Guild Wars 2

I agree the clock’s ticking. Each day I see less activities in HoT maps, and more complaints in map chat and guild chat. This should not be the case 1 week into a brand new expansion. Time for meetings are over, it’s time to act. I’ll settle with an apology as long as you promise changes are coming. I’m in a few WvW guilds, 1 PvX guild, and 1 PvE guild. Funny thing is the mood is pretty much the same across the board in these guilds.

What people like:

-Gliding, it’s a huge hit. Highlight of the expansion, ppl want it in WvW.
-Guild halls, it’s a huge hit and awesome addition.
-Story, everybody’s loving the story.
-Graphics, there are some really pretty zones.
-Harder mobs, it’s nice to be challenged so you don’t just spam auto while watching tv.
-Elite specializations, people are happy they’re finally able to play something new…but…

What people dislike/disappointed with:

-Elite specializations gated by hero points, haven’t found 1 person I know that likes it. WvW players forced to either PvE or karma train to unlock elite specs, neither of which are fun activities for WvW players.
-Hero points gated by Mastery, Verdant Brinks (starter zone) requiring Nuhoch Proving is a bit much, blocks map completion.
-Mastery as a design is fine, but the exp you get from doing events and boss encounters are not scaling properly with the exp you need to level up Masteries. It’s too much of a grind with the little exp available.
-Events and boss encounters often take a long time to complete, and rewards are lackluster. You actually hurt exp gains by sticking around to do these larger events and meta encounters. I spent 1 hour 20 minutes at an event in Dragon’s Stand where I literally just stood there while pug commanders tried to organize pod kills and such. It was the most boring time I’ve spent and likely I will never do it again.
-New WvW borderlands, while pretty, will require 3 map blobs to feel alive. Currently not even T1 servers have what it takes to make new desert borderlands work. Also too much gimmicks, nobody likes being crippled while running, or getting knocked back/down while trying to fight enemies.

Changes need to happen soon. At the very least players need a post from Anet stating changes are coming, so people stop leaving and jumping ship. I rode the wave over the weekend to get things done. I’m glad I spent extra time because I’m finding it harder and harder to get events, hero challenges, and mastery completed now that maps are often empty. Maps should not be so empty with a new expansion less than 1 week old.

A lot of players really enjoy parts of HoT expansion, it’s just there are tweaks and changes need to be made so it’s fun for more people. Players are vocal about a lot of things because they are passionate about this game. People like me want to see the expansion succeed and the game to continue, we don’t want this game to fail. We like this game. I’d much rather see developers come out and say they’ve made mistakes and changes are coming. Rather than this hardline stance and silence, all the while the maps empty out and more players get discouraged because they can’t get anything done in the new expansion.

11:00 AM in Seattle. What is happening at ANet HQ?

RedBaron.6058:

11:00 AM in Seattle. What is happening at ANet HQ?

Either:

(1) Meetings and brainstorming
(2) People still recovering from the weekend

or both.

Decisions will be slow in coming. Businesses do not make adjustments the same way
individuals do.

What gets me about the hero points/elite spec is that I had almost 2 stacks of those skill point scrolls. Then they changed them to hero points and took the scrolls and turned them into shards, so if they hadn’t done that, I would have had enough to fully unlock the elite spec on the Reverant.

A lot of us probably had a lot of scrolls saved, they take them away and then come back now and say, you have to earn 400 to unlock the elite spec.

66 pages later i tried to do some """serious""" pve for spec. As i said in another post im a wvw-only player and again, as i said before, i don’t like pve. Sure map is great, awesome design etc etc but at this point is just a kick in the balls. I just wanna come back home from work and play wvw with elite spec. Nothing else. That’s what i paied for this expansion.
Not grind in pve, not pvd in eotm with ktrains.
If i have to do things slowy in wvw maps with old specs and “enjoy” something months later i could have not buy the game since new borders are for everybody.
Plain and simple.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

I spent the last hour working towards gliding to a hero point and what do you know… it’s a champion and 2 vets… ONE SHOT DEAD…

Can we please get the inevitable change to this entire system immediately please? This will change, there is no question. It’s hard enough finding groups to do these hard to reach hero points as it is, but when the expansion isn’t a few days old and everyone has already done it it will be impossible.

I spent a bit of time gliding down to a hero point. Yay! So I find the guy and expect to fight him, except he tells me “You are not worthy” meaning I have to go find some other mastery. What do you mean I’m not worthy? I’ll knock your sorry bottom off this cliff! Then I logged off.

My main concern with the new expansion is the vast amount of hero points that I would need for an elite spec. I was so excited when they released the details of the elite necro spec. Now I find out that I have nowhere close to the amount of hero points needed for it. I love edge of the mists and just WvW in general. I used to play it all the time. I only recently returned with the release of the expansion only to find that I will need endless hours of grinding to ever come close to unlocking everything in my elite spec. I also recently started a revenant and it’ll take a while to get to level 80, but getting 400 extra hero points for the elite spec? Forget it. I’m not a super dedicated player, and I understand that I’ll never have the best gear, but I think I should at least be able to have some fun with all the new abilities.

HtFde.3856:

And it doesn’t seem strange to you that they create a completely new machanism for HoT – one they completely forgot to mention while they touted out other things aloud?

[SNIP]

There – if they had done that I bet there’d be a lot less complaints – because it would have been with what GW 2 is instead creating a new, alien-feeling mechanism.

No, it doesn’t seem strange at all. There are a lot of things in HoT that are new. In fact, I WANT there to be new things. It is what keeps the game interesting.

As far as complaints. No there would not have been a lot less complaints. Look at any content that has been released. There has been nothing but a huge amount of complaints. No matter what Anet does, there are a ton of complaints. If people had not been complaining about this it would have been something else.

RedBaron.6058:

11:00 AM in Seattle. What is happening at ANet HQ?

OPTIONS:

1. Devs are trying to figure out a solution to the problem w/o making things worse in the process.

OR

2. Anet employees are searching Monster.com for a new job.

12:00 AM in Seattle. What is happening at ANet HQ?

jheryn.8390:

HtFde.3856:

And it doesn’t seem strange to you that they create a completely new machanism for HoT – one they completely forgot to mention while they touted out other things aloud?

[SNIP]

There – if they had done that I bet there’d be a lot less complaints – because it would have been with what GW 2 is instead creating a new, alien-feeling mechanism.

No, it doesn’t seem strange at all. There are a lot of things in HoT that are new. In fact, I WANT there to be new things. It is what keeps the game interesting.

As far as complaints. No there would not have been a lot less complaints. Look at any content that has been released. There has been nothing but a huge amount of complaints. No matter what Anet does, there are a ton of complaints. If people had not been complaining about this it would have been something else.

Completely untrue. As you can find easily in this thread, people praise many aspects of this (and other) releases. One very specific item (albeit a major one) has very many players unhappy.

I wouldn’t be here looking for a “fix” if I didn’t love the game.

RedBaron.6058:

12:00 AM in Seattle. What is happening at ANet HQ?

My guess would be- having some drinks and laughing hard about every post showing ones disappointment about HoT, giving constructive feedback and mourn the money one blew out for HoT. May be they even play somekind of forum Bingo with our replies, idk.

I know we’ve talked about this already several times now but what I can’t get over is how this was kept so quite throughout the pre-release phases. Something that fundamentally changes the game mechanics is only addressed as a forum response right before the game goes live?

Say what you will but I think Anet knew well enough that this decision was going to anger the fans and that’s why nothing was said about it even though players have been asking for details for months now.

I had a gut feeling NOT to buy the expansion until it had been live for awhile and players started to see what content was really in it. I’m sure glad I actually listened to myself (for once).

This whole conversation:

Sytherek.7689:

jheryn.8390:

HtFde.3856:

And it doesn’t seem strange to you that they create a completely new machanism for HoT – one they completely forgot to mention while they touted out other things aloud?

[SNIP]

There – if they had done that I bet there’d be a lot less complaints – because it would have been with what GW 2 is instead creating a new, alien-feeling mechanism.

No, it doesn’t seem strange at all. There are a lot of things in HoT that are new. In fact, I WANT there to be new things. It is what keeps the game interesting.

As far as complaints. No there would not have been a lot less complaints. Look at any content that has been released. There has been nothing but a huge amount of complaints. No matter what Anet does, there are a ton of complaints. If people had not been complaining about this it would have been something else.

Completely untrue. As you can find easily in this thread, people praise many aspects of this (and other) releases. One very specific item (albeit a major one) has very many players unhappy.

I wouldn’t be here looking for a “fix” if I didn’t love the game.

What is untrue? That there are a lot of people complaining?

You are right that there are people actually praising “many things”. I’m one of them. The problem I am seeing is that even much of the praise is conditional. "I love HoT but…

I think it is obvious to anyone that the complaints much outweigh the praise. You might have one specific item you want fixed, but there are many more complaining about a lot more things.

Also, many of these people posting are not offering constructive opinions and criticism, but rants ranging from boo-hooing to hateful and harsh.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

This whole conversation:

Agreed.

I’m about to log on for my usual few hours of fun in GW. What should I do?

Should I waste another evening trying to figure out a way through a glass wall within the largest and most frustrating jumping puzzle I ever saw? Or should I give up and farm gold so it feels like I’m actually moving forward from where I am now, even if forwards is just more gold in my bank?

Sigh, if it was possible to change my account name mine would now be OldMacDonaldeieio.0000

While i understand most of things have been discussed allready, i for instance love the new content, the hard content which needs grouping is really something we should enjoy and something we should have got sooner. So instead of blame Anet for not giving us solo content, enjoy gw2 as a social game which it is, the best one out there.

I also don’t agree that something needs to change, from what i heard commanders do Hero point runs for people, as one guy from my guild did all of them and got his elite spec in 1 hour (though i think he was halfway there allready).

Its also only hard doing the Hero points if you don’t know how to use LFG tool, or shout on map (/map). While i consider the harder content good, i don’t like that people are blaming Anet for not giving them more of the same solo content they did before.

Enjoy the game, explore the zones, form a party to do hard events or Hero points, people are helping each other, its only frustrating if you don’t know how to find a party, guildies or other people to help you..

One of the things that puzzles me about this character-specific new spec unlocking is that, it goes against what Anet has been pushing for the past few years. Originally, much of the content and gating was character-based. Fractal personal levels were character bound, WvW ranks were character bound, Ascended gear was character bound. While this gating was likely defended at the time by many of the same people here defending the character gating of the new specs, Anet realized this was overall a bad idea because it actually REDUCES the game’s longevity instead of increasing it.

Seems counter-intuitive right? Making everything character based would increase the overall time a player needs to progress in the game. This should mean it would increase longevity. But what Anet likely found was that instead of this motivating players to play more, it likely frustrated them to not play at all. Their answer? Make all these things account based which did a few things:
First, it doesn’t cheapen the experience since, a player still had to get the WvW rank, the Fractal personal level and the Ascended gear. But what it DID do is dramatically reduce the barrier for playing alts. This opened the door for many players to be able to experience the game with a variety of different characters and builds. This actually promoted horizontal progression, as people began to play all these different styles of characters in all the different content. This had a HUGE positive effect on longevity for this game. Got a bit tired playing staff ele in WvW? Just hop on your Warrior and not worry about gimping your team since you have the WvW ranks. Want to try Fractals on a Guardian instead of Warrior? No problem, you can pass the ascended gear with infusions off to your Guard and your personal fractal level is shared.

The game design push to make things more account based instead of character based greatly improved the games’ fun factor and longevity. This pro greatly outweighs the “con” of a few players feeling like its “too easy” to get things, and clearly Anet thinks this is so as well or else they wouldn’t have changed these systems to be account based.

Hopefully, Anet will see the new spec unlocking in the same light as the other issues they have already addressed, and they focus once again on improving game diversity through account based solutions instead of character based ones.

jheryn.8390:

Sytherek.7689:

jheryn.8390:

HtFde.3856:

And it doesn’t seem strange to you that they create a completely new machanism for HoT – one they completely forgot to mention while they touted out other things aloud?

[SNIP]

There – if they had done that I bet there’d be a lot less complaints – because it would have been with what GW 2 is instead creating a new, alien-feeling mechanism.

No, it doesn’t seem strange at all. There are a lot of things in HoT that are new. In fact, I WANT there to be new things. It is what keeps the game interesting.

As far as complaints. No there would not have been a lot less complaints. Look at any content that has been released. There has been nothing but a huge amount of complaints. No matter what Anet does, there are a ton of complaints. If people had not been complaining about this it would have been something else.

Completely untrue. As you can find easily in this thread, people praise many aspects of this (and other) releases. One very specific item (albeit a major one) has very many players unhappy.

I wouldn’t be here looking for a “fix” if I didn’t love the game.

What is untrue? That there are a lot of people complaining?

You are right that there are people actually praising “many things”. I’m one of them. The problem I am seeing is that even much of the praise is conditional. "I love HoT but…

I think it is obvious to anyone that the complaints much outweigh the praise. You might have one specific item you want fixed, but there are many more complaining about a lot more things.

Also, many of these people posting are not offering constructive opinions and criticism, but rants ranging from boo-hooing to hateful and harsh.

Actually I’m gonna post an “atta boys, BUT …” thing once the forums are a bit less stressed.

But if I serve you a really well done meal with a really nice wine and hammer a nail into your foot while you eat it … I doubt you’re going to comment on the food.

The way I see it there are actually only two main complaints overall:

(1) Why does it take ages to play my “elite” spec and why is it so much work to unlock it and why only through ONE means (two actually, if you count the WvW option in)

(2) Why is everything gated and in some cases double gated?

I guess we’ll see more complaints once a lot of players have finally unlocked the elite traits and comment on THOSE.

The “It’s not solo friendly” is – from my point of view – a result of (1) and (2).

Loged in after hot released. Found out I needed these hero points I can only get from pve and world completion. Loged back out. Wont log back in until I can unlock my elite spec using spirt shards or something I already have tons of from doing pvp and wvw for years.

Change coming per Colin, 400 down to 250 hero points. Thank you Anet!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/heads-up-iteration-incoming/

Test.8734:

Nike.2631:

Really. You think the folks whose livelihoods depend on the game and have been working towards this release for about two years now didn’t think about it?

Yep.

Just like they didn’t predict the massive outcry when they announced the price of the expansion.

Or when they announced the new “gold to gem” conversion system.

Or any of the other times when they had to take back a decision they had made because of a massive community outcry that they didn’t properly predict.

You can claim that ArenaNet is perfect and thinks everything through correctly and perfectly. This mess with the specialization points show otherwise.

If anything, this is a sign of how poorly they are doing. People are complaining because the specializations are locked behind a grind wall. The grind wall exists because ArenaNet is trying to artificially inflate the duration of HoT. They are artifically trying to inflate the duration of HoT because the expansion has very little content. HoT has very little content because ArenaNet couldn’t make more, even after all this time working on the expansion without adding new content to the core game. ArenaNet couldn’t make more content because they are extremely ineffective at making things.

And that explains why they are doing so poorly. We know that:

• ArenaNet had basically to make server merges with the megaserver thing, due to how empty the maps were.

• ArenaNet itself had said that, if they did it right, the Living World would mean they wouldn’t make an expansion. Here we are with an expansion, hinting that no, they didn’t do the Living World right.

• We also know the GW2 earnings during the Living World and, accordingly, it didn’t stop falling. Not only the LW didn’t raise the earnings like expansions do, it didn’t even prevent them from falling.

• GW2 became free to play, and we know that no MMORPG went free to play when its previous business model was being a success.

• NCSoft, which completely owns ArenaNet, has distanced itself from GW2. We have been told that it’s ArenaNet who’s publishing GW2 now, instead of NCSoft; the lack of advertisement about HoT is a very clear sign of how few resources ArenaNet has as far as publishing goes when compared to NCSoft itself.

• HoT has been released in a hurry, with many promised features that aren’t actually here but have been postponed for “later” (legendary weapons – they didn’t release even the three they had mentioned earlier -, raids, the new squad system, etc…).

• Lots of important people have left ArenaNet this year. Chris Whiteside, Eric Flannum, Jon Peters, Kristen Perry… Many of those have left in the last few months.

If they really did think so thoughtfully about things, they wouldn’t be in the middle of all those issues.

With the current mess about the specialization grind being just one more mess among many.

I had no idea Kristen Perry left!
Reading about this makes me very sad. I had compiled a huge post talking about her history and asking about what she has been up to in regards to HoT that I was going to make after the HoT dust settled. I guess I can just scrap that. :\

She’s such an awesome person. I hope she is doing well wherever she has moved on to.

Woooooooo, yes!

Thank you Colin!

That sounds like so much a better place for it.

250, that’s entirely manageable. Thanks for that guys, I can get back to enjoying the rest of the expansion fully now!

WE DID IT BOYS ,
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/heads-up-iteration-incoming/

still too high but something that is at least workable. reason has prevailed…to a degree.

The reduction makes the necessary amounts a little more appropriate, but unfortunately it doesn’t really address one of the key problems with this system.

Character A – My engineer is nearing his third birthday. 2nd character I made. Personal Story on last step. My main WvW train engineer. I can’t even imagine how many times he has leveled over. Probably accounts for at least 800 of my WvW ranks. 500 crafting leather/huntsman. 483 hours, 31 minutes played. 83 hero points. This character is loved.

Character B – A Norn guardian I started last Fall. 18th character. No personal story. Speed leveled by running zone lines, only stopping for overlapping events/hearts, and specifically targeting skill points. No crafting. Mostly leveled by doing dailies and eating the XP scrolls. She was a failed concept. I got to 80 and came to a dead stop. Total hours played – 33 hours, 37 minutes. Hero Points – 97. This character was abandoned.

Rather than encourage or reward people for fully immersing themselves in any or all of the games aspects, the new system directly rewards you for merciless leveling, eating scrolls, and running to hero points, ignoring anything and everything on the way. I don’t see how this compliments anything else you are trying to do.

Thank you so much for listening, Anet.

250 points is still a bit much if you consider alts, manageable for 1-2 characters, more than that and is still too daunting. If you don’t want to lower it to a decent cost (100-150 since there’s nothing elite about them), please increase the drops of the “proof of heroics” item in WvW.

Selkirk.4218:

still too high but something that is at least workable. reason has prevailed…to a degree.

It may be a little high, but honestly, 250 is easy enough to get on a few characters quickly. Then you can play the game on those characters for awhile and by the time you want to play a different character, getting another 250 HP won’t feel that bad either. I’m OK with it.

The change is a step in the right direction and will probably work out. But the way Hero Points work in general is still concerning as a design choice. Let me explain:

400 Hero Points took a long time to gather, but that’s not the main issue IMHO. The main issue was it was a long time, spent doing exactly ONE THING. There is only one way to get Hero Points, which is go to set points on the map and do their thing.

Compare this to leveling a class and unlocking the non-elite lines. Hero Points can accelerate the process, but in general playing the game, going where the player wants and taking in content along their own path all nets XP and all contributes to unlocking more skills and traits. This makes unlocking these things enjoyable, as I can do it a number of different ways and I’m never locked into one particular thing.

Same thing with Masteries which have been much better received. I run around the maps doing my thing, gather XP, train up the Masteries then quickly gather some points to unlock them. It’s fun and open.

10 hours of playing is pretty much 10 hours of gaining XP or Mastery training. I may not be 100% efficient if I wander aimlessly, but I can just enjoy the content and know I’m still making progress towards my end goal.

In contrast, getting Hero Points require single minded farming of a single thing. If I really want to make progress towards Chronomancer, 10 hours of this play feels like 10 hours of checking boxes off on a list, it isn’t particularly fun or engaging and it becomes an outright chore, not a game. Which is a shame, because some of the challenges are themselves fun to overcome.

So my sincere feedback and challenge to the designers is this – don’t just tinker with numbers to get the amount of grind right. Give us a system that isn’t just checkboxing/ farming one thing with our imagination turned off. Let us unlock our specializations as we play and explore the game – that’s how you get people to engage with and explore the world instead of flocking to specific points in a mindless train.

Lynce.9560:

250 points is still a bit much if you consider alts, manageable for 1-2 characters, more than that and is still too daunting. ..

That’s exactly what I just posted on the thread Gaile started.

People are just so happy that they got a piece of cake, they haven’t noticed it really amounts to nothing more than a few crumbs of “compromise”.

Thank you, Colin! You are a true gentleman and a scholar! I can definitely live with 250.

Well, that was unexpectedly generous. Back to playing!

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Lynce.9560:

250 points is still a bit much if you consider alts, manageable for 1-2 characters, more than that and is still too daunting. ..

That’s exactly what I just posted on the thread Gaile started.

People are just so happy that they got a piece of cake, they haven’t noticed it really amounts to nothing more than a few crumbs of “compromise”.

Pretty much this. It’s almost insulting. This works for a few characters, but when it comes down to it, it’s still 25 HP locations. They only cut it down by 15. And this is not factoring the amount of HPs per map, nor does it factor that many of these HPs cannot be solo’d and are mastery gated. You STILL have to pretty much do most of the maps, just not 100%. Ridiculous.

It’s a first step. Now, for the second one: make at least 3/4 of the Hero Challenges soloable kitten .

BOO!!!! Reducing the points is a bad idea, I wholy disagree with it. I really enjoyed having things unlock slowly. I liked having it feel really meaningful to unlock a new trait or skill. To play the elite spec semi complete and still be viable out in pve. Then when I unlocked a new trait or skills I really felt like I was getting more powerful.

Unlocking things slowly forced me to play better and made each upgrade feel more impactful, meaningful and honestly made the game more fun.

Please go back to 400, or at least 350.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Lynce.9560:

250 points is still a bit much if you consider alts, manageable for 1-2 characters, more than that and is still too daunting. ..

That’s exactly what I just posted on the thread Gaile started.

People are just so happy that they got a piece of cake, they haven’t noticed it really amounts to nothing more than a few crumbs of “compromise”.

I’ll take it, compromise is not a dirty word. Ultimately, it’s their game and they made it and they can do what they want with it. I happen to like the game very much, and I’m glad they considered our very different opinions enough to steer their ship more in our direction.

To be able to finish out the game as a Tempest or a Daredevil as opposed to an Ele or Rogue is a very good thing.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Can we just stop calling them "elite specs " FKS (for kittens sake)!

They are alternate play style, they are no more elite than any other extra trait line with a new weapon. Continuing to refer to them as elite is a misnomer and propagating the fact is just getting asinine at this point. Unlocking them should be an accomplishment yes, but no more so than unlocking your other trait lines/weapons/utilities IMO.

They are elite specs specifically because you can only ever take one at a time, and unlike core specs the actually confer more mechanical changes and grant skills and weapons you can only use when equipping them.

They may not feel particularly elite now, but once the second spec is released that term will make a lot more sense. Their power is extreme enough that taking two would be OP. That’s what makes them elite.

They’re elite not because of any raw mechanical power they add, but because of the level of what they add to a character compared to core specs. They’re simply “better” than core specs because of the shift in playstyle they can add to a character, a thing that core spec lines don’t do.

the thought process behind the gates for elites is still troubling…and 250 is still too high. anet had to do this..they didn’t have a choice-it wasn’t as if they are doing us a favor by lowering this cap.

they took something (400) that was mind numbingly unreasonable and turned it into 250…something that is still insane. a compromise in the way that getting burned alive is better than being hanged.

no winners here sadly. anet looks like a company completely out of touch with their playerbase.

I cant help but think that the weird number of “toilet paper” drops from mobs is the devs unconscious way of saying the game is going down the pan….

Selkirk.4218:

the thought process behind the gates for elites is still troubling…and 250 is still too high. anet had to do this..they didn’t have a choice-it wasn’t as if they are doing us a favor by lowering this cap.

they took something (400) that was mind numbingly unreasonable and turned it into 250…something that is still insane. a compromise in the way that getting burned alive is better than being hanged.

no winners here sadly. anet looks like a company completely out of touch with their playerbase.

As I said, 250 it’s ok IF most of the hero challenges in HoT are soloable/not gated behind some high lvl masteries.

PopeUrban.2578:

Tommyknocker.6089:

Can we just stop calling them "elite specs " FKS (for kittens sake)!

They are alternate play style, they are no more elite than any other extra trait line with a new weapon. Continuing to refer to them as elite is a misnomer and propagating the fact is just getting asinine at this point. Unlocking them should be an accomplishment yes, but no more so than unlocking your other trait lines/weapons/utilities IMO.

They are elite specs specifically because you can only ever take one at a time, and unlike core specs the actually confer more mechanical changes and grant skills and weapons you can only use when equipping them.

They may not feel particularly elite now, but once the second spec is released that term will make a lot more sense. Their power is extreme enough that taking two would be OP. That’s what makes them elite.

They’re elite not because of any raw mechanical power they add, but because of the level of what they add to a character compared to core specs. They’re simply “better” than core specs because of the shift in playstyle they can add to a character, a thing that core spec lines don’t do.

You are talking in riddles with no facts to base them on. The only thing that makes these specs actually special is that they (many of them anyways) change the way your classes actually play… and after 3 years of the same way to play our classes, you can understand why people consider these as “better”.

And you are wrong because the core specs DO bring shifts in playstyle (a D/D elementalist plays a whole hell of a lot differently than a staff Ele, A condi Thief plays differently than a direct damage one etc.)… the difference is that we’ve already played those playstyles ad nauseum for 3 years already.

250 is perfect! All I wanted: not too easy, but not tedious either.

Thank you, over and out! I see you in HoT.

250 is actually… exactly what I predicted would be necessary to unlock the mechanics.

I’ll definitely take the skins 150 points faster than I expected to get them, thanks.

So where’s the patch so i can enjoy this now. I have yet to enjoy the Expansion cause of this.

With this news, a lot of people who were disappointed have already started playing again. The maps are starting to feel alive again. Guild chat is full of nothing but positive, upbeat chat about the game and what elite specs people are planning on playing now. It’s really amazing how a few tweaks here and there could make such a big impact on players.

This is a good start Anet, now please listen to your players with regards to other aspects of the game that may need tweaked, such as the new WvW borderlands, the lackluster rewards for long events & boss encounters, etc..

Good stuff Colin & Anet, +1.

For 1,2 even 3 alts 250 HP are manageable. But for the rest…….

250 points is fair. As soon as this change goes live, everyone’s main character(s) will max out and they can play the new content with the elite spec, like so many of us have wanted. It also means even our alts with 5% map completion can power through VB and AB in a couple hours if they are just going for hero points because the HoT masteries will be leveled up by then. To be fair, it’s not the first 50 hero points that are the problem. It’s the LAST 50.