Guild Wars 2

There is a great deal of controversy surrounding mastery and elite spec gating with Heart of Thorns. And here’s what I have to say about it.

Masteries and Elite Specializations are an important compromise.

Guild Wars 2’s vertical progression and horizontal progression crowds have forever been at eachother’s throats to the detriment of the game. Make no mistake – this is the cause of Vanilla Guild Wars 2’s biggest flaws, because compromise between these two diametrically opposed crowds has been thought of as impossible.

But with Masteries, we see something different. We see progression that isn’t just numbers. It doesn’t affect balance. It’s manageable. It doesn’t invalid old content. It is a system that can only improve with time.

OPTIONAL WORK IS NOT GRIND

Grind is a repetitive task that one is forced to engage in for the purposes of progressing one’s character statistically. That is the only definition. If you CHOOSE to engage in work, it is not bad design. If you CHOOSE to engage in work, the game is not forcing it on you. And if the “grind” at hand allows the user a free choice of tasks in order to achieve it, IT’S NOT GRIND.

Progression in Heart of Thorns is not a power curve.

Masteries do not in any way improve the performance of your character. You are not dealing bonus damage to mobs and, more importantly, other players universally.

While elite specializations are more of a grey area, they are not explicitly designed to be a flat power increase, and they are taken at the loss of a third core specialization slot, which can be quite detrimental to a good many classic builds.

So what are they?

Horizontal progression. They expand what you can do, without expanding your combat proficiency. This is good design. It gives the player something to work towards while not reducing the game to a gear treadmill. All content remains valid and the game becomes something more rather than different with each future expansion.

Thematically, Heart of Thorns Masteries are incredible.

It is rare to see mechanics married so well to story themes. Think on it. You’re in the jungle. It is a hellish warzone. Navigation is confusing and dangerous. There is a pronounced feeling of dread everywhere. This difficulty lessens, but remains relevant, over time as the player character learns to survive in this content. This is incredible.

The design of mastery “grind” IS fair.

The most important masteries are typically front-loaded. Gliding and Bouncing Mushrooms, the two most important masteries, are also the easiest to obtain. These are the core of Heart of Thorns travel, and players can get them within the first hour or so.

Everything after these is more situational and even optional. You don’t need to fight the Exalted champion for rewards, but if you work at it, you can earn that right. That is good design.

In closing, I personally believe the outcry is absurd.

The game has always lacked something to work towards. We have that now, and we have that in a fair and fun form that improves the game. But a certain very vocal crowd doesn’t seem to comprehend this. No, I am not a hardcore player. I work a full time job. I don’t get to play half as often as I’d like and these masteries will take me a long time. But I see this as motivation to make this game something great for the extended future – because that’s what it is.

Yeah, no. You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.

“Optional work is not grind.” That’s very much true. However it is not optional, therefor a grind. Let me explain. Let’s assume you are a person like me and these dynamic events not high on your priority list. So what else to do? Plenty! Story: a huge drawing force for many players. Let’s do it! Oh, wait… it’s gated for no reason after the first. Fine, let’s get gliding even tho I don’t care about it. Done! Story time… and gated again. And again. And again. Fine. I’ll do something else.
Map exploration! Oh, shoot, not only the mobs 3 shot me, but I can’t even get to where I want because, a) the map is confusing and doesn’t provide enough info, b) mastery gated. Whatever, I’ll just work on Hero Points and unlock my elite class. What do you mean I need masteries for that too? And also 70% of them are not soloable.
FINE! I’ll do the events which the game FORCES me to do. Even tho vanilla GW2 is well known for its flexibility. OH. Most of them are ridicously hard (like Veteran mob oneshotting my warrior with a non-telegraph, no cooldown move) and others are ALSO mastery gated.
So it is a grind in every possible definition of the word, because you have only one choice to gain xp: events. You can get some from story missions, yes, but those are gated too.

The purpose of the mastery should be a side thing, that keeps you motivated, but doesn’t become your main focus. But in HoT EVERYTHING is about masteries or lack of them. And they don’t give statisfactory feeling, because you feel crippled from the get go.

“Thematically, Heart of Thorns Masteries are incredible. It is rare to see mechanics married so well to story themes. Think on it. You’re in the jungle. It is a hellish warzone. Navigation is confusing and dangerous. " It is also a game, that needs to be approachable instead of realistic.

“The design of mastery “grind” IS fair.” No. I explained why.

Gliding is also very poorly impleneted for a big feature. It is essentially slow fall, which gliding in real life is not. No wind, instant turns and boring in general. Sure there would be gameplay concerns with wind for example but there is a silver lining.

nah its kitten.

it wouldn’t be kitten if they didn’t try to replace player level with mastery on the UI, that is a stupid decision.

but the biggest problem is instead of introducing diversity with mastery, the fact that they are level by grinding instead of mission like the hearts and story in the old game, means that player can only advance by grinding REGARDLESS of the path they wish to pursuit. this means mastery doesn’t affect how you grind your toon, this mean people going to places like COF P1 and bug the dungeon to level. this mean it is STUPID. sure anet will “fix” those thing, but player will continue to find the next grind spot, rather then encouraging gameplay, it kills it since it doesn’t matter what they are trying to mastery, there will ONLY BE ONE WAY to do everything in the most effective way.

the problem isn’t with what the mastery are, the problem is how you GET the mastery has NOTHING TO DO with the mastery ITSELF. be it you are trying to communicate with a dog or trying to fly to the sky, you get it done in the SAME WAY. that’s poor planning and the servers are paying the price for it with crashes as people crash into certain “high exp” map. so GG.

Lumea.6845:

Yeah, no. You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.

“Optional work is not grind.” That’s very much true. However it is not optional, therefor a grind. Let me explain. Let’s assume you are a person like me and these dynamic events not high on your priority list. So what else to do? Plenty! Story: a huge drawing force for many players. Let’s do it! Oh, wait… it’s gated for no reason after the first. Fine, let’s get gliding even tho I don’t care about it. Done! Story time… and gated again. And again. And again. Fine. I’ll do something else.
Map exploration! Oh, shoot, not only the mobs 3 shot me, but I can’t even get to where I want because, a) the map is confusing and doesn’t provide enough info, b) mastery gated. Whatever, I’ll just work on Hero Points and unlock my elite class. What do you mean I need masteries for that too? And also 70% of them are not soloable.
FINE! I’ll do the events which the game FORCES me to do. Even tho vanilla GW2 is well known for its flexibility. OH. Most of them are ridicously hard (like Veteran mob oneshotting my warrior with a non-telegraph, no cooldown move) and others are ALSO mastery gated.
So it is a grind in every possible definition of the word, because you have only one choice to gain xp: events. You can get some from story missions, yes, but those are gated too.

The purpose of the mastery should be a side thing, that keeps you motivated, but doesn’t become your main focus. But in HoT EVERYTHING is about masteries or lack of them. And they don’t give statisfactory feeling, because you feel crippled from the get go.

“Thematically, Heart of Thorns Masteries are incredible. It is rare to see mechanics married so well to story themes. Think on it. You’re in the jungle. It is a hellish warzone. Navigation is confusing and dangerous. " It is also a game, that needs to be approachable instead of realistic.

“The design of mastery “grind” IS fair.” No. I explained why.

Gliding is also very poorly impleneted for a big feature. It is essentially slow fall, which gliding in real life is not. No wind, instant turns and boring in general. Sure there would be gameplay concerns with wind for example but there is a silver lining.

You are all over the place..

" It is also a game, that needs to be approachable instead of realistic." + “Gliding is also very poorly impleneted for a big feature. It is essentially slow fall, which gliding in real life is not.”
Contradict yourself and others don’t need to.

“You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.”
Pretty sure thats what Young Earthers say xD

“And they don’t give statisfactory feeling, because you feel crippled from the get go.”
So being able to overcome the ‘crippled’ feeling would be unsatisfying? No I’m pretty sure it would be..

Just take a breath and think, try using your class to its full and consider remembering the map as you explore it.

“Masteries do not in any way improve the performance of your character. You are not dealing bonus damage to mobs and, more importantly, other players universally.

While elite specializations are more of a grey area, they are not explicitly designed to be a flat power increase, and they are taken at the loss of a third core specialization slot, which can be quite detrimental to a good many classic builds."

I agree with this.

But…

….is this all that Anet could think up for a fifty dollar expansion?

Lumea.6845:

Yeah, no. You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.

“Optional work is not grind.” That’s very much true. However it is not optional, therefor a grind. Let me explain. Let’s assume you are a person like me and these dynamic events not high on your priority list. So what else to do? Plenty! Story: a huge drawing force for many players. Let’s do it! Oh, wait… it’s gated for no reason after the first. Fine, let’s get gliding even tho I don’t care about it. Done! Story time… and gated again. And again. And again. Fine. I’ll do something else.

This is true for the original 80 levels of the game… You need to gain EXP to unlock the further story steps. Maybe this game isn’t for you ?

Change thread title to “Mastery Progression is Impeccably Designed” and maybe I’d agree with you. Elite Specialization has a major, glaring design flaw. ANet has put challenging content requiring a group on one-and-done content. This is not going to work very well for limited-time players and late adopters.

I just want my dang elite fully unlocks and I will never go to that jungle ever again. It’s an awful place that is no fun at all; you will not be changing my mind OP. I thought WoD was bad, but this really takes the cake.

Anyways, back to collecting old world HPs instead since I will not be getting the rest in HoT zones any time soon; many are gated behind needing lvl 5 in some masteries. That’s absurb holding elites ransom like that. I can’t name any other MMO that does this other than really bad f2p korean grinders.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Change thread title to “Mastery Progression is Impeccably Designed” and maybe I’d agree with you. Elite Specialization has a major, glaring design flaw. ANet has put challenging content requiring a group on one-and-done content. This is not going to work very well for limited-time players and late adopters.

I agree. Anet either needs to make the Hero Challenges 100% soloable or GREATLY reduce the number of hero points needed to unlock elite specializations. As someone who can usually only play during off hours/wee hours of the morning there is usually hardly anyone in the maps when I’m on —ALREADY, and HoT is less than a week old. This does not bode well for the future of this game. If I’m already struggling to find enough people on to do events with and do the more difficult hero challenges with and that’s just for one character. RIP all my alts. They need to fix this, and I mean fast.

captaincrash.6528:

Lumea.6845:

Yeah, no. You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.

“Optional work is not grind.” That’s very much true. However it is not optional, therefor a grind. Let me explain. Let’s assume you are a person like me and these dynamic events not high on your priority list. So what else to do? Plenty! Story: a huge drawing force for many players. Let’s do it! Oh, wait… it’s gated for no reason after the first. Fine, let’s get gliding even tho I don’t care about it. Done! Story time… and gated again. And again. And again. Fine. I’ll do something else.

This is true for the original 80 levels of the game… You need to gain EXP to unlock the further story steps. Maybe this game isn’t for you ?

It’s completely different from leveling 1-80. To level a character you could do so much to reach lv 80. You weren’t forced into do one thing. As /u/scoorps on reddit said :

“You could do PVP, WvW, solo PVE content, explore, do group PVE dynamic events, harvest, craft, story quests, or do dungeons to reach level 80. I had one character cover 20-odd levels off of nothing but crafting. …No one is actually upset they have to play the game to see the content. They’re kittened that the game’s done a complete 180 on design philosophy.”

StacyX.4831:

captaincrash.6528:

Lumea.6845:

Yeah, no. You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.

“Optional work is not grind.” That’s very much true. However it is not optional, therefor a grind. Let me explain. Let’s assume you are a person like me and these dynamic events not high on your priority list. So what else to do? Plenty! Story: a huge drawing force for many players. Let’s do it! Oh, wait… it’s gated for no reason after the first. Fine, let’s get gliding even tho I don’t care about it. Done! Story time… and gated again. And again. And again. Fine. I’ll do something else.

This is true for the original 80 levels of the game… You need to gain EXP to unlock the further story steps. Maybe this game isn’t for you ?

It’s completely different from leveling 1-80. To level a character you could do so much to reach lv 80. You weren’t forced into do one thing. As /u/scoorps on reddit said :

“You could do PVP, WvW, solo PVE content, explore, do group PVE dynamic events, harvest, craft, story quests, or do dungeons to reach level 80. I had one character cover 20-odd levels off of nothing but crafting. …No one is actually upset they have to play the game to see the content. They’re kittened that the game’s done a complete 180 on design philosophy.”

So to play the Heart of Thorns content you need to do the Heart of Thorns content. I don’t see the problem.

I am following the story line. But I don’t have poison resistance yet, so I’ve died twice now on Hero points that are impossible to get without it. Working on that, but the story leads me to the next zone. Where I’m prompted to master hieroglyphics to advance. Wait, not yet done with… The masteries gating is a grind and is not well-paced.

The maps are confusing and maze-like. Finally got Level 2 gliding, which makes some things doable, but that means other stuff neglected and has to be ground out. And quite a few things that you need to come back to later — except you don’t come back.

How many times have I run into HP’s where I am not worthy, or doors that are closed (literally) and I have no way to know how to open them, or HP’s where you need a crowd but there isn’t a crowd. Repetitive missions where you spend more time fighting your way to them — narrow roads, annoying mobs — than doing anything. Poorly placed waypoints that sometimes necessitate giving up on a mission after a wipe.

Elite Spec is just another talent line, except everything falls into one long progression for which points are hard to get. Could be broken out into sub-lines (Reaper Shouts, Reaper Skills, Reaper Skins) but it’s not.

The mini-games are not well-explained and you can die multiple times without even knowing what you’re supposed to do. Some of the story line involves dying repeatedly with things like trying to figure out where the ghost jumped to, then how to get there — except you die if you go too far down.

No, it’s not impeccably designed. It’s full of seams. Now you happened to do things in the order they demand. You like jumping puzzles (and things like them). Things fell into place for you in a couple of hours. You’re riding the rails with no real choices, you’re grinding for stuff that you have to get to advance, then convincing yourself that you wanted to do them just for the fun of it so it’s not a grind.

Many of us disagree with you.

masteries are a way to artificialy gate content, and punish you for exploring without them, the events are boring and awful and you have to grind them to get enough xp to do anything. ive quit from the game untill it changes.

So impeccably designed its led to empty ghost town zones 4 days after launch.

Coulter.2315:

You are all over the place..

" It is also a game, that needs to be approachable instead of realistic." + “Gliding is also very poorly impleneted for a big feature. It is essentially slow fall, which gliding in real life is not.”
Contradict yourself and others don’t need to.

“You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.”
Pretty sure thats what Young Earthers say xD

“And they don’t give statisfactory feeling, because you feel crippled from the get go.”
So being able to overcome the ‘crippled’ feeling would be unsatisfying? No I’m pretty sure it would be..

Just take a breath and think, try using your class to its full and consider remembering the map as you explore it.

1. It is not contradictory. You are comparing map design to traveling. Apple to orange. Gliding would be fine if it would be a necessary addition. Like mounts in WoW: boring but they are useful. Gliding is boring and useless. Maps were specifically designed for a mechanic that was never needed nor is good. That should NEVER be the case. If you design your maps for a mechanic, that mechanic needs to be super good. If you cant do that, you design the mechanic for the map.

2. No game should make you feel like you are crippled. Your character was at its best in vanilla and in HoT you are crippled because you can’t do this, that. You are constantly reminded that there is a cool thing that you cannot use yet, which is discouraging.

One of the worst expansions I’ve ever played. And I love vanilla GW2.

Lumea.6845:

Coulter.2315:

You are all over the place..

" It is also a game, that needs to be approachable instead of realistic." + “Gliding is also very poorly impleneted for a big feature. It is essentially slow fall, which gliding in real life is not.”
Contradict yourself and others don’t need to.

“You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.”
Pretty sure thats what Young Earthers say xD

“And they don’t give statisfactory feeling, because you feel crippled from the get go.”
So being able to overcome the ‘crippled’ feeling would be unsatisfying? No I’m pretty sure it would be..

Just take a breath and think, try using your class to its full and consider remembering the map as you explore it.

1. It is not contradictory. You are comparing map design to traveling. Apple to orange. Gliding would be fine if it would be a necessary addition. Like mounts in WoW: boring but they are useful. Gliding is boring and useless. Maps were specifically designed for a mechanic that was never needed nor is good. That should NEVER be the case. If you design your maps for a mechanic, that mechanic needs to be super good. If you cant do that, you design the mechanic for the map.

2. No game should make you feel like you are crippled. Your character was at its best in vanilla and in HoT you are crippled because you can’t do this, that. You are constantly reminded that there is a cool thing that you cannot use yet, which is discouraging.

One of the worst expansions I’ve ever played. And I love vanilla GW2.

If you think Gliding is useless and the maps weren’t designed around it then I don’t know what I can do to help you – you are just wrong and I cannot fathom how you even approached that conclusion.

Oh I wasn’t agreeing with you that one feels crippled – just pointing out how bad your reasoning was.

It is really hard to take breathless hyperbole seriously. Please look up “Impeccable”

StacyX.4831:

captaincrash.6528:

Lumea.6845:

Yeah, no. You fail to see other’s PoV and thus to see facts.

“Optional work is not grind.” That’s very much true. However it is not optional, therefor a grind. Let me explain. Let’s assume you are a person like me and these dynamic events not high on your priority list. So what else to do? Plenty! Story: a huge drawing force for many players. Let’s do it! Oh, wait… it’s gated for no reason after the first. Fine, let’s get gliding even tho I don’t care about it. Done! Story time… and gated again. And again. And again. Fine. I’ll do something else.

This is true for the original 80 levels of the game… You need to gain EXP to unlock the further story steps. Maybe this game isn’t for you ?

It’s completely different from leveling 1-80. To level a character you could do so much to reach lv 80. You weren’t forced into do one thing. As /u/scoorps on reddit said :

“You could do PVP, WvW, solo PVE content, explore, do group PVE dynamic events, harvest, craft, story quests, or do dungeons to reach level 80. I had one character cover 20-odd levels off of nothing but crafting. …No one is actually upset they have to play the game to see the content. They’re kittened that the game’s done a complete 180 on design philosophy.”

all fair and well saying this, but before the expansion everyones complaint was 0 character Progression 0 Set Paths and 0 Requirements to play, now they’ve altered this your arguments done a 180 degree turn to another PoV, im sorry but its Ridiculous they cant please Every player on the face of the earth, every player wants something different and sadly points of views Change So diversily that its Impossible for 1 game to cater to all in this day and age.

Mastery system = Character progression I love this system

Elite specialization = Alternate playstyle These specializations are NOT elite. They can’t be because of pvp balance and play to win issues. The word elite was just used to justify a hideous 400 hp requirement. These traits and utilities should cost no more than the regular traits and utilities. The elite spec is NOT character progression.. Heck, if you try to play it without full traits it is actually regression.

captaincrash.6528:

So to play the Heart of Thorns content you need to do the Heart of Thorns content. I don’t see the problem.

If only that was the problem…

Drayos.8759:

im sorry but its Ridiculous they cant please Every player on the face of the earth, every player wants something different and sadly points of views Change So diversily that its Impossible for 1 game to cater to all in this day and age.

Exactly. They can’t. And Hot is exactly that – trying to please a completely different group than the Core game.

Herald, Reaper, Scrapper, Druid, Chronomancer, Daredevil and Dragonhunter are NOT horizontal progression…

Yet they are locked behind a system that is meant for horizontal progression.

Only maybe Tempest and Berserker (I’ve not played Berserker so this is just a guess based on fighting against them in pvp) could be considered horizontal.

Astralporing.1957:

captaincrash.6528:

So to play the Heart of Thorns content you need to do the Heart of Thorns content. I don’t see the problem.

If only that was the problem…

Drayos.8759:

im sorry but its Ridiculous they cant please Every player on the face of the earth, every player wants something different and sadly points of views Change So diversily that its Impossible for 1 game to cater to all in this day and age.

Exactly. They can’t. And Hot is exactly that – trying to please a completely different group than the Core game.

Agreed. There isn’t a lot of stuff now that the usual subjects can scream “go back to wow” about. Level cap increase, I guess.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

It is really hard to take breathless hyperbole seriously. Please look up “Impeccable”

“Having no flaws; perfect”. Indeed, HoT is not that.

Hyperboles work two ways though. While HoT is not ‘impeccable’, its also not ‘broken’, ‘a distaster’ or ‘the worst expension ever’ as some describe it.

To give force to an opinion and vent your frustration, its easy to throw out some big words and make it sound more authoritive. It actually achieves the opposite, as most people (like yourself) will just raise their eyebrows and stop taking it seriously.

Its after all still just opinions, and that can vary per person. I don’t think HoT is impeccable, but i am enjoying it a lot and are happily taking my time going through the story and the maps, exploring the corners and finding new trinkets.

Faab.8049:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

It is really hard to take breathless hyperbole seriously. Please look up “Impeccable”

“Having no flaws; perfect”. Indeed, HoT is not that.

Hyperboles work two ways though. While HoT is not ‘impeccable’, its also not ‘broken’, ‘a distaster’ or ‘the worst expension ever’ as some describe it.

Well, it’s the worst Guild Wars expansion so far (even if we include GW1). And it’d better remain the worst Guild Wars expansion ever. I don’t think i could stomach any next expansion to be even worse than this one.
It’s really, really bad. Though i agree, there were worse cases in MMORPG history.

Astralporing.1957:

Faab.8049:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

It is really hard to take breathless hyperbole seriously. Please look up “Impeccable”

“Having no flaws; perfect”. Indeed, HoT is not that.

Hyperboles work two ways though. While HoT is not ‘impeccable’, its also not ‘broken’, ‘a distaster’ or ‘the worst expension ever’ as some describe it.

Well, it’s the worst Guild Wars expansion so far (even if we include GW1). And it’d better remain the worst Guild Wars expansion ever. I don’t think i could stomach any next expansion to be even worse than this one.
It’s really, really bad. Though i agree, there were worse cases in MMORPG history.

See, you just confirmed my point about using hyperboles. In my own experience HoT is a very entertaining game expansion that provides me with a lot of content to enjoy. Its not perfect, just as GW2 was never perfect and GW1 lacked in many things.

That is apparently contra to your experience, and you expressed that. However your use of hyperboles make me not able to take you seriously. It’s an all or nothing attutide, no in between possible. No explanation of why the expansion sucks.

I dont rate it better or worse than previous GW1 expansions. I rate it better than the whole Living Story 1 added content. The original GW2 has entertained me over the years, but has become stale and boring over the last months. HoT refreshes that and with the expectation that content will be added over the coming months/years it will be remain entertaining in the near future.

But hey, to each his own. Just my opinion on that people should refrain from using the hyperbole to express their opinions, but use a more reasoned and substantiated argument than ‘it sucks’ about things.

Coulter.2315:

If you think Gliding is useless and the maps weren’t designed around it then I don’t know what I can do to help you – you are just wrong and I cannot fathom how you even approached that conclusion.

You don’t seem to understand, do you? The PROBLEM is that maps were designed for a LACKLUSTER mechanic.

Gliding is useless. It was never needed. Vanilla GW2 is easily traversable on foot. There was no reason to include gliding to make traveling is easier. It is a flavor mechanic, a sell feature, that is ultimately boring, useless and unnecessary. And the maps suffer because of the backwards philosophy.

If you think gliding actually serves a purpose then you lack the ability to see the intention of certain designs and features. There is nothing wrong with that., it just means you are still a bit inexperienced in these areas.

logan.5846:

So impeccably designed its led to empty ghost town zones 4 days after launch.

Isnt it impeccable? Everyone achieved everything in just 4 days…

OP your post was well written and right on point for Masteries. Why you lumped elite specs in there and then lacked any points of why the have to be used as progression and Gated just shows again that it was a poor decision to lock them away.

Outside of that I’m enjoying the expansion and the story has been well done so far.

Excellent post, thank you for it.

Colin, and the rest of the teams, you have done an OUTSTANDING job, on behalf of people who enjoy this game for what it actually is, please do not subside to the vocal whiners and change the game according to their flawed philosophy.

PLEASE keep it as you intended it to be!

Duke Blackrose.4981:

There is a great deal of controversy surrounding mastery and elite spec gating with Heart of Thorns. And here’s what I have to say about it.

Masteries and Elite Specializations are an important compromise.

For the most part I agree about Mastery’s. My main problem with Mastery’s is that there are other issues preventing players from obtaining the XP needed to get them (events void of players, etc…) but the overall design of Mastery’s I don’t have a problem with. You’re right in saying they do provide that progression without level cap increase. That said, there is still grind to get them but maxing them out is optional. With the mega-server problems with balancing play population right now they do feel very much like grind and that needs to be fixed, but the underpinning system is fine.

Since Mastery’s provide that progression path well we don’t need to stack progression with the Elite Specs, at least not in the ridiculous way it’s been implemented

So I do not agree about Elite Specializations. The Elite Specialization is something advertised are a feature of the game not some reward to be obtained near the very end. We;re not talking about a unique skin or weapon/armor upgrade (I am 100% ok with those aspects of the Elite Spec being something you have to work for up until the end) but we’re taking about it being impossible for a player to max out their elite trait line and create a viable build with it prior to end game. We’re talking about that being the case for something that is not a cosmetic achievement but a core functional play mechanic of the expansion. That is beyond ridiculous, it’s asinine. There is no rational explanation. As I’ve said many times PLAYERS WANT TO PLAY THOUGH MOST OF HEART OF THORNS WITH THEIR ELITE SPECIALIZATION NOT GET THEM AS AN END-GAME REWARD.

To take an advertised new play mechanic that for many defines the value of new expanshion and then to make it so most characters can not actually play though the expansion story/ content with that mechanic is completely unacceptable and the worst game design I’ve ever seen.

I continue to challenge ArenaNet to address the question of Elite Spec unlock implementation from the “…end-game reward” perspective and they continue to dodge this question.

there are more sheeple yearning for the carrot than i thought in this forum. i am .. well … no …. only a tiny bit surprised. everything op has said were cheap excuses for manipulative systems. don’t drink the kool aid, bros.
i guess some people are not able to do stuff by themselves and need others to set goals for them. i pity you. on the other side i envy you. you seem to be able to enjoy hot this way.

Op, I think Anet should pay you. Or take you off the meds….

If you think grinding out 49m exp and 4000 Hp or whatever the figures are to unlock skills on my wvw toons is anything other than a boring repetitive grind than you’re beyond help.

HoT assumes people will be around and willing to help others do difficult champ guarded HPs forever. Sadly four days in and already it proved impossible to get help st two HPs after 30 minutes of asking in Map chat, even with a comm badge up, and watching my paid for boosts run down.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

OPTIONAL WORK IS NOT GRIND

Every piece of content they added in this expansion is gated behind a mastery wall.

Storyline. Collections (hardly can be considered content, but also gated).
Elite specs.
Map exploration.
New fractal levels.
Raids.
Guild halls.

You can argue that the revenant is not gated, but his elite is, so there you go….

So, you are right, optional work is not a grind. The problem is this is not optional, it’s MANDATORY.

I agree with the rest of your post though. Masteries are a good way of improving your character past lvl 80, as long as it remains optional.

RedBaron.6058:

logan.5846:

So impeccably designed its led to empty ghost town zones 4 days after launch.

Isnt it impeccable? Everyone achieved everything in just 4 days…

my guess is most people are farming cof p1 before they patch it.

And it’s not empy 4 days after. Verdant brink was empty on day 1. i got prompted out of 2 maps while playing, and ended up in a third, seemingly single player map.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

As I’ve said many times PLAYERS WANT TO PLAY THOUGH MOST OF HEART OF THORNS WITH THEIR ELITE SPECIALIZATION NOT GET THEM AS AN END-GAME REWARD.

In general i’m pleased with HoT as it is, but this is agree with. There is no reason to make the Hero point requirement as large as it is. It should have the same skill point cost any other trait line as it does not transfer any ‘Elite’ powers to you. Just a different way of playing. On top of that it excludes a lot of the elite professions from a lot of players.
Leveling to 80 is one thing (crafting, exploring, tomes) to play that character at top level. The Elite spec requires the same amount of skill points, but it is not the same as a completly new profession. Its more like a 30% new profession because it shares 70% with the base profession.

Its actually quite dishearting to think that I need to spend lots of hours of straight HP hunting per character (and I like my alts) to get the elite specs. I probably will not get around to getting my Engineer, Ele, Warrior and Mesmer all to elite specs…

Half the number of points for elite specs, and make the excess HP available in the HoT world convert to Mastery progression or points.

I’m enjoying HoT. When I started playing a year ago I heard of tons of cool stuff that was locked behind lvl, wps, and knowledge of the game. Video games need to offer more options for when you buy. Check off everything you want to start with that the game offers and the people who complain will get bored faster and leave.

I miss old games that didn’t change features. I’d buy a game if I didn’t like it I would toss it in a drawer if I enjoyed it I played the game. I’m sure other people enjoyed games I didn’t. Now I’m always afraid that the things I do enjoy could be altered down the road because of how vocal angry whiners will get when they want you to see their point. I do like that they fix bugs in games now and content updates.

You’re delusional if you think fully unlocked Elite specs are easy to obtain and a “compromise”.

See 50+ pages (3000+ posts) on this matter in this very forum.

If I want to unlock Reaper on my WvW-only necro I need to grind out 400 proof of heroics , or bring it to PvE and grind out masteries just to get to the hero points.