Guild Wars 2

First of all: Happy Anniversary! This expansion is very close to a year old now! I think now is an excellent time to provide some feedback on the expansion now that people have had lots of time to experience it.

1. Gliding: I LOVE gliding. I glide everywhere. Core Tyria, the newest Living World zones, WvW… Well, the cliffs in Desert Borderlands are so tempting that sometimes I forget I can’t glide there. At least it’s a free trip back to spawn!

2. Adventures: Too much basic content is gated behind them (Mastery Points). And they aren’t available all the time. You have to wait a long time for them to be open to play. I know the times used to be even longer. But it is still long now. For something like this, it should be open 24/7 so you can play it. When you’re trying to get enough mastery points to continue leveling up it can be very frustrating to do an adventure. I did not gold many adventures, even after a year. Finally managed to silver most of them, at least. I might appreciate and enjoy them more if there wasn’t basic content gated behind them. As they stand now, if the plan is to gate mastery points behind Adventures again, I would simply rather not have Adventures in the next expansion.

3. The Mastery Point system: I strongly dislike this. After a year of the expansion being out, I still do not have enough Mastery Points. I didn’t really care, because I could take the best part of the expansion (gliding) out of the expansion and into content I liked more (at the time, Core zones), but now that there are new Living World zones and they count as expansion zones, I cannot gain spirit shards there because I cannot gain XP. This feels really bad. Especially because the big bonus you can get in the first new Living World zone is increased XP gains. I played back when every level-up gave you a Skill Point (now “Spirit Shard”) so it feels really bad and frustrating that this functionality was removed, then re-added. Now I am gated from it in the new zones because I did not go back to do expansion content I don’t enjoy to get the masteries.

Problem Identified: Players who do not have 100% maxed Masteries cannot level up, and cannot earn Spirit Shards as a result.

In an MMORPG, gaining XP is a core mechanic. GW2 has historically (pre-expansion) been an excellent game for always making gaining XP feel rewarding even post-level-80. It may be true that earning Spirit Shards post-80 is not as fundamental as earning levels 2-80. And it may be true that a player doesn’t “need” Spirit Shards. But it still feels really frustrating to remember a time (pre-expansion) when I could get rewards from earning post-80 XP, and to live in a time now where that functionality is back but I am excluded from it for the seemingly arbitrary reason of not having amassed 124 Mastery Points in the expansion areas. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it doesn’t feel great at all either.

Proposed Solutions:

1. If a player has filled all the bars of all their available mastery tracks, but doesn’t have enough mastery points to complete any mastery track, put that player in the same XP-earning state until they have enough mastery points to complete another track. I don’t know how hard this would be to implement.

2. Make a repeatable Mastery track that gives a Spirit Shard for people who have not maxed every mastery so far. It’s a) repeatable, b) free (costs zero mastery points), and c) a workaround. Since this mastery track would always be available, when a player fills up every other mastery line, they will get kicked onto this track, and since the track is repeatable, it will always be available, so players will keep getting kicked to this always-available track when there is nothing else to work toward.

3. A system like the WvW Notary of Heroics/Heroics Notary: spend a token earned from general gameplay to get a “Notarized Scroll of Heroics” that completes one random Hero Challenge. Why isn’t there an equivalent that unlocks Mastery Points? It would let players play the content they enjoy, but get the tools they need to do something fundamental like “earning XP” again. In an MMORPG, gameplay functionality doesn’t get any more basic than “earning XP.”

I like this game overall, but I honestly think a lot of this expansion was designed around preventing reviewers from completing it “too fast,” negatively impacting its review score. I understand that reviews like that can hurt sales, but since this expansion is well past the launch timeframe, we can move past those concerns now. This expansion is almost at its one year anniversary. It could be time to remove these limitations, allowing players to get back to basic things like earning XP. I think that goes with this game’s core philosophy much more than the current system, and that it would be a great change for the game.

I agree with much of what you say. Gliding is awesome, adventures are lame, and everyone should earn spirit shards for experience regardless of their mastery progress. I otherwise enjoy the mastery system, but I would make the additional suggestion that bounce mushrooms and updrafts should have been granted as baseline via the storyline.

Along with gliding, players would have the basic tools they need to begin exploring the jungle and I think it would have felt a lot less restrictive.

AliamRationem.5172:

I agree with much of what you say. Gliding is awesome, adventures are lame, and everyone should earn spirit shards for experience regardless of their mastery progress. I otherwise enjoy the mastery system, but I would make the additional suggestion that bounce mushrooms and updrafts should have been granted as baseline via the storyline.

Along with gliding, players would have the basic tools they need to begin exploring the jungle and I think it would have felt a lot less restrictive.

The tradeoff is loss of progression.

Anet didn’t raise the level cap. They didn’t introduce a new tier of gear. Masteries replace the leveling system in other MMOs, and it’s supposed to show progression.

In all reality it takes roughly a couple of hours to get your first three masteries, particularly if you use boosters. That’s updrafts, gliding and mushrooms. So you can save someone a couple of hours, but at the end of the day you lose the feeling that you’re unlocking stuff that matters, and I don’t know that that would be the best trade for everyone.

Vayne.8563:

AliamRationem.5172:

I agree with much of what you say. Gliding is awesome, adventures are lame, and everyone should earn spirit shards for experience regardless of their mastery progress. I otherwise enjoy the mastery system, but I would make the additional suggestion that bounce mushrooms and updrafts should have been granted as baseline via the storyline.

Along with gliding, players would have the basic tools they need to begin exploring the jungle and I think it would have felt a lot less restrictive.

The tradeoff is loss of progression.

Anet didn’t raise the level cap. They didn’t introduce a new tier of gear. Masteries replace the leveling system in other MMOs, and it’s supposed to show progression.

In all reality it takes roughly a couple of hours to get your first three masteries, particularly if you use boosters. That’s updrafts, gliding and mushrooms. So you can save someone a couple of hours, but at the end of the day you lose the feeling that you’re unlocking stuff that matters, and I don’t know that that would be the best trade for everyone.

I agree with what you are saying here. That feeling of progression is important, and admittedly while many people feel that the pacing might have felt off when they had to fill their first mastery bar before continuing with early story, though the plot itself had a sense of urgency to it, it can feel good to unlock new potential. And I actually like that the new Living World zones (Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay) have some small amounts of similar progression to them.

The problem my original post addresses, however, is the problem that only reveals itself after a long time playing the expansion. The final tiers of masteries require a dozen Mastery Points. There is also a set of masteries that require raids to get. The system in place right now says that until you 100% all of that, you cannot earn any more XP, and therefore cannot get Spirit Shards.

Before Heart of Thorns launched, everyone got the equivalent of a Spirit Shard whenever they leveled-up post-80. They were called Hero Points back then and were a currency, not like they are now. But they changed it so that those who 100%ed all of their masteries are able to regain that functionality. However, those who have not 100%ed every mastery yet, but have filled up the maseries they have available (hit a wall of running out of Mastery Points) earn no XP, and therefore no Spirit Shards.

Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay both count as expansion zones, and in Bloodstone Fen one of the big rewards you can get is https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone_Empowerment – an ability that increases XP gains. You have to be level 80 to reach this zone, so it is clear that they intend that to confer a benefit to post-80 players. So it is particularly frustrating for a player who has run out of Mastery Points but who has not yet maxed out every Heart of Maguuma Mastery Track, because at that point the game halts any XP gains and grants no Spirit Shards.

While I know a lot of people had complaints about the early-game, this particular issue is one that manifests in late-game, and I think any of my proposed solutions could alleviate that issue somewhat.

AlienMenace.7516:

Vayne.8563:

AliamRationem.5172:

I agree with much of what you say. Gliding is awesome, adventures are lame, and everyone should earn spirit shards for experience regardless of their mastery progress. I otherwise enjoy the mastery system, but I would make the additional suggestion that bounce mushrooms and updrafts should have been granted as baseline via the storyline.

Along with gliding, players would have the basic tools they need to begin exploring the jungle and I think it would have felt a lot less restrictive.

The tradeoff is loss of progression.

Anet didn’t raise the level cap. They didn’t introduce a new tier of gear. Masteries replace the leveling system in other MMOs, and it’s supposed to show progression.

In all reality it takes roughly a couple of hours to get your first three masteries, particularly if you use boosters. That’s updrafts, gliding and mushrooms. So you can save someone a couple of hours, but at the end of the day you lose the feeling that you’re unlocking stuff that matters, and I don’t know that that would be the best trade for everyone.

I agree with what you are saying here. That feeling of progression is important, and admittedly while many people feel that the pacing might have felt off when they had to fill their first mastery bar before continuing with early story, though the plot itself had a sense of urgency to it, it can feel good to unlock new potential. And I actually like that the new Living World zones (Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay) have some small amounts of similar progression to them.

The problem my original post addresses, however, is the problem that only reveals itself after a long time playing the expansion. The final tiers of masteries require a dozen Mastery Points. There is also a set of masteries that require raids to get. The system in place right now says that until you 100% all of that, you cannot earn any more XP, and therefore cannot get Spirit Shards.

Before Heart of Thorns launched, everyone got the equivalent of a Spirit Shard whenever they leveled-up post-80. They were called Hero Points back then and were a currency, not like they are now. But they changed it so that those who 100%ed all of their masteries are able to regain that functionality. However, those who have not 100%ed every mastery yet, but have filled up the maseries they have available (hit a wall of running out of Mastery Points) earn no XP, and therefore no Spirit Shards.

Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay both count as expansion zones, and in Bloodstone Fen one of the big rewards you can get is https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone_Empowerment – an ability that increases XP gains. You have to be level 80 to reach this zone, so it is clear that they intend that to confer a benefit to post-80 players. So it is particularly frustrating for a player who has run out of Mastery Points but who has not yet maxed out every Heart of Maguuma Mastery Track, because at that point the game halts any XP gains and grants no Spirit Shards.

While I know a lot of people had complaints about the early-game, this particular issue is one that manifests in late-game, and I think any of my proposed solutions could alleviate that issue somewhat.

Yeah I"m not disagreeing that everyone should get spirit shards and the ability to do so should not force you to have to raid. That’s not what I’m saying at all.

I’m simply saying that giving people those three masteries early on would take something away, as well as giving something, and I’m not sure it’s worth the trade off. It wouldn’t have been worth the trade off for me, since I’m mostly progression driven.

@OP If I was a footballer I’d be with the point about adventures at least 200% but as I am an engineer I’m restricted to 100% agreement.

To fight/dodge you way through to an adventure point and then find it not available is frustrating. To play an adventure/mini-game that you don’t enjoy just because because you want/need a mastery point is not entertainment.

I actually like the mastery point system and I’m happy to take my time and to only get those masteries that I will use. Or at least, I was happy until the XP rewards came back. I don’t particularly need the spirit shards but it does irk me that if I want to gain anything from all the XP I keep earning then I will have to complete masteries like raid and legendary weapons, both things I will never use in the game. I find it strange that some of the new story stuff awards big chunks of XP immediately. The devs must know that the majority of players have no use for that reward.

Best parts of HoT: Gliding, gliding and more gliding.
Worst parts of HoT: The difficulty level and the really bad maps.

My biggest problem with HoT was How the Mastery system works, I don’t see why I need to get XP and points to unlock them. The points block progression.

The points make you do things you don’t want to do.
I don’t want to do adventures, I really don’t like them at all.
I don’t want to have to chase achievements to be able to progress.
I don’t want to run back and forth 50 times giving an NPC an apple to get appoint.
I don’t want to play a game modes I don’t enjoy all that much to progress.

GW2 was supposed to be a game of, you can do what you want and get to the same place as everyone else, just some ways are quicker than others. I’m not saying that I want all mastery points unlocked for me now. they are here, and there is nothing I can do about it, I have to accept that I’ll never complete them because I will not wast my time doing content I do not like so I can fully “progress”.

The mastery system is a great Idea, and a great addition to the game. needing XP and points is a very bad idea I feel.

With that said, I find I spend most of my time playing in non HoT (launch) maps. maybe when my next toon gets to the HoT story I’ll find my self playing the maps again.

Vayne.8563:

I’m simply saying that giving people those three masteries early on would take something away, as well as giving something, and I’m not sure it’s worth the trade off. It wouldn’t have been worth the trade off for me, since I’m mostly progression driven.

I agree with this sentiment, in that I think that some amount of progression can feel very good.

The problem I’m personally having is that when masteries take a very long time to complete I end up with the feeling that I’m spinning my wheels. Getting XP feels good on its own, but when you have filled up every XP bar and don’t have enough mastery points to advance any tracks everything just stops. I no longer have the bar at the bottom of my screen progressing. I no longer hear the little “tinkle” noise when completing events or during exploration. Everything just feels a bit more boring and tedious.

One thing that I like is that the new zones have fast and focused mastery progression. It feels like I’m unlocking a new ability that I can use. That feels good. It only took me a few hours to unlock each of the new abilities in the new zones, and now I enjoy logging in and playing with those abilities. I think that masteries are a good way to provide players with progression, but I also think that not having any feeling of reward during long-term progression can cause many people to simply get bored and give up. I’ve fallen victim of the unrewarding “boredom” feeling before, and that has caused me to stop playing when I probably would have continued otherwise. I like playing Guild Wars 2, and I want to see the community grow. That’s not going to happen if players get bored midway through playing and leave to play something else.

I think that Solution 2 of the OP is probably the best way to solve the problem of mid-term progression feeling unrewarding. It allows players to have some sense of accomplishment and reward without removing the long-term progression goals.

I want to chime in as another against “Mastery Points”. They could have made more of those Hero Point locations, so that we have other options for getting our Elite Specializations.

The Mastery Points system definitely seems to go against the previous model of “Do whatever you want to and still get progression”. Like others here, I really don’t enjoy most of the little “games” they added. (If I want to play those I’ll play Mario.) It should be XP-based only, and you also should not have to do advanced gaming like raids in order to max it out.

DoctorDing.5890:

To fight/dodge you way through to an adventure point and then find it not available is frustrating. To play an adventure/mini-game that you don’t enjoy just because because you want/need a mastery point is not entertainment.

BrotherBelial.3094:

GW2 was supposed to be a game of, you can do what you want and get to the same place as everyone else, just some ways are quicker than others. I’m not saying that I want all mastery points unlocked for me now. they are here, and there is nothing I can do about it, I have to accept that I’ll never complete them because I will not wast my time doing content I do not like so I can fully “progress”.

Cynn.1490:

The problem I’m personally having is that when masteries take a very long time to complete I end up with the feeling that I’m spinning my wheels. Getting XP feels good on its own, but when you have filled up every XP bar and don’t have enough mastery points to advance any tracks everything just stops. I no longer have the bar at the bottom of my screen progressing. I no longer hear the little “tinkle” noise when completing events or during exploration. Everything just feels a bit more boring and tedious.

fourhim.3584:

The Mastery Points system definitely seems to go against the previous model of “Do whatever you want to and still get progression”. Like others here, I really don’t enjoy most of the little “games” they added. (If I want to play those I’ll play Mario.) It should be XP-based only, and you also should not have to do advanced gaming like raids in order to max it out.

It sounds like a lot of the feedback that has been forming in this thread so far seems to agree that it can be frustrating to not have enough mastery points and to hit that total wall that stops you from earning XP.

I mentioned this briefly in my OP but I think it’s worth stating again: I feel confident in saying part of the reason for Mastery Points and these walls (need XP and need Mastery Points) was to prevent reviewers from chewing through the content too quickly and saying the expansion is “short.” I can see the desire to not have your expansion be called “short” because some people seem to think the MMO ends when the story ends, or when you unlock all the skills, or whatever.

But it has been almost a year now, and many of us are still at a wall with Mastery Points. And it just feels really frustrating to know that we could be getting more XP/Spirit Shards if only we had more Mastery Points. Like some have said above, it can feel bad to be trying to go back and do content you may not really want to do otherwise, because your ability to earn XP/Spirit Shards is now gated behind it for a seemingly arbitrary reason.

I do think it is time to loosen the requirements. Maybe just add even more Mastery Points if none of my three suggestions are feasible. I know I still need a heap of them. But that doesn’t really fix the problem that players have to raid and get the raid masteries to be entitled to earn XP/Spirit Shards I hope some of our feedback reaches the ears of people in Anet so they can do something to at least let us earn more XP. The fear of “getting everything too quickly” has certainly flown out the window for those of us who still don’t have enough Mastery Points after a year, and I hope their metrics show how much potentially earned XP has been wasted (not earned) by all the players who have hit such Mastery Point walls since the expansion went live.

The final personal quest is wayyyy to buggy, that’s my biggest complaint of HOT.

Agree with a lot of what you say. Yes gliding is awesome, hope they can come up with something equally cool next xpac.

Yes the XP/Spirit Shard issue is BS. At the very least, if we are forced to cap all masteries before getting it back then the raid track should not require a boss kill to unlock. Fractal track doesn’t after all. Not sure what the thinking was doing it this way other then a feeble attempt at pushing people to raid, which after 10 years of listening to nerds screaming on WoW just isnt happening here.

Adventures are awful. Just awful. Gating mastery points behind them was a dumb idea. Should’ve left them out completely and put the points behind more achis imo, also possibly made a higher number of points obtainable so people retained some choice of what to do.

I like the concept of the mastery system in general, but too many of the masteries are meh. Last 2 in both Nuhoch and Itzel, most of Exalted, etc. Better to not have them at all than have crappy ones just for the sake of it. Also having them in tracks sucks, being able to choose what to work on would be better.

Otherwise, liked the story, loved the jungle maps (yep even TD), think they got the slight difficulty increase just right. And LS3 has been good so far, although it was way too long in coming.

I agree. I’ve been playing since the xpac released and I don’t have enough mastery points because i don’t want to do adventure’s or go through old living world story episodes just to do achieves. I actually don’t want to do achieves in the current living world episodes. I just wanna enjoy the story and kill what’s in my path. Locking Mastery Points behind achieves makes the achievements feel like work and a chore. Achievements should award bonus items, not items that are core to character progression.

Senca.8356:

Yes the XP/Spirit Shard issue is BS. At the very least, if we are forced to cap all masteries before getting it back then the raid track should not require a boss kill to unlock…

Adventures are awful. Just awful. Gating mastery points behind them was a dumb idea. Should’ve left them out completely and put the points behind more achis imo, also possibly made a higher number of points obtainable so people retained some choice of what to do.

Hot Boy.7138:

…I’ve been playing since the xpac released and I don’t have enough mastery points because i don’t want to do adventure’s or go through old living world story episodes just to do achieves… Locking Mastery Points behind achieves makes the achievements feel like work and a chore. Achievements should award bonus items, not items that are core to character progression.

I agree with what both of you are saying. They should either have many more mastery points or have some less gated method of delivering core character progression. In the base game, progression came naturally from doing activities you enjoy. In the expansion, if you don’t do the specific things that give Mastery Points, you will never progress.

We’re mere days away from this expansion being a year old, and I really think now is a good time to revisit this problem and bring this system more in line with the philosophy of the game overall. Whether that means trying any of the improvements suggested in my OP, or adding lots more mastery points (I need so many more yet) or simply coming up with a better system entirely, I can’t say. But as it stands now, it feels really bad to have all of the XP I should be earning (with all the XP numbers I see while playing) disappear into nothingness rather than going toward a Spirit Shard.

I really am curious if they have a metric that shows how much “lost” or wasted XP has been (not)earned in this way since the expansion launched. I would be willing to bet the number would be staggeringly incomprehensible, out to more digits than any one of us would expect.

Personally, I really enjoy the Mastery system. I only just maxed it out a month ago; I never felt like I was missing out for not doing so, but doing so felt like solid progression.

As for Adventures, I would like to add that the adventures that incorperated random chance mechanics (like the shooting gallery and mask-room) are bad too. All adventures should have a static order of content. Otherwise, the best score goes to the best and luckiest person, rather than just the best.

The only complaint i have is the mini-games.

-I paid a friend to come here at home and do the Fallen Masks.
-I’m paying for it again to do the Sanctum Scramble.

Not every style of play is viable for all people. Some people like me, really hate jumping.

I am told to fight. I have no problem in understanding boss mechanics as the achivments the LS2, but “jumping” is a problem. I also like map exploration/discovery “hidden places” so in this, hot is OK.

Explore the maps when you understand them is pleasant, but I noticed that there is still a certain lack of intuitiveness and guides. In Tangled Depths for example, is not very clear “loot phase” of the map (I will write a guide on this map in the future).

I want to vote for Ree Soesbee as the next game director I believe she would continue to make Gw2 better for the future!

I agree the that the mastery system feels unrewarding when you have the required exp but not the mastery points. You’re pretty much left feeling stuck and thinking at the back of your mind “I could be earning experience for this event, but I’m not”.

This is the issue with having the mastery point and experience requirement. A simple compromise to this would be letting you continue to earn XP and shards and for every x amount of levels (say 10) you get one mastery point.

In an MMO players need to feel rewarded for every activity they do, preventing XP progression, disrupts this philosophy.

Why are people still uptight about adventures? With the new maps you do not need the points for these. I have gold in 3 adventures, the easiest ones and frankly have not even entered 2 or 3 and I have every mastery capped. Leave them, let it go and get some enjoyment back instead of fixating on them.

Mastery’s are gated grind, difficulties were dumb, the whole thing just removed 3/4 of the populations from the game..

At least i learned not to buy anything off of ANet forever more.

Yargesh.4965:

Why are people still uptight about adventures? With the new maps you do not need the points for these. I have gold in 3 adventures, the easiest ones and frankly have not even entered 2 or 3 and I have every mastery capped. Leave them, let it go and get some enjoyment back instead of fixating on them.

I think we can all agree that not everyone enjoys every kind of content. I think the problem that’s created by the mastery system is that it feels like the Adventures are mandatory to many players, even if that’s not strictly the case. When the mastery system requires you to fill out every point (including the raid ones) to re-access progression it’s easy to get fixated on any method of gaining points that’s available to you.
I don’t think that the adventures are bad content, or that attaining gold on every adventure is necessary. I do, however, feel as though the adventures would be more enjoyable if mastery progression wasn’t on the line.

Cynn.1490:

Yargesh.4965:

Why are people still uptight about adventures? With the new maps you do not need the points for these. I have gold in 3 adventures, the easiest ones and frankly have not even entered 2 or 3 and I have every mastery capped. Leave them, let it go and get some enjoyment back instead of fixating on them.

I think we can all agree that not everyone enjoys every kind of content. I think the problem that’s created by the mastery system is that it feels like the Adventures are mandatory to many players, even if that’s not strictly the case. When the mastery system requires you to fill out every point (including the raid ones) to re-access progression it’s easy to get fixated on any method of gaining points that’s available to you.
I don’t think that the adventures are bad content, or that attaining gold on every adventure is necessary. I do, however, feel as though the adventures would be more enjoyable if mastery progression wasn’t on the line.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that, whether or not Adventures are “mandatory” or even if they just seem mandatory to some, the entire Mastery system is a system that funnels players into certain activities for basic progression – the ability to earn XP (an ability that existed for all players before the expansion) and to earn Spirit Shards from leveling up (an ability that existed for all level 80 players before the expansion).

Normally, in the base game, if you wanted to progress, you just did what you liked, and you would earn experience for it. In fact, one of the big selling points of the base game was that you could play the content you wanted to play, and you would make meaningful progression in the process.

Now, in the expansion, you get some of the mastery points just from playing through the basic stuff, like doing the story, sure. Likewise, you get some from doing other achievements on maps, and some from doing Adventures. And if you did every single thing, you would even have extras…

…but that’s still a far cry from being able to achieve basic core progression from doing the content you like. For Mastery Points, once you have completed all the content you wanted to do, you probably still won’t have enough Mastery Points. At that point, it becomes a matter of running down the checklist of what’s left, trying to determine what might be easiest to do, or that you might not dislike as much as the other things, and maybe forcing yourself to complete it, not because you want the content, but because you want to get back to being able to earn XP or Spirit Shards.

Again, we’re not talking about earning a super-rare or super-prestigious high-end endgame reward here. We’re talking about basic, core progression. We’re talking about the ability to earn XP, and the ability to earn Spirit Shards because you’re earning XP again.

And Bloodstone Fen, for example, is all about earning XP for level 80 characters. That’s why they added this to it: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone_Empowerment_ – and that’s in a zone classed as being a part of the expansion.

The problem is that, on the whole, not having enough Mastery Points means all progression – even the old type that used to exist before the expansion – all comes grinding to a total halt, until you make yourself do something on the list (and the highest masteries cost 12 points each) just to “re-earn” the basic ability to earn XP.

I don’t own HoT. I still think gliding is awesome and rag on my wife who has HoT and glides at every opportunity because I am indeed envious.

What I can’t understand is that people still bring up the “do what you want however you want” broken promises manifesto after we all know by now that ANet lied, and continue to do so in the name of profit. C’mon folks, you should have come to that “shame on me” part of the old saw by now. I’m not saying all of the great people working for ANet are kittens, but ANet is after all a company interested in separating you from your cash. As often and expeditiously as possible. If that involves making certain things in the game gated in order to force you to experience what they laid out salaries to bring to you, I can understand that. If it means that other pieces of the game are gated behind a whole expansion/system, then that’s just to force you to spend money. Deal with it: GW2 is not a free game and never will be.

KyreneZA.8617:

I don’t own HoT. I still think gliding is awesome and rag on my wife who has HoT and glides at every opportunity because I am indeed envious.

What I can’t understand is that people still bring up the “do what you want however you want” broken promises manifesto after we all know by now that ANet lied, and continue to do so in the name of profit. C’mon folks, you should have come to that “shame on me” part of the old saw by now. I’m not saying all of the great people working for ANet are kittens, but ANet is after all a company interested in separating you from your cash. As often and expeditiously as possible. If that involves making certain things in the game gated in order to force you to experience what they laid out salaries to bring to you, I can understand that. If it means that other pieces of the game are gated behind a whole expansion/system, then that’s just to force you to spend money. Deal with it: GW2 is not a free game and never will be.

Sorry. I’m sort of new around here. Did ANet really promise they would deliver this game entirely free? I find that hard to believe. Further, HoT is worth the money. I know a lot of players didn’t feel that way initially and ANet seemed to have a long pause after the release, but this is how MMO expansions work. They release some of the content up front and then continue releasing new additions until the next expansion is ready to go live.

I’m not saying I love paying money for games. Obviously, if I could get them for free (legally!) I would! But if we don’t pay for it, why should we expect to see more content? Developers have to make a living, too! And like I said, the product is easily worth the money (YMMV, of course!).

I’m looking forward to the next expansion and I don’t mind paying for it even a little bit. If the game is worth playing, I’d like to support continued development!

AliamRationem.5172:

KyreneZA.8617:

I don’t own HoT. I still think gliding is awesome and rag on my wife who has HoT and glides at every opportunity because I am indeed envious.

What I can’t understand is that people still bring up the “do what you want however you want” broken promises manifesto after we all know by now that ANet lied, and continue to do so in the name of profit. C’mon folks, you should have come to that “shame on me” part of the old saw by now. I’m not saying all of the great people working for ANet are kittens, but ANet is after all a company interested in separating you from your cash. As often and expeditiously as possible. If that involves making certain things in the game gated in order to force you to experience what they laid out salaries to bring to you, I can understand that. If it means that other pieces of the game are gated behind a whole expansion/system, then that’s just to force you to spend money. Deal with it: GW2 is not a free game and never will be.

Sorry. I’m sort of new around here. Did ANet really promise they would deliver this game entirely free? I find that hard to believe. Further, HoT is worth the money. I know a lot of players didn’t feel that way initially and ANet seemed to have a long pause after the release, but this is how MMO expansions work. They release some of the content up front and then continue releasing new additions until the next expansion is ready to go live.

I’m not saying I love paying money for games. Obviously, if I could get them for free (legally!) I would! But if we don’t pay for it, why should we expect to see more content? Developers have to make a living, too! And like I said, the product is easily worth the money (YMMV, of course!).

I’m looking forward to the next expansion and I don’t mind paying for it even a little bit. If the game is worth playing, I’d like to support continued development!

I think you totally misunderstood my point/s.

I think ANet was wholly optimistic with their pay-once business plan 4 years ago. People who don’t realise that are idiots and were the ones that wanted HoT for free. I personally pushed about as much into the gem store as I did for my vanilla download code, but it never bothered me that I would have to buy HoT. What did bother me was how far away from the vaunted manifesto the game had drifted, even if I understand why.

No, I disagree. HoT is not worth it to me personally. It was worth it to my wife, and I was okay with that even if the money went out of our joint household finances. HoT was just more sliding down that slippery slope ANet has been doing and I will not validate/reward that with money going their way.

KyreneZA.8617:

I don’t own HoT. I still think gliding is awesome and rag on my wife who has HoT and glides at every opportunity because I am indeed envious.

What I can’t understand is that people still bring up the “do what you want however you want” broken promises manifesto after we all know by now that ANet lied, and continue to do so in the name of profit. C’mon folks, you should have come to that “shame on me” part of the old saw by now. I’m not saying all of the great people working for ANet are kittens, but ANet is after all a company interested in separating you from your cash. As often and expeditiously as possible. If that involves making certain things in the game gated in order to force you to experience what they laid out salaries to bring to you, I can understand that. If it means that other pieces of the game are gated behind a whole expansion/system, then that’s just to force you to spend money. Deal with it: GW2 is not a free game and never will be.

I think your confusing the “play how you want” with what some people twisted it into. I always read that as, I could get the same progression as everyone else regardless or what game mode I played, just some ways would take longer than others. And it still holds true for 99% of things in game. There are quite a few ways to get a lot of things in game, just some are very quick one way and really slow another. For instance the quickest way to get ascended weapons and armor is to craft it. You can get it as drops from pvp/wvw tracks and fractels, but crafting is by far the quickest, but if you don’t want to do crafting you don’t have to.

Sure the same could be said for the mastery points. But the truth is, it is not the same. At some point you will have to do something you don’t want to. I don’t want to spend hours of my game time doing something I don’t want to do just to “progress”. I don’t find it fun at all. Playing adventures or achievement hunting have never been a “thing” for me. The only time they where was during season 1 of LW. And that was more of not wanting to miss out than wanting to have those things. Most now can be picked up from a vendor, and everything else will always be there, so I’m not fussed anymore. Might also just be that I want my game time to be fun, and not feel like work.

I love the mastery system, and I love the idea behind adventures. And gliding is just so kittening amazing. I glide everywhere I can I love it so much.

Mastery system is not perfect, nor is the adventure system, but for the most part I think they were well done. Only things I would like to see changed in them is:

1 – More access to adventures. I know that you guys already increased access once in the April patch, but sometimes I still feel like I am waiting around a decent while for no reason. Ideally if I can get to the physical location of the adventure, I should be able to play it unless there part of a meta event happening right on top of the adventure. Problem is, at least in VB, some adventures are still gated behind advancing so far in the meta. Regardless of whether there are any enemies around or not, if you haven’t progressed enough in the meta you can’t start the adventure, and I think that is the biggest miss of adventures.

2 – Some of the higher level masteries feel extremely useless/unrewarding for the amount of points and time put into achieving them. Specifically:

• Itzel Leadership/Exalted Purification/Nunoch Proving. Outside of gating collection items behind these masteries they are useless.

• Itzel Poison Lore feels useless outside of the jungle, because it is. Would like to see more areas in future maps that require this mastery

• Exalted Gathering is only useful for collections again. And the auric slivers you get are 100% useless after you finish the auric weapon collection anyway (which doesn’t even require that many in the first place if you finish both PvP and WvW auric basin tracks, and take even a few characters through the HoT story)

Ideally, going forward, we will have no more masteries that are useful solely to finish a collection or two and then they are useless.

3 – Thematically it would be cool (but probably highly impractical) to grant mastery exp on a track for actually completing activities related to that track. So you would gain a trivial amount of exp towards your gliding track whenever you are on your glider, a bit more for using updrafts/lean techniques/stealth until the track is maxed. It doesn’t have to be your active track either. Or gain a bit of mastery exp towards Itzel/Nunoch lines when you use bouncing mushrooms/nunoch wallows respectively.

Those are really the only things I would change about these systems. And to everyone who is complaining about being “forced” to do adventures for mastery points……………. Well that’s just bull. The new LW episodes came out with~25 new mastery points, and combined they only required 4 to max the two masteries they came with, granting you an additional ~21 mastery points to use that didn’t require adventures. Of those, most of them are trivial to achieve.

A year later, and I still am not a fan of the story and characters brought in via LWS3/HoT. I also don’t like how, if you don’t have enough Mastery Points to level up, all of the XP you earn while your bar is full goes into thin air. It does not get dumped into the next Master level. I also still dislike the HoT mobs and maps.

But I like gliding and Elite Specs.

Yargesh.4965:

Why are people still uptight about adventures? With the new maps you do not need the points for these. I have gold in 3 adventures, the easiest ones and frankly have not even entered 2 or 3 and I have every mastery capped. Leave them, let it go and get some enjoyment back instead of fixating on them.

The new living-story maps give new mastery points and introduced new masteries. Until now there are more new mastery points given in the two new maps than you can spend for the new masteries. But it is unclear if this continues and some people think that this changes during LS and future new masteries need much more mastery points.

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

It took me 11 months to reach max mastery, because I just didn’t care. Max auto-loot changes how I play; max gliding changes how I explore. But max Nuhoch, Exalted, and Itzel? Irrelevant for daily gameplay; those only matter for collections/achievements and I’ve never been in a rush for those.

Besides that, I find it incredibly boring and frustrating to force acquisition of all the mastery points. Sure, few of them require much skill, but so many require specific timing or other types of coordination. Plus, I truly hate adventures — if I wanted to play console-like mini-games, I’d purchase a console for my home or Candy Crush for my phone.

tl;dr the important masteries might be worth investing time/effort on, but not the rest — at least, not for me.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

I hated HoT at launch. I didn’t really start playing the maps till the “fixes” in April. I hate adventures and grinding out achievements with the power of infinite suns. Getting the XP is easy, getting the points is just busy work. There is no reason for them other than to slow your progress to make the content last longer. It’s really poor to think they put something like that in to eek out interest in HoT and to make it seem bigger.

HoT was a failure for most, and the fact the first year launch went by with zero celebration speaks volumes for how much they want to brush the whole thing under the carpet.

BrotherBelial.3094:

I hated HoT at launch. I didn’t really start playing the maps till the “fixes” in April. I hate adventures and grinding out achievements with the power of infinite suns. Getting the XP is easy, getting the points is just busy work. There is no reason for them other than to slow your progress to make the content last longer. It’s really poor to think they put something like that in to eek out interest in HoT and to make it seem bigger.

HoT was a failure for most, and the fact the first year launch went by with zero celebration speaks volumes for how much they want to brush the whole thing under the carpet.

They don’t even celebrate the original launch of the game, except maybe putting stuff in the gemstore. If they don’t celebrate launch then what makes you think they’ll celebrate an expansion or that lack of celebration means it was a failure.

No, failure to celebrate has nothing to do with it being a failure or success. It only means that they don’t celebrate launch, for whatever reasons.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

Because it’s not a goal for everyone? Because not all “really want to do it?”

I got the ones that interested me. After that, I had no interest in getting Masteries that did not offer me anything that I valued for unlocking them. And having a high mastery number isn’t something that’s important to me.

Not everyone is the same and not all are going to value what you value.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

Its just not important to some people. Most of my time in game is spent in core tyria, and I have those masteries maxed (well, as soon as I get enough mastery points to unlock Scholar of Secrets I will be maxed. I already have the exp bar full though), and they were maxed really easily. I don’t spend nearly as much time in HoT maps, and they require a lot more experience to max since there are just so many more masteries to complete. Not to mention when I am online a rather large portion of time is spent kittening around and not actively chasing experience or mastery points. To the point where I still don’t have advanced gliding unlocked.

Just because you finished it fast doesn’t mean other people play the same way that you do.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

BrotherBelial.3094:

I hated HoT at launch. I didn’t really start playing the maps till the “fixes” in April. I hate adventures and grinding out achievements with the power of infinite suns. Getting the XP is easy, getting the points is just busy work. There is no reason for them other than to slow your progress to make the content last longer. It’s really poor to think they put something like that in to eek out interest in HoT and to make it seem bigger.

HoT was a failure for most, and the fact the first year launch went by with zero celebration speaks volumes for how much they want to brush the whole thing under the carpet.

They don’t even celebrate the original launch of the game, except maybe putting stuff in the gemstore. If they don’t celebrate launch then what makes you think they’ll celebrate an expansion or that lack of celebration means it was a failure.

No, failure to celebrate has nothing to do with it being a failure or success. It only means that they don’t celebrate launch, for whatever reasons.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

Because it’s not a goal for everyone? Because not all “really want to do it?”

I got the ones that interested me. After that, I had no interest in getting Masteries that did not offer me anything that I valued for unlocking them. And having a high mastery number isn’t something that’s important to me.

Not everyone is the same and not all are going to value what you value.

They do celebrate launches, GW2 launch has a festival in GW. Buy at least they mark the launch or GW2 with gems store discounts and sales, HoT got nothing. I fond it odd. I mean why not? Drum up interest in HoT and GW2 for people who do not have it, or upgraded to HoT.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

BrotherBelial.3094:

I hated HoT at launch. I didn’t really start playing the maps till the “fixes” in April. I hate adventures and grinding out achievements with the power of infinite suns. Getting the XP is easy, getting the points is just busy work. There is no reason for them other than to slow your progress to make the content last longer. It’s really poor to think they put something like that in to eek out interest in HoT and to make it seem bigger.

HoT was a failure for most, and the fact the first year launch went by with zero celebration speaks volumes for how much they want to brush the whole thing under the carpet.

They don’t even celebrate the original launch of the game, except maybe putting stuff in the gemstore. If they don’t celebrate launch then what makes you think they’ll celebrate an expansion or that lack of celebration means it was a failure.

No, failure to celebrate has nothing to do with it being a failure or success. It only means that they don’t celebrate launch, for whatever reasons.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I was max mastery 3 or 4 weeks after release and I wasn’t even the fastest in our guild. I really don’t understand how one can not be max. level. Especially people who are online all the time. If you really want to do it, just join an escort group in the raid. It’s really no big deal to finish that one.

Because it’s not a goal for everyone? Because not all “really want to do it?”

I got the ones that interested me. After that, I had no interest in getting Masteries that did not offer me anything that I valued for unlocking them. And having a high mastery number isn’t something that’s important to me.

Not everyone is the same and not all are going to value what you value.

They do celebrate launches, GW2 launch has a festival in GW. Buy at least they mark the launch or GW2 with gems store discounts and sales, HoT got nothing. I fond it odd. I mean why not? Drum up interest in HoT and GW2 for people who do not have it, or upgraded to HoT.

They have a festival in a different game? I only care about celebrations in games I play. I have no idea why they would put a gw2 celebration not in this game but in another but if I don’t see it here, If I can’t play it here, then I don’t count it for this game. In addition, as far as I’m concerned a “celebration” in this game that’s only gem store sales is not a celebration but a sellabration. A sellabration is where they are reaching for my wallet rather than spending the time to design a festival, events, decorations, quests, fun times and in game rewards. I don’t count that either. So, again, as far as I’m concerned they don’t celebrate Guild Wars 2 launch as I don’t count either sellabrations or events in another game.

So to tie this back in with the topic of the thread, an evaluation of the expansion. Since they do not celebrate gw2 launch in this game it’s not surprising they don’t celebrate the launch of an expansion. So not having a celebration has nothing to do with the expansion’s success or failure.

Hello ArenaNet,

I am a long term GW player, I don’t play any other MMO’s or computer games for that matter, just GW1 then GW2. You made a great game at launch, I hope that you can continue that way! Having played all of your GW1 and GW2 campaigns, HoT is my least favorite. I have been trying to appreciate it more, but I still have to place it last. The adventures are really far too difficult to be a part of mastery points and repeating them takes my enjoyment out of playing GW, which is quite hard to do. I also very much enjoyed the 5 player instanced format and the expansion unfortunately didn’t include anything in that. I hope that future expansions will take place in all of the worlds that GW1 included and that you will include many types of game play in them as you did in GW1 with the various forms of PvP and PvE. That is me hoping and what I really enjoyed! Thanks for the work you do, cheers and good luck!

Meiko

Okay, I get it that it’s not a goal for everyone to reach max level as fast as possible. For me, I really put all my dedication into HoT during release. I came back from work, played 4-6 hours. It was an arduous, stressful time… Anyway, I also loved HoT. But after that I just lost all my interest, didn’t even do all the raid parts…

ProtoGunner.4953:

Okay, I get it that it’s not a goal for everyone to reach max level as fast as possible. For me, I really put all my dedication into HoT during release. I came back from work, played 4-6 hours. It was an arduous, stressful time… Anyway, I also loved HoT. But after that I just lost all my interest, didn’t even do all the raid parts…

You burned yourself out, which is what other people are trying to avoid when they don’t rush to complete their masteries as fast as possible

ProtoGunner.4953:

Okay, I get it that it’s not a goal for everyone to reach max level as fast as possible. For me, I really put all my dedication into HoT during release. I came back from work, played 4-6 hours. It was an arduous, stressful time… Anyway, I also loved HoT. But after that I just lost all my interest, didn’t even do all the raid parts…

your goal appears to be to give yourself an ‘arduous, stressful time’ that ultimately sickens you off the very same content – lessons to be learned there. I remember when I was a kid and drank a full quarter of vodka, took me a decade before i could go near the stuff again, Ican also remember min maxing the levelling xp in a rush to get to 100 in WOW – hated the levelling experience after that too.

er. no it just sounds wrong. Arduous rather in conjunction with work. I have a desk job and my back, right hand/arm/shoulder and my eyes really hurt from time to time. But playing the game itself was a pleasure ofc.