I don't get all of the QQing
Its an expansion. Things are supposed to be gated.
Says who?
ANet could have done what WoW does and made us level up AND need new gear for those levels.
Instead we have horizontal progression for our characters and skills and we get to do this with the gear we already have.
This argument doesn’t even make sense. The masteries and stories being gated behind millions of exp and weeks of gameplay is just as “bad” as what other MMOs do in their expansions. What you call “horizontal progression” is essentially the same as vertical progression, with only slight nuances. It’s not really horizontal progression when it’s required to progress in the game.
Alot of you folks just need to play the kitten ed game and stop complaining if you want your unlocks.
People are playing the game, that’s exactly why they are complaining. Because they are forced to grind before they can enjoy the new stuff.
I think that it is a complete joke that people assumed that could unlock everything in a day. Are you joking me?
No one expected to unlock everything in a day. But many people expected to be able to choose in what order to unlock stuff.
You are also focusing on a single side of the issue and ignoring the larger picture. People feel that gating content behind tremendous exp grinds is a cheap way to add artificial difficulty to the game, and make it feel like we got more content than we actually got. Want that mastery point/ hero challenge? Too bad, you need x mastery to access it. Want x mastery? That’s 5 million exp, please grind these same 10 events over and over and over and over again.
It doesn’t help that half of the event mobs don’t even yield exp or loot, that many events are bugged, and the new participation tracker system is merciless. Died after doing 90% of the event? Too bad you weren’t there when it finished, no reward for you.
You also need to play through the story with each of your alts in order to unlock the specialization. Sitting through the same unskippable cutscenes and dialogues for the 4th time gets tedious, especially since you’re not even gaining exp or loot in the instances.
And don’t even get me started on the 400 Hero Points and Hero challenges that are in remote locations but require a small zerg to complete. Terrible design.
I still enjoy the expansion, but those are all valid points. Saying “stop the qq, just play the game” doesn’t cut it.
In other games’ expansions leveling up or acquiring higher tier gear means immediately improving your character. Equiping a new elite spec tree does the opposite. With elite specs players are nerfed and then expected to work to get back to where they were before equiping the spec.