How is Experience Gating exciting?
Stage 1: “Give me everything NOW!”
Stage 2: “I’m bored. There is nothing to do.”
I think this is the main reason why the masteries are gated. I can’t say I agree with the numbers – especially for precursor collections – but the gated behind exp is needed for this, and in turn the idea of “locations locked behind masteries” is needed too for this reason.
If you can do everything right away, you’re more likely to rush through a zone and never return. How many folks here go back to Harathi Hinterlands after mapping except for Ulgoth farming? How many of you go to Fireheart Rise except to head to CoF? How many head to Iron Marches at all after mapping?
Not many, I bet.
Using masteries to “gate content” allows ArenaNet to add some secret areas in even the earliest of places for players to go back to and find.
Besides, I bet that most of the places you get to easier with higher masteries are still accessible without the highest masteries, just much tougher.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
If you can do everything right away, you’re more likely to rush through a zone and never return. How many folks here go back to Harathi Hinterlands after mapping except for Ulgoth farming? How many of you go to Fireheart Rise except to head to CoF? How many head to Iron Marches at all after mapping?
Not many, I bet.
This shows why gated content is the best for Anet. They can use less effort to keep people playing for longer.
However, as a player, having less grind is more fun.
Time gating is nothing new. It’s been in every single game I’ve ever played. It’s in place to always give you something to journey towards. If everything was given to you all at once how long would you play; be honest now.
Time gating is nothing new. It’s been in every single game I’ve ever played. It’s in place to always give you something to journey towards. If everything was given to you all at once how long would you play; be honest now.
I think people are unhappy because Anet originally advertised their game as one that “does not require time to prepare for fun”, and bought the game based on this manifesto and the fact that GW1 is truly such a game.
If this game were not a GW2 extension, then fewer people would complain.
For the same reason, if Google had never said “don’t be evil”, then fewer people would have complained angrily about the way in which they track their users.
I also would like to mention that, if you also play games that are not MMORPGs, then you will see that the vast majority of PC games do not have time gated stuff.
(edited by MyriadStars.5679)
Time gating is nothing new. It’s been in every single game I’ve ever played. It’s in place to always give you something to journey towards. If everything was given to you all at once how long would you play; be honest now.
Well, I ended up at rank 80 in SPvP.
Played Super Smash Bros. for hours even when I had everything unlocked, all of which I never used.
Ran through Devil May Cry 4 multiple times with everything unlocked.
Played Dark Souls PvP repeatedly when I had no need for humanity
Played Starcraft 2 for 10s of hours despite having every unit and map available from the start and no friends to play it with.
Back when it was active, played on a local vault NWN RP server as pretty much my only game played for years.
I’d say… quite a while unless the gameplay is awful.
(edited by Eponet.4829)
I kind of like the idea of being able to acquire experience and spending it the way I like to unlock new content and areas. There are many ways to get experience, so this will give each of us a different way to progress if we like. Sounds good to me.
Jade Quarry – Esparie
Illustrious Exhausted Primordial Legendary Druid, and Mesmer for fun
PvE | PvP (1500)| WvW | Fractals | Dungeons
Illustrious Exhausted Primordial Legendary Druid, and Mesmer for fun
PvE | PvP (1500)| WvW | Fractals | Dungeons
Time gating is nothing new. It’s been in every single game I’ve ever played. It’s in place to always give you something to journey towards. If everything was given to you all at once how long would you play; be honest now.
Well, I ended up at rank 80 in SPvP.
Played Super Smash Bros. for hours even when I had everything unlocked, all of which I never used.
Ran through Devil May Cry 4 multiple times with everything unlocked.
Played Dark Souls PvP repeatedly when I had no need for humanity
Played Starcraft 2 for 10s of hours despite having every unit and map available from the start and no friends to play it with.
Back when it was active, played on a local vault NWN RP server as pretty much my only game played for years.I’d say… quite a while unless the gameplay is awful.
You mention you played those games for hrs, 10’s of hrs, repeatedly , and multiple times. All terms for relatively short gameplay return once you had everything.
I am a bit concerned by this, based on how grindy BWE3 was. In the beta weekends, basically the only way I was able to get anywhere was by rolling new characters and running them through the story chapters. The open world content gave negligible mastery growth. I’m also concerned that they talked about raids as being a place of higher XP growth, so are players that don’t raid left in the dust?
We don’t know what the fully fleshed out zones provide, XP might be much easier to come by in the full game than in the betas, but the XP in the betas was pathetic. I understand locking out the very tops of some of the trees, the very optional and single-focus branches like unlocking special boss fights, but the basic traversal stuff should not be a grind, a player that spends a decent amount of time in Maguuma should be able to unlock all the traversal options within the first week or two.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Time gating is nothing new. It’s been in every single game I’ve ever played. It’s in place to always give you something to journey towards. If everything was given to you all at once how long would you play; be honest now.
Well, I ended up at rank 80 in SPvP.
Played Super Smash Bros. for hours even when I had everything unlocked, all of which I never used.
Ran through Devil May Cry 4 multiple times with everything unlocked.
Played Dark Souls PvP repeatedly when I had no need for humanity
Played Starcraft 2 for 10s of hours despite having every unit and map available from the start and no friends to play it with.
Back when it was active, played on a local vault NWN RP server as pretty much my only game played for years.I’d say… quite a while unless the gameplay is awful.
You mention you played those games for hrs, 10’s of hrs, repeatedly , and multiple times. All terms for relatively short gameplay return once you had everything.
Well, to put it in context. When I was younger, my friends and I played it at some point almost every time we had people over.
If you think getting to rank 80 in SPvP took a short amount of time, you clearly haven’t done it or have a /very/ skewed perception of what short means.
A single run of Bloody Palace alone in DMC 4 takes 1-2 hours assuming that you don’t fail and restart at any point ever, and I did. I still haven’t beaten the Dante version of it yet. The campaign takes around 4-6 hours each time if you’re not speedrunning it while not ever failing, and, at higher difficulties, you will unless you’ve already played it for long enough that you’ve memorised every enemy pattern or cheat by using items.
I have well over 100 hours of Dark Souls registered in Steam alone, while I was primarily a console player during its early years, the majority of which were spent in PvP.
Starcraft 2 I played a game or two most nights for several months.
The Neverwinter Nights RP server, well, that was much longer than any of those except possibly SSB. What do you consider necessary to count as a long period of time? 10000 hours?
It really comes down to how big HoT really is. We know how big central tyria is, there’s a lot of content you can do for mastry xp, same for fractals, the perception of HoT is based only upon the tiny slivers of it we got to play, one story mission and a small section of an open world map.
The success of failure of HoT mastries is going to have a lot to do with how much actual content is packed in to the new maps and most importantly the adventure system. They’re banking on adventure leaderboards to be highly replayable things like arcade games that you want to keep doing and better your score. Challenge missions worked like this in GW1, and some were really fun that way (like the pacman solo mission in nightfall) and paid out cool loot. If the ongoing content continues this path, in addition to fractal and raid updates for those types of players I think masteries are in good shape and work with the core strength of GW2 being “about the journey.”
As long as the stuff you’re doing to get all that mastry XP is fun, then mastries are a great system. I can already see the pact tyria mastries being a fun system simply because core tyria has a lot of fun and diverse content. HoT masteries depend on the HoT content being diverse and fun really.
Guild Master – The Papacy [POPE] (Gate of Madness)/Road Scholar for the Durmand Priory
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ
experience gating? are you kidding me with that term?
do you expect everything to be unlocked for you from the start with any other game?
its called progression and for a game to hold the interest of its audience there needs to be a meaningful sense of progression or else the players will get bored and leave.
Most wanted in game additions: Beastiary, readable books
experience gating? are you kidding me with that term?
do you expect everything to be unlocked for you from the start with any other game?
its called progression and for a game to hold the interest of its audience there needs to be a meaningful sense of progression or else the players will get bored and leave.
Is that why you got bored and left GW1?
experience gating? are you kidding me with that term?
do you expect everything to be unlocked for you from the start with any other game?
its called progression and for a game to hold the interest of its audience there needs to be a meaningful sense of progression or else the players will get bored and leave.
I agree, to a point, but in my mind, the gating should come from overcoming discrete experiences, not from level grind. The devs have compared HoT to a Metroidvania, but in one of those games, you don’t see a locked door and say “well, if I kill 500 bugs then I’ll be able to unlock the missiles and open that door!” You instead have to go and find the missile pod. I would prefer that the gating be behind achieving various milestones in the world, like finding a certain location or clearing a certain event, than from XP grind.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
If everything was given to you all at once how long would you play; be honest now.
I have had everything I have ever needed (or ever will need) to play chess available to me for decades and have still played frequently for more than thirty years. I played GW1 for years after I had acquired more than a hundred stacks of ectos and every in game reward that I desired.
I guess it all comes down to the player, and to the game.
I know right? I just hooked up my n64 the other day and started playing ocarina of time (after blowing on the cartridge for an hour), and I couldnt even equip the master sword right away! I had to go through all the starter dungeons first before I could play the game. kitten game developers, even back in the 90’s they were stopping us from playing how we want!
80 Mesmer – Yaks Bend
Joe: “You know how to sell those XP boosters no one buys?”
Bob: “Nope, but I got a feelin’ you’re gonna tell me.”
Joe: “Create xp gates! Lots and lots of gates!”
Serenity now~Insanity later
How many rpgs of any kind out there doesn’t have some kind of leveling?
All this whining is stupid. Leveling of one sort or another in rpgs is very nearly universal.
Experience gating is not supposed to be exciting. It is no more supposed to be exciting than the physical act of entering your credit card info when buying the game. No more exciting than creating the account itself or driving to the store to buy a box copy of the game, or even putting on slippers to walk to the computer room to log into the game to play.
There are many things that are important or absolutely necessary to be able to do the exciting stuff that are not exciting themselves.
How many rpgs of any kind out there doesn’t have some kind of leveling?
I spent years playing on a Neverwinter Nights roleplay server where you literally just created your character on your own computer within limits (Level set to 30, no items above effective item level 20).
Leveling is the most unimaginative way of adding a sense of progression. For instance, progression in SPvP comes from actually getting better at the game, not because playing mind numbing tasks for longer but never learning anything entitles you to having higher stats or more traits.
In the server I played on, there were just so many areas that it would take ages to actually get through each of them, that, and the fact that hanging around the Red Lion Inn’s bar and chatting was so much fun, assuming we weren’t charting an expedition into the Orchards of the kitten ed in the infinite layers of the abyss, Reclaiming our souls from devils in the Hells after accidentally selling them, breaking out of the prison planes of Carcerei after being trapped in its deepest layer, joining up for a stint in the blood war, journeying deep into the hearts of outland in order to reach the library of thoth, and then reading through the tomes contained within in the search of a description depicting the scene described by an prophetic character viewed within their dreams in order to figure out where it was that they were seeing, staging a heist on the god of thieves in the depths of Gehenna, before reaching the treasury getting caught and trying to escape, dealing with players plotting to overthrow one of the factions and gathering support, etc, and that’s not even counting the portals, all tied to random easily obtainable junk that we’d discover from just hoarding everything as we explored in order to try and find each of them and determine just which item corresponded to each key.
Character progression is a crutch that’s only needed if your gameplay isn’t interesting enough to generate a sense of progression from developing your skill as a player/You don’t have enough content to keep people interested.
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Ok, clearly it’s back to first principles time.
Persistent Worlds are at their core about one thing: the accumulation of advantage over time. That’s why they persist. It’s not a trick of the English language that they reward persistence.
The rate of accumulation varies from player to player and you can be logged in racking up /age without benefit, but on the whole an older character is a more advanced character. Or here a more played account is a more potent account.
ANet’s tried mightily to make that advancement not equate to numerical/mechanical advantage, but fact is more people are retained by offering that than are retained by not offering it. Boom: the ascended tier.
Masteries are another go at offering horizontal advantage, but make no mistake — the currency with which you buy that advantage has always been and will always be YOUR TIME spent playing.
This is the essential social contract of persistent world games. If this isn’t a contract you’re ready to sign up for, you’re in the wrong genre.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
(edited by Nike.2631)
Ok, clearly it’s back to first principles time.
Persistent Worlds are at their core about one thing: the accumulation of advantage over time. That’s why they persist. It’s not a trick of the English language that they reward persistence.
The rate of accumulation varies from player to player and you can be logged in racking up /age without benefit, but on the whole an older character is a more advanced character. Or here a more played account is a more potent account.
ANet’s tried mightily to make that advancement not equate to numerical/mechanical advantage, but fact is more people are retained by offering that than are retained by not offering it. Boom: the ascended tier.
Masteries are another go at offering horizontal advantage, but make no mistake — the currency with which you buy that advantage has always been and will always be YOUR TIME spent playing.
This is the essential social contract of persistent world games. If this isn’t a contract you’re ready to sign up for, you’re in the wrong genre.
The term, “persistent world,” refers to the fact that it continues to exist, persists, even when you are not there. It does not refer to rewards.
How many rpgs of any kind out there doesn’t have some kind of leveling?
I spent years playing on a Neverwinter Nights roleplay server where you literally just created your character on your own computer within limits (Level set to 30, no items above effective item level 20).
Leveling is the most unimaginative way of adding a sense of progression. For instance, progression in SPvP comes from actually getting better at the game, not because playing mind numbing tasks for longer but never learning anything entitles you to having higher stats or more traits.
In the server I played on, there were just so many areas that it would take ages to actually get through each of them, that, and the fact that hanging around the Red Lion Inn’s bar and chatting was so much fun, assuming we weren’t charting an expedition into the Orchards of the kitten ed in the infinite layers of the abyss, Reclaiming our souls from devils in the Hells after accidentally selling them, breaking out of the prison planes of Carcerei after being trapped in its deepest layer, joining up for a stint in the blood war, journeying deep into the hearts of outland in order to reach the library of thoth, and then reading through the tomes contained within in the search of a description depicting the scene described by an prophetic character viewed within their dreams in order to figure out where it was that they were seeing, staging a heist on the god of thieves in the depths of Gehenna, before reaching the treasury getting caught and trying to escape, dealing with players plotting to overthrow one of the factions and gathering support, etc, and that’s not even counting the portals, all tied to random easily obtainable junk that we’d discover from just hoarding everything as we explored in order to try and find each of them and determine just which item corresponded to each key.
Character progression is a crutch that’s only needed if your gameplay isn’t interesting enough to generate a sense of progression from developing your skill as a player/You don’t have enough content to keep people interested.
That was an individual home made server, and not the core game. I’ll ask the question again: how many games come from their company to our computer without a leveling system. Yes even NWN had leveling, I played that a lot. Perhaps that home brew didn’t, but thats not what came to us out of the box, that was a home made change.
What I can say is, I’ve been playing rpgs of one form or another for 33 years, and some form of experience-time-based character improvement has existed in every single rpg I’ve played, bar none that I can recall.
In other words, this complaint you and others are leveling against GW2 would be accurate to level against EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER RPG EVER MADE.
How many rpgs of any kind out there doesn’t have some kind of leveling?
I spent years playing on a Neverwinter Nights roleplay server where you literally just created your character on your own computer within limits (Level set to 30, no items above effective item level 20).
Leveling is the most unimaginative way of adding a sense of progression. For instance, progression in SPvP comes from actually getting better at the game, not because playing mind numbing tasks for longer but never learning anything entitles you to having higher stats or more traits.
In the server I played on, there were just so many areas that it would take ages to actually get through each of them, that, and the fact that hanging around the Red Lion Inn’s bar and chatting was so much fun, assuming we weren’t charting an expedition into the Orchards of the kitten ed in the infinite layers of the abyss, Reclaiming our souls from devils in the Hells after accidentally selling them, breaking out of the prison planes of Carcerei after being trapped in its deepest layer, joining up for a stint in the blood war, journeying deep into the hearts of outland in order to reach the library of thoth, and then reading through the tomes contained within in the search of a description depicting the scene described by an prophetic character viewed within their dreams in order to figure out where it was that they were seeing, staging a heist on the god of thieves in the depths of Gehenna, before reaching the treasury getting caught and trying to escape, dealing with players plotting to overthrow one of the factions and gathering support, etc, and that’s not even counting the portals, all tied to random easily obtainable junk that we’d discover from just hoarding everything as we explored in order to try and find each of them and determine just which item corresponded to each key.
Character progression is a crutch that’s only needed if your gameplay isn’t interesting enough to generate a sense of progression from developing your skill as a player/You don’t have enough content to keep people interested.
That was an individual home made server, and not the core game. I’ll ask the question again: how many games come from their company to our computer without a leveling system. Yes even NWN had leveling, I played that a lot. Perhaps that home brew didn’t, but thats not what came to us out of the box, that was a home made change.
What I can say is, I’ve been playing rpgs of one form or another for 33 years, and some form of experience-time-based character improvement has existed in every single rpg I’ve played, bar none that I can recall.
In other words, this complaint you and others are leveling against GW2 would be accurate to level against EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER RPG EVER MADE.
Also life itself.
I think what people forget about the leveling process is that it’s largely a tutorial. Endgame is THE game. 1-80 is just an opportunity to build up your character and learn how to use it.
Going straight to 80 deprives the player of that critical learning opportunity. Imagine, if you will, having the option to just buy a geared 80. I don’t know of many players who would welcome this sort of teammate into their WvW or PvP groups because, really, what kind of experience do they have? Anyone with half a brain cell knows a talented player in Exotics (or even Rares, if they’re good enough) can beat a talentless player of equal level in Ascendeds pretty much at will.
But this is no longer the day and age in which we live, my friend. These days, everyone coming out of college thinks they’re set for life. They don’t understand that college is just a gear grind to get an item that MIGHT improve their RNG in the job market. They think it’s a dead cert.
These people believe paying for something is enough to get everything. There is no sense of pride or accomplishment in conquering obstacles. There’s no point for these kind of people to do ANYTHING unless the reward is a) guaranteed and b) totally badkitten.
Fortunately, these kind of people can’t design games, so I don’t think it’ll be too much of an issue. We’ll still have the kind of RPG that works. And, with any luck, maybe we’ll be able to teach kids a thing or two about having a sense of pride in one’s creations instead of just treating them as another pile of pixels that isn’t shiny enough because (insert unrelated grievance here). -Sid
I played this game every day from launch(sans vacations and 2 weeks when my computer broke)until March of this year. I wanted progression to be wholly cosmetic and game play. I wanted a big expansion with tons of maps to explore and a lot of events. The x-pac is providing gated maps. That is totally opposite of the base game. Sure, you had to level, but I ran all the way down to Straits of Devastation at a really low level early on. Exploration has been neutered. Players that identify as explorers(Google the Bartle System) haven’t had a ton to do after seeing all of the base game. Gating exploration with having to do things that aren’t exploring isn’t all that exciting.
The mastery system is just an arbitrary gating system. The OP is correct in my opinion. It’s not all that creative a system they’ve devised.
Now the legendary system seems really well thought out. That should have been the progression system. That way, even if you didn’t like the Legendary skins, you still got to play the game at the pace you wanted to play it at.
Artificially inflating the number of hours it takes to get through the content doesn’t mean they added meaningful content. It just means they gated what they had made so that it took you longer to get through it.
There’s absolutely nothing compelling about that and I would still replay the heck out of the content if it is compelling. Locking off stuff arbitrarily doesn’t make me more excited to see it. It’s actually the reason I didn’t buy the x-pac. Also, because there is nothing enticing to me about a gated Dry Top/Silverwastes experience.
Leader of The Guernsey Milking Coalition [MiLk] Sanctum of Rall
How is Experience Gating exciting?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781
To max out one mastery we will need to grind out 17mil xp.
What happened to no grind? I have been looking forward to this expansion for months now a week before launch i find out this.
The don’t “grind it out.” Keep in mind that before specializations, you gained a skill point every 254,00 xp, so a million is equivalent to leveling 4 times. 17 million is leveling up < 68 times, i.e. similar to leveling up new toons now.
There are only three ways they could have set it up:
- Drastically reduce the amount of XP to max.
- Drastically increase the number of masteries, so that you have to choose carefully.
- Keep the number of masteries manageable and require 17 million ish xp.
(1) would mean people would level up fast and run out of things to do. (2) would mean having to make tons of spreadsheets to keep track of the different options, something that seems to be unpopular. Or (3), the current system: a manageable number of masteries with high XP requirements.
Do you have a fourth alternative that offers the same degree of customization, doesn’t get fully maxed by the “fastest” players in a few days, and remains something we can manage with the types of UI we see in the game?
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
To max out one mastery we will need to grind out 17mil xp.
What happened to no grind? I have been looking forward to this expansion for months now a week before launch i find out this.The don’t “grind it out.” Keep in mind that before specializations, you gained a skill point every 254,00 xp, so a million is equivalent to leveling 4 times. 17 million is leveling up < 68 times, i.e. similar to leveling up new toons now.
There are only three ways they could have set it up:
- Drastically reduce the amount of XP to max.
- Drastically increase the number of masteries, so that you have to choose carefully.
- Keep the number of masteries manageable and require 17 million ish xp.
(1) would mean people would level up fast and run out of things to do. (2) would mean having to make tons of spreadsheets to keep track of the different options, something that seems to be unpopular. Or (3), the current system: a manageable number of masteries with high XP requirements.
Do you have a fourth alternative that offers the same degree of customization, doesn’t get fully maxed by the “fastest” players in a few days, and remains something we can manage with the types of UI we see in the game?
Or (4), the current trait system.
You can get points to unlock it by completing specific content (i.e. hero challenges), or just get the XP (Unlock everything at 80) for people that don’t enjoy the specific content.
Preferably tying the specific content to challenging solo content, which is something that’s currently lacking, and will probably always be lacking if there’s anything exclusive behind it, so, putting a fast track as a reward for completing it, but that players unable/unwilling to play it can skip by just grinding xp would be the ideal sort of reward for such content.
Additionally, the kind of people that will be aiming for challenging solo content are also the kind of players who can deal with having multiple options available to them in a short period of time, and are far less likely to need gating in order to avoid being overwhelmed.
…and this gating applies per account or per character? If it is per character, I’m quitting, because I’m NOT doing it 19 times over.
Bye! We will enjoy HoT for you! PS. Send us your gold and items…
There are only three ways they could have set it up:
Drastically reduce the amount of XP to max.
Drastically increase the number of masteries, so that you have to choose carefully.
Keep the number of masteries manageable and require 17 million ish xp.(1) would mean people would level up fast and run out of things to do. (2) would mean having to make tons of spreadsheets to keep track of the different options, something that seems to be unpopular. Or (3), the current system: a manageable number of masteries with high XP requirements.
Nope.
Maxing out masteries does not leave people “without things to do.” I’ve had most of my characters at 80 for at least two years now, and still find plenty to do. Maxing out the available masteries does not mean uninstalling the game. If someone fills out all their masteries in the first week or two, that does not mean they are done with the game until more are added, and if any player does fall into that category, they are basically hopeless anyways.
I still think the ideal solution would have been to divide up the masteries into two major categories, “core” masteries, ones that you need in order to get places and do things, and “bonus” masteries, ones that just unlock a single option that is otherwise unnecessary.
So the first category would include all the Glider stuff, the jumping shrooms, all the various traversal elements, communication elements, etc. The second category would include the unlockable boss fights and that sort of thing, the ones that you don’t need except to do that one thing. The first ones would be scaled to be maxed out fairly easily, within days or at most a couple weeks, while the latter would be scaled to take considerably longer, because they are less a barrier to convenience and general progress.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
It takes 4,860,359 xp to lvl from 1-80 now they lock 1 mastery track behind 17million xp.
sadly i already bought the expansion and since i hate grind it looks like il be locked out of large chunks of it.
Artificially inflating the number of hours it takes to get through the content doesn’t mean they added meaningful content. It just means they gated what they had made so that it took you longer to get through it.
Basics of “How to survive as an MMO”.
I for one chose this game over other mmo specifically because of it no grind approach,as did a hell of a lot of other players.If the developers are changing there philosophy towards GRIND then its probably time i changed games.
Please explain how this is any different from leveling from 1 to 80. Or, you know, the leveling experience in any MMORPG.
Also, consider this. For those of you complaining about stuff being gated in terms of exploration, it took me maybe an hour to unlock hang-gliding 1, which is the single most important of the skills for getting around. It was trivial.
Please explain how this is any different from leveling from 1 to 80. Or, you know, the leveling experience in any MMORPG.
Also, consider this. For those of you complaining about stuff being gated in terms of exploration, it took me maybe an hour to unlock hang-gliding 1, which is the single most important of the skills for getting around. It was trivial.
Leveling to 80 can be done in base Tyria, WvWvW, or even SPvP, whereas Maguuma masteries can only be advanced in Maguuma, a region that, unless they haven’t announced anything for, doesn’t have heart quests, only has four maps, most of which we wont be able to get map completion xp for until we have most of the masteries anyway, doesn’t have dungeons, and can’t be contributed to via WvWvW or SPvP.
Apparently the beta weekend masteries were actually accelerated in order to allow people to test them, and unless there’s something not shown, the only ways to advance them have been the personal story, which you can only get XP from once, or doing the same event chain over and over.
On the plus side though, people with a dozen level 80s can probably do the personal story with all of them for a good amount of XP due to masteries being account bound.
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Thats exactly the point,its no different from leveling from 1-80 just takes over three times the xp to do it and in an area thats a tiny fraction of the size of the original game.and thats for one mastery there are 4 of them in hot.
Please explain how this is any different from leveling from 1 to 80. Or, you know, the leveling experience in any MMORPG.
Because I already leveled from 1-80 and don’t want to do it again on the same characters. This is essentially raising the level cap to 270, and I’m sorry, but I don’t like that very much. The only character I have that should need to worry about XP grinding is my Rev.
Also, consider this. For those of you complaining about stuff being gated in terms of exploration, it took me maybe an hour to unlock hang-gliding 1, which is the single most important of the skills for getting around. It was trivial.
Yes, but it scales. Getting the second one takes longer. Getting the third takes longer still. Grinding out my forth skill was already super tedious. Gliding is intended to be trivial, but you’ll also need a lot of the other tricks to really get going. The BWE2/3 areas of VB are a horror show until you unlock Bouncing Mushrooms, at least.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Please explain how this is any different from leveling from 1 to 80. Or, you know, the leveling experience in any MMORPG.
Also, consider this. For those of you complaining about stuff being gated in terms of exploration, it took me maybe an hour to unlock hang-gliding 1, which is the single most important of the skills for getting around. It was trivial.
Leveling to 80 can be done in base Tyria, WvWvW, or even SPvP, whereas Maguuma masteries can only be advanced in Maguuma, a region that, unless they haven’t announced anything for, doesn’t have heart quests, only has four maps, most of which we wont be able to get map completion xp for until we have most of the masteries anyway, doesn’t have dungeons, and can’t be contributed to via WvWvW or SPvP.
Apparently the beta weekend masteries were actually accelerated in order to allow people to test them, and unless there’s something not shown, the only ways to advance them have been the personal story, which you can only get XP from once, or doing the same event chain over and over.
On the plus side though, people with a dozen level 80s can probably do the personal story with all of them for a good amount of XP due to masteries being account bound.
That still isn’t really any different. Because I can’t go do cursed shores or go fight Jormag until I’ve gained many levels either. It’s a slightly different flavor but it really doesn’t change anything. It’s simply another type of leveling, and leveling is prevalent in every single computer RPG in existence.
I wonder how some of you felt about school. You probably hated it. -Sid
Wow, no matter what you do, people will always complain.
Yeah how dare arenanet put in new maps that after playing them a hundred times can still feel fresh and new thanks to a new unlock or new movement ability. Preposterous.
I hope none of you complainers ever play a Metroid or Zelda game. Man are you going to hate those…
EDIT: personally I find the design genious. Give players access to new content, then design that content so that when you unlock abilities you get to experience it in a new and different way. Let’s hope it takes at least a month or longer to unlock everything.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
How is Experience Gating exciting?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Just a flesh wound.3589
It will probably take months to unlock everything, but you can do it while playing the game. You don’t need to do anything different or unusual. Just play the game like you’ve been playing it for up to 3 years. And while you’re playing, the Masteries are progressing and unlocking. I don’t see that as a problem, unless you’re one of those who demand that the expansion hand you the end expansion goals with no effort and within a couple of weeks.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
How is Experience Gating exciting?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eirian Direstorm.9748
I am a bit concerned by this, based on how grindy BWE3 was. In the beta weekends, basically the only way I was able to get anywhere was by rolling new characters and running them through the story chapters. The open world content gave negligible mastery growth. I’m also concerned that they talked about raids as being a place of higher XP growth, so are players that don’t raid left in the dust?
We don’t know what the fully fleshed out zones provide, XP might be much easier to come by in the full game than in the betas, but the XP in the betas was pathetic. I understand locking out the very tops of some of the trees, the very optional and single-focus branches like unlocking special boss fights, but the basic traversal stuff should not be a grind, a player that spends a decent amount of time in Maguuma should be able to unlock all the traversal options within the first week or two.
I felt similarly, but since the LS story chapters gave big chunks of XP, I assume that if you do those, you’ll be able to at least reach 1-3 mastery levels. We also don’t know yet what you get for the adventures, and fingers crossed, none of the event chains will bug out.
Since during each beta I was able to get 3 levels with just the one LS episode and buggy event chains, I think it won’t be as grindy as people fear. But I do understand the concern, because the betas felt grind sometimes, especially at night.
I remember, before GW2 had even launched, there were these long threads about how the game was doomed because it was going to be pay-to-win as a blog or some such announced there were going to be….‘gasp’….XP Boosters and such!
Much moaning and gnashing of teeth was to be found. It was going to be the worst thing ever!
We can all look back and laugh at that. So….
Before we all put on our Chicken Little costumes for Halloween, we might consider waiting to see how the Mastery system all pans out. You never know, it might not turn out to be as bad as XP Boosters!
Good luck.
The term, “persistent world,” refers to the fact that it continues to exist, persists, even when you are not there. It does not refer to rewards.
Once you add “game” to “persistent world”, it becomes a place where the consequence of gameplay accumulates.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Not is it only a lot of XP, but I spent most of BWE3 in Verdant Brink and the XP gain was terrible. Forget about killing mobs for xp because the amounts rewarded were tiny. Events were the only way to get enough xp to make the mastery bar visibly move, however most of the events were at night, and they run out. It did feel very grindy, and most of the jungle is gated off until you level certain masteries.
Hopefully the full map won’t give that feeling like you are doing the same things over and over again. It did make me think that xp boosters won’t help much because the gains are so small, you wouldn’t notice the difference.
It takes 4,860,359 xp to lvl from 1-80 now they lock 1 mastery track behind 17million xp.
sadly i already bought the expansion and since i hate grind it looks like il be locked out of large chunks of it.
You can’t really use hard numbers for that. The xp gain for most things actually tends to be based on a percentage of the xp needed to level, so, while you need much less xp to level from 2 to 3, you also get much less for doing the same thing.
and new thanks to a new unlock or new movement ability. Preposterous.
I hope none of you complainers ever play a Metroid or Zelda game. Man are you going to hate those…
Again though, I’ve played every Metroid and Castlevania game, love the genre, but not one of them required you to level up in order to unlock content. They all involved beating a given boss or reaching a hidden room ONCE, and then you unlock the new trick. If they involved XP leveling at all, it was only a stat-booster. If HoT were following Metroidvania rules, then it would leave in those glowy white orbs, and each time you tagged one you could unlock a new power, no grinding needed.
I felt similarly, but since the LS story chapters gave big chunks of XP, I assume that if you do those, you’ll be able to at least reach 1-3 mastery levels. We also don’t know yet what you get for the adventures, and fingers crossed, none of the event chains will bug out.
Yeah, this is why I’m not in full panic mode yet, we have not been playing with the full progression of options, but I am still concerned by what we have seen. I mean, I was able to get four masteries in BWE1-2, but a lot of that XP came from doing the story chapter on six characters and then unlocking map locations with most of them. Starting fresh in BWE3 and only making three characters, I ended the weekend with barely two masteries.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
I don’t mind making slow progress on mastery with my limited amount of play time for this xpac, but my biggest concern is that Anet might keep shrinking the size of their development team if they are convinced that players are all fine with what they do in HOT. You know, it’s a lot easier to create grindy stuff and gated content, than creating new and fun content that requires creativity and more effort to design. If we give Anet the impression that what they do for HOT is fine, then it is likely that they will just keep the fewest programmers necessary to create grindy stuff, to decrease the cost and maximize their profit. This will eventually kill GW2.
and new thanks to a new unlock or new movement ability. Preposterous.
I hope none of you complainers ever play a Metroid or Zelda game. Man are you going to hate those…
Again though, I’ve played every Metroid and Castlevania game, love the genre, but not one of them required you to level up in order to unlock content. They all involved beating a given boss or reaching a hidden room ONCE, and then you unlock the new trick. If they involved XP leveling at all, it was only a stat-booster. If HoT were following Metroidvania rules, then it would leave in those glowy white orbs, and each time you tagged one you could unlock a new power, no grinding needed.
I felt similarly, but since the LS story chapters gave big chunks of XP, I assume that if you do those, you’ll be able to at least reach 1-3 mastery levels. We also don’t know yet what you get for the adventures, and fingers crossed, none of the event chains will bug out.
Yeah, this is why I’m not in full panic mode yet, we have not been playing with the full progression of options, but I am still concerned by what we have seen. I mean, I was able to get four masteries in BWE1-2, but a lot of that XP came from doing the story chapter on six characters and then unlocking map locations with most of them. Starting fresh in BWE3 and only making three characters, I ended the weekend with barely two masteries.
While neither one of the two games you mentioned specifically have leveling as their progression tactic, they both do still require progression of some type.
In the case of Metroid, it’s a requirement to get some of the upgrades in order to advance. (Most notably, the Morph Ball power item.)
In the case of Castlevania, I suppose the argument can be made that one can progress through the game without acquiring any kind of upgrade at all, but it does require linear progression through levels just to finish the game. I’d rather be able to go anywhere and do anything, personally. But some people like one-way linear games.
I think a lot of your disappointment has to do with you not hitting masteries fast enough, but it looks like you were able to finish BWE3 averaging a mastery a day. I don’t know what YOUR expectations are, but to me that’s pretty good! So, what, you’d be able to hit them all in under a month at that rate?
Were you expecting to somehow go faster than that, maybe? And if so, why? -Sid
I don’t mind making slow progress on mastery with my limited amount of play time for this xpac, but my biggest concern is that Anet might keep shrinking the size of their development team if they are convinced that players are all fine with what they do in HOT. You know, it’s a lot easier to create grindy stuff and gated content, than creating new and fun content that requires creativity and more effort to design. If we give Anet the impression that what they do for HOT is fine, then it is likely that they will just keep the fewest programmers necessary to create grindy stuff, to decrease the cost and maximize their profit. This will eventually kill GW2.
…buddy, have you ever considered just taking up a new game or something? It sounds like you have a lot of anger issues directed toward ANet at this point and I don’t know if there can ever be a resolution that will satisfy you.
I’m actually not being a smartkitten here. I’m serious. Throughout the whole course of this thread, you have steadfastly refused to cut ANet even the semblance of a break – it’s all conspiracy theories and random vitriol.
Maybe it’s time to step back and away, if a game’s got you that locked-in mentally. -Sid