Guild Wars 2

In less than 3 weeks, I’ve hit the wall with GW2 HoT, tired of the long Meta Events, sick of 75% of the maps and way points being contested. It’s just run like hell from one event to another, it’s getting old way to fast, Even Orr is relaxing compared to this!

GW2 with HoT is becoming too much of a twitch game for me.

How many hours have you played over the past 3 weeks?

HoT=burnout is frequently a symptom of getting a high or maximimum mastery level in the short period after the expansion’s release.

It’s not burn out, there’s just no content there. No new fractals, just 4 zones, a 2-4 hr shallow story. It really is 1-2 weeks worth of content.

Once your done with your elite spec and got your armor pieces from the TWO new sets (yep that’s all), there is nothing left to do.

I agree. I beat the story today and have been doing events, and feel like i’m getting nowhere. I want the bladed armor set for my engineer but I’m not getting gears very much at all, and the leveling is SOOOOOO slow. I’ve been level 13 mastery all day. I don’t understand the point of this mad grind, it burns you out.

I’ve gotten a bit burned out too and I haven’t been grinding for eternity. I just find the maps to be a bit too chaotic for me- in Orr the mobs were spread out and there were some areas you could just chill in. I also find it very hard to even map the new areas out on even one character. Just not my cup of tea I guess.

In less than three weeks, I’ve enjoyed exploring the new maps, testing different builds with the new specs, doing a minimal amount of events, making some easy money off people who have to have everything now, and working on a few achievements. I haven’t really experienced any stress or burnout thus far, and I don’t intend to.

Don’t make things a grind. Play for fun and do what you enjoy. And change things up. Even if what you enjoy is map meta events, running them all day every day is bound to get boring.

lol
When it started I played about an hour then got onto Halloween and haven’t been back =)

Zodryn.4216:

In less than three weeks, I’ve enjoyed exploring the new maps, testing different builds with the new specs, doing a minimal amount of events, making some easy money off people who have to have everything now, and working on a few achievements. I haven’t really experienced any stress or burnout thus far, and I don’t intend to.

Don’t make things a grind. Play for fun and do what you enjoy. And change things up. Even if what you enjoy is map meta events, running them all day every day is bound to get boring.

I’d say the worst thing is that masteries are a meta-event grind. You simply can’t get them by farming mobs (dare you to try), and unfortunately you can’t choose to level HoT masteries while playing vanilla maps doing random other things to mix up gameplay… plus mastery XP scales pretty insanely per level. So if you want to get anywhere with collections/masteries/HoT progress, you really do have to be on the maps doing meta-events 24/7… =/

glad that i did not buy HoT yet, ok make kitten harder and on top of that the new maps are very iregular and you need to “glide” seriously….. im intrested only in ranger and guardian, druid just dumb only worthless healing skills, dragonhunter is “meh” traps traps traps not realy worth anything in pvp or wvw, Talking about wvw the new maps are realy bad wich 90% killed wvw at least in my server, fractals? same boring thing as before, dosent realy worth doing higher level fractals since the rewards are bad at all levels. Grind for new skills that I want to get if I buy HoT? no thx.New legendaries? dungen gold nerfed so pointless.

Only things I liked so far are the new tonics, the new ranger pet, and the guild hall. But I wont buy HoT just for that, those things should be in the Vanilla game in the first place and some tipe of GvG with a global map with castles, so team pvp in this game would mean something.

Swift.1930:

Zodryn.4216:

In less than three weeks, I’ve enjoyed exploring the new maps, testing different builds with the new specs, doing a minimal amount of events, making some easy money off people who have to have everything now, and working on a few achievements. I haven’t really experienced any stress or burnout thus far, and I don’t intend to.

Don’t make things a grind. Play for fun and do what you enjoy. And change things up. Even if what you enjoy is map meta events, running them all day every day is bound to get boring.

I’d say the worst thing is that masteries are a meta-event grind. You simply can’t get them by farming mobs (dare you to try), and unfortunately you can’t choose to level HoT masteries while playing vanilla maps doing random other things to mix up gameplay… plus mastery XP scales pretty insanely per level. So if you want to get anywhere with collections/masteries/HoT progress, you really do have to be on the maps doing meta-events 24/7… =/

I did try. As I mentioned, I’ve done a minimal amount of events (read: less than ten in three weeks), and I have all the masteries I need at the moment, and bladed armor. Three more and the only ones I’ll have left are basically fluff masteries. Events are actually just average experience sources. I get plenty from helping people with HP challenges, occaisional mob farming, accidentally tagging events as I wander, story rewards, etc.

Am I rank 161? No. But who cares? I have all I need to fully explore the maps, work on map vendor stuff and enjoy myself, and the rest will come eventually. If it takes me six months to get to 161, but I am still playing and having fun, doesn’t that beat the guy who got 161 in three weeks and quit because he got burned out on grinding?

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

So of course you’re burnt out, anyone with a pulse should be burnt out. The content presented in HoT is nothing more than four maps and a new system that displays a yellow bar that fills up slowly. Bottom line, it’s a glorified feature pack. Unless you find that watching bars fill up excites you, it’s normal to be burnt out.

AIex.4105:

glad that i did not buy HoT yet, ok make kitten harder and on top of that the new maps are very iregular and you need to “glide” seriously….. im intrested only in ranger and guardian, druid just dumb only worthless healing skills, dragonhunter is “meh” traps traps traps not realy worth anything in pvp or wvw, Talking about wvw the new maps are realy bad wich 90% killed wvw at least in my server, fractals? same boring thing as before, dosent realy worth doing higher level fractals since the rewards are bad at all levels. Grind for new skills that I want to get if I buy HoT? no thx.New legendaries? dungen gold nerfed so pointless.

Only things I liked so far are the new tonics, the new ranger pet, and the guild hall. But I wont buy HoT just for that, those things should be in the Vanilla game in the first place and some tipe of GvG with a global map with castles, so team pvp in this game would mean something.

Curious, because I’d say that dragonhunter is my favorite part of the update. I’ve got concerns about the forced replacement of virtue skills, but I’m living with that because dragonhunter longbow skills and traps are an extremely fun evolution of the guardian’s normal gameplay.

On the downside, revenants are nowhere near as fun as ritualists were… even with a full elite spec. Really miss weapon enchantments, spirits, channels, and urn skills. Pretty much everything that made a ritualist. Quite a sad replacement, since rit was my GW1 main (although I guess revenants would have been called ritualists if they were supposed to be identical).

But is it fun?

That is, after all, how ArenaNet measures success.

Majic.4801:

But is it fun?

That is, after all, how ArenaNet measures success.

I think a big problem is that Anet gives us a choice on how we progress. In Metroid, if I want the grapple beam, I beat a specific boss. To get to that boss I have to get other power ups from other places and play through chunks of the game. In HoT, if I want updrafts I get experience. I could beat challenges, do adventures, progress throught the story, help others etc. I could also grind my brains out doing one thing. It’s the equivalent of Nintendo letting you buy every upgrade from a shop in Zelda, and players farming grass for hours to buy everything instead of actually playing the game. Is it fun? That’s up to you, because Anet gave you a choice.

Zodryn.4216:

Majic.4801:

But is it fun?

That is, after all, how ArenaNet measures success.

I think a big problem is that Anet gives us a choice on how we progress. In Metroid, if I want the grapple beam, I beat a specific boss. To get to that boss I have to get other power ups from other places and play through chunks of the game. In HoT, if I want updrafts I get experience. I could beat challenges, do adventures, progress throught the story, help others etc. I could also grind my brains out doing one thing. It’s the equivalent of Nintendo letting you buy every upgrade from a shop in Zelda, and players farming grass for hours to buy everything instead of actually playing the game. Is it fun? That’s up to you, because Anet gave you a choice.

On the flipside, it’s a choice without heart. For instance, learning Nuhoch language simply takes killing monsters rather than attempting to talk to Nuhoch. Learning to jump on mushrooms should be something you gain xp for by trying mushrooms over and over (and until you gain a level, your jumps can be completely off-target or something) rather than, again, killing things. Sure, you have a choice, but it’s 1) not an intelligent choice and 2) ends up being more a chore than a choice, because unlike attempting to level multiple skills to level 1, you’re leveling tiers of mastery that cause the next level (even if it’s something completely unrelated) to take twice as long.

One thing that I thought was good about GW2 originally was that to learn new skills on your weapons, you killed enemies with them. It didn’t take a very long time to unlock them, but it was still a progression that encouraged experimentation. (Flip side to everything, though – I still feel that weapon skills were a bit of a cop-out compared to the GW1 skill system.)

Just curious Sola, how many hours have you been putting in each day for the past three weeks? I’ve finished the story and gone through all the maps, although I still very much enjoy them. I still have to work on masteries though and still have to unlock all the elite specs.

I legitimately think the worst thing for MMO’s are players who play the game every day for hours on end after a release. If you play 4+ hours a day for weeks of an expansion, you’re going to very quickly get bored/hit the wall. I haven’t had the opportunity to play every day for long periods of time, so to me the expansion is still very much enjoyable.

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

I mean, that’s a viable way of leveling a skill… it’s not a bypass. As the game currently stands, you can stand in one corner and bash a single dinosaur over the head until you unlock every single mastery.

If you want to slow down masteries presented in that fashion, you just need to make sure the people can only gain, for instance, a certain number points in a mastery level from a single NPC or mushroom per day. They can always come back and do it again tomorrow, but if they want it quicker they will need to seek out other NPCs/mushrooms. Gliding would be slightly trickier, but I see nothing wrong with a “total flight time” being the requirement. Makes a lot of sense for glider players, and also encourages using gliders more.

So here’s the real question: why don’t the Guild Wars 2 devs seem to care that the leveling system is completely detached from the actual masteries? I could be leveling mushroom jumping without ever even SEEING a mushroom. By hitting a dinosaur with a pointy stick. In that abandoned little corner you mentioned.

Swift.1930:

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

I mean, that’s a viable way of leveling a skill… it’s not a bypass. As the game currently stands, you can stand in one corner and bash a single dinosaur over the head until you unlock every single mastery.

If you want to slow down masteries presented in that fashion, you just need to make sure the people can only gain, for instance, a certain number points in a mastery level from a single NPC or mushroom per day. They can always come back and do it again tomorrow, but if they want it quicker they will need to seek out other NPCs/mushrooms. Gliding would be slightly trickier, but I see nothing wrong with a “total flight time” being the requirement. Makes a lot of sense for glider players, and also encourages using gliders more.

So here’s the real question: why don’t the Guild Wars 2 devs seem to care that the leveling system is completely detached from the actual masteries? I could be leveling mushroom jumping without ever even SEEING a mushroom. By hitting a dinosaur with a pointy stick. In that abandoned little corner you mentioned.

Thumbs up mate, you’re getting the issue. I thought the Masteries sounded cool, I kinda regretted that when I saw the jumps in exp in-between masteries.

I’m just glad raiding is being added tomorrow. Not sure how I feel about them also adding raid masteries but.. hum. At least something else to do in the new zones other than grinding meta-events, because that is kind of all you can do.

It is nice with the new strongboxes. Other options than having to do JPs to get Empyreal Fragments.

I prefer playing the game to level bouncing mushrooms over jumping on a mushroom 40 times.

Wahaha.7938:

I prefer playing the game to level bouncing mushrooms over jumping on a mushroom 40 times.

Yeah… If by playing the game you mean it really like that, instead of grinding the same most proftiable enemy/-ies or events over and over and over, which would result in basically the same as jumping on a mushroom xx times. Or a better solution would simply be to give both options.

Based on my experience, you can easily do a 100% map completion on central tyria in less than 50 hours, so if you play 7 hours / day, you should be able to finish everything in just 1 week.

I agree though that it gets boring after a while, mainly because they killed dungeons and fractals. I usually just afk on new maps everyday after 200% participation just to get the map tokens. My progress seems to be really slow after the expansion.

Sola.7250:

In less than 3 weeks, I’ve hit the wall with GW2 HoT, tired of the long Meta Events, sick of 75% of the maps and way points being contested. It’s just run like hell from one event to another, it’s getting old way to fast, Even Orr is relaxing compared to this!

It seems, you burned through the game/content too fast.

When the game started, I wanted to have gliding at max level. So I tried to grind XP as efficient as possible. It was not always fun. But after I got it, I started to play more relaxed and only doing the “fun” (for me) things. And I noticed, the XP still flows in and fills my XP-bar.

Your burnout seems to be a result of the pressure you put on yourself. So, take it slow, play something different (or nothing at all) and relax.

Have you been doing all the adventures? They’re varied and pretty challenging.

I had it too here is just quick medicine for that. Download free WoW and play it for 5 hours and then come back. You will se that problem will solve himself:-P

Sola.7250:

In less than 3 weeks, I’ve hit the wall with GW2 HoT, tired of the long Meta Events, sick of 75% of the maps and way points being contested. It’s just run like hell from one event to another, it’s getting old way to fast, Even Orr is relaxing compared to this!

GW2 with HoT is becoming too much of a twitch game for me.

Anet has no idea it’s killing its own game.

Dragon Stand events? Not anymore – not since the first two weeks…. so few and more are in the lower maps if at all, some times of day.

If they had made the new maps as easy to “start” as Silverwastes, as in clearing an area, it would be succeeding.

As it is, 15 people to start a map event might as well be a million even with 30+ on EVERY map.

Anet has no idea how to manage its own game.

Period.

Swift.1930:

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

I mean, that’s a viable way of leveling a skill… it’s not a bypass. As the game currently stands, you can stand in one corner and bash a single dinosaur over the head until you unlock every single mastery.

If you want to slow down masteries presented in that fashion, you just need to make sure the people can only gain, for instance, a certain number points in a mastery level from a single NPC or mushroom per day. They can always come back and do it again tomorrow, but if they want it quicker they will need to seek out other NPCs/mushrooms. Gliding would be slightly trickier, but I see nothing wrong with a “total flight time” being the requirement. Makes a lot of sense for glider players, and also encourages using gliders more.

So here’s the real question: why don’t the Guild Wars 2 devs seem to care that the leveling system is completely detached from the actual masteries? I could be leveling mushroom jumping without ever even SEEING a mushroom. By hitting a dinosaur with a pointy stick. In that abandoned little corner you mentioned.

That’s another problem though: Time-gating.

GW2 players don’t like Time-gating, so sadly your solution would get as much flack as the current one because players couldn’t do it all in one day.

It’s rock and a hard place, this community can’t be pleased. It’s spoiled rotten and beyond help, nothing ANet will do or can do is going to change that.

Y’know, I think I got burned out before HoT was released. ANet may have announced the expansion a little too early or spent a little too long talking about all the neat new features every week, but I lost most of my enthusiasm by the launch date.

Without the rose-tinted glasses of enthusiasm, the flaws in design and bugs just stood out that much more.

The biggest mistake anet made was tearing dungeons apart without a proper replacement. They went on and on about how they wanted to make fractals the go to dungeon-like content and then they kitten all over fractals. They made them boring and tedious, not hard just tedious and to top that off they killed the rewards. They went on and on about the new WvW map and how rewarding it would be and then within the first week they nerfed the rewards. The worst thing for a game is when an economist has the authority to break a game, the economy should be healthy, but you shouldn’t make the game less fun to accomplish that.

It’s one of the reasons why I did not buy the expansion: I useually play for like 30 – 40 minutes, 3 or 4 times a day. Which makes about 2 hours a day. But given the map mechanics in HoT you can’t do anything in 30 – 40 minutes.

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

How can you possibly refer to the Masteries as “the long-term horizontal progression” when many have capped already.

Yes, they played 24/7 but even so that makes it ‘long term = 3 weeks’.

Wahaha.7938:

I prefer playing the game to level bouncing mushrooms over jumping on a mushroom 40 times.

Grinding spiders or whatever else most of those with capped Masteries killed endlessly isn’t “playing the game” any more than what he suggested.

MMOs are all about arbitrary goals and just doing what you like. GW2 has a crap load of those things You have to figure out what YOU want to go for. Armor or weapon skin? Ascended? Legendary? Map completion Achievements? WvW? SPvP? PvE? Guild hall completion? No one is forcing you to play, and complaining will get you nowhere.

I believe it resembles more like an old zelda title playstyle rather than a metroidvania. Since you’ve got relatively nore freedom than metroid games but maybe less than the first Zelda for SNES. I find it amusing. Btw…. I just run with a lvl 58 toon from the silverwastes to dragon stand, it’s really fun! But ypu get 1 shot KO’es by anything xD

Swift.1930:

Zodryn.4216:

In less than three weeks, I’ve enjoyed exploring the new maps, testing different builds with the new specs, doing a minimal amount of events, making some easy money off people who have to have everything now, and working on a few achievements. I haven’t really experienced any stress or burnout thus far, and I don’t intend to.

Don’t make things a grind. Play for fun and do what you enjoy. And change things up. Even if what you enjoy is map meta events, running them all day every day is bound to get boring.

I’d say the worst thing is that masteries are a meta-event grind. You simply can’t get them by farming mobs (dare you to try), and unfortunately you can’t choose to level HoT masteries while playing vanilla maps doing random other things to mix up gameplay… plus mastery XP scales pretty insanely per level. So if you want to get anywhere with collections/masteries/HoT progress, you really do have to be on the maps doing meta-events 24/7… =/

Actually, you can get them from farming mobs while doing meta events. Probably over 90% of the XP that I earned came from things that I killed.

lordhelmos.7623:

It’s not burn out, there’s just no content there. No new fractals, just 4 zones, a 2-4 hr shallow story. It really is 1-2 weeks worth of content.

Once your done with your elite spec and got your armor pieces from the TWO new sets (yep that’s all), there is nothing left to do.

Swift.1930:

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

I mean, that’s a viable way of leveling a skill… it’s not a bypass. As the game currently stands, you can stand in one corner and bash a single dinosaur over the head until you unlock every single mastery.

If you want to slow down masteries presented in that fashion, you just need to make sure the people can only gain, for instance, a certain number points in a mastery level from a single NPC or mushroom per day. They can always come back and do it again tomorrow, but if they want it quicker they will need to seek out other NPCs/mushrooms. Gliding would be slightly trickier, but I see nothing wrong with a “total flight time” being the requirement. Makes a lot of sense for glider players, and also encourages using gliders more.

So here’s the real question: why don’t the Guild Wars 2 devs seem to care that the leveling system is completely detached from the actual masteries? I could be leveling mushroom jumping without ever even SEEING a mushroom. By hitting a dinosaur with a pointy stick. In that abandoned little corner you mentioned.

But it is a bypass. The whole point of Masteries was to provide a long-term horizontal progression once you hit 80. If all it took was 40 mushrooms to master mushroom jumping mastery, someone would literally just keep using the same mushroom over and over until they unlocked it. That wouldn’t take very long. Okay, so you say you limit a mushroom to once per day. Okay, fine. But then you get people complaining on the forums that Anet is “gating” content again by forcing you to wait a whole day per mushroom. You end up in the same scenario where people don’t like the situation, much like yourself. Another issue is, it would be very easy to reach the 40 mushroom requirement, even if it was once per day per mushroom. So once again, you hit the issue of masteries being cleared in a few hours/days after launch.

Okay, so let’s say hypothetically you raise the cap to 200 mushrooms. Now that’s a grind, because every day I have to make sure I jump on every mushroom I see, whereas before I could just do whatever I wanted in the new maps and reach the same goal. Same principle with NPCs. You would once again end up with people complaining about the system on the forum. Sure, getting xp to jump on mushrooms has nothing to do with physically jumping on mushrooms, but it’s a smart way of making sure masteries take a while, while at the same time not restricting you to what you can do to level it.

Sure, I could just sit in one corner of the map and bash a pocket raptor over the head over and over again for masteries. However the difference between the current system and yours is that you would literally have to be insane to do that in the current system because you would receive so little xp. Thus, you don’t have incentive to sit in one corner bashing a dino’s head because it would literally take months/years. However, with your system (assuming no daily cap) you have incentive to sit in one corner, constantly jumping on one mushroom.

So once again, I’ll ask the question. What is a viable way of attaining mushroom jumping through physically interacting with the mushrooms, while making sure it isn’t easily cleared, and without being too repetitive or limiting? Or any other mastery similar to it? Unless of course, you forsake the whole idea of masteries being long-term progression, in which case you just go with what you proposed. However, that’s not Anet’s goal with masteries, so the point is moot.

If someone can come up with a reasonable way to accomplish all those goals and implement it well, then Anet messed up on their part. I have yet to see such a reasonable way.

People playing the pedal to the metal shouldn’t really feel legitimate to complain about being burnt after having burn the content. The rhythm and variation in activity is up to us players…

If you read the OP, instead of assuming, it’s kind of obvious that he’s talking primarily about the stressfulness of the new zones. The only real downtime is the forced downtime in-between metas, but even then, there are very few areas of the map that won’t get you killed by mobs for standing around.

If you find intensity relaxing, the HoT maps will be very relaxing for you. If you find intensity to be draining, then HoT are one big, ongoing stressfest.

There’s a reason I find myself going to DR or LA to bank stuff and empty bags, and it’s not just because of the lack of banks and TP in HoT zones.

I’m just doing the masteries so I can get the mistward armor bits from the vendors in AB and TD, then the only time I’ll be going near HoT will be for story for my alts, and maybe HP if I can be bothered, and for the next LS. I wasn’t a fan of DT or SW, so the HoT maps are just meh for me. I get no enjoyment from zerging from event to event. The challenges I don’t find fun. The whole thing with Raids being given XP and gold buffs when it’s the new thing, smacks of desperation to get people to play it.

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

So of course you’re burnt out, anyone with a pulse should be burnt out. The content presented in HoT is nothing more than four maps and a new system that displays a yellow bar that fills up slowly. Bottom line, it’s a glorified feature pack. Unless you find that watching bars fill up excites you, it’s normal to be burnt out.

Congrats on discovering that all video games are basically pointless time wastes of slowly making imaginary numbers larger. If this is actually news to you, maybe you need to graduate from the 5th grade first before coming back to the forums.

Honestly its becoming very clear that people complaining on the forums really want a single player game like Skyrim or Fallout and NOT an MMO. The essence of the MMO is grind and repetition, something many people enjoy. If you do not enjoy the repetition go play a different genre, also if you think GW2 is bad for grind PLEASE PLEASE do not go and ruin someone elses MMO like FF14 or WoW since you will discover they are in an entirely different league of true grind. FF14 in HW requires you to run the SAME dungeon ten times for about an hour each time (if skilled) to get a single level, of ten. Then you do the same thing over and over through a couple different dungeons until you hit max level at which point you graduate to grinding Raids or mini-Raids to get items so that you CAN DO IT AGAIN for the next content patch.

displacedTitan.6897:

Congrats on discovering that all video games are basically pointless time wastes of slowly making imaginary numbers larger. If this is actually news to you, maybe you need to graduate from the 5th grade first before coming back to the forums.

Honestly its becoming very clear that people complaining on the forums really want a single player game like Skyrim or Fallout and NOT an MMO. The essence of the MMO is grind and repetition, something many people enjoy. If you do not enjoy the repetition go play a different genre, also if you think GW2 is bad for grind PLEASE PLEASE do not go and ruin someone elses MMO like FF14 or WoW since you will discover they are in an entirely different league of true grind. FF14 in HW requires you to run the SAME dungeon ten times for about an hour each time (if skilled) to get a single level, of ten. Then you do the same thing over and over through a couple different dungeons until you hit max level at which point you graduate to grinding Raids or mini-Raids to get items so that you CAN DO IT AGAIN for the next content patch.

Nope. Try again.

I agree with OP, the expansion burned me out from the whole game, I was content before HoT, farming boss, fractal, dungeons…but now I just don’t have the motivation or energy to play this game anymore. I have moved on to Fallout 4 and I’m not sure I want to come back, Hot left a bad taste in my mouth.

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

Zelkovan.2630:

Swift.1930:

EsarioOne.9840:

I’m seeing alot of discussion about how mastery relates to burn out, that’s not the case.
Mastery = Millions of experience
Millions of experience = time buffer so people don’t realize the mastery system is non-beneficial and shallow character progression.
At its core, mastery is just something to keep consumers occupied. You aren’t doing anything original or unique. It’d be a different story if the player actually learned the itzel language (etc.) by doing related activities.

Ah, I just made a comment to this effect on another post – you’re exactly right; if mastery was related to trying to do the things you are mastering, it would make sense and wouldn’t be a 9999999999999999XP grind (which is a lot of veteran spiders, by the way). Like trying out jumping mushrooms ~40 times before it actually takes you in the right direction and doesn’t get you nearly killed, or something like that.

The issue with that is it’s easily bypassed. I could literally just stand next to one mushroom in one corner of a map and jump on it over and over again until I unlock that mastery. Same thing with Itzel lore, just talk to the same npcs over and over again. So how do you slow people down so they don’t unlock all the masteries instantly and devalue the point of masteries meaning to be the long-term horizontal progression?

I mean, that’s a viable way of leveling a skill… it’s not a bypass. As the game currently stands, you can stand in one corner and bash a single dinosaur over the head until you unlock every single mastery.

If you want to slow down masteries presented in that fashion, you just need to make sure the people can only gain, for instance, a certain number points in a mastery level from a single NPC or mushroom per day. They can always come back and do it again tomorrow, but if they want it quicker they will need to seek out other NPCs/mushrooms. Gliding would be slightly trickier, but I see nothing wrong with a “total flight time” being the requirement. Makes a lot of sense for glider players, and also encourages using gliders more.

So here’s the real question: why don’t the Guild Wars 2 devs seem to care that the leveling system is completely detached from the actual masteries? I could be leveling mushroom jumping without ever even SEEING a mushroom. By hitting a dinosaur with a pointy stick. In that abandoned little corner you mentioned.

But it is a bypass. The whole point of Masteries was to provide a long-term horizontal progression once you hit 80. If all it took was 40 mushrooms to master mushroom jumping mastery, someone would literally just keep using the same mushroom over and over until they unlocked it. That wouldn’t take very long. Okay, so you say you limit a mushroom to once per day. Okay, fine. But then you get people complaining on the forums that Anet is “gating” content again by forcing you to wait a whole day per mushroom. You end up in the same scenario where people don’t like the situation, much like yourself. Another issue is, it would be very easy to reach the 40 mushroom requirement, even if it was once per day per mushroom. So once again, you hit the issue of masteries being cleared in a few hours/days after launch.

Okay, so let’s say hypothetically you raise the cap to 200 mushrooms. Now that’s a grind, because every day I have to make sure I jump on every mushroom I see, whereas before I could just do whatever I wanted in the new maps and reach the same goal. Same principle with NPCs. You would once again end up with people complaining about the system on the forum. Sure, getting xp to jump on mushrooms has nothing to do with physically jumping on mushrooms, but it’s a smart way of making sure masteries take a while, while at the same time not restricting you to what you can do to level it.

Sure, I could just sit in one corner of the map and bash a pocket raptor over the head over and over again for masteries. However the difference between the current system and yours is that you would literally have to be insane to do that in the current system because you would receive so little xp. Thus, you don’t have incentive to sit in one corner bashing a dino’s head because it would literally take months/years. However, with your system (assuming no daily cap) you have incentive to sit in one corner, constantly jumping on one mushroom.

So once again, I’ll ask the question. What is a viable way of attaining mushroom jumping through physically interacting with the mushrooms, while making sure it isn’t easily cleared, and without being too repetitive or limiting? Or any other mastery similar to it? Unless of course, you forsake the whole idea of masteries being long-term progression, in which case you just go with what you proposed. However, that’s not Anet’s goal with masteries, so the point is moot.

If someone can come up with a reasonable way to accomplish all those goals and implement it well, then Anet messed up on their part. I have yet to see such a reasonable way.

Funny, because first you say that unless the thing I said was implemented, what I said would not be viable. If you’re arguing that a single-mushroom daily limit is a gate, then clearly you’ve not seen the current mission gates based on masteries… single-mushroom limitation is not a gate when you can still wander around and find more mushrooms. Think map completion – we can’t sit around and complete a single heart eighteen times over to complete all the hearts on a map. Do we consider that gated?

The real gating is when you lock masteries behind each other. For instance, if you could pick and choose any of the masteries to level at any given time, and then the next one costs more xp, etc, etc, it would be less gated. But currently each one is tiered, even though (apart from the gliding mastery) nothing is related to its preceding mastery point.

A bit like the new skill circle setup (which replaced the old pick-and-choose skill tree), where we have to level our skill trees with 80% of skills our characters wouldn’t even pretend to practice or care about before unlocking the skills we care about.

And thus the burnout. We’re forced to level and go through entire trees of things we will never ever use just to unlock something minor. This is a huge change compared to the vanilla release of Guild Wars 2, which (minus bugs, but certainly not closed to additions) is what we paid for.

Also, keep in mind that at least 60% of the GW2 playerbase came directly from GW1, and there were very, very few gates in that game. Nearly pure customization.

Kraggy.4169:

Wahaha.7938:

I prefer playing the game to level bouncing mushrooms over jumping on a mushroom 40 times.

Grinding spiders or whatever else most of those with capped Masteries killed endlessly isn’t “playing the game” any more than what he suggested.

I can assure you I didn’t grind spiders. I leveled my HoT masteries exclusively through the meta events. The HoT maps are full of experience. You can easily make like 2 million XP from a full dragon stand run.

Raven.1524:

I find it amusing. Btw…. I just run with a lvl 58 toon from the silverwastes to dragon stand, it’s really fun! But ypu get 1 shot KO’es by anything xD

Yeah, I’ve always enjoyed doing that, in games.

Running the gauntlet through level inappropriate areas and seeing how far you can get…

But, even though you expect to die a lot doing that, that is very different from constant and repeated conflict, in level-appropriate areas, which just becomes wearing pretty quickly.

You need more mob-free areas, to chill in.

Preferably ones with nice views.

Rozbuska.5263:

I had it too here is just quick medicine for that. Download free WoW and play it for 5 hours and then come back. You will se that problem will solve himself:-P

Well, if it’s the free version, isn’t that only to level 20, or did they change that?

If it is still just to level 20, you’re comparing apples to oranges in so many ways, it’s hard to even know where to start.

Swift.1930:

And thus the burnout. We’re forced to level and go through entire trees of things we will never ever use just to unlock something minor.

Bingo. Not only is the training of the masteries completely divorced from their purpose (as you, myself and others have pointed out) but you also make the excellent point that we’re forced to go through things we don’t want to get to what we do.

Case in point: I’m on the last tier of the PACT Commander mastery, trying to get the ability to pick up loot automatically, a simple QOL feature that would affect only me and would reduce some of the administrative tedium in the game. Yet, this feature is the last tier and requires not only completion of all the previous tier which I’m not greatly interested in but it also requires an exhorbitant amount of xp. It’s not something worth working up to over months. It’s a useful feature that should be tier 1.

Instead, tier 1 is mentor, although it affects multiple people and is causing a lot of headaches because it’s so easy to get. This is a mastery that should be tier 5, and should take months of effort to acquire, to demonstrate that someone is worthy of being a mentor.

Imho these two masteries should have been reversed. But what do I know?

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Swift.1930:

And thus the burnout. We’re forced to level and go through entire trees of things we will never ever use just to unlock something minor.

Bingo. Not only is the training of the masteries completely divorced from their purpose (as you, myself and others have pointed out) but you also make the excellent point that we’re forced to go through things we don’t want to get to what we do.

Case in point: I’m on the last tier of the PACT Commander mastery, trying to get the ability to pick up loot automatically, a simple QOL feature that would affect only me and would reduce some of the administrative tedium in the game. Yet, this feature is the last tier and requires not only completion of all the previous tier which I’m not greatly interested in but it also requires an exhorbitant amount of xp. It’s not something worth working up to over months. It’s a useful feature that should be tier 1.

Instead, tier 1 is mentor, although it affects multiple people and is causing a lot of headaches because it’s so easy to get. This is a mastery that should be tier 5, and should take months of effort to acquire, to demonstrate that someone is worthy of being a mentor.

Imho these two masteries should have been reversed. But what do I know?

I agree that the order is wonky on a number of masteries. I’d love to know what their reasoning was. For instance, the idea that the “challenge the champion” masteries are all tier 5 instead of 6, or even 1 – why?

It’s like… now that you’re honored among the tribe, they will give you access to another mastery. They already helped you learn some other ones, but oops, they forgot one.

Maybe I’m expecting logic too much.