled yours to support my argument?
If so, elite specs take 2 hours.

I am making it very clear that I’m going to use unsupported data there, just like yours.

My data? Ok I’ll type slower and louder.

He said 20-25 hours.

You said you completed in less that 15% of that.. so, less than 3 hours.

Then you stated you would pull an imaginary number of 2 hours.

And I’m done, because your need to convince yourself how right you are will drag this on for hours.

He said 20-25 hours as a fact, I said less than 15% of that. Did he provide proof? no.
I’m merely showing how bad that is to determine the real time it takes.
Your inability to comprehend this is amazing, oh well at least we’re done

Pezz.4758:

ProtoGunner.4953:

What is the problem? You can play right away with elite specs, not fully explored but you won’t get something without work, right? I think it is pretty normal to level up to get the new stuff, or do I miss something? An MMO shouldn’t hand out everything on a silver platter or people will leave in masses after burning through the content when they realize there is nothing to do.

After 3 days I am well over 50% into the elite spec. I hope though they will do some things more accessible like the hero point challenges: make them veterans or easier to kill champs: it’s frustrating to wait for a party/group to fight them.

i honestly dont think i could have been any clearer, i honestly dont

im not asking for EVERYTHING as you put it. im asking to play the new spec i paid for.
and as you so eloquently put it, i DID work for the elite spec, i went to work and made 50 dollars and bought the expansion. Im here to play a game not work. Now all im asking is if its going to change, or im going to take another 50 dollars i worked for and buy a different game.

I’m sorry, but did you see/read something anywhere that said buying the expansion would allow you to play the elite specialization right away?

chaosdurza.3291:

OP, let them be Anet white knights all they want to. It’s still early into the xpac. They don’t have the foresight any intelligent person would have to know how horrible it’s going to be when you’re on you 5th toon trying to unlock your elite spec. Once they finally get around to that point, they’ll see the light. The grind will finally have worn away their fanboy attitude and they’ll understand what we, and the THREE THOUSAND other angry posters are talking about (reference; see the mega thread). Each elite spec takes an average of 20-25 hours to unlock. I have 11 toons. So kindly, go kitten yourself if you think it’s entitled or whining for wanting elite specs at a lower rate.

This is a poor argument.

1) – Masteries are account bound, so after you have unlocked them all on one character, it will be much easier on the others.

2) – You chose to have 11 characters. It takes much more effort to get all those characters to level 80 than to unlock the Elite. Even with tomes. You had to expend effort to get those.

3) – It is not grind if you can get it by just playing the game. Getting Hero Points is just that: playing the game.

So all that said, there ARE reasonable points to the arguments that you an people like you make, it is just the tone you take that kills all reasonable conversation.

For one thing, while Hero Points should remain challenging, they should also do a better job scaling. All of them should be solo-able, but not eye-bleedingly easy with more people in the area.

For another, the total hero points required should be about half of what it is to fully unlock all traits and skills. The remaining half should unlock skins.

I think a lot of the “everything’s fine, don’t expect everything instantly” folks aren’t getting what many of us are feeling. Some of it is having the Elite spec gated as it is, rather than being an alternative we could choose — trading off other issues. It’s a grind and then a choice, which is not different from just raising the level cap to 90.

Most of it is the poor pacing, of which the Elite is just the most obvious example. As another, follow the story line and participate in events and you’re led out of The HoT initial zone to a second zone. I haven’t even gotten to gliding up drafts yet! I run into points I cannot access, including points that require poison resistance, and those mushrooms would sure be handy, but I’m not even to Step 2 in gliding. Am going to go back to the previous zone and not consider it boring? (Oh, the new zone has yet another mastery, so now I’m two or three behind and grinding.)

Or what about the twisty, narrow paths that are pains to navigate and have annoying mobs along them? Seemingly their only purpose is to make you glad you ground out flying (to level 2, not there yet) plus mushrooms. Even have parts of the story line that require mushrooms (unless you’re stubborn enough to try a couple dozen times with flying blind and at max distance until you do it. Yay me.

Heck, even the idea of having all of an Elite dropped into a long linear advancement track is painful. There should be an initial gate to enable the Elite spec, then options to advance the parts you think most important first, as you can with base characters. Instead, you have a long slog which requires you to get all elite skills in a particular order.

lorddarkflare.9186:

chaosdurza.3291:

OP, let them be Anet white knights all they want to. It’s still early into the xpac. They don’t have the foresight any intelligent person would have to know how horrible it’s going to be when you’re on you 5th toon trying to unlock your elite spec. Once they finally get around to that point, they’ll see the light. The grind will finally have worn away their fanboy attitude and they’ll understand what we, and the THREE THOUSAND other angry posters are talking about (reference; see the mega thread). Each elite spec takes an average of 20-25 hours to unlock. I have 11 toons. So kindly, go kitten yourself if you think it’s entitled or whining for wanting elite specs at a lower rate.

This is a poor argument.

1) – Masteries are account bound, so after you have unlocked them all on one character, it will be much easier on the others.

2) – You chose to have 11 characters. It takes much more effort to get all those characters to level 80 than to unlock the Elite. Even with tomes. You had to expend effort to get those.

3) – It is not grind if you can get it by just playing the game. Getting Hero Points is just that: playing the game.

So all that said, there ARE reasonable points to the arguments that you an people like you make, it is just the tone you take that kills all reasonable conversation.

For one thing, while Hero Points should remain challenging, they should also do a better job scaling. All of them should be solo-able, but not eye-bleedingly easy with more people in the area.

For another, the total hero points required should be about half of what it is to fully unlock all traits and skills. The remaining half should unlock skins.

Well I do think his “tone” could have been influenced by being called an “Entitled Whiner”. Hostility breeds hostility.

to be fair, new maps are beautiful, events are great and challenge, masteries are fine (may be need to reduce exp)
the only thing I dont like is HP to unlock elite spec, too much and locked by masteries. If anet reduce 1/2 or create a new story for each elite spec to unlock, it will be awsome, people can enjoy exploring HOT maps with full elite spc

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

lorddarkflare.9186:

chaosdurza.3291:

OP, let them be Anet white knights all they want to. It’s still early into the xpac. They don’t have the foresight any intelligent person would have to know how horrible it’s going to be when you’re on you 5th toon trying to unlock your elite spec. Once they finally get around to that point, they’ll see the light. The grind will finally have worn away their fanboy attitude and they’ll understand what we, and the THREE THOUSAND other angry posters are talking about (reference; see the mega thread). Each elite spec takes an average of 20-25 hours to unlock. I have 11 toons. So kindly, go kitten yourself if you think it’s entitled or whining for wanting elite specs at a lower rate.

This is a poor argument.

1) – Masteries are account bound, so after you have unlocked them all on one character, it will be much easier on the others.

2) – You chose to have 11 characters. It takes much more effort to get all those characters to level 80 than to unlock the Elite. Even with tomes. You had to expend effort to get those.

3) – It is not grind if you can get it by just playing the game. Getting Hero Points is just that: playing the game.

So all that said, there ARE reasonable points to the arguments that you an people like you make, it is just the tone you take that kills all reasonable conversation.

For one thing, while Hero Points should remain challenging, they should also do a better job scaling. All of them should be solo-able, but not eye-bleedingly easy with more people in the area.

For another, the total hero points required should be about half of what it is to fully unlock all traits and skills. The remaining half should unlock skins.

Well I do think his “tone” could have been influenced by being called an “Entitled Whiner”. Hostility breeds hostility.

Not just him, but everyone involved comes out looking bad in terms of how they express themselves.

Anyone who does not see this as a ‘mess’ is labeled as a ‘white knight’ as well.

It does not matter if who started it. You should be civil and reasonable regardless of how your detractors behave.

i don’t think there is much they can say. this is all they have and the gating (err ‘hardcore’ pve…as if the best players were playing pve ) is absolutely necessary to stretch what little content they have.

there is literally no reason to go to the jungle other than the hp’s and i suspect that many will go once and grit their teeth and then never go back..many others will dip their toe and just never go back. all the ‘hardcore’ pve players will tire of it and the maps will be as dead as drytop.

in the process they have kicked their loyal veteran players in the teeth with a grindy small content release that feels cynical and cruel. the reason veterans are passionate about this issue is not because we feel ripped off by this gated feature pack (altho we do). hey it’s 50 bucks but i’ve wasted 50 bucks on bad computer games before.

no we feel angry because we love playing the game and hate to see it flounder like this. further, there are no ‘fixes’ in the future-if it took them a year and half to come up with hot (?!?)…how long would it take them to make something good?

One week it’s all cupcakes and rainbow, the next week it’s just stale pastries and rain. Hang in there folks!

hope Anet dont make any changes

its called elite specialization and shouldnt be obtainable in a day
thats what destroy mmorpgs

i like maguuma jungle, only because i am from maguuma the server :p

Reese.6379:

That’s where I disagree. It very much is a grind especially for returning players who left around or before fractals and ascended gear. When we left the core principles were somewhat still in place, and the game was very casual friendly.

I returned to new gear, new currency, new UI, completely different spec layouts and progression. Not only that the expansion or something somewhere has added hero points and masteries I have to figure out just to progress. Want to glide, well you have to train gliding “Sounds like Eve, I hate Eve.” You have to do that for literally every new aspect of the new expansion. On top of that I can’t even max out my build on my maxed out character, I need to spend hero points to get there, and I’m starting at the daunting number of 20 of those completed.. None of the new zone is casual friendly it’s almost entirely group driven, and now hidden behind jump things and glide things and poison things.. You name it….

That is a complete 180 from what this game was supposed to be about..

For now, I was focusing on discovering the Verdant Brink and everything unlock itself while discovering Verdant Brink.
I did some events, try to reach some challenge and mastery points, made my way to some places I wanted to see, trying to figure if there is something to do there or if I’m just lost.

There were not a moment where I had to think “you must farm events to unlock masteries”.
I just enjoyed the content with friends.

I’m already half through Verdant Brink and already unlocked Glider rank 3 and other mastery branches too. I have four area to explore, I don’t fear to run out of content to do and my masteries will pex alon while doing other things.

Your character is not max out. It’s an expansion, your character is not max out anymore and you have new things to do to “re-max it”. Because there are more things now than before.

Casual do not mean solo or easy. It means you have not 10h per day to play, but it’s not important.
After the first few minutes of discovering that it’s not faceroll monsters, I became more careful and started paying attention to the monsters.
Then, I didn’t have too much trouble wandering as I wanted in the area. Dodge at the right time, avoid that big road to pick this little path in the cliff, jump there.
Exploration is rewarded by making you learn how to go somewhere fast or safe.

The RNG part is pretty bad. There shouldn’t be such a drastic difference (4 vs 2 is half).

Anet there are compromises you can make that’ll make both camps relatively happy.

1. With regards to elite specializations, all you really need is to reduce the amount of hero points required to 150-200. Thinking back I really didn’t have too difficult of a time getting to 50% Reaper. Things didn’t really slow down until after halfway through unlocking, that’s when dread set in and I was stuck in PvE. That’s also when I started doing WvW ktrains (which is something I really hate to do).

I thought the first 2 maps in HoT expansion were fun. Pace felt pretty good, not too fast not too slow. They broke you in and got you accustomed to the new expansion & its features. Now with masteries unlocked it’ll be easier to do for other characters. Between that and WvW ranks, I should be able to obtain 150 hero points for other characters to unlock elite specs without a problem. This way you get to keep the hero point progression that one camp wants, but you reduce the burden for the other camp especially those of us with so many alts.

To help make WvW players happy, please make sure the rank up chest always gives you 5 Proofs of Heroics. This random 2-4 proofs is a pain. I think this would be a good compromise that’ll make both camps relatively happy.

2. For Mastery grind, you can easily make it more tolerable by tripling the exp people get from doing bosses & events. The amount of rewards people get do not scale with the amount of exp required to level up. Reward must be there for players to want to do the content. It’s a MMO and that’s just how it works.

psizone.8437:

It was much lower last night because some people have been asking others to leave bad reviews to force Anet to answer this thread.

To make a point, if people want to leave bad reviews it’s their right, but make sure they’re well written and you try to justify the score. Also, counter to that, if you leave a good review, mention what you liked and justify your score.

“1/10, grindy as hell” and “10/10 because people are whiny” don’t help anyone decide if a game/expansion is any good by looking at the reviews and it makes it harder for Anet to look for feedback.

This is why Metacritic user reviews and Steam reviews are worthless. The numerical majority of submitters are just out to grind an axe, they don’t care about giving a fair review. But at least Steam has the helpful/unhelpful buttons on each review that let them weed out the axe-grinders.

Osu.6307:

Zixum.9718:

Why has PvP been neglected in this respect when you have worked hard to allow people to develop their characters in PvP in most other aspects.

Are there any future plans to bring hero points to pvp? Or is there some way to get them and I’m missing something?

Why do you need hero points in spvp? All the elite specs are already unlocked. There are new runes and trinkets that you have to buy with gold, but that is an insignificant annoyance in comparison.

My point is that you can level and gear your character for PvE through PvP, but if you are on of those people you cannot use that particular game mode to further your character.

Hi, I feel the need to say something that is important in regard of the design of this HP requirements and Elite specialization combination/balance.

We are all casual here, and some people are fortunate enough to have a lot of playtime, but…

Please respect and put in consideration to people who have only a short limited amount of playtime.

Hero challenges are not all appropriate/viable for us. Some are solo-impossible, and there are times where we cannot get anyone to help. Some are blocked by high level of mastery. I spend an hour trying to locate the challenge location and get demolished by champion/found out I need tier 4 mastery in Verdant. I asked the map for help, but it was 3am PDT and no one replied, and it feels really bad.

Lets connect dots here: Elite specialization require 400pts right? So you made Hero challenges in jungle worth 10pts for that purpose, and because of it you think the difficulty should be higher. This concept is simply wrong to the bone.

What I want to suggest is to look at Elite specialization, Hero challenge, and its difficulty as a whole package in order to efficiently solve/balance the problem here. 400pts is simply unfriendly to people who like playing alts. IMO I think this game is revolve around people spending time playing with different professions. However, at this current rate I don’t think a short playtime would let me unlock even one elite specialization before Xmas or 2015.
I don’t have 100% old Tyria map completion, and I do not ever plan to tackle on it for HP.

Then there is Elite specialization unlock-progress-blocking trait problem. I spend my first 60pts to unlock new weapon, but it costs me an entire trait line just to enable it. Can’t I play with my new weapon first? Why does it have cost so much. In the beginning (core GW2), weapon skills and traits are separated, so why are we forced to tied them together? This really is counter intuitive, especially knowing HP being fairly challenging to obtain, and elite progression is slow enough due to the cost. There becomes little to no point in actually play the partially unlocked elite specialization.

One could argue that we were unlocking traits on our way to lvl80. However, all these challenges and monsters we have to deal with are all post lvl80 difficulties. Traits are what makes the professions powerful in post lvl80 contents, and that’s why I said there is little to no point in actually play the partially unlocked elite specialization because it feels like I’ve just nerf’d myself in order to play it.

I expect something to be done ASAP. I’m not happy about the current state. Please don’t repeat the same mistake as in NPE Trait Issues.

Engel.6029:

Making Hero Points soloable would fix the problem.

This. HoT has plenty of “Hardcore” content and raids coming. Masteries is the progression system that should take time and I have no problem with that. HoT was marketed as having elite specializations and NEVER did ANet make comments saying that it would take 300+ points to get all your skills. This is why people are disappointed.

On Reaper for example they locked the “Rise” skill behind the last skill unlock…that just sucks for people wanting to try out the new minion master builds. It’s a grind just to try out a build.

If people think that the hero challenges wont’ become a ghost town, then think again. It’s already happening. I sat and watched the Creeping Crevasse HP on SATURDAY night and no one came to do it…no one. Map chat was all a buzz so people online but everyone had moved on to the later zones.

The hero challenges should not be locked behind group only content. That’s just bad design and forces zergs. Hero challenges should scale to the number of people and NOT have a zerker DPS burn down timer.

I don’t mind the current implementation of elite specs regarding hero point accumulation. That said, if all the whining causes it to change, I wouldn’t mind either.

I paid $100 for access to classes (elite specs) which are locked behind a map-grind.

PvP players get immediate access to their elite specs, but still have a separate Maguuma mastery track. Should be the same for all players. My $100 is as good as theirs.

I might actually enjoy the mastery system if I could approach it casually, instead of having my class mechanics locked behind it.

WvW hero points rewards are far too little to make up the difference.

Right now, I’m holding off on buying HoT for my wife and kid. They simply WILL NOT grind to unlock their elite specs. To hang-glide, yeah sure, but to play their class? No way.

Clairenix.2780:

I personally think that you shouldn’t have tied down TRAITS and SKILLS in one single line. I think the point requirement is fine, but it feels so deep getting these traits and skills because they’re in one single route. The old system did this, and it’s perfectly fine!

This has been stated a couple times in this thread, and I really think it’s the fastest and fairest fix. HP cost can still stay at a total of 400, keeping the devs’ intended difficulty, but players can get to the heart of the elites, the traits, a bit faster. AND, it maintains consistency with the existing character mechanics.

Surely even the hardcore anti-change camp could see this as a reasonable compromise.