Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Zietlogik.6208

Zietlogik.6208

I was expecting the new horizontal progression to be more inline with how Metroidvania/Legend of Zelda type games function, where sure, you cannot access a bunch of the game world, but you just need to do certain tasks, or obtain certain items to be able to access them.

And they ALMOST got there…but then stopped short and didn’t properly figure out how to implement it, so they just fell backwards into the pit of “kill things”

For example, in LoZ: OoT, you need to obtain the hookshot to access the Forest temple right? But you don’t run around trying to obtain 2000 rupies to buy it, or kill a billion skulltulas to get enough exp to use it, it is part of a natural progression through the story.

The main story arch can be how it currently is, locked behind a “gate” for people who need to obtain the item/mastery needed to complete them. But the method for obtaining these really needs to change. There needs to be mini-missions in between the main story that allow you to unlock mastery.

Let’s say you want Itzel Mastery, instead of killing pocket raptors for 2 weeks straight, you just complete quests/scavenger hunts/collections/events for the itzel. and along side this you could have a Micro-chapter of story just for them, and one just for the exalted, and one just for gliding, and these you do to unlock their respective mastery, just little story snippets and missions that help you understand what you are MASTERING in the first place.

Zietlogik [Warrior] Chronologix [Ranger] Ziet The Dreaded [Necromancer] Zietlogic [Revenant]

(edited by Zietlogik.6208)

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Andred.1087

Andred.1087

I expected GW2: HoT, and I got it.

“You’ll PAY to know what you really think.” ~ J. R. “Bob” Dobbs

(edited by Andred.1087)

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Posted by: Doam.8305

Doam.8305

Same with OP

Story is broken up so much it’s hard to immerse into any of it

Play some grind gliding, play grind shroom, grind exalted, grind updraft and so forth. The story has so much down time in it due to the constant grinding requirement that it’s become disjointed. Anet has admitted it through there actions as actions speak louder than words since they removed the poison requirement. The story will be more enjoyable for the rest of us who’ve yet to reach that point but by doing that they admit there is a problem. I’ve already told people your interested in the story your better off grinding and I’ve given them a heads up everytime I hit a grinding gate.

Worse yet we don’t really have hearts or quests so grinding comes down to event chains and what makes that bad is they basically boil down to killing mobs. One of the things Anet was against at the launch of GW2 was the kill X mob quests yet these event chains have you killing mobs to protect X target while traveling, Killing Mobs to take X location, or killing mobs so NPC can complete X task. It’s all killing mobs the very thing they wanted to avoid with GW2. Grinding with quests wasn’t bad in other MMO’s and grinding with hearts wasn’t bad in GW2 but HoT takes it to a place that is neither fun or engaging. Doesn’t even make sense either some parts of the story tell you that you need to hurry and are in a rush then right after your hit with a grind gate.

I expected all that they promised when they released Gw2 what I got instead was HoT

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: lagrangewei.8516

lagrangewei.8516

the problem isn’t the grinding, it is that you can’t play with your friend who will be grinding at different levels. i reach the last story mission and map and the game is only out for a few days, but i can’t play with most of my friend because every few mission there will be a wall and the entire party has to wait for the SLOWEST member to farm his way up to our level and it demoralizing for them to feel they are slowing everyone down, this is just stupid.

the problem is in the way the content is all dump onto the player, i was expecting something like living story season 3 where the player can ease in, or a 1 shot campaign, what i got is a game that is continously interrupted and forces you to farm lvls… I wish the mastery is unlock by actually completing something than experience grind.

it is also stupid that the mastery lvl replaces the player lvl in the UI. that is just WRONG.

RAWR~
Feed the Merlion… before the Merlion feed on YOU!

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

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Posted by: Zietlogik.6208

Zietlogik.6208

I was wondering about the Mastery Level thing when I saw my party members with level 2 and 0. I understand it now, but it seems strange, I think the icon next to their name in the world is sufficient, the UI doesnt need it

Zietlogik [Warrior] Chronologix [Ranger] Ziet The Dreaded [Necromancer] Zietlogic [Revenant]

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.

Some must fight so that all may be free.

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Posted by: Sola.7250

Sola.7250

You get experience for everything in the base game (pve, pvp, crafting, farming, WvW, Dungeons, Events, etc.), HoT limits the type of things that get you the type of experience you need for this or that. Why not use the base game approach, allowing players to do what they want/like to get the experience needed.

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Posted by: Tommyknocker.6089

Tommyknocker.6089

The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.

For the masteries I could not agree more, but, I have map completion on all my characters and yet I have to find enough players to do the HP challenges in HoT for my elite.

Maybe If I could get the players currently in EotM farming there for the masteries as they are easier (and safer) to get in a zerg as opposed to the empty maps in Hot.

I bought HoT to play Hot, not to hang out in an empty map waiting for players to show up and do the challenges, or farm EotM.

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Posted by: Zietlogik.6208

Zietlogik.6208

The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.

The issue is that you cannot do A, B and C without Mastery X, Y and Z, so the zones limit you to the content you can actually get exp from, can’t get exp from the story because its locked, cannot exp from some of the areas and challenges because they are locked too.

So you can only do what you have access to, which in turn turns it into you grinding the same events over and over.

At least in main Tyria, you can do ALOT of stuff to work towards your masteries, but HoT is far too restricted.

And I surely do not condone the shear amount of experience required for some of these masteries, it is just abhorrent how they pretty much multiply the amount instead of putting some meaningful content to unlock it instead.

Zietlogik [Warrior] Chronologix [Ranger] Ziet The Dreaded [Necromancer] Zietlogic [Revenant]

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.

The issue is that you cannot do A, B and C without Mastery X, Y and Z, so the zones limit you to the content you can actually get exp from, can’t get exp from the story because its locked, cannot exp from some of the areas and challenges because they are locked too.

So you can only do what you have access to, which in turn turns it into you grinding the same events over and over.

At least in main Tyria, you can do ALOT of stuff to work towards your masteries, but HoT is far too restricted.

And I surely do not condone the shear amount of experience required for some of these masteries, it is just abhorrent how they pretty much multiply the amount instead of putting some meaningful content to unlock it instead.

You have access to at least 80% of the content once you get basic gliding and mushroom numping which honestly take less than 2 hours just by playing normally.

Some must fight so that all may be free.

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Posted by: Nerzmuth.7804

Nerzmuth.7804

The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.

I can’t allow level not to be my goal, because the developers don’t allow me the luxury of not allowing the level to be my goal. I.e: For 2,5 years i’ve been doing nothing but grinding in gw2, to get this, to get that and that stuff, problem is i want to enjoy the story, actually that’s what made me buy Hot, yet i cannot enjoy the story because i am forced to grind, and trust me i tried exploring i tried everything, the fastest way to get xp are the events and even so i a kick in the balls. I mean it’s like you want to go out to play with your friends but your grounded, and you won’t be allowed out until you do what you have to do, does that feel funny to you?

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Posted by: Shoe.5821

Shoe.5821

One of the things Anet was against at the launch of GW2 was the kill X mob quests yet these event chains have you killing mobs to protect X target while traveling,

this sort of comment just makes me roll my eyes.

you know kitten well what a ‘kill x mob’ quest is….but u r pretending not to. :p

Expected LoZ, got Farm Simulator

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Posted by: Rasimir.6239

Rasimir.6239

The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.

I can’t allow level not to be my goal, because the developers don’t allow me the luxury of not allowing the level to be my goal. I.e: For 2,5 years i’ve been doing nothing but grinding in gw2, to get this, to get that and that stuff, problem is i want to enjoy the story, actually that’s what made me buy Hot, yet i cannot enjoy the story because i am forced to grind, and trust me i tried exploring i tried everything, the fastest way to get xp are the events and even so i a kick in the balls. I mean it’s like you want to go out to play with your friends but your grounded, and you won’t be allowed out until you do what you have to do, does that feel funny to you?

I have to admit I’m having a hard time understanding this. For three years, I have played this game, and have yet to find anything forcing me to grind. What is it you are trying to go after, how, and why?

Did it ever occur to you, that by looking for the “fastest way to get xp”, you’re missing out on a lot of additional experience sources, making things go subjectively (if not even objectively) much slower than they could?

I hate grinding, and actually quit my previous mmo mostly because it was either grind or drag down your raid group. I even hate farming. Still, there are days in GW2 when for example I want to craft something and find I don’t have enough iron ore for it. If I go out to farm the iron, I can guarantee you that I’ll be bored out of my mind and give up a minute into the process.

What I do is choose an alt that looks fun to play, take them into a map that offers the resource I look for (iron nodes in my example), and proceed to do everything that crosses my path. Map exploration, fighting, resource harvesting, events I stumble upon, and so on. In the end I have my iron, it’s realistically maybe taken twice as much time as going exclusively for the iron, but practically it didn’t feel half as long plus I’ve stockpiled a bunch of character/mastery experience, cleared some map%, and hoarded some miscelaneous materials that may keep me from farming them later when I need them. It’s a full-out win in my book.

With mastery experience and the HoT story, I’m pretty much doing things the same way. I am just now at a point where I need to advance a specific mastery, but I was 80% through another mastery path at that point and wanted to finish that first, so I decided to go back to the previous map and just explore around. I’ve found a bunch of events, some hero and mastery points, a fun adventure, and ever so many pretty or intriguing places all over the map. I’m having a blast, and fully expect to at some point realize I’m half-way through the next mastery rank because the one I need for story is already done and I missed it .

Try to loose that “must-earn-xp-now” tunnel view, and enjoy the scenery. You know the saying “time flies when you’re having fun”, and it very much is right for this game. As a bonus, the xp will come anyway, and before you know it you’ll have more than enough and can still say: I had a great time getting here.

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

The problem for me is that the story is too heavily gated – I want to go in – to get immersed and play it – find out what’s going on and whatnot – but I can’t.
I have to constantly stop – break up the flow and do some event grinding before I can keep going. This is as far as I’m concerned a pretty bad experience.

And it’s a shame too – I feel like this would have had the best story so far – just that I can’t seem to play it in one go.

If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”

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Posted by: Rasimir.6239

Rasimir.6239

And it’s a shame too – I feel like this would have had the best story so far – just that I can’t seem to play it in one go.

How about front-loading those masteries if you’re so intent on doing the story in one go? I’ve done a bunch of exploration, gathering, events that I came across etc., and have not met much in the way of mastery gates yet (except for the latest one when I actually had to level a whole level of a tree I hadn’t touched before).

Explore the map, check out the event chains and adventures, pick up some hero and mastery points, unlock a level or two in the masteries available to you. Then do the story, until it leads you into the next map, take a break to explore this new map, rinse and repeat. Or even explore all the maps (and unlock all of the level 1+2 masteries to be on the safe side) before you start the story.

If you can’t get what you want right away, check out other stuff that keeps you occupied and amused until you can get to your original goal .

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Posted by: Nerzmuth.7804

Nerzmuth.7804

And it’s a shame too – I feel like this would have had the best story so far – just that I can’t seem to play it in one go.

How about front-loading those masteries if you’re so intent on doing the story in one go? I’ve done a bunch of exploration, gathering, events that I came across etc., and have not met much in the way of mastery gates yet (except for the latest one when I actually had to level a whole level of a tree I hadn’t touched before).

Explore the map, check out the event chains and adventures, pick up some hero and mastery points, unlock a level or two in the masteries available to you. Then do the story, until it leads you into the next map, take a break to explore this new map, rinse and repeat. Or even explore all the maps (and unlock all of the level 1+2 masteries to be on the safe side) before you start the story.

If you can’t get what you want right away, check out other stuff that keeps you occupied and amused until you can get to your original goal .

I got it, you like to pre-grind the xp needed to advance and you like to explore, but not everyone enjoys that, especially when has been doing it for years before the expansion came out, i myself only came back to the game for the story, mainly.

It’s cool that the devs came up with the mastery system, i guess, but man if you want me to discover and enjoy something, appreciate the work you put in it, don’t force me to discover it, allow me to do it a my own wit. But no, i have to grind from tier 1 to tier 4 in one mastery, just to be able to proceed with the story, problem wouldn’t be if i could get that xp somewhere else or with other means but nope…

Oh, and please don’t tell me you don’t grind, exploration is done with one character once, do something with several characters to get the xp needed to unlock mastery becomes grinding.

Anyway, just because you enjoy the game one way, while the others enjoy it the other way, just because the system as it is, works for your tastes and doesn’t work for other people’s tastes, that doesn’t mean the other must be wrong.

As far as i am in the game right now, i didn’t enjoy the expansion at all, it reminds me of guild wars factions, which was another grinding fest…

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Posted by: Rasimir.6239

Rasimir.6239

Oh, and please don’t tell me you don’t grind, exploration is done with one character once, do something with several characters to get the xp needed to unlock mastery becomes grinding.

Well, I don’t grind. In fact, I refuse to, been there, done that in other games until they sucked all the fun of playing out of it.

I just like to change things up, play around with a bunch of different characters, and go after a bunch of different playstyles. Maybe I’m just one of those people that’re bored easily and find it hard to focus . But this game is perfect for that.

Go here, do a couple of events, harvest some crafting materials, enjoy the view. Go there with another character, check out that vista over there and the jp on the other side. Grab a third character, do some WvW or sPvP. Hop onto a fourth and play a dungeon/fractal or two.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and even though I don’t have a lot of play time (with family, job, and real life in general) I have plenty of lvl 80s, several with 100% core Tyria completion, and many of the others above 60%, and I’ve never specifically gone for completion except for rare cases of finishing up an almost-completed map.

Yet, I still see the world through different eyes when I’m on a different character. Even in old maps, the experience is almost never the same. There’s often events or characters I haven’t noticed before (or forgotten about), hidden paths and places I’ve missed on the previous characters and lots more.

I fully expect HoT to be the same once I take more characters through the maps seriously, but for now, I’m casually enjoying the maps and story on my main ranger. There’s so much to see and do, I have yet to be seriously stalled by missing masteries.

You are entitled to say “I don’t enjoy that kind of content”, but wanting to have the cake and eat it, too? The story is part of the whole, taking out anything requiring character/account progression tied to the expansion would be like reworking the original personal story so you could play it at level 2 all the way to the Gates of Arah, no character progression required for story progression. Is that really what you want?

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

And it’s a shame too – I feel like this would have had the best story so far – just that I can’t seem to play it in one go.

How about front-loading those masteries if you’re so intent on doing the story in one go? I’ve done a bunch of exploration, gathering, events that I came across etc., and have not met much in the way of mastery gates yet (except for the latest one when I actually had to level a whole level of a tree I hadn’t touched before).

Explore the map, check out the event chains and adventures, pick up some hero and mastery points, unlock a level or two in the masteries available to you. Then do the story, until it leads you into the next map, take a break to explore this new map, rinse and repeat. Or even explore all the maps (and unlock all of the level 1+2 masteries to be on the safe side) before you start the story.

If you can’t get what you want right away, check out other stuff that keeps you occupied and amused until you can get to your original goal .

You can’t front-load the masteries and here’s why: by doing that you’re ruining your own game experience since moving to other maps without knowing the associated story is going to break immersion and the overall narrative experience.

I can’t go farm Tarir without know what it is – why it’s there.

The story is the core element that should tie everything together – you do the story – get a good idea of what everything is and when you’re done you should go in and do more events, farm events and so on – not the other way around.

The story is the main reason I’m in that jungle – I find it absurd to grind xp in the jungle before the story tells me why I’m there – who I’m fighting and what’s going on.

If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”

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Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573

ZudetGambeous.9573

The story and the maps flow driectly into one another. As soon as you land you meet NPC X. You do the story, and learn about NPC X and what he is doing. After the story ends the very first dynamic event is helping NPC X explore and establish a camp. If you run that event chain from start to finish and kill all the mobs then you unlock gliding. This allows you to proceed to the next mission where you meet tribe Y. You do tribe Y’s mission and you finish it and see there are a ton of bouncy mushrooms all around. You also unlock the myshroom mastery. If you help Tribe Y and do their full chain of events and a sequence of night time events then you get bouncy mushrooms.

This continues throughout all 4 zones. If you follow the story in the maps then you will never hit a wall (now that poison lore was removed)