Guild Wars 2

the problem comes down to this. If Anet doesnt change this they will lose many more players and money than if they do change it. People like Raziel are not going to stop playing if they make elite specs easy to get but people like me will

Michael Patricius.4369:

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.

things aren’t that rosy on the pvp side. we got nothing in this expansion. one new map that isn’t a pvp map (stronghold) that no one plays. a few new reward tracks and that’s it. we don’t get hero points for playing so unlocking elites for playing pve with friends is impossible.

a literal heart of thorns.

Tken.1986:

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.

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.

This is it right here. Vanilla GW2 had enough content for the casual to catch up to, and play with, the people who made GW2 their main MMO and enough content to separate the two as well. HoT immediately shuns the casual. I logged on for three hours on day 1 and 3 hours on day 2 and felt like I got literally NOTHING completed except for a minuscule amount of the story and a mastery point. I cannot bring myself to boot the game up again because it was so disheartening.

I expect me playing over a month to get the elite fully playable. I will do hero challenges i can. To hard or locked ones will be skipped i get them with WvW coins. Done … And its no issue for me to get i a bit later then hoped, unless i feel its well doable. And i prefer WvW. Don´t like jumping puzzles and to repeat content often (grind). Playtime 5-10h a week (more the lower end but there are 1/2days i play more in a month).

I think a lot of people are missing the point of the biggest majority of the complaints here. Yes, I’m aware it’s new content, yes I’m aware it’s more difficult. The mobs are better, the events are really cool. A lot of it is gated behind new mechanics, awesome mechanics I might add, but I have to grind to get these mechanics, and it keeps me out of the content for no reason what so ever, except the DEVs artificially created. It was not there prefractal, and ascended. I came back to an entirely different game philosophy, one that changed even more dramatically with the expansion. I thought the game was terrific before, I’m not quite sure what lead down this wormhole of gated content.. It’s never been good for casual players, and for the most part this was entirely a casual game. Now I have to count on other people to even get me to my characters full potential with elite specs, this philosophy will never sit well with me, and there are plenty of other casuals agreeing. I want to play how I want , I want to go where I want, and I want to hit achievement milestones my way.. Why abandon such a magnificent philosophy?

Wow. Now I’m really glad I did NOT preorder HoT. I’ll try back in a few months once this is all sorted out.

In the meantime, Fallout 4 can’t come soon enough, and ESO is surprisingly fun.

So, I did Daredevil 100% in WvWvW …. but it was not fun, it was a chore.
I can’t be bothered with even doing it on my other chars, not in the nearest future atleast.

HP should be account bound not soulbound. That would fix a lot of problems because then I could take pre-existing HP from one toon and sacrifice it for the toon I really want the elite spec on. You still have to earn HP. You still have to play, but at least you have some options which feels less like a grind – AND – you get to have one of your toons have the elite spec almost right away if you really want it.

Pifil.5193:

… I can’t see how a system that requires you to get unique, individual Hero Points once per character can be seen as “grindy”

But, that isn’t really true is it? I had over 2,000 skill points on one character and they decided to take that away from me and replace the points that I had already earned with shards. Now I have the pleasure of earning Hero Points yet again. Woohoo

And to top it off they are allowing me to spend hero points on unlocking weapons, sigils, runes while not allowing me to play with the Scrapper properly until it is ALL done. Nice of them to let me know that’s how it would be before the game launched, too. Don’t you think?

At least it’s not like the fractal players — they get the pleasure of buying the ability to get rid of past “rewards” at the wonderful price of one gold per item. I’m glad A-Net at least understands rewarding good play.

“it’s called elite specialization and shouldn’t be unlockable in a day”

Yes, it is called “elite”. That is the problem. There is nothing elite about these specializations. Because of pvp balance issues and pay to win concerns these specializations are no more powerful than the regular professions. So if these specs are on par with normal profession then their trait lines and utility costs should be the same as normal traits and utilities. There also shouldn’t be one huge upgrade wheel. There should be an elite trait line wheel and an elite utility wheel.

Elite is just an illusion. Fake progression is insulting.

There are different types of players and it’s hard to appease all types of players.

1. The mechanics loving players. They primarily are playing the game because they love the mechanics. The look of the place and the characters are secondary. The lore isn’t a big draw. They don’t need to explore every nook and cranny.

2. The lore loving players. These guys are primarily in games for the story. The mechanics and look are secondary. This group includes the RP’ers.

3. The exploration loving players. These guys care how the world and the inhabitants look graphics wise.

Each group also has it’s opposite. And the lore haters and the exploration haters will still be found playing the game. Since it’s hard to avoid mechanics, most mechanics haters won’t be found playing the game.

The mechanics lovers but exploration haters don’t particularly enjoy being told that they have to explore the new maps to unlock the new mechanics. This is also true for the lore lovers but exploration haters. They don’t like having to explore the map in order to get mastery points to spend their mastery experience on so that they can experience the next story step. They are less miffed since masteries are account bound, unlike hero challenges.

And of course it’s a scale between love and hate and this affects when things become a grind and if something is even fun to begin with.

And unfortunately, it can be hard to develop a system that all groups will enjoy equally. Some group will hate it.

Zixum.9718:

My main feedback is just regarding the game modes.

In PvE you can earn hero points, Anet have added a way in WvW to gain hero points. 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?

I like this, they act like PVPers only play PVP and never venture into other game modes, I mainly play PVP, then WvW with my guild, and occasionally do fractals or dungeons to spice things up, but being forced into the open world to unlock my specs for those game modes makes me feel like a fish out of water.

Hi, I read in another post that people were very critical of the expansion, especially the specializations, in this thread and just wanted to say that me and my ~30 member guild really enjoy the expansion so far. We had a great time exploring the maps and finding the hero challenges (woah, they’re difficult, but with 10 people it’s super fun to look for them and compete to see who finds them first).
The only thing that I don’t like is that my main, who was an Ele, got a specialisation that doesn’t really click with me, but now I play berserker and I shout “I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL” all the time and it’s super fun

Well, probably mentioned earlier by some:

1) Not all people have the luxury of time to play all day and night
2) Imagine you got 30+ alts. (yes, such people exist)
3) The frog at that HP that says "You are not worthy! " gave me so much feelz, I love/hate it. (after numerous attempts of gliding into that platform…)

all in all, why lock all the fun away when one plays the game to have fun. If it is the sense of achievement that Anet is seeking, shouldnt that be based on how well the player manages his/her profession?

#2cents

Aye.8392:

Pifil.5193:

… I can’t see how a system that requires you to get unique, individual Hero Points once per character can be seen as “grindy”

But, that isn’t really true is it? I had over 2,000 skill points on one character and they decided to take that away from me and replace the points that I had already earned with shards. Now I have the pleasure of earning Hero Points yet again. Woohoo

It is true. It is completely and utterly true. When they replaced Skill Points with Spirit Shards and Hero Points you got one Hero Point for each Skill Challenge in the world that you’d done and the rest were converted to Spirit Shards. You didn’t have to go back and unlock the Hero Points again, you couldn’t in fact, you can do each once per character, which is what I said.

When you take into account the fact that they gave us enough Hero Points from levelling to 80 to fully unlock all our character’s traits and skills this means that each character will have some Hero Points left. As the Hero Challenges in the expansion are worth 10 Hero Points each the whole “grind” becomes “do less than 40 hero challenges on your characters you want to play”. Not that much of a grind once you do them the first time.

Aye.8392:

And to top it off they are allowing me to spend hero points on unlocking weapons, sigils, runes while not allowing me to play with the Scrapper properly until it is ALL done. Nice of them to let me know that’s how it would be before the game launched, too. Don’t you think?

I do think that all the “extras” (apart from the initial weapon chest that gives you the ascended weapon collection unlock) should have been the last things to unlock that you should have unlocked the skills and traits first. Then, if people want to they can unlock those sigils, runes, etc (I can see people wanting to skip those parts if they have multiple characters with the same profession).

Aye.8392:

At least it’s not like the fractal players — they get the pleasure of buying the ability to get rid of past “rewards” at the wonderful price of one gold per item. I’m glad A-Net at least understands rewarding good play.

Erm… no comment on any of that. Actually no, screw that, you’re right, the “reward” for doing something should never be just an invoice for a gold.

Simple fix
Allow PvP and WvW acquired achievements (including tomes of knowledge) unlock the elite specialization.
For example, if you have already unlocked all wvw skills and have 500 points left over then those should convert into hero points.
Or, if you have _ rank in pvp, convert that into hero points.
They say that by allowing ranks, etc. to convert into hp, it will simply allow too many people to “unlock” chars too quickly, yet map completion (entirely pve related) gave a couple of hundred hp’s to pve’ers did it not?
I will not pve to play the game portions I like. Simply not worth it on so many chars.

The Solutions:

Sometimes going back is going forward.

1)Selectable traits/stats. At least for the begining. You shouldnt need to fully unlock all skills if its tied to mastery (longer term slower repetitive progression) to have access to a working charachter.
2) methods of aquisition for different play types:
explorer
instance runner/defeat tough monster
WvWer
2a)these should scale up from 1 player to a group. Personal progression should not require groups in this game. Though grouping can make it easier/faster

Suggestion for masteries:
start the exp curves lower. Overall you shouldnt have designed masteries such that the grind comes into play untill after you have your basic needs met. There are some flaws imo with how they interact with level design, and pacing, but thats probably too late to deal with now

While those that post on the forums are indeed the vocal minority, be glad there are enough passionate players that even care enough to post right now. These folks are like me, they think the expansion isn’t too bad but certain things are just off. They want to like the game, they probably do like the expansion, but some things are just blocking that fun. Elite spec grind for one, which is gated by hero points, which are also gated by masteries, which are further gated by non-soloable content….which altogether are gated by some bad map design that are not friendly to explorers, Tangled Depth comes to mind.

Be glad you are seeing this many passionate players post about this. Because for the majority, they simply would walk away and stop playing. If things are not fixed/tweaked soon, more and more passionate players will walk away. So do something soon and fast, before people give up and just stop caring. People want to like the expansion, that’s why they’re posting about it, so help people enjoy the expansion.

I’m confident you see the statistics and real numbers that you can’t publish. You see empty WvW maps, and how WvW players are avoiding new desert borderland maps like a plague. Part of that is due to the elite spec grind you imposed on WvW players, so most are grinding PvE or ktraining EBG. Other part of it is that the new desert borderland maps are tedious to play in, it’s too large for the current WvW population, not even T1 servers which are markred Full can make these maps feel populated. WvW players also don’t want random things that knock them back, or get crippled just trying to run from point A to B, or some Environment happenings ruining fights. People warned you about this before launch, now you see it, now you see the empty borderland maps. And no gliding in these large vertical maps? Really?

You also see PvE players grinding CoF1 repeatedly to get insane exp and high mastery ranks for central tyria masteries. Was this how you envisioned players would play this game? Grinding something repeatedly because the mastery grind is unbearable any other method?

You see all those failed events because they require just a tad too much out of players that are random pugging. Oh by the way, a lot of the hero challenges I probably could solo on my elite specs…if I had full access to them. Just saying, the decision to kitten people by giving people small chunks of an elite spec is just a bad one. What am I supposed to do with 1/3 of a Reaper class without traits and shouts?

I honestly really wish I could’ve enjoyed this expansion with full elite specs. Things would’ve been much more enjoyable, and I wouldn’t feel as pressured to rush through content just to unlock elite specs fully. Listen to your passionate players because right now, they at least care enough to post. You don’t want to wait until they stop caring and walk away from the game.

binidj.5734:

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.

Why?

And what do you suggest?

Just talking here? Not nearly enough. ArenaNet often loves to take negative feedback, lump it into a single topic and hope it will fade away (see the topic about the Dragonhunter name). Even when they bother to fix something, it takes them many, many months to even acknowledge so, much less actually do it (see the topic about the broken trait acquisition system, or the one about how the NPE update broke the personal storyline, etc).

Asking for a refund? That’s far, far worse. Not only it actually takes money away from ArenaNet, but it also keeps Support busy (while they could be working on real issues), and it’s also a lot of trouble for the players.

No, giving HoT a low Metacritic score is the best option. It’s:

• Relatively harmless. Low user scores have not prevented big releases from selling millions, just take a look at Assassin’s Creed or any EA game. Unlike asking for a refund, this doesn’t remove money from ArenaNet.

• Easily undone. It’s very easy to change a given Metacritic score, as soon as ArenaNet fixes this. Unlike all the trouble of asking for a refund, that would basically require a player to buy HoT again.

• A very clear message. A low number on that score is a simple way to let ArenaNet know that players are really unhappy.

• It adds pressure, just like asking for a refund and far more than just posting here. But again, without actually taking resources from ArenaNet.

• Very simple for players. Making an account there is very quick, and voicing one’s opinion about other games is a good thing.

Really, the best way to express being unhappy with the current specialization grind is going over to Metacritic and giving HoT a low score. It’s a way to make yourself heard without actually sabotaging ArenaNet.

Sadly my problem with the expansion was the entire advertisement of the Elite Specs. But i need to admit that making them something hard to get was the more logical aspect, they are Elite after all.
But they kept the amount of points needed for the full unlock of the Spec a mystery. So we all though that the most sensible amount was around 160 or even 200 HP.

Not telling us how much it cost made it a bad surprise that kittened everyone . Another sad point if that a Elite spec barely open is unplayable. It lacks skills, traits and everything that made the Elite fun or viable on a challenging area.

Right now i’m playing the same build that i used before until a make the Elite Spec fully open, kinda of a disappointment.

I have played Heart of Thorns for a good 30 hours since launch and I think that has been long enough for me to come up with an opinion on many aspects of the expansion pack.

I’m going to begin by mentioning that I almost exclusively only play WvW and occasionally some PvP. I have always found PvE to be repetitive and somewhat dull and I prefer the competitive aspects That PvP/WvW have to offer. I mention this as I expect my views on the new PvE content will be manipulated by the type of player I am.

That being said, I must admit that I have (for the most part) really been enjoying the new content HoT has brought with it, both in PvE and WvW. The new Desert Borderlands are a welcome change to the old maps and I look forward to seeing more and more of them in the future. The removal of guard stacks has made roaming in WvW fairer and I think that the change, although not necessary, was a good thing to do.

The new PvE zones are where I have spent most of my time since Friday, and they have really surprised me. I think the vertical design is very well done (but can be slightly annoying) and the different ways of getting from place to place (Gliding, Jump-y Mushrooms etc. etc.) make for an enjoyable experience when navigating the new zones. There are also various events in the new zones and I believe they all have a different meta-event. Playing these events wasn’t too dissimilar from doing events in the normal zones so I found them to quickly become slightly dull and repetitive, but by no means were they bad. The story missions were challenging enough for them to be fun, but there wasn’t as many as I expected. Each chapter of the story has it’s own set of achievements so they have some sort of re-playability and some additional targets to aim for. So in terms of content, I think Anet did a very good job all around with HoT, aside from Stronghold, which I don’t like. But that’s just personal preference, nothing particularly bad about it.

The new mastery system added with HoT allows players to have additional goals after they’ve reached level 80 which I think is nice. Although the mastery ranks are very slow to obtain, they are account wide so you’ll only have to get them once.

Now, this is the BIG problem I have with HoT, and I expect most of you saw this coming, but I really don’t like the Hero-Points-for-elite-specialisation system. The elite specialisations are largely what made me buy Heart of Thorns, and in my time playing since the launch, I’ve managed to obtain ~160 Hero Points. That’s 30 hours for 160 Hero Points. And I’m fully aware that people have managed to get far more than that, but I’ve been playing the game to have fun, not to grind these points. The fastest way (and only viable way as far as I know) to get Hero Points is to complete Hero Challenges in the new zones. Each challenge gives 10 points, there are 40 challenges, 400 Points. Hearing this had slightly salvaged the system for me, but then I tried to do some of these Hero Challenges. I managed to do quite a few of the challenges before I began to see more and more of them were restricted by specific masteries or required additional players to complete them. Requiring max/high level masteries to do the challenges really put me off since the only way to get these is to grind events for hours on end. To some people, doing these events doesn’t feel like a grind to all, but to me it sure does. Needing extra players isn’t too much of a problem right now since the maps are highly active, but give it a few weeks and less and less people will be helping with the challenges on map chat.

Let’s say you’ve done the grind and have all the necessary masteries, which is already going to have taken you an absurd amount of time, you still have to go through all your alts, run them to the new zones (assuming they don’t have map completion) and do all 40 hero challenges several times. This is not an enjoyable experience and it’s not what I paid £35 for. As someone mentioned previously in this thread, needing to grind endlessly for Hero Points to get elite specialisations has nothing to do with character development. It’s essentially a new class. I think that restricting this content was the wrong thing to do and it needs to be re-evaluated.

tl;dr: Heart of Thorns = good. Hero Points = bad.

You lock the content I paid $50 for behind a horrible grind and nerfed the only content I enjoyed (dungeons and fractals) pre-expansion.

I’d pay $50 more to roll back this horrible expansion.

Or you know, I can just spend $50 on a new game and not worry about this mess.

“They are elite after all”

No, No, No!!!!!! There is nothing elite about these specializations. It’s all an illusion to make you think you think you are progressing. These specs are nothing more than alternate playstyles. They are not even a full profession.

Dashingsteel.3410:

“They are elite after all”

No, No, No!!!!!! There is nothing elite about these specializations. It’s all an illusion to make you think you think you are progressing. These specs are nothing more than alternate playstyles. They are not even a full profession.

Exactly. They are not elite in any way other than acquisition effort. Not on “elite” spec is “better” than existing specs.

But the work required to obtain them is more than what we did to unlock ALL of our other specs.

I’m not agaisnt changing the elite specs, making it slightly easier (reducing requirements a bit).
I’m agaisnt Anet giving them away, playing for 15 mins on a new char and having one of the core xpac progression elements fully unlocked? Yeah that’s too much.

First off I have been playing on and off since launch and this game has been very good to me. while I was in School I played wow and this game has allowed me to leave and come back even after HoT with no worry about “catching up”. I love it

The only thing I do not like about Hot is the requirement of hero points to unlock my elite spec. I dont think it would have been such an issue to me If the game had released more core game changing content in the past. But I have been playing the same spec(s) for going on three years and the thought of not getting them right away and having to put more time in playing the same way is frustrating.

TLDR: 3 years is to long to be playing the same core game loop. I wanted the elite spec faster.

Pezz.4758:

Ok i just wanted to know, straight up no more smoke and mirrors. No more arguments no more conjecture, please save me some time and sanity.

Will Elite Specs (to be clear to staw manners, ONLY elite specs, not asking for anything else but ELITE SPECS) Will elite specs be made more easily attainable in a PVE way? I dont care if its removing mastery grind from getting to hero points removing champ mobs, making , giving more points per challenge, nerfing the number of points needed to progress, changing the lines to the standard seperate trait and ability lines.

Is there ANY plan to implement ANY of this? Please, just let me know so i can either move on for good or just take a break and come back when its fixed.

Right now, I have no plans on changing anything on that matter or implementing any of your suggestions.

Good bye.

I guarantee you that one of their biggest selling points was not that the elite would cost 400 hero points. That little nugget of information was missing from all there presentations prior to release of the game. I wonder how many HoT prepurchases they would have lost had they informed their consumers.

My constructive feed back on Elite Specs and HPs:

Problems:
1) Elite specialization isn’t very useful until you have unlocked pretty much all of it.

2) There are only two ways to get hero points. There are many who don’t enjoy being forced to do these activities, but they are necessary in order to unlock the full potential of your character

3) You have to do the same hero point challenges for every level 80 you have (I have 9). While doing this the first time might be ok, repeating the same challenges nine times is a daunting and non-enjoyable task.

4) A lot of the hero points are hard to get to/require more than one person. The difficulty with requiring multiple people is that most of them are mastery gated. So it’s hard to find a group that can all do them.

Possible Suggestions:
1) Don’t lock the elite specialization behind so many hero points. I understand some gating being helpful (I actually like the mastery progression, minus the fact that the points are earned from exploration), but it does seem excessive for something that so many people bought the xpac for.

2) Add more ways for people to get hero points. Whether it’s a fractal drop, something from a vendor in exchange for tokens, gold sink, pvp reward track, etc. It gives people more options with how they want to earn them. I personally don’t like the HP challenges that much, and grinding wvw ranks also doesn’t sound super fun to me.

3) I think you can mitigate this in one of two ways. If you lessen the gate/add more options to get HPs then I don’t see a problem with them not being account bound. If you don’t do those things, then maybe HPs after level 80 should be account bound. Doing it 9 times in the same way is very unrewarding.

4) This one is more of an extra. If you don’t fix it I’m not that upset, especially if you add more ways to get HPs. I think that making them scale better for the number of people around would help with this. Soloing a champ (which is what I’ve had to do for most) can be annoying, and for some because of their mechanics is impossible.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I guarantee you that one of their biggest selling points was not that the elite would cost 400 hero points. That little nugget of information was missing from all there presentations prior to release of the game. I wonder how many HoT prepurchases they would have lost had they informed their consumers.

Most likely the same amount that did purchase it because they would have known that is what they had to do.

Bottom line, however, many “assumed” they would get elites with purchase or it would be a short ride to get them. That is what they get for assuming.

People had a lot of false expectations, it is true that 400 hero points is way too much, but some were expecting to have the new class trait line 15 mins after playing HoT.
Unreal expectations tend to have bad results.

Dashingsteel.3410:

“it’s called elite specialization and shouldn’t be unlockable in a day”

Yes, it is called “elite”. That is the problem. There is nothing elite about these specializations. Because of pvp balance issues and pay to win concerns these specializations are no more powerful than the regular professions. So if these specs are on par with normal profession then their trait lines and utility costs should be the same as normal traits and utilities. There also shouldn’t be one huge upgrade wheel. There should be an elite trait line wheel and an elite utility wheel.

Elite is just an illusion. Fake progression is insulting.

I’m glad someone else understands this, that elite specs are basically a cosmetic upgrade with a couple new abilities, and the name elite is little more than lipstick that is causing people to have false perceptions about what the specs are worth (mainly in the direction of believing that they are worth the 400 HP, when they really aren’t).

These specs may be called elite but they are not. They are on par with existing professions. Why are they overcharging on the amount of hero points needed to unlock traits and utilities? This is fake progression. Elite traitlines and utilities should cost the same as any other traitline and utility wheel.

The mastery system is the true character progression and I love that system. You actually improve over what your character was at the beginning of HoT.

An assumption compounded by a “Beta” that showed nothing of the means to get an elite spec.. only the experience of having one.

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why people are saying, “Relax, it’s called Elite for a reason.” If I stick an “ELITE” sticker on my derriere, would you kiss that too?

It’s not more powerful than other specializations, and it’s not really something you can show off – you can dance around as a Daredevil with 60 points or 400 into it. Unless you show them your wicked evasion moves, who’s going to know the difference? Maybe you’ll know, but patting yourself on the back for completing a grind-fest that others won’t do is kind of silly, IMHO.

My take on Elite Specializations is they were labeled as such, because they do more to change your character’s behavior than the regular ones do. It was like breathing new life into a class that you already had put the work into. After we pre-paid, we find out that the shoveling we need to do to actually play that class is nearly the same as grinding out a new class. What’s the point of that? Will this be true in the future as well?

Please don’t go too far with in-game requirements for obtaining certain items.

Something such as armour does deserve to be harder to get but not something of skills nature such is profession.

400 hero points is way over the top, 200 is quite decent and okay, optimal to say.

Zypher.7609:

Pezz.4758:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Sorry OP, but this is the point that the “caring” rabid community they brag so much about tells you not to let the door hit you. Or worse.

eh its cool, if it doesnt get fixed no biggy, watching a BDO alpha test on my second screen and its looking like its got options. yes lots of grinding but the combat looks awesome and the immersion with crafting and trading looks intense

I just don’t even know how to respond to this. You say you like this other game, and how it has lots of grinding, but then you do not want to even play to get your elite specs. The amount of kitten out of you is intense.

I think you miss the point that we are not getting an entirely new profession to start from level one. We are taking EXISTING professions that we have ALREADY leveled up to max level and now you have to grind 400 hp EACH to get one more weapon and a single line of traits from.
That is silly to make such a comparison.
People aren’t asking for things on a silver platter, just be consistent with time=progress

I also just want to say that I’ve loved the game in almost every other respect, and I’ve enjoyed playing it with everyone the past several years now. In a thread discussing elite specs I didn’t feel it was necessary to say this, but some people seem to think that voicing a strong and rational opinion is whining, and rebutting arguments means people are out for blood.

fireflyry.7023:

Raziel.4216:

fireflyry.7023:

Raziel.4216:

I’ve yet to see a MMO expansion where players log in and have all of their new skills in day 1 and I sure hope this isn’t the first one, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

Factions.

What? I had to unlock skills in factions.

Yeah…and it took all of 2 hours to unlock all the core class skills.

Amirite?

LOLOL did you even play factions? You have to capture every single skill. I’ve been playing GW1 for 9 years and my skills captured in faction is still only 115/130. And these are only elite skills. You have to unlock the thousands of regular skills… I’m by no means a noob either since I have 35 HOM and 11 titles maxed. I’m working on all 37 titles maxed.

If anything it’d take around 50 hours if you do it quickly and efficiently. Then you have to farm up money to buy skill capture skills which cost 1K each, and as a lol 1, 130k is hard to come by…

GJ spreading false info.

Raziel.4216:

People had a lot of false expectations, it is true that 400 hero points is way too much, but some were expecting to have the new class trait line 15 mins after playing HoT.
Unreal expectations tend to have bad results.

I think people that played a lot and put in a lot of effort prior to patch felt their previous efforts should have been worth something more….that is all

Reward now for time spent simply does not add up. And the time spent is not that enjoyable because many are simply go back to playing other game modes.

My feedback for this expansion is one thing apart from this. This is about Elite and Hero Points.

Right now, in PvE, the Expansion Pack rolls like this for a lvl 80 character with full map completion:

- Prologue + 1st Chapter
- Get XP for Glider, then use the glider to get 2 mastery points. Then get more xp to unlock these masteries.
- Start doing Hero Points. I Find out that 50% of the hero points at the “Starter map” of the expansion needs to be done with a group. Let’s get back to masteries.
- The masteries are gated by masteries that are gated by the story. Let’s do Story.
- Done Story until end of act 1.
- Got back to hero points, since now I have updraft. I find out that 80% of players with updraft are already at Auric Basin, a map that almost needs no Updraft. There’s a Hero Challenge in Verdant Brink Canopy with a Champion by the end of a puzzle that needs not only finger skill, but to get lucky and pray to your glider to open without lag, how can I call out other players, since they are leveling masteries doing events (and if they stop, they’ll get behind).
- So now I found a stuck. I can’t level my Elite, because other maps are full of champions in Hero Points, some Masteries are locked behind masteries, hero points locked behind THOSE masteries, your story is (was) locked behind an unreachable mastery at that point, but I need to do it anyways to unlock the last Mastery category.

I have a great Reaper incomplete, but because I can salvage from what is offered to me. But I work, I have a family, I have other stuff to do. This Elite won’t get advanced until I find out how to bypass the grind (it IS a Grind. By concept and by execution), since you have to complete 4500 events to fully unlock the masteries. You know how many events you need for Emergency Response Hero Achievement? 5000 events, but all over Tyria o.O. This is not an achievement. It’s repeating something over and over. And I don’t even get it. How can I see the content, if I’m worried about which champion will spawn next with 800.000 hp?

endlessagony.9412:

TLDR: 3 years is to long to be playing the same core game loop. I wanted the elite spec faster.

THIS x 2,900±

Akkeros.1675:

Raziel.4216:

People had a lot of false expectations, it is true that 400 hero points is way too much, but some were expecting to have the new class trait line 15 mins after playing HoT.
Unreal expectations tend to have bad results.

I think people that played a lot and put in a lot of effort prior to patch felt their previous efforts should have been worth something more….that is all

Reward now for time spent simply does not add up. And the time spent is not that enjoyable because many are simply go back to playing other game modes.

Their previous effort can cut down the ammount of HP require by 40%, that’s a LOT.

Eddie Mo.7169:

fireflyry.7023:

Raziel.4216:

fireflyry.7023:

Raziel.4216:

I’ve yet to see a MMO expansion where players log in and have all of their new skills in day 1 and I sure hope this isn’t the first one, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

Factions.

What? I had to unlock skills in factions.

Yeah…and it took all of 2 hours to unlock all the core class skills.

Amirite?

LOLOL did you even play factions? You have to capture every single skill. I’ve been playing GW1 for 9 years and my skills captured in faction is still only 115/130. And these are only elite skills. You have to unlock the thousands of regular skills… I’m by no means a noob either since I have 35 HOM and 11 titles maxed. I’m working on all 37 titles maxed.

If anything it’d take around 50 hours if you do it quickly and efficiently. Then you have to farm up money to buy skill capture skills which cost 1K each, and as a lol 1, 130k is hard to come by…

GJ spreading false info.

I think fireflyry was being sarcastic; mocking the people who complain about not having the specializations unlocked 2 hours after playing.

The more I think about it, giving 200 hero points for map completion and ONLY for map completion is a pretty cruel thing for Anet to do. Basically it says we only respect the accomplishments of pve’ers. It’s kinda like a parent telling one child he/she is the favorite in front of the other 2. After maxing all my wvw masteries, I now have almost 400 unused wvw rank points and those are all meaningless. If Anet really wanted to be completely fair, they would have allowed map completion, wvw rank, and spvp rank to all weigh equally in the equation to determine starting hero points. And why we’re on the subject, why map completion by character? For all the things that we do in the game in the various aspects of pve content, be it map completion, dungeons, fractals, living story, personal story, etc., why did they land on map completion as the standard for game “success?” Mindlessly running from POI to vista to heart for 50 hours per character is the thing we should be most rewarded for? Really? That’s the pinnacle of achievement in this game? SERIOUSLY? It sounds pretty kittening dumb when you say it out loud, don’t you think?

Arnath.2319:

No one complained when they were unlocking their character from lvl 1-80. Why should elite specs be different?

I have yet to see a single logical reason why things should be changed. All i am seeing is a mob of angry spoiled children with a mob like mentality because everything isn’t handed to them for free within the first few days of launch… over a weekend… that the devs are working overtime to keep the servers stable, how selfish and impatience can you people be?

Go play the game, even the most casual of all casual players can easily unlock the full elite spec in as little as week, i’m a casual player and i have already unlocked everything, it is super mega easy, almost too easy!

It’s really not hard to see, and has already been explained in great detail numerous times:

• Leveling from 1-80 improves your character. As you “grow” you gain access to more traits, abilities, and options for how you want to play. This makes sense.
• Leveling an elite spec is a conundrum that conflicts with the pre-existing game. Elite specs, by their nature and stated design intent, aren’t “more powerful” than core specs, they’re just “different” and meant to be alternatives, not upgrades.
• Fully unlocking an elite spec requires an absurd amount of Hero Challenges. Even at 100% map completion for the core game, a player has to consume or “spoil” a large portion of HoT’s content just to fully unlock the spec. Characters without 100% map completion are looking at potentially consuming or “spoiling” all of HoT’s world content just to fully unlock the spec.
• Choosing to equip an elite spec before the line is nearly filled out means using an “incomplete” build. You are effectively “de-leveling” your character just to experience the content with the new playstyle. This does not make sense.
• The other option is to not slot your elite spec at all until you have at least one grandmaster trait unlocked (which is near the end of the line) and play through the bulk of HoT’s world content as an old, but fully-functional spec and then get the “alternative playstyle” as an end-of-game reward. Again, this does not make sense.

Playing an elite specialization currently requires “settling” and intentionally downgrading your character by using an incomplete trait and skill line, or waiting until you’ve cleared most of HoT’s world content and the elite is sufficiently unlocked so that its performance is on par with your old builds. It’s a choice players simply shouldn’t have to make. ESpecs, even if not “fully unlocked” should be functional out of the gate. The initial 60-point buy should give you at least all of your minor traits, and one adept, master, and grandmaster trait, so that your character is on roughly even footing with preexisting builds. Further unlocks should allow you more customization in the form of your other traits, and your utility, heal, and elite skills. The overall cost is absurdly high, as well, and should be reduced, but at the bare minimum 60 points needs to get you ‘competitive’ if not fully optimized for your particular build.

Moreover, all of the functionality of this Hero Challenge system was hidden from the players during 95% of the game’s pre-purchase period, and only sprung on us immediately before launch. Not only is the system a mess, the way it was obfuscated was also a mess. The time for discussion and debate was before HoT went live, not after it’s been live for X length of time even if X is “only” 3 days. It feels unfair to many players, and feels almost entirely untested.

Based on Colin’s comment that “the people currently grinding are enjoying the grind because if they’re doing it, they must be enjoying it” I think the grind is here to stay, won’t be changed, and HoT is never going to be the refreshing, fun new thing that I was super-excited for and will actually drive me away from the game after I burn out on the Hero Point grind on 1-2 characters. His post just feels so back-handed, even if it wasn’t his intent. It reads as if “Yeah, we know a lot of you are upset, but our metrics show people in-game, so we don’t care if you are upset. We’ll ‘talk’ about it in the future, but nothing’s going to change.”

Blizzard did this with their Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft. There were complaints about arduous, time-gated, and boring game systems as well as complaints about cut or delayed content and alt-unfriendliness everywhere. But, the hype train was rolling, sub numbers were up for launch, and Blizzard ignored the complaints. Six months later, the game had lost nearly half of its subscribers, and player retention was at the worst point it had seen in literally a decade.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate everything; There are aspects of HoT that are great. The music is amazing. The environments are beautiful. Some of the elite specs I played during BWE were absolutely awesome, and really felt like evolutions of the ‘actiony’ playstyle of the game without necessarily being mathematically better than their core classes.

Problem is, it’s hard for me to enjoy any of the stuff I like about it, because I’m seeking out gated or group-required hero points, ignoring most of the overworld content, and occasionally chasing a zerg around EOTM (which is something I have no desire to do, I’m not a PVP-person) just to try to get to the point where I can enjoy Reaper without handicapping myself by using an incomplete build. I’ve sunk over 20 hours into my Reaper since HoT went live, and I still don’t have any master traits, let alone any grandmasters nor the elite shout I’ve been looking forward to. At my current rate of progress, it’s going to take me at least another 20 in-game hours, probably more as mastery gates more and more of the Hero Challenges I have left, to get to the point where I can play Reaper at the power level that I was formerly at on an old build before HoT even released. It’s not hard to see how stupid that is.

Raziel.4216:

Eddie Mo.7169:

fireflyry.7023:

Raziel.4216:

fireflyry.7023:

Raziel.4216:

I’ve yet to see a MMO expansion where players log in and have all of their new skills in day 1 and I sure hope this isn’t the first one, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

Factions.

What? I had to unlock skills in factions.

Yeah…and it took all of 2 hours to unlock all the core class skills.

Amirite?

LOLOL did you even play factions? You have to capture every single skill. I’ve been playing GW1 for 9 years and my skills captured in faction is still only 115/130. And these are only elite skills. You have to unlock the thousands of regular skills… I’m by no means a noob either since I have 35 HOM and 11 titles maxed. I’m working on all 37 titles maxed.

If anything it’d take around 50 hours if you do it quickly and efficiently. Then you have to farm up money to buy skill capture skills which cost 1K each, and as a lol 1, 130k is hard to come by…

GJ spreading false info.

I think fireflyry was being sarcastic; mocking the people who complain about not having the specializations unlocked 2 hours after playing.

Ah if that’s true then my apologies to firefly. I just really dislike when people spew false info so I got worked up.

I think people are just being a bit over the top. So on the BWE we got it handed to us on a plate, did not have to do a thing for the Elite specs. Now we do in the full game. Get over it. I already have Full 100% on both Mes and now Reverent, in less than 4 days. When GW2 first came out it took me longer than that just to get one to 100%. Give it time, Mastery is the only thing that really slows you down, and it only has to be done once.

I would be disappoint if Anet changed it, it’s meant to be endgame.

I don’t mind getting 400HP to get a new spec, what I do mind is having to do it on every character lol

The mastery system, raids, legendary journey, new achievement points, new maps….. This is the endgame.

Elite specs being overpriced at 400 hero points when they are not even elite. This is not endgame but it could be the end of the game for many. Hopefully Anet will fix this and the game I love will flourish.