Guild Wars 2

Masteries is quite a unique feature in any mmorpg, I do not think I ever played an mmorpg to have something like this and it is quite clever solving the standard lets become a gear and stat treadmill of illusion, trust me these masteries are an amazing addition and we should be thanking anet for coming up with something so clever and unique that will hopefully give a better standard to mmorpgs in the future.

I have seen allot of complaints, but people do not realize they are trying to give you a good challenge/reward to give us incentive for the later content. Trust me it is far more fun then grinding for adding a new stat here and there.

Now if you want to compare it to something like the alternate advancement in eq2 well then that is indeed comparable since eq2 actually added new abilities to earn but in a way gw2 does as well with the elite skill.

Just my 2 cents, anet thank you, impressive job.

Agreed, mastery were a great idea instead of increasing character lvls, that way new player won’t get left behind as new content comes out. most of the ppl who disagree are just lazy to work and get all the masteries, i don’t see any real negative things with this system

Pax.3548:

Agreed, mastery were a great idea instead of increasing character lvls, that way new player won’t get left behind as new content comes out. most of the ppl who disagree are just lazy to work and get all the masteries, i don’t see any real negative things with this system

Exactly, if any team is going to think of the next advancement system for new content I pick a net.

Masteries per se were a great invention, if they hadn’t been so tightly locked to story progress in HoT. That ruined it for many, and calling people “lazy” because they have better things to do with their time than grinding XP and Mastery Points is quite impertinent. Furthermore, the fact that you won’t gain any more non-mastery XP unless you have all Masteries maxed is also an outrage, therefore I do understand people complaining about the status quo (even though Anet seems to have understood their own mistake and handled things better post-HoT).

P.S. I have all Masteries maxed, so you can’t say I was trying to “defend” a certain point of view because I was having trouble with the issue myself.

I prefer leveling the mastery system using generic EXP and not Mastery Points. It’s infinitely more understandable and allows me to play however/wherever I prefer.

serow.6524:

I prefer leveling the mastery system using generic EXP and not Mastery Points. It’s infinitely more understandable and allows me to play however/wherever I prefer.

Yes, I have little interest in doing more HOT content but was gated by the points. I never had trouble finding enough XP in either core or hot in a reasonable time. For example, with the most recent LS3 chapter I had all the needed xp before logging out that evening (without doing all of the story either) but had to scrounge other zones for more points.

Ashantara.8731:

Masteries per se were a great invention, if they hadn’t been so tightly locked to story progress in HoT. That ruined it for many, and calling people “lazy” because they have better things to do with their time than grinding XP and Mastery Points is quite impertinent. Furthermore, the fact that you won’t gain any more non-mastery XP unless you have all Masteries maxed is also an outrage, therefore I do understand people complaining about the status quo (even though Anet seems to have understood their own mistake and handled things better post-HoT).

P.S. I have all Masteries maxed, so you can’t say I was trying to “defend” a certain point of view because I was having trouble with the issue myself.

It does not ruin anything, it is all perspective, no mmorpg should he a cakewalk. If you want super easy there are always phone games. I understand why people are complaining but it does not justify it. They are far from being half as grind as other mmorpgs and if people do not wish to invest the effort and time they should not be playing an mmorpg at all.

Ryou.2398:

Ashantara.8731:

Masteries per se were a great invention, if they hadn’t been so tightly locked to story progress in HoT. That ruined it for many, and calling people “lazy” because they have better things to do with their time than grinding XP and Mastery Points is quite impertinent. Furthermore, the fact that you won’t gain any more non-mastery XP unless you have all Masteries maxed is also an outrage, therefore I do understand people complaining about the status quo (even though Anet seems to have understood their own mistake and handled things better post-HoT).

P.S. I have all Masteries maxed, so you can’t say I was trying to “defend” a certain point of view because I was having trouble with the issue myself.

It does not ruin anything, it is all perspective, no mmorpg should he a cakewalk. If you want super easy there are always phone games. I understand why people are complaining but it does not justify it. They are far from being half as grind as other mmorpgs and if people do not wish to invest the effort and time they should not be playing an mmorpg at all.

I can’t say anything about other MMOs as I’ve never played any (except DDO, but that was different in pretty much every aspect).

I didn’t say that people shouldn’t be investing time if they want something. What I wrote was that the game is literally limiting their basic content access by locking Masteries to story content (you can’t proceed with HoT if you don’t have certain Masteries) and cutting their XP gain (for Spirit Shards) if they don’t grind all Masteries (including Raid Masteries).

serow.6524:

I prefer leveling the mastery system using generic EXP and not Mastery Points. It’s infinitely more understandable and allows me to play however/wherever I prefer.

This is how it should have been done….

Personally, I’d go the other way — always just use XP for repeatable PvE reward tracks, use collections with multiple levels of completion to unlock masteries.

E.g., you’d have 20 items in your collection scavenger hunt, at 5% complete you’d get the first achievement and tier 1, at 15% you’d get the next tier, and so on. The last could unlock a new themed PvE reward track, so it’s more of an optional thing than a requirement to access content.

Ashantara.8731:

Ryou.2398:

Ashantara.8731:

Masteries per se were a great invention, if they hadn’t been so tightly locked to story progress in HoT. That ruined it for many, and calling people “lazy” because they have better things to do with their time than grinding XP and Mastery Points is quite impertinent. Furthermore, the fact that you won’t gain any more non-mastery XP unless you have all Masteries maxed is also an outrage, therefore I do understand people complaining about the status quo (even though Anet seems to have understood their own mistake and handled things better post-HoT).

P.S. I have all Masteries maxed, so you can’t say I was trying to “defend” a certain point of view because I was having trouble with the issue myself.

It does not ruin anything, it is all perspective, no mmorpg should he a cakewalk. If you want super easy there are always phone games. I understand why people are complaining but it does not justify it. They are far from being half as grind as other mmorpgs and if people do not wish to invest the effort and time they should not be playing an mmorpg at all.

I can’t say anything about other MMOs as I’ve never played any (except DDO, but that was different in pretty much every aspect).

I didn’t say that people shouldn’t be investing time if they want something. What I wrote was that the game is literally limiting their basic content access by locking Masteries to story content (you can’t proceed with HoT if you don’t have certain Masteries) and cutting their XP gain (for Spirit Shards) if they don’t grind all Masteries (including Raid Masteries).

I honestly don’t see the issue just like in rpge you cannot get to new aras until your a certain level you may not prefer this but it fairly standard in games.

Ashantara.8731:

I didn’t say that people shouldn’t be investing time if they want something. What I wrote was that the game is literally limiting their basic content access by locking Masteries to story content (you can’t proceed with HoT if you don’t have certain Masteries) and cutting their XP gain (for Spirit Shards) if they don’t grind all Masteries (including Raid Masteries).

Personally, I think the latter is the bigger issue.

You can get the masteries required for story progression pretty quickly. It can be annoying, but on the other hand, it does force you to explore the maps at least a little before running off to the next green star, which gives you a better picture of the overall story.

However, having XP become worthless because you’ve maxed out your XP bars but you don’t have the mastery points to unlock the next mastery is something that’s extremely annoying. Rather than make spirit shards be something that only activates once you’ve maxed out your masteries, they really should have made it a repeatable track that can be selected from the masteries tab at any time.

In the meantime, I’ve got hundreds of LS3 reward chests waiting to be opened… I open them when the autoconsumed scrap of maguuma mastery will actually do something for me (usually when I first enter a new map, since it means I can instantly unlock the mastery associated with that map).

The implementation of masteries is nothing special. It’s simply leveling with the added requirement of doing achievements. They likely chose this route in response to people grinding to level 80 without actually playing the content, then complaining about the lack of content.

Obviously forced achievements isn’t a smart idea, especially when there’s not actually enough options to allow everyone to obtain them in their preferred play style. Because of this and the non-linear path, it’s possible to permanently screw your account.

In other games with a similar implementation, it’s usually one or the other. Like the original implementation of skill points for example, where skill challenges were the main source of points whereas leveling was simply an alternative.

My only complaint regarding the current Masteries are the ones tied to in game mini games and jumping puzzles. I log in to play the MMO fantasy game, not tic tac toe or dodge em’.

Associate them with killing Bosses, doing events, or communing like some are already are. If you want some associated with mini games go ahead just make sure there are enough other options to obtaining them by playing the game itself, and to be able to max all lines in the Masteries.

Ryou.2398:

Masteries is quite a unique feature in any mmorpg, I do not think I ever played an mmorpg to have something like this and it is quite clever solving the standard lets become a gear and stat treadmill of illusion, trust me these masteries are an amazing addition and we should be thanking anet for coming up with something so clever and unique that will hopefully give a better standard to mmorpgs in the future.

I have seen allot of complaints, but people do not realize they are trying to give you a good challenge/reward to give us incentive for the later content. Trust me it is far more fun then grinding for adding a new stat here and there.

Now if you want to compare it to something like the alternate advancement in eq2 well then that is indeed comparable since eq2 actually added new abilities to earn but in a way gw2 does as well with the elite skill.

Just my 2 cents, anet thank you, impressive job.

Masteries are great. Mastery Points that are locked behind arcade games that have nothing to do with the RPG or locked behind meta events that take groups, or locked behind platforming, or being able to find it on a confusing map – those are the issue.

Ryou.2398:

Masteries is quite a unique feature in any mmorpg, I do not think I ever played an mmorpg to have something like this and it is quite clever solving the standard lets become a gear and stat treadmill of illusion, trust me these masteries are an amazing addition and we should be thanking anet for coming up with something so clever and unique that will hopefully give a better standard to mmorpgs in the future.

I have seen allot of complaints, but people do not realize they are trying to give you a good challenge/reward to give us incentive for the later content. Trust me it is far more fun then grinding for adding a new stat here and there.

Now if you want to compare it to something like the alternate advancement in eq2 well then that is indeed comparable since eq2 actually added new abilities to earn but in a way gw2 does as well with the elite skill.

Just my 2 cents, anet thank you, impressive job.

I disagree 100%

Anet talks about brave and great ideas back when GW2 first released.

This is basic go to a spot to collect a item and go to another area to get the next one. Dont sugar code it and turn into something its not.

WHen HOT first came out i was in PvP, that is mostly what i did with WvW. I almost have 10,000 matches played and im on T5 of all my WvW but 1 and i have 5-6 of them done.

Take a wild guess what happened when i tried to play PvE with my friends?

I couldnt play with them, to reach certain bosses like the dragons i needed mushrooms. The next champion i needed updraft. For the personal story i needed the tunnel, i cant even do the story in HOT without completing more mastery points.

This is the most basic hide certain content behind walls, forcing players to do the events not because they want to but because in order to do something they want. They have to complete X amount of missions under X mastery skill.

HOT created 4 maps, FOUR. 3 have meta event maps on them were they are very populated for the meta and much less so when the event is gone.

They could of made mastery points items you wanted but dont necessarily needed.

For instance, instead of raids. They could of hid 4 different dungeons. Each dungeon unlocking a new ability that would help you in the fight vs mordremoth which could of been a epic battle.

Boom, people who want to rush threw the story go ahead. If you are skilled enough you can beat him/ henchman and all is great. If you are struggling you complete the dungeons for a much easier fight.

Instead we got nothing, raids came later i me being the cry baby i was. I was so frustrated to get into a Xera fight and i didnt have Ley line gliding so i couldnt even finish the fight. I had to go back to PvE get XP and go back to this boss.

There is nothing creative, nothing fun about this for someone who doesnt want to get the Golden Child Title

Edit- Please next time lets add WvW and PvP masterys. For instance you have to play 2,000 games in PvP to unlock X mastery which every PvE player would want.

Then add you must get 50,000 player kills in WvW to get legendary armor.

Lets have these masterys in there, call it ground breaking and innovative fun way to include all games modes with one another.

I think it’s the kind of thing that looks great on paper, but it either wasn’t thought through well enough, or the development process morphed it into something much different than what was intended. That or I just fundamentally disagree with its goals.

I think the concept of horizontal progression is reasonable and GW2 certainly isn’t the first game to do it.

But here’s a way of doing it off the top of my head that I think might work more effectively at providing a sense of mastery and avoiding the base simplicity of “earn points, click button to unlock thing, earn more points” (granted, it would be more complicated to design):

Take, for instance, Lean Gliding. Rather than you unlocking it with XP and an unrelated adventure point, you unlock it by Lean Gliding. This might sound stupid at first, but bear with me here. You don’t get full Lean Gliding functionality at first. Instead, it costs a high amount of your gliding stamina and is high risk to use. The more you use it, the more progress you get on a bar, the less it costs in stamina with each use until you reach mastery.

Why? The idea is:
- Instead of being outright restricted, you get introduced to the ability by using it.
- You master it through using it, which means you learn as you go along, rather than being exposed to it all at once, and by the time you’ve mastered it in numbers, you’ll probably have a pretty good sense of how to make use of it, practically.

The reason I say it would be way more complicated to do may be obvious to some. For example, the jump mushrooms don’t really lend themselves to such a system. They have a specific distance they leap you to and that’s it. Features like that (and the maps themselves) would have needed to be designed entirely differently from the ground up to support such a system.

So it’s not like it’d automatically work for everything.

But that’s one way I can think of to create a sense of mastery beyond vague, unrelated point acquisition.

I’m not passionately against vague, unrelated point acquisition though… I think I would have preferred it if the masteries we got were just unlocked with XP, or mastery points were acquired generically through, like, world boss battles or something.

What I don’t like is the idea of doing something highly specific that has nothing to do with what it’s for (e.g. doing a gold adventure for a mastery point that lets you do something that has nothing to do with the gold adventure).

Labjax.2465:

But here’s a way of doing it off the top of my head that I think might work more effectively at providing a sense of mastery and avoiding the base simplicity of “earn points, click button to unlock thing, earn more points” (granted, it would be more complicated to design):

Take, for instance, Lean Gliding. Rather than you unlocking it with XP and an unrelated adventure point, you unlock it by Lean Gliding. This might sound stupid at first, but bear with me here. You don’t get full Lean Gliding functionality at first. Instead, it costs a high amount of your gliding stamina and is high risk to use. The more you use it, the more progress you get on a bar, the less it costs in stamina with each use until you reach mastery.

Why? The idea is:
- Instead of being outright restricted, you get introduced to the ability by using it.
- You master it through using it, which means you learn as you go along, rather than being exposed to it all at once, and by the time you’ve mastered it in numbers, you’ll probably have a pretty good sense of how to make use of it, practically.

The reason I say it would be way more complicated to do may be obvious to some. For example, the jump mushrooms don’t really lend themselves to such a system. They have a specific distance they leap you to and that’s it. Features like that (and the maps themselves) would have needed to be designed entirely differently from the ground up to support such a system.

Lean gliding is a part of “gliding” and the mushrooms are a part of Itzel Lore. Using those masteries (whatever specific skill that Anet put first) could progress you to the next, etc.

This would not be difficult to do as GW2 had EXACTLY that type of “mastery” when the game first started. If you wanted to use a sword, you got the first sword skill only and opened the next skills by using it! It was a great system but Anet decided to give us the NGE (or whatever they called it) and completely screwed the learning experience.

Djinn.9245:

Labjax.2465:

But here’s a way of doing it off the top of my head that I think might work more effectively at providing a sense of mastery and avoiding the base simplicity of “earn points, click button to unlock thing, earn more points” (granted, it would be more complicated to design):

Take, for instance, Lean Gliding. Rather than you unlocking it with XP and an unrelated adventure point, you unlock it by Lean Gliding. This might sound stupid at first, but bear with me here. You don’t get full Lean Gliding functionality at first. Instead, it costs a high amount of your gliding stamina and is high risk to use. The more you use it, the more progress you get on a bar, the less it costs in stamina with each use until you reach mastery.

Why? The idea is:
- Instead of being outright restricted, you get introduced to the ability by using it.
- You master it through using it, which means you learn as you go along, rather than being exposed to it all at once, and by the time you’ve mastered it in numbers, you’ll probably have a pretty good sense of how to make use of it, practically.

The reason I say it would be way more complicated to do may be obvious to some. For example, the jump mushrooms don’t really lend themselves to such a system. They have a specific distance they leap you to and that’s it. Features like that (and the maps themselves) would have needed to be designed entirely differently from the ground up to support such a system.

Lean gliding is a part of “gliding” and the mushrooms are a part of Itzel Lore. Using those masteries (whatever specific skill that Anet put first) could progress you to the next, etc.

This would not be difficult to do as GW2 had EXACTLY that type of “mastery” when the game first started. If you wanted to use a sword, you got the first sword skill only and opened the next skills by using it! It was a great system but Anet decided to give us the NGE (or whatever they called it) and completely screwed the learning experience.

It worked with weapon skills, because you had to learn weapon skills fairly fast. Unfortunately, advancement of some kind has to happen in expansions or too big a percentage of the pl;ayers rush through ti and get completely bored and leave. Then they loudly claim there’s no game at all. Which is not any better than some people claiming it’s not good as it is.

The masteries were a bit overtuned and a lot of that has been fixed. It doesn’t take that long to get basic masteries any more, particularly because you can even farm XP for them (and even some mastery points) in the Living Story zones.

Of course comparing the NPE (New player experience) to Star Wars NGE, was always a stretch, and it’s been long since disproved since it’s long term affect on the game was negligible.

kdaddy.5431:

Ryou.2398:

Masteries is quite a unique feature in any mmorpg, I do not think I ever played an mmorpg to have something like this and it is quite clever solving the standard lets become a gear and stat treadmill of illusion, trust me these masteries are an amazing addition and we should be thanking anet for coming up with something so clever and unique that will hopefully give a better standard to mmorpgs in the future.

I have seen allot of complaints, but people do not realize they are trying to give you a good challenge/reward to give us incentive for the later content. Trust me it is far more fun then grinding for adding a new stat here and there.

Now if you want to compare it to something like the alternate advancement in eq2 well then that is indeed comparable since eq2 actually added new abilities to earn but in a way gw2 does as well with the elite skill.

Just my 2 cents, anet thank you, impressive job.

I disagree 100%

Anet talks about brave and great ideas back when GW2 first released.

This is basic go to a spot to collect a item and go to another area to get the next one. Dont sugar code it and turn into something its not.

WHen HOT first came out i was in PvP, that is mostly what i did with WvW. I almost have 10,000 matches played and im on T5 of all my WvW but 1 and i have 5-6 of them done.

Take a wild guess what happened when i tried to play PvE with my friends?

I couldnt play with them, to reach certain bosses like the dragons i needed mushrooms. The next champion i needed updraft. For the personal story i needed the tunnel, i cant even do the story in HOT without completing more mastery points.

This is the most basic hide certain content behind walls, forcing players to do the events not because they want to but because in order to do something they want. They have to complete X amount of missions under X mastery skill.

HOT created 4 maps, FOUR. 3 have meta event maps on them were they are very populated for the meta and much less so when the event is gone.

They could of made mastery points items you wanted but dont necessarily needed.

For instance, instead of raids. They could of hid 4 different dungeons. Each dungeon unlocking a new ability that would help you in the fight vs mordremoth which could of been a epic battle.

Boom, people who want to rush threw the story go ahead. If you are skilled enough you can beat him/ henchman and all is great. If you are struggling you complete the dungeons for a much easier fight.

Instead we got nothing, raids came later i me being the cry baby i was. I was so frustrated to get into a Xera fight and i didnt have Ley line gliding so i couldnt even finish the fight. I had to go back to PvE get XP and go back to this boss.

There is nothing creative, nothing fun about this for someone who doesnt want to get the Golden Child Title

Edit- Please next time lets add WvW and PvP masterys. For instance you have to play 2,000 games in PvP to unlock X mastery which every PvE player would want.

Then add you must get 50,000 player kills in WvW to get legendary armor.

Lets have these masterys in there, call it ground breaking and innovative fun way to include all games modes with one another.

So let me get this straight your complaining over something like gliding abilities which are very easy to get?

My only complaint about the masteries is that I have to kill at least one raid boss to unlock the raid masteries which I need to unlock the spirit shard “leveling” thing for HoT areas, which means that a lot of XP for me is just wasted now. I did make a decent number of attempts, but raiding just doesn’t really do it for me, and with my current ping and the somewhat lackluster performance of my laptop, that’s not going to happen any time soon. That’s just a bugbear for me personally though.

PS: Before anybody mentions it, yes, I know that one of the raid bosses is easier, but it still needs a few people with certain raid masteries.

Otherwise, I think the masteries are fine. Not perfect and I could see room for improvement, but they’re not too demanding or too grindy either.

To Kdaddy: HoT launched with 4 maps (and two guild halls, plus the raid areas for those who are into that) as well as a bunch of changes including a bunch which aren’t immediately noticeable in many cases, but which was needed for future content.

By now however, HoT also offers 5 new maps (though the first one is still the coolest by far, in my humble opinion), more personal story to go with those maps, several raid wings (again, for those interested in that), a number of additional legendaries and then there have been a bunch of changes and improvements which are also available to non-HoT players, such as a few new Fractal maps and changes to some of the old ones.

One can argue that HoT was a bit lacking when it first came out, but I’d say that it has certainly made up for that since then. But feel free to disagree with me; this is after all just my opinion.

Mercure.5689:

My only complaint about the masteries is that I have to kill at least one raid boss to unlock the raid masteries which I need to unlock the spirit shard “leveling” thing for HoT areas, which means that a lot of XP for me is just wasted now. I did make a decent number of attempts, but raiding just doesn’t really do it for me, and with my current ping and the somewhat lackluster performance of my laptop, that’s not going to happen any time soon. That’s just a bugbear for me personally though.

PS: Before anybody mentions it, yes, I know that one of the raid bosses is easier, but it still needs a few people with certain raid masteries.

Otherwise, I think the masteries are fine. Not perfect and I could see room for improvement, but they’re not too demanding or too grindy either.

To Kdaddy: HoT launched with 4 maps (and two guild halls, plus the raid areas for those who are into that) as well as a bunch of changes including a bunch which aren’t immediately noticeable in many cases, but which was needed for future content.

By now however, HoT also offers 5 new maps (though the first one is still the coolest by far, in my humble opinion), more personal story to go with those maps, several raid wings (again, for those interested in that), a number of additional legendaries and then there have been a bunch of changes and improvements which are also available to non-HoT players, such as a few new Fractal maps and changes to some of the old ones.

One can argue that HoT was a bit lacking when it first came out, but I’d say that it has certainly made up for that since then. But feel free to disagree with me; this is after all just my opinion.

No i agree that right now HOT was worth the price and hype as advertised. As much as HOT screwed PvP and WvW. From a PvE aspect almost 2 years later, HOT is now worth what everyone paid for when it was first released.

Think about this, when GW2 first came out PvP was fun, not balanced but fun with underwater combat and 8 vs 8 servers. WvW was fun, had some big bugs especially with the orbs you carried to keeps but it was new and fun.

During GW2 core, we got new events like Halloween mad king, Christmas event, Fractals all of which had negatives and positives.

That Living Story came with interactive PvE where you shut down portals. They destroyed Lions Arch and Kessex hills and it came with 3-4 dungeons. And for me the coolest thing ive ever done was when i finished Scarlett “F”. Then the Cinematic played.

Those events were super awesome. A bit grindy, doesnt have replay value so it made me want to play it then.

GW2 core also had 33 dungeons when it released.

Take my preferences out of it, HOT had alot less maps to explore. Also it was very 1 sided VB being the jack of all trades map and the other 3 being meta maps.

No raids till later, no legendary weapons or armor till later. HOT when released is a joke compared to GW2 core when released.

But i agree with you, if the HOT we have right now is what we got when released i would not have any negative comments other then simple preferences.

@ Ryou.2398

Read my comment please.

Masterys were horribly done. If you play mostly WvW and PvP but do a little PvE, how would do the new events?

Only later did Anet fix it so you could get SP in WvW to unlock masterys. Only later did PvP/WvW get reward tracks for the new maps so they werent running up to everything going huh how do i open that?

Anet hid the ability to fight bosses on maps behind doing mastery points.

Anet hid more things behind unlocking raids.

I agree with you that they needed something to prevent gear grind.

But you are saying this was a good idea?

Just to make some observations about GW2 since ive been playing in beta. GW2 made PvP easier for PvE players who wanted the levels/titles and said it was to hard for them to play all those games. WvW complained that you couldnt get them through WvW and getting finished by a shark in WvW, they were like that is awesome i want that but i dont want to PvP. ( many WvW players say these were PvE/AP try hards who complained about this and not real WvW players) So Anet killed PvP levels.

For 100% map completion PvE players had to go into WvW, they took this away. Like Mike Obrian said “if you WvW you probably PvE” except if you PvE you dont have to PvP or WvW for items, we will just hand them to you.

So Anet is pushing this all is one and you can play anything, catering to every group. So why did Anet screw PvP and WvW out of masterys?

If people do not like the PvE maps in HOT why is Anet forcing them to play it? Same goes for Legendary Armor, my guild mate who played GW1 for years and now GW2 for years and mostly plays PvE is not a huge fan of raids.

He likes running his own builds and exploring stuff. He enjoyed the new maps but hates the HOT maps. Then Anet BAM puts the elite items behind something. IN PvP we got cultural armor at level 60 from the forge and tribal.

Raids now get legendary armor. He was frustrated because after 5 years of GW2, doing 100% completion with 4 characters and having 4 others above 50%. After forcing the 2 other game modes to mix with PvE, everyone now has to be forced into raids to attempt the new content?

Just like these mastery’s, they are things you HAVE TO DO if you want to fight certain bosses in PvE, fight certain bosses in raids, do the personal story. This is a terrible concept period.

Seriously answer my question, as someone with almost 29k AP, with almost 10,000 PvP matches played, having almost done all my WvW ap not for the AP but because i used to like WvW.

I dont know anything about you, lets say im Anet and i hade bouncing mushrooms behind 1,000 games played in PvP and you dont PvP. How are you gonna feel?

A bit excessive you say? How about defending 500 objects in WvW to get Ley Line Gliding? Because this is exactly what they did for raids/ Legendary Armor.

There was no creative process. Creative would of been small dungeons, where we go in to meet a master who teaches how to glide, another to teach us bouncing mushrooms at the beginning at each map zone. Having a main dungeon to unlock something and explorable dungeons to unlock new things. While making the 1-2nd map not needed these mastery skills.

Or giving elite bosses drops which you used to craft into elite perma items to help defeat mordremoth. Then actually making the boss fight vs a elder dragon feel some what real and not super buggy.

You have to look at it from all sides, if Anet caters to everyone for years then flips the script thats bad design. Anet said in there opener GW2 wouldnt be a go grab 10 apples and come back to me, well guess what. The new map is complete all 4 hearts and get a druid shard.

You said “but people do not realize they are trying to give you a good challenge/reward to give us incentive for the later content.”

Im just pointing out that this is not what they did and no they were not creative at all. HOT felt alot more like WoW then GW2.

My only issue are with masteries are bad camera angle,claustrophobic in nature, badly made jumping puzzle .Those masteries give me a headache.

kdaddy.5431:

@ Ryou.2398

Read my comment please.

Masterys were horribly done. If you play mostly WvW and PvP but do a little PvE, how would do the new events?

Only later did Anet fix it so you could get SP in WvW to unlock masterys. Only later did PvP/WvW get reward tracks for the new maps so they werent running up to everything going huh how do i open that?

Anet hid the ability to fight bosses on maps behind doing mastery points.

Anet hid more things behind unlocking raids.

I agree with you that they needed something to prevent gear grind.

But you are saying this was a good idea?

Just to make some observations about GW2 since ive been playing in beta. GW2 made PvP easier for PvE players who wanted the levels/titles and said it was to hard for them to play all those games. WvW complained that you couldnt get them through WvW and getting finished by a shark in WvW, they were like that is awesome i want that but i dont want to PvP. ( many WvW players say these were PvE/AP try hards who complained about this and not real WvW players) So Anet killed PvP levels.

For 100% map completion PvE players had to go into WvW, they took this away. Like Mike Obrian said “if you WvW you probably PvE” except if you PvE you dont have to PvP or WvW for items, we will just hand them to you.

So Anet is pushing this all is one and you can play anything, catering to every group. So why did Anet screw PvP and WvW out of masterys?

If people do not like the PvE maps in HOT why is Anet forcing them to play it? Same goes for Legendary Armor, my guild mate who played GW1 for years and now GW2 for years and mostly plays PvE is not a huge fan of raids.

He likes running his own builds and exploring stuff. He enjoyed the new maps but hates the HOT maps. Then Anet BAM puts the elite items behind something. IN PvP we got cultural armor at level 60 from the forge and tribal.

Raids now get legendary armor. He was frustrated because after 5 years of GW2, doing 100% completion with 4 characters and having 4 others above 50%. After forcing the 2 other game modes to mix with PvE, everyone now has to be forced into raids to attempt the new content?

Just like these mastery’s, they are things you HAVE TO DO if you want to fight certain bosses in PvE, fight certain bosses in raids, do the personal story. This is a terrible concept period.

Seriously answer my question, as someone with almost 29k AP, with almost 10,000 PvP matches played, having almost done all my WvW ap not for the AP but because i used to like WvW.

I dont know anything about you, lets say im Anet and i hade bouncing mushrooms behind 1,000 games played in PvP and you dont PvP. How are you gonna feel?

A bit excessive you say? How about defending 500 objects in WvW to get Ley Line Gliding? Because this is exactly what they did for raids/ Legendary Armor.

There was no creative process. Creative would of been small dungeons, where we go in to meet a master who teaches how to glide, another to teach us bouncing mushrooms at the beginning at each map zone. Having a main dungeon to unlock something and explorable dungeons to unlock new things. While making the 1-2nd map not needed these mastery skills.

Or giving elite bosses drops which you used to craft into elite perma items to help defeat mordremoth. Then actually making the boss fight vs a elder dragon feel some what real and not super buggy.

You have to look at it from all sides, if Anet caters to everyone for years then flips the script thats bad design. Anet said in there opener GW2 wouldnt be a go grab 10 apples and come back to me, well guess what. The new map is complete all 4 hearts and get a druid shard.

You said “but people do not realize they are trying to give you a good challenge/reward to give us incentive for the later content.”

Im just pointing out that this is not what they did and no they were not creative at all. HOT felt alot more like WoW then GW2.

First if all it sounds like your complaining about the beginning of the expansion I never said anything about when it first released clearly I’m talking about after many imrovements.

Second of all to be fair but you did chose to do wvw and pvp instead. Clearly hot was for pve that was your choice, it’s not bad design they cannot cater to only you.

They want people to play pve. This is not a pure PvP mmorpg and masteries would not make sense in the adventure sense if you can unlock them in anything outside of pve.

I still disagree with your concept of locked content.irs not that different then any other rpg.

The mastery suxs. But hey we will give you a lvl 80 Character(Of your Choice) with all maxed out gear and maxed out Skilled points in trade for the Mastery. Either way you are still going to grind…lol

I think there were clearly some mistakes made with the release of this expansion, but much of it has been addressed since release. That isn’t going to make us all agree that the mastery system is a great system. I happen to think it’s pretty good, but not perfect.

PvP/WvW alternatives for leveling the mastery system should have been there from the start.

Filler masteries like Itzel poison mastery should never have been a thing. We want meaningful gameplay (like the LS3 mastery line or the gliding line), not pointless grind-gating.

The spirit shard reward for post-cap experience should not have been linked to the mastery system.

Legendary armor probably should not have been implemented at all. It seems the amount of effort that went into them was very great, given how long it took for them to release the armor. Yet it’s entirely locked behind a niche game mode (raiding). If we had multiple sets it wouldn’t be an issue, but it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort to produce multiple legendary armor sets.

Having said that, for me the mastery system was overall a success. I enjoyed exploring the jungle right from the start and the mastery system succeeded at its goal of providing a feeling of progression in that context. I was fine with the way it tied into the story. The whole thing worked for me.

@ Ryou.2398

Of course they have addressed these issues, it was putting a huge wall between players who play WvW- PvP and the PvE community.

Heres the thing you said it was my fault for doing PvP. When GW2 came out you could jump into any and play any at any time. If you had enough skill you could be a level 60 player in WvW who beats a level 80 player.

HOT made alot of things worse, never has anyone had a problem playing with another person. If i was in a area like ORR and my friend is level 50, we could still explore together. If i wanted to run back into PvP he could join me.

Guess what PvE has been completely separated from the PvP – WvW community. Which is why you see the threads you see in the PvP and WvW threads.

I have a ton of teleport to a friend and i used a few but guess what if i didnt have updraft, i couldnt play with them, no ley line gliding to bad you cant fight this champ with us, etc etc etc.

This was a expansion for everyone, new elite specs that were suppose to expand on PvP, a new WvW map and obviously a whole new map area and PS line.

3 things happened,

1) PvP and WvW got screwed.
Terrible metas that actually destroyed game play and build diversity.

2) You are punished for not playing PvE
Like i said the whole time, example after example. not only did Anet hide mastery points behind PvE but they also hid the new elite specs for PvE. Yes they have addressed those issues but the fact that Anet would screw over 2 groups with in there community says alot.

3) The Split of the community’s
There is a thread with a similar name which im sure we all are posting in. Once again you have people like Vayne.**** who talks about how Anet cant cater to groups and they have to play for the middle.

Yet they didnt play to the core casual player group with there 3 meta maps. Vayne talks about alot using the LFG tool and using outside resources to play the game. Which is not for the casual group at all and it takes away from just playing for fun. I now have to set up my fun, if the event isnt going on when im playing what else can i do? Join another map oh wait its another meta map and that map is full and im in the dead map.

Lets also make it so PvP and WvW players make a TON less money and have no way to the new skins in PvE. Once again they recently addressed this but man. If on Christmas me you and Tim wake up to see presents with only Ryou.2398 name on it. We are not gonna feel loved and for some reason many players just dont see that.

Anet isnt catering to the middle or trying to give everyone a little pc. We had the 4 maps only for a year. They just recently added the LS with the new maps, raids itself is like WvW and PvP in that they have there core groups who play and defend it.

Raids get way more attention then anything else right now.

WvW and PvP are dying within the game and its not some secret. Casual players are also not enjoying the game as much which is why you are seeing the questions, the core game is F2P which allows the population to still be some what good.

But the divide put on all 3 communitys come from the HOT ability to fairly reach all 3 and masterys/elite spec/ meta maps/ were all negative things that put those cracks into the game. Only now is HOT worth the price/hype it was selling nearly 2 years ago.

AliamRationem.5172:

I think there were clearly some mistakes made with the release of this expansion, but much of it has been addressed since release. That isn’t going to make us all agree that the mastery system is a great system. I happen to think it’s pretty good, but not perfect.

PvP/WvW alternatives for leveling the mastery system should have been there from the start.

Filler masteries like Itzel poison mastery should never have been a thing. We want meaningful gameplay (like the LS3 mastery line or the gliding line), not pointless grind-gating.

The spirit shard reward for post-cap experience should not have been linked to the mastery system.

Legendary armor probably should not have been implemented at all. It seems the amount of effort that went into them was very great, given how long it took for them to release the armor. Yet it’s entirely locked behind a niche game mode (raiding). If we had multiple sets it wouldn’t be an issue, but it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort to produce multiple legendary armor sets.

Having said that, for me the mastery system was overall a success. I enjoyed exploring the jungle right from the start and the mastery system succeeded at its goal of providing a feeling of progression in that context. I was fine with the way it tied into the story. The whole thing worked for me.

I honestly think Anet is struggling with direction.

Like if im not mistaken but alot of the devs who wrote the classes/set ups are now gone from the game. SO the pieces added on are the ideas of people who may or may not have the same ideas for what this class is suppose to be.

Like the legendary armor, this is the oddest thing to me.

In PvP it took a insane amount of XP to level up. I was 53 or 55 at the time and about 3000-4000 games played.

At level 60 we could get unique armors only to PvP.

Anet killed all of it because it wasnt fair to PvE players who wanted AP and the skins from PvP but didnt want to put the time in. Then 2 years later with which i assume is a new group of employees.

They implement the very same thing they took away from the PvP community.

Thats my 2 cents, glad you enjoyed the jungle

kdaddy.5431:

@ Ryou.2398

Of course they have addressed these issues, it was putting a huge wall between players who play WvW- PvP and the PvE community.

Heres the thing you said it was my fault for doing PvP. When GW2 came out you could jump into any and play any at any time. If you had enough skill you could be a level 60 player in WvW who beats a level 80 player.

HOT made alot of things worse, never has anyone had a problem playing with another person. If i was in a area like ORR and my friend is level 50, we could still explore together. If i wanted to run back into PvP he could join me.

Guess what PvE has been completely separated from the PvP – WvW community. Which is why you see the threads you see in the PvP and WvW threads.

I have a ton of teleport to a friend and i used a few but guess what if i didnt have updraft, i couldnt play with them, no ley line gliding to bad you cant fight this champ with us, etc etc etc.

This was a expansion for everyone, new elite specs that were suppose to expand on PvP, a new WvW map and obviously a whole new map area and PS line.

3 things happened,

1) PvP and WvW got screwed.
Terrible metas that actually destroyed game play and build diversity.

2) You are punished for not playing PvE
Like i said the whole time, example after example. not only did Anet hide mastery points behind PvE but they also hid the new elite specs for PvE. Yes they have addressed those issues but the fact that Anet would screw over 2 groups with in there community says alot.

3) The Split of the community’s
There is a thread with a similar name which im sure we all are posting in. Once again you have people like Vayne.**** who talks about how Anet cant cater to groups and they have to play for the middle.

Yet they didnt play to the core casual player group with there 3 meta maps. Vayne talks about alot using the LFG tool and using outside resources to play the game. Which is not for the casual group at all and it takes away from just playing for fun. I now have to set up my fun, if the event isnt going on when im playing what else can i do? Join another map oh wait its another meta map and that map is full and im in the dead map.

Lets also make it so PvP and WvW players make a TON less money and have no way to the new skins in PvE. Once again they recently addressed this but man. If on Christmas me you and Tim wake up to see presents with only Ryou.2398 name on it. We are not gonna feel loved and for some reason many players just dont see that.

Anet isnt catering to the middle or trying to give everyone a little pc. We had the 4 maps only for a year. They just recently added the LS with the new maps, raids itself is like WvW and PvP in that they have there core groups who play and defend it.

Raids get way more attention then anything else right now.

WvW and PvP are dying within the game and its not some secret. Casual players are also not enjoying the game as much which is why you are seeing the questions, the core game is F2P which allows the population to still be some what good.

But the divide put on all 3 communitys come from the HOT ability to fairly reach all 3 and masterys/elite spec/ meta maps/ were all negative things that put those cracks into the game. Only now is HOT worth the price/hype it was selling nearly 2 years ago.

But all of your points come down to is this is more of a pve mmorpg then a pvp/wvw mmorpg, why should you be able to get skins that are in pve and get them in pvp hmmm? No one is being punished your just forced to do pve if you want those things, there are things pve players need to do in pvp as well and I do not see anyone complaining, There is no real division like you think, I know tons who do all kinds of content.

No one said anet needed to cater to all crowds for this expansion either.

Ryou.2398:

kdaddy.5431:

@ Ryou.2398

Of course they have addressed these issues, it was putting a huge wall between players who play WvW- PvP and the PvE community.

Heres the thing you said it was my fault for doing PvP. When GW2 came out you could jump into any and play any at any time. If you had enough skill you could be a level 60 player in WvW who beats a level 80 player.

HOT made alot of things worse, never has anyone had a problem playing with another person. If i was in a area like ORR and my friend is level 50, we could still explore together. If i wanted to run back into PvP he could join me.

Guess what PvE has been completely separated from the PvP – WvW community. Which is why you see the threads you see in the PvP and WvW threads.

I have a ton of teleport to a friend and i used a few but guess what if i didnt have updraft, i couldnt play with them, no ley line gliding to bad you cant fight this champ with us, etc etc etc.

This was a expansion for everyone, new elite specs that were suppose to expand on PvP, a new WvW map and obviously a whole new map area and PS line.

3 things happened,

1) PvP and WvW got screwed.
Terrible metas that actually destroyed game play and build diversity.

2) You are punished for not playing PvE
Like i said the whole time, example after example. not only did Anet hide mastery points behind PvE but they also hid the new elite specs for PvE. Yes they have addressed those issues but the fact that Anet would screw over 2 groups with in there community says alot.

3) The Split of the community’s
There is a thread with a similar name which im sure we all are posting in. Once again you have people like Vayne.**** who talks about how Anet cant cater to groups and they have to play for the middle.

Yet they didnt play to the core casual player group with there 3 meta maps. Vayne talks about alot using the LFG tool and using outside resources to play the game. Which is not for the casual group at all and it takes away from just playing for fun. I now have to set up my fun, if the event isnt going on when im playing what else can i do? Join another map oh wait its another meta map and that map is full and im in the dead map.

Lets also make it so PvP and WvW players make a TON less money and have no way to the new skins in PvE. Once again they recently addressed this but man. If on Christmas me you and Tim wake up to see presents with only Ryou.2398 name on it. We are not gonna feel loved and for some reason many players just dont see that.

Anet isnt catering to the middle or trying to give everyone a little pc. We had the 4 maps only for a year. They just recently added the LS with the new maps, raids itself is like WvW and PvP in that they have there core groups who play and defend it.

Raids get way more attention then anything else right now.

WvW and PvP are dying within the game and its not some secret. Casual players are also not enjoying the game as much which is why you are seeing the questions, the core game is F2P which allows the population to still be some what good.

But the divide put on all 3 communitys come from the HOT ability to fairly reach all 3 and masterys/elite spec/ meta maps/ were all negative things that put those cracks into the game. Only now is HOT worth the price/hype it was selling nearly 2 years ago.

But all of your points come down to is this is more of a pve mmorpg then a pvp/wvw mmorpg, why should you be able to get skins that are in pve and get them in pvp hmmm? No one is being punished your just forced to do pve if you want those things, there are things pve players need to do in pvp as well and I do not see anyone complaining, There is no real division like you think, I know tons who do all kinds of content.

No one said anet needed to cater to all crowds for this expansion either.

If you dont see pve players complaining about having to venture into PvP for certain things you are not looking. Gift of Battle access has been a common complaint for years.

Ashantara.8731:

Masteries per se were a great invention, if they hadn’t been so tightly locked to story progress in HoT. That ruined it for many, and calling people “lazy” because they have better things to do with their time than grinding XP and Mastery Points is quite impertinent. Furthermore, the fact that you won’t gain any more non-mastery XP unless you have all Masteries maxed is also an outrage, therefore I do understand people complaining about the status quo (even though Anet seems to have understood their own mistake and handled things better post-HoT).

P.S. I have all Masteries maxed, so you can’t say I was trying to “defend” a certain point of view because I was having trouble with the issue myself.

with the nerf you can hardly call them locked to anything

Ashen.2907:

Ryou.2398:

kdaddy.5431:

@ Ryou.2398

Of course they have addressed these issues, it was putting a huge wall between players who play WvW- PvP and the PvE community.

Heres the thing you said it was my fault for doing PvP. When GW2 came out you could jump into any and play any at any time. If you had enough skill you could be a level 60 player in WvW who beats a level 80 player.

HOT made alot of things worse, never has anyone had a problem playing with another person. If i was in a area like ORR and my friend is level 50, we could still explore together. If i wanted to run back into PvP he could join me.

Guess what PvE has been completely separated from the PvP – WvW community. Which is why you see the threads you see in the PvP and WvW threads.

I have a ton of teleport to a friend and i used a few but guess what if i didnt have updraft, i couldnt play with them, no ley line gliding to bad you cant fight this champ with us, etc etc etc.

This was a expansion for everyone, new elite specs that were suppose to expand on PvP, a new WvW map and obviously a whole new map area and PS line.

3 things happened,

1) PvP and WvW got screwed.
Terrible metas that actually destroyed game play and build diversity.

2) You are punished for not playing PvE
Like i said the whole time, example after example. not only did Anet hide mastery points behind PvE but they also hid the new elite specs for PvE. Yes they have addressed those issues but the fact that Anet would screw over 2 groups with in there community says alot.

3) The Split of the community’s
There is a thread with a similar name which im sure we all are posting in. Once again you have people like Vayne.**** who talks about how Anet cant cater to groups and they have to play for the middle.

Yet they didnt play to the core casual player group with there 3 meta maps. Vayne talks about alot using the LFG tool and using outside resources to play the game. Which is not for the casual group at all and it takes away from just playing for fun. I now have to set up my fun, if the event isnt going on when im playing what else can i do? Join another map oh wait its another meta map and that map is full and im in the dead map.

Lets also make it so PvP and WvW players make a TON less money and have no way to the new skins in PvE. Once again they recently addressed this but man. If on Christmas me you and Tim wake up to see presents with only Ryou.2398 name on it. We are not gonna feel loved and for some reason many players just dont see that.

Anet isnt catering to the middle or trying to give everyone a little pc. We had the 4 maps only for a year. They just recently added the LS with the new maps, raids itself is like WvW and PvP in that they have there core groups who play and defend it.

Raids get way more attention then anything else right now.

WvW and PvP are dying within the game and its not some secret. Casual players are also not enjoying the game as much which is why you are seeing the questions, the core game is F2P which allows the population to still be some what good.

But the divide put on all 3 communitys come from the HOT ability to fairly reach all 3 and masterys/elite spec/ meta maps/ were all negative things that put those cracks into the game. Only now is HOT worth the price/hype it was selling nearly 2 years ago.

But all of your points come down to is this is more of a pve mmorpg then a pvp/wvw mmorpg, why should you be able to get skins that are in pve and get them in pvp hmmm? No one is being punished your just forced to do pve if you want those things, there are things pve players need to do in pvp as well and I do not see anyone complaining, There is no real division like you think, I know tons who do all kinds of content.

No one said anet needed to cater to all crowds for this expansion either.

If you dont see pve players complaining about having to venture into PvP for certain things you are not looking. Gift of Battle access has been a common complaint for years.

Certainly not to high levels.

kdaddy.5431:

At level 60 we could get unique armors only to PvP.

There was no “unique armor”, just skins that fell through the cracks (almost all the sets were, and are, partially available in PVE). That’s why they disappeared from the game entirely when the wardrobe was introduced: they were never properly available in the game to begin with.

Also, if Anet had removed them for the reason you think they did, they’d have immediately implemented them properly in PVE instead of just sort of sitting on multiple armor sets for like three years.

The only true PVP armor was the Glorious set and its upgraded version.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

kdaddy.5431:

At level 60 we could get unique armors only to PvP.

There was no “unique armor”, just skins that fell through the cracks (almost all the sets were, and are, partially available in PVE). That’s why they disappeared from the game entirely when the wardrobe was introduced: they were never properly available in the game to begin with.

Also, if Anet had removed them for the reason you think they did, they’d have immediately implemented them properly in PVE instead of just sort of sitting on multiple armor sets for like three years.

The only true PVP armor was the Glorious set and its upgraded version.

The tribal armor was a unique drop for PvP that not many PvE players got.

Like you said the TOL armor which really only about 12 people have.

That still doesnt take away the titles and finishers which were handed out. It may seem that my complaints are getting off point but i really would just like to point out that the philosophy of Anet is never the same.

Right now raids, get there own unique rewards from bosses such as skins/ mini / titles / AP and the ability to craft legendary armor.

PvP had unique items which they made incredibly easy, WvW had even less items and they either got rid of the need to go in there or made it easier.

Even now masterys which are incredibly useful and in some cases needed to play PvE maps, are things you have to work towards in experience and grabbing icons around the map.

A really big reason WvW and PvP are dying is aside from the balance issues. Is that they are outsiders and are completely separated from the PvE/guild hall parts of the game. Even casual players struggle with the grind of meta maps and raids but they can still make lots of gold and farm. So even the casual player has something they can work towards, PvP and WvW rewards look like they are just handed to the PvE side.

1 way street are 1 way.

kdaddy.5431:

2) You are punished for not playing PvE
Like i said the whole time, example after example. not only did Anet hide mastery points behind PvE but they also hid the new elite specs for PvE. Yes they have addressed those issues but the fact that Anet would screw over 2 groups with in there community says alot.

For WvW players, yes, but the elite specialisations are unlocked for sPvP as soon as you have HoT activated on your account – you don’t need to unlock them through hero points.

draxynnic.3719:

kdaddy.5431:

2) You are punished for not playing PvE
Like i said the whole time, example after example. not only did Anet hide mastery points behind PvE but they also hid the new elite specs for PvE. Yes they have addressed those issues but the fact that Anet would screw over 2 groups with in there community says alot.

For WvW players, yes, but the elite specialisations are unlocked for sPvP as soon as you have HoT activated on your account – you don’t need to unlock them through hero points.

Of course but if you spend your first 10 hrs of play in PvP that means you are 10hrs behind your PvE friends.

So imagine you and your friends lets just 5 of them. You 6 buy HOT get your level 80 booster and jump into the game. You play a little bit and say we all meet up friday which will be 3 days away.

1 does WvW while waiting, 1 does PvP while waiting and the 4 others explore a little bit to get a head start.

Your 4 friends have some masterys unlocked elite specs unlocked and the WvW and PvP have nothing.

I have written this about 4-5 times in different fashions. If you are a casual gamer, you want to jump into a game and just explore with your friends. Enjoy the new content and potentially new abilities.

The new abilities create walls that need to be unlocked, another example is you start unlocking mushroom bouncing and or something else. Your friends have unlocked updraft and Ley line gliding, they now are doing events and bosses you cant.

It will now take a couple days for the WvW and PvP player to catch up. It is a problem if those 2 players prefer the other game modes.

Anet made everything base line. If you play X you can get X, HOT comes out and they scrap it all.

I prefer unlocking new abilities through overcoming challenges. The way this system was implemented led to stuff like people farming xp in CoF to max masteries. At least the mastery points required beating certain challenges, so it felt half engaging to me. I could live with the xp farming aspect of the mastery system being left out. And that way we start earning spirit shards again.

If you spend 10 hrs playing PvP while they’re spending 10 hrs playing PvE, then of course they’re going to be ahead. Any form of progression vertical or horizontal, is going to require you to do things that provide that progress.

It also goes both ways. If they turned around and joined you in PvP instead of you joining them in PvE, they’d be behind you too. It may not be obvious in the mechanics the way it is in PvE, but you’d have ten hours of experience of how the new elite specialisations operate in a PvP environment and how to counter them that they don’t have.

It sounds like your main issue is with essentially being locked out of content because you don’t have the masteries yet… and that’s something I’d agree with. Itzel Poison Mastery is probably my least favourite mastery from a design perspective for exactly this reason – there’s no mechanic to interact with, it just means that regions that you couldn’t enter before because they’d kill you, now do absolutely nothing to you because you’re somehow immune to what used to be deadly poison (you’re carrying a set of Itzel antidotes or something? That only work against environmental poisons, not anything an enemy might inflict you with?).

For most of the rest… I would agree that masteries in general should just make it easier to do something, rather than be a total lockout.

That said, there is an argument to be made for having an equivalent to Proofs of Heroics in sPvP (or even just port them over directly, so you can earn Proofs of Heroics in sPvP). One could even consider the possibility of using Proofs of Heroics to earn mastery points in the same way as hero points (you ‘buy’ the point, and a random point in the world is counted as completed), although it would probably have to be limited to the channel points and maybe the strongboxes.

If you spent a few days in pvp while your friends spent that time in pve, how would you expect to join them in Orr, or a later game dungeon, or anything of the sort?

Ashen.2907:

If you spent a few days in pvp while your friends spent that time in pve, how would you expect to join them in Orr, or a later game dungeon, or anything of the sort?

Teleport to a friend, also being on the same map as another player allows you to enter the dungeon without actually being near the dungeon, fractals are in LA and PvP and WvW are open to everyone.

This is why i said HOT locked content behind masterys, our guild is fighting the dragon in DS or VB and you dont have updraft. Sorry you cant play with us, you will die after 1 phase.

draxynnic.3719:

If you spend 10 hrs playing PvP while they’re spending 10 hrs playing PvE, then of course they’re going to be ahead. Any form of progression vertical or horizontal, is going to require you to do things that provide that progress.

It also goes both ways. If they turned around and joined you in PvP instead of you joining them in PvE, they’d be behind you too. It may not be obvious in the mechanics the way it is in PvE, but you’d have ten hours of experience of how the new elite specialisations operate in a PvP environment and how to counter them that they don’t have.

It sounds like your main issue is with essentially being locked out of content because you don’t have the masteries yet… and that’s something I’d agree with. Itzel Poison Mastery is probably my least favourite mastery from a design perspective for exactly this reason – there’s no mechanic to interact with, it just means that regions that you couldn’t enter before because they’d kill you, now do absolutely nothing to you because you’re somehow immune to what used to be deadly poison (you’re carrying a set of Itzel antidotes or something? That only work against environmental poisons, not anything an enemy might inflict you with?).

For most of the rest… I would agree that masteries in general should just make it easier to do something, rather than be a total lockout.

That said, there is an argument to be made for having an equivalent to Proofs of Heroics in sPvP (or even just port them over directly, so you can earn Proofs of Heroics in sPvP). One could even consider the possibility of using Proofs of Heroics to earn mastery points in the same way as hero points (you ‘buy’ the point, and a random point in the world is counted as completed), although it would probably have to be limited to the channel points and maybe the strongboxes.

Exactly, the OP tried to make it sound as if masterys were super awesome and gave some great reward system.

I just wanted to point out that PvP- WvW were left behind if they wanted to try new content with friends.

And that the masterys were not new, like if there was a boss to teach you something or a mini dungeon. Where you had to complete the dungeon to unlock a ability.

HOT literally said earn XP to unlock mastery’s. To unlock masterys you need mastery points. T o play PvE content you need to unlock high levels of masterys.

Its like buying a omelet and seeing all the ingredients you can add to it. Except to add vegetables you must wear a cape. You didnt know you needed a cape, the cook says they are on the 6th floor. You come back with a cape and ask for vegetables and he only gives you mushrooms. You ask why you cant have other types, the cook says you need a mask on floor 11. Floor 11 is under construction and must find a alternative route.

I just want a omelet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This example might not be the best but i swinging for the fences.

Ashen.2907:

If you spent a few days in pvp while your friends spent that time in pve, how would you expect to join them in Orr, or a later game dungeon, or anything of the sort?

Use the bug in Bloodtide Coast to get to Straits of Devestation directly. lol

grind is fine. having to play game modes I dont care for so much

a story i can’t complete because i need X mastery unlocked is exactly the reason why it’s flawed, i never heard of a single game or book that makes you do something completely unrelated to the story just to continue the story.
also, using masteries to lock down a simple basic feature is just down right lame, it just shows how much they want to force mastery grind in our throat.
worse even, since they are not gonna release anything useful anytime soon they just use masteries to keep ppl busy, kinda the same effect as using fillers in an anime show because they don’t have the rest completed.

sorudo.9054:

a story i can’t complete because i need X mastery unlocked is exactly the reason why it’s flawed, i never heard of a single game or book that makes you do something completely unrelated to the story just to continue the story.

Did you play the original GW NIghtfall as an Elonian character? When you get to the story quest “And a Hero Shall Lead Them,” Elonian characters need to attain the General Rank in the Sunspear Rank Title Track to qualify to continue the story. Depending on what you did prior to that point in the game, that might or might not be more involved than getting a particular Mastery.

sorudo.9054:

a story i can’t complete because i need X mastery unlocked is exactly the reason why it’s flawed, i never heard of a single game or book that makes you do something completely unrelated to the story just to continue the story.
also, using masteries to lock down a simple basic feature is just down right lame, it just shows how much they want to force mastery grind in our throat.
worse even, since they are not gonna release anything useful anytime soon they just use masteries to keep ppl busy, kinda the same effect as using fillers in an anime show because they don’t have the rest completed.

I’m sorry? What do you have to do that is completely unrelated to the story to advance the story.

Considering that you need 6 mastery points to get every mastery you need to complete the HoT story, and you get 1 point for every story chapter you do, this statement doesn’t make sense to me.

In VB alone, marked on the map, are 9 mastery insights clearly marked on both the map, and in the achievement point area of your hero panel. To unlock masteries, you need to do the first story which gives you your first point. That’ means you need 5 more mastery points.

One of them is an easy commune on a branch, right at the beginning of the zone. that let’s you train both gliding and mushroom jumping. If you were doing just the story, you’d have to train those things in order to progress, but each story you progress through gives you another mastery point.

The only thing you can really be complaining about then is experience.

Well, I don’t know about you, but when I originally played this game, if I did nothing but story, I was too low a level to continue and sometimes had to stop to get experience in completely unrelated hearts and dynamic events to be a high enough level to get to the next story step.

To be clear, you don’t have to do a single adventure, or a single achievement other than very easy communes in the open world clearly marked on the map, and the story itself to do the story, all the way through.

I should also point out this wasn’t the case at launch, because you originally needed Itzel poison lore as well, but that was changed very very early on.

I know in Guild Wars 1, there was a point in the Factions story where I had to stop the story to do a bunch or random events to get the luxons or kurzicks to trust me, and this is really no different.

Aside from that you’re assuming the story is all in instances, which isn’t really true, since half the story takes place in the zones themselves.

Edited for…math lol

IndigoSundown.5419:

Did you play the original GW NIghtfall as an Elonian character? When you get to the story quest “And a Hero Shall Lead Them,” Elonian characters need to attain the General Rank in the Sunspear Rank Title Track to qualify to continue the story. Depending on what you did prior to that point in the game, that might or might not be more involved than getting a particular Mastery.

I played GW Nightfall with my first GW1 character almost 9 years ago, and I remember it well. I activated every shrine on Istan, I made every quest on Istan. When I was required to have some Sunspear rank, I simply had it. The game was designed in a way that when I play all the available content, my character level and Sunspear rank was just right. I didn’t have to explicitly farm XP or rank points. If you didn’t had enough points, you could look for quests you skipped – available content you skipped or did not find until then.
That was good design back then. It made you searching for and playing through the contents once. Perhaps cleaning a map once more to catch up with the points if you skipped too much, but not grinding stuff over and over again like in GW2.

kdaddy.5431:

draxynnic.3719:

If you spend 10 hrs playing PvP while they’re spending 10 hrs playing PvE, then of course they’re going to be ahead. Any form of progression vertical or horizontal, is going to require you to do things that provide that progress.

It also goes both ways. If they turned around and joined you in PvP instead of you joining them in PvE, they’d be behind you too. It may not be obvious in the mechanics the way it is in PvE, but you’d have ten hours of experience of how the new elite specialisations operate in a PvP environment and how to counter them that they don’t have.

It sounds like your main issue is with essentially being locked out of content because you don’t have the masteries yet… and that’s something I’d agree with. Itzel Poison Mastery is probably my least favourite mastery from a design perspective for exactly this reason – there’s no mechanic to interact with, it just means that regions that you couldn’t enter before because they’d kill you, now do absolutely nothing to you because you’re somehow immune to what used to be deadly poison (you’re carrying a set of Itzel antidotes or something? That only work against environmental poisons, not anything an enemy might inflict you with?).

For most of the rest… I would agree that masteries in general should just make it easier to do something, rather than be a total lockout.

That said, there is an argument to be made for having an equivalent to Proofs of Heroics in sPvP (or even just port them over directly, so you can earn Proofs of Heroics in sPvP). One could even consider the possibility of using Proofs of Heroics to earn mastery points in the same way as hero points (you ‘buy’ the point, and a random point in the world is counted as completed), although it would probably have to be limited to the channel points and maybe the strongboxes.

Exactly, the OP tried to make it sound as if masterys were super awesome and gave some great reward system.

I just wanted to point out that PvP- WvW were left behind if they wanted to try new content with friends.

And that the masterys were not new, like if there was a boss to teach you something or a mini dungeon. Where you had to complete the dungeon to unlock a ability.

HOT literally said earn XP to unlock mastery’s. To unlock masterys you need mastery points. T o play PvE content you need to unlock high levels of masterys.

Its like buying a omelet and seeing all the ingredients you can add to it. Except to add vegetables you must wear a cape. You didnt know you needed a cape, the cook says they are on the 6th floor. You come back with a cape and ask for vegetables and he only gives you mushrooms. You ask why you cant have other types, the cook says you need a mask on floor 11. Floor 11 is under construction and must find a alternative route.

I just want a omelet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This example might not be the best but i swinging for the fences.

First of all I did not try to make it sound like anything, your giving a clear biased opinion because you chose to do different content then doing pve knowing your friends where doing this first. I never claimed it was perfect I said it was good, it is only your opinion that it is bad, now maybe at the start it was not very good but it is a new concept and obviously they did not expect some of those flaws seeing it live.

In the end it is not half as bad as you try to make it sound, if anyone is trying to make it sound like something here it is you.

Silmar Alech.4305:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Did you play the original GW NIghtfall as an Elonian character? When you get to the story quest “And a Hero Shall Lead Them,” Elonian characters need to attain the General Rank in the Sunspear Rank Title Track to qualify to continue the story. Depending on what you did prior to that point in the game, that might or might not be more involved than getting a particular Mastery.

I played GW Nightfall with my first GW1 character almost 9 years ago, and I remember it well. I activated every shrine on Istan, I made every quest on Istan. When I was required to have some Sunspear rank, I simply had it. The game was designed in a way that when I play all the available content, my character level and Sunspear rank was just right. I didn’t have to explicitly farm XP or rank points. If you didn’t had enough points, you could look for quests you skipped – available content you skipped or did not find until then.

That was good design back then. It made you searching for and playing through the contents once. Perhaps cleaning a map once more to catch up with the points if you skipped too much, but not grinding stuff over and over again like in GW2.

On my Dervish, I skipped a lot of the side quests, and needed to grind a whole lot of Sunspear Points to be able to proceed. In HoT, I found no grind at all in getting the Masteries needed to follow the story.