Guild Wars 2

I have spent the last 7 hours running through this adventure, and for those that do not know the masks spawn at a random set of locations that could follow the previous mask. This RNG produces a few paths that I believe are truly impossible to complete. As ANET has changed Haywire to be achievable, it sure would be nice if these specific impossible paths would be either removed or changed in some way. I believe the gold achievement for this adventure far surpasses the effort required to get gold in every other adventure short of shooting gallery (which is also RNG).

I understand that gold is attainable at this point, but only if you get the perfect RNG on your attempt.

When getting gold for it a month ago, I noticed that many of the possible spawn combinations were feasible to get gold. Make note that the individual spawns are not themselves random but the sets of spawns are. It’s all about being able to quickly determine where the next mask is based on the mini map, how to get there efficiently, and to maintain the speed boost from the mushrooms.

I know there are sets of possible combinations. I am only trying to say that it is pointless for anet to include those combinations which are impossible to run for gold.

bobbimous.2476:

I know there are sets of possible combinations. I am only trying to say that it is pointless for anet to include those combinations which are impossible to run for gold.

I agree for those combinations which are impossible. I know that there are at least five that are possible but I can’t really vouch for the rest. If the others are not then perhaps some of the spawns within them could be changed so that there’s a shorter distance to reduce the time running between points.

I would seriously love that change. Then no one could complain about RNG because all paths would be possible.

What’s funny is the radical difference in difficulty compared to some of the others.

I love On Wings of Gold and you get 3 minutes to get gold. My current record is 1:03, about a third of the time permitted. At masks my record is 20 masks, still 5 short and I hear it’s rng to get a route that’s even gold-viable. Great.

I read a post where someone was stuck on their reaper greatsword because they couldn’t even manage the 15 for silver. I think ArenaNet needs to mover the bar a lot further down on that one, like 8/13/18 for bronze/silver/gold.

At this point I’ve managed gold on Haywire Punch-o-matic and Scrap Rifle Field Test, both of which are pretty extreme. I’m pretty sure most of the mobs don’t even render in Haywire so you just have to pray a big wad of mobs pop in front of the golem’s fists as you mash skill 2 and on one run I eventually got lucky…

Still, most loathing goes to A Fungus Among Us, which I desperately want to love but the bugs… oh the bugs… Mario 64 it is not. I got 1:19 for gold and I’m not going to play it again because that skill 2 has so many ways to fail. Why on earth does it even have a line of sight check that can fail?! Just jump in the indicated direction like Mario would! Argh. Sometimes the initial cap vault just pops you over in place without even moving… why?! /facepalm.

I’ve also been trying gold on The Floor Is Lava? and it has that hilarious bug where if you activate a spore while in a dodge roll it locks the controls up. So you want to do like a dodge-roll-into-spring-jump as if you were playing a platform game but it just breaks and locks you in place on the horizontal plane and your character just drops into the poison and dies. Nice.

This stuff should have been fixed by now. It’s not like it’s not been bug reported. Anyway, this stuff needs mentioning because I really want adventures to be high quality and they’re just inconsistent.

ANet has said they intend to re-balance adventures, that some are too difficult, or that the distinction between copper|silver|gold|leaderboard is not what they’d like.

As usual — and with good reason — they haven’t been specific about which adventures or what sorts of changes.

Well they had better kittening change some of them, especially and including “Fallen Masks”. This kitten is so kittening kittened. I don’t give a rats kittening kitten if SOME people HAVE managed to do it. kittening good for you if you have – but kitten this is ridiculous!

What makes it worse is that this kitten is REQUIRED for the kittening mastery point!? That is down right kittening ridiculous anet. What the kitten were you thinking?

I’ll tell you what, it would have been neat to include these “puzzles” as an OPTION (read: something OPTIONAL to do), but to make them kittening required. kitten you. All I have to say is unless I manage to master all your kittened “puzzles” I cannot progress in the game, again, what the kitten were you thinking!?

I can safely say I will not be purchasing your next expansion. You keep going back on your word about not wanting your game to be grindy, and wanting people to just get in the game and have fun. Well guess what, it’s kitten like this that shows you’re a bunch of kittening liars. Good luck getting another red cent out of my pocket, you guys are really pieces of work!

PS, FIX THIS kitten

So many kittens.

They said that they’re working on adjusting some of the adventures. We may see the updates in April so take a break for now.

At least they nerfed the TD golem armor adventure. That one was even harder than fallen masks….

Most of the adventures in Auric Basin really, really need a rebalance. Especially since two of them have collection items gated behind them (three, really, but Wings of Gold is fine as is).

The three worst offenders are by far Fallen Masks, The Floor is Lava? and Shooting Range. Two of them mostly to RNG and all three because of the short timer involved.

Yeah, you should put an effort into doing them but these three are just terrible.

To be honest, I kinda liked The Floor is Lava, as it was necessary to memorize a certain path and to be skilled enough to do the right jumps etc.
It was completely unrandom and you got better and better if you tried, so I’m really okay with the difficulcy of that one.

The Floor of Lava becomes incredible annoying with lag or input delay, however. You have to do it almost perfectly in order to get gold which honestly is pretty bad. I’d say even an extra five seconds would do the trick.

I’m not okay with any of them, due to the PRINCIPLE of the matter. Unless I’m wrong, if you’re not good at these stupid puzzles (knows as “adventures”) it will actually block and hinder game progression (mastery points/ranks). It would be fine and fun if they were purely OPTIONAL, but to actually block progression, is utter BULLkitten…

Because as far as I’ve been told, you HAVE to (read: have NO choice) but to do these to earn enough mastery points to max out (163). If you do not do these (still not sure on the “some” or “all” part) – YOU WILL NEVER REACH 163… Now that is the part I say is utter kittening bullkitten. I normally like “puzzles” and stuff, even the ones that I can’t just beat on the first or second try – but when I’ve put SO much time into something (such as fallen masks) to STILL fail time and time again (can only get silver), AND it’s potentially going to stop my actual game (mastery) progress, you’re kitten right I’m going to be kittened. These should be 100% OPTIONAL to do.

I’d say I have about SIXTEEN HOURS invested in “Fallen masks” – WTF anet. In my opinion, whoever came up with this <sarcasm> BRILLIANT </sarcasm> idea needs to have their employment with ArenaNet severed without delay!!!

In my opinion they should just remove the mastery points from all adventures all together. Then they could leave them just as hard (or easy) as they are! The ones that /are/ hard they can determine what “epic” loots (or whatever) that you will get for succeeding. Did anyone over at the lovely “offices of ANet” pause to think maybe I don’t want to HAVE to do your stupid “mini games” to be able to progress in a main aspect of the game (mastery points/ranks) !?!?!?!? Because I don’t! If they don’t do something to remedy this issue (and I can’t reach 163 mastery due to this BS) I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I will NOT be purchasing any future expansions OR ANY other products from them! I’m sure I’m not the only one, and I HOPE they read, and realize, this!

Unless I’m completely wrong and I am the idiot here, and mastery rank 163 IS obtainable without HAVING to do these “adventures”; then PLEASE, someone correct me! Though if it’s true that you’d never attain mastery rank 163 without doing at least some of the adventures (including “gold”), then they REALLY * NEED * to come up with a different or another way to be able to obtain this without HAVING to do these stupid “mini games”…

Maybe tangential but these “adventures” should rightly be called “activities”, at the very least, to match the very similar mini-games in LA. The term “adventure” suggests something very different from what they actually offer.

sparc.3649:

Unless I’m completely wrong and I am the idiot here, and mastery rank 163 IS obtainable without HAVING to do these “adventures”; then PLEASE, someone correct me! Though if it’s true that you’d never attain mastery rank 163 without doing at least some of the adventures (including “gold”), then they REALLY * NEED * to come up with a different or another way to be able to obtain this without HAVING to do these stupid “mini games”…

</rant>

You need to do some adventures to reach 163 mastery level, but you don’t need to complete every single adventure on gold to reach that cap.
Fallen Masks Gold is definitely something you should be skipping if you are only interested on capping the masteries. Depending on your ability to play shooter games, you may also want to entirely skip Shooting Gallery (both silver and gold).

The Floor is Lava, as someone pointed above, isn’t really that hard (there are far easier ones tough, so it may also deserve a skip).
It can be very ping or lag sensitive and maybe impossible to do under a bad connection.
Outside of that, there’s no RNG involved and it’s mostly about picking a good spore sequence, which is where i think most people are failing.

sparc.3649:

I’m not okay with any of them, due to the PRINCIPLE of the matter. Unless I’m wrong, if you’re not good at these stupid puzzles (knows as “adventures”) it will actually block and hinder game progression (mastery points/ranks). It would be fine and fun if they were purely OPTIONAL, but to actually block progression, is utter BULLkitten…

They are purely optional — nothing about the final masteries is required. I hate adventures, too, as they are the type of content I play RPGs to avoid. However, many people love them. Plus, even if ANet agreed today that they are bad for the game (which seems unlikely to me), it would take them months to figure out appropriate replacement activities for collections and masteries. So, I’ve decided if I can’t avoid them, I’ll just get through them somehow.

I’ve made it through all the masteries except for the last two (adrenal mushrooms & chak acid) and I can definitely enjoy the entire game without either. I’ve managed a couple of adventures and while I wouldn’t call them ‘fun’, some aren’t that bad.

Anyhow, this thread is about just one of the masteries, Fallen Masks. As far as we know, it probably will be adjusted, but ANet hasn’t promised a specific date or explained exactly what will change.

They’re still required for those going for the new legendary weapons. Even then, if you get mastery points from everywhere else, you only need to get 8 from adventures. Getting 8 out of a choice of 30 isn’t too bad.

Fallen Masks is also one of the adventures required for an elite spec weapon (as are fellow Tarir adventures, the much friendlier On Wings of Gold and the clusterkitten that is Sanctum Scramble).

You only need silver though.

Thanks for the help everyone, I was able to find these two pages within the wiki that also helped a ton (I was in the dark before you guys and these two pages).

I haven’t yet done the math, but if only silver is required (even of all) that’s the goal I set for myself. To get at least silver on ALL “adventures”. So far I have done so in VB (yes even shooting gallery). Now I plan to go map by map until I have at least silver on all “adventures”, next is Auric Basin… (going in order of maps now since fallen masks made me so angry)!

Anyways, here’s the two wiki pages that may help some other nab/nub/n00b out there. As we all know max mastery rank is currently 163, between these two pages it does show not only that there are SOME “extra” points (so, at least to an extent, you can “pick and chose” where/how to get them) – but exactly where each and every point is attainable…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks

If I’m seeing things correctly (and the wiki is accurate) there are seventeen (17) extra points for “central tyria” and nineteen (19) extra points for “maguuma”.

With there being fifteen (15) “adventures” ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Adventure ) I can see how “gold” isn’t really necessary now (thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

Hopefully this also helps some other nab/nub/n00b out there! This “news” surely does calm me down, at least a little bit. However there are certainly things that still urk me about this system! Such as shooting gallery, and I’m not talking shooting gallery itself, rather, how it’s LOCKED (so you CANNOT even try or practice it) MOST of the time. Obviously “adventures” are “locked” at night in VB, but you also have to do some stupid event chain to unlock at least a few of them in VB. Shooting gallery is one of them. The one “morning” I was trying to do this event chain so I could do S/G and I was the ONLY one doing it for quite a while. Eventually a few more peeps showed up, which was a GREAT thing since of course the entire chain isn’t “soloable”. Then, by the time we finished the event chain and ‘unlocked’ shooting gallery I got a whopping ONE (and a half) tries at it before, guess what, NIGHT TIME IS HERE (are you kittening serious).

So, nonetheless, yes, there are still things that NEED to be changed about all this BS! I still think all 163 should be attainable by insights and strongboxes alone >.>

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

sparc.3649:

I’m not okay with any of them, due to the PRINCIPLE of the matter. Unless I’m wrong, if you’re not good at these stupid puzzles (knows as “adventures”) it will actually block and hinder game progression (mastery points/ranks). It would be fine and fun if they were purely OPTIONAL, but to actually block progression, is utter BULLkitten…

They are purely optional — nothing about the final masteries is required. I hate adventures, too, as they are the type of content I play RPGs to avoid. However, many people love them. Plus, even if ANet agreed today that they are bad for the game (which seems unlikely to me), it would take them months to figure out appropriate replacement activities for collections and masteries. So, I’ve decided if I can’t avoid them, I’ll just get through them somehow.

I’ve made it through all the masteries except for the last two (adrenal mushrooms & chak acid) and I can definitely enjoy the entire game without either. I’ve managed a couple of adventures and while I wouldn’t call them ‘fun’, some aren’t that bad.

Anyhow, this thread is about just one of the masteries, Fallen Masks. As far as we know, it probably will be adjusted, but ANet hasn’t promised a specific date or explained exactly what will change.

Well, I’m sure this is subjective but, it’s not optional. If you want to glide, you HAVE to train and have MP’s for “gliding”. That to me is a game progress hindrance… There are MP’s that require other mastery’s to get as well, such as Ley Line Gliding, since there are MP’s up in a ley line in TD. Or Itzel Poison Lore, is required to get at least 1 or two MP’s that come to mind, one of which being in VB. Also, there would be certain areas of the map you cannot traverse without having mastery’s such as Poison Lore… Same for Ley Line Gliding, there are areas of the map you’ll NEVER be able to get to without it. So I’m sorry, but that to me is a progression hindrance! Heck, if you want to be able to interact with certain NPC’s you HAVE to get certain mastery’s too! Again, failure to obtain ALL mastery’s does indeed block progression, you’ll never experience 100% of the game without mastery’s!

Though if you wanna get super technical, sure I’ll agree, they’re “optional” – but that’s only because playing the game itself is “optional”. You surely don’t need the game to live (you need food and water to live)… I guess being level 80 is “optional” too – though one major difference is, no matter what, if you play enough, you will inevitably become level 80 (no matter how long you play you will NEVER get mastery 163, unless you partake in doing exactly WHAT WHERE WHEN and HOW anet wants you to do things to get it)… So again, I’d be fine with mastery points being ALL obtainable through insights and strongboxes, then you don’t just “get” your mastery over time (like leveling), and you don’t have to do ridiculous things like SINGLE PLAYER stuff in an MMO!

It’s actually 22 extra mastery points in Maguuma. The wiki page isn’t completely accurate. For example, the Itzel champion that requires the mastery awards you a mastery point the first time you kill it.

It annoys me that theses things block content utterly unrelated to them .. like the ascended weapons from the Elite specs, each one requires silver in one of the abominations, WHY? Just what has bouncing and gliding for example (Fallen Masks) got to do with the weapon it gates?

I really agree with sparc here. I have always hated games with a timer and I always will. Yet in order to even achieve silver on some of them (like Fallen Masks or Sanctum Scramble) for the collections you have to practise for hours on end to become fast enough (being thrown out of them repeatedly and forced to do event chains to unlock them again).

I don’t want to be good at these games. Why am I forced to do something for hours and hours I so utterly hate? Games are supposed to be fun. This isn’t. At least not for me. And I get absolutely no satisfaction out of finally making it, either. If I wanted these kind of challenges in my life, I’d be playing something else.

Forcing people to spend this much time on content they really, really do not want to spend time on is imo never a good choice. Why is there no option to get the mastery points some other way? Why are these adventures required for the elite weapon collections? This is extremely frustrating.

Oh, and I also hate the fact, that you cannot “cheat” on these achievements by having friends assist you. I don’t know how many people only got the diving spot in the “Not So Secret” jumping puzzle, because some mesmer friend portaled them up — repeatedly. You also get a mastery point for that. Same goes for all the mps, where you need ley-line gliding or bouncing mushrooms. But you cannot portal while in an adventure. That’s just mean. If you could somehow at least play as a group, it would not be so tedious and boring and … just frustrating … maybe.

The Floor is Lava? is a great adventure, and the gold route is incredibly tight and a lot of fun to figure out. It’s about learning the path and mastering the mechanical skill to get it down. There’s no RNG involved; it’s great.

Shooting Gallery and Fallen Masks, however, are both grotesque RNG abominations with gold medals I’ll never get in their current states. I realize that some combinations are gold-possible, but I don’t have the patience to RNG until I get the right combination. I hope they address this.