Guild Wars 2

The Elite specialization system and mastery system will be fixed, Give it this week! Trust me. It is difficult for them to get it right on the first go. We will hear responses tomorrow.

Fixed in what way though? For me,. the only way to “fix” it is to make it playable solo. And that seems to go against the grain. And yes, tad yada MMO yada yada; I’ve heard it all before. So, it’s a good job that I’ve placed my decision on not “upgrading” to HoT by not buying it based on user posts here.

Oh, and to the “challenging” thing? The grind? No ta. Not the way I enjoy playing. IMHO. You have yours, I have mine.

Koolaid.9152:

The Elite specialization system and mastery system will be fixed, Give it this week! Trust me. It is difficult for them to get it right on the first go. We will hear responses tomorrow.

The last trait system needed over a year to get “fixed”. Funny thing is now i wish it
back .. or at least the part where we could buy all traits at an NPC .. as long as we
had enough skillpoints. Oh and ofc that part where every level-up gave us a skillpoint.

Flatley.1620:

Fixed in what way though? For me,. the only way to “fix” it is to make it playable solo.

And mostly this. As long as i can’t roam around solo i have null intention to visit
those maps ever again. And at the moment that even leads to null motivation to
even play the old maps.

Well, they certainly fixed the story-gating issue fast enough. I don’t think they’re convinced yet about the points issue, or if they ever will be.

There’s no need to be an apologist. They’re not Frankenstein’s Monster, and we’re not going to swarm Anet offices with torches. It’s either this, or give HoT a bad metacritic score.

I honestly don’t mind the gated story mode. Collecting the hero points is fun and doing the events is fun, playing the game and getting experience is fun.
However, not being able to do that on the class you were looking forward to isn’t fun.
That is literally the only thing they need to change imo, the elite spec gate

DeltaZero.6310:

I honestly don’t mind the gated story mode. Collecting the hero points is fun and doing the events is fun, playing the game and getting experience is fun.
However, not being able to do that on the class you were looking forward to isn’t fun.
That is literally the only thing they need to change imo, the elite spec gate

Collecting hero points in the jungle is about as far away from fun as you can get in my experience. Half of the hero points are gated behind masteries, and the other half are guarded by champion mobs that you have to kill in 4 minutes or less.

In fact, I can tell what the hero point is going to be before I even click on it, which leads me to just passing up hero points because I know I won’t be able to solo whatever champion kitten comes out.

DeltaZero.6310:

I honestly don’t mind the gated story mode. Collecting the hero points is fun and doing the events is fun, playing the game and getting experience is fun.
However, not being able to do that on the class you were looking forward to isn’t fun.
That is literally the only thing they need to change imo, the elite spec gate

This is pretty much my thoughts on the matter. I don’t really have a problem with the mastery system. Given that it’s an account-wide progression mechanic, I don’t mind it being a lengthy process, since you really only have to do it once. Rather, it’s the elite spec gating that really has me frustrated. I expected to be able to play all this new content with my new elite spec… instead I’m expected to play thru the majority of the new content with my base class, something I’ve been playing for 3 years now.

Also, players with multiple characters, myself included, are in for a verrrrry tedious grind if they want their alts to run elite specs as well. Ugh… I hope this gets addressed as soon as possible. It seems like this launch weekend is leaving players more worried than excited.

I don’t mind the mastery farm (would be nice though leveling what I want in which zone)

Hero points I wouldn’t mind either if they were not forced to need masteries, or multiple people for a majority.

This is the kinda info that should of been released well over a month ago so they could get the players thoughts

Seabreeze.8437:

DeltaZero.6310:

I honestly don’t mind the gated story mode. Collecting the hero points is fun and doing the events is fun, playing the game and getting experience is fun.
However, not being able to do that on the class you were looking forward to isn’t fun.
That is literally the only thing they need to change imo, the elite spec gate

This is pretty much my thoughts on the matter. I don’t really have a problem with the mastery system. Given that it’s an account-wide progression mechanic, I don’t mind it being a lengthy process, since you really only have to do it once. Rather, it’s the elite spec gating that really has me frustrated. I expected to be able to play all this new content with my new elite spec… instead I’m expected to play thru the majority of the new content with my base class, something I’ve been playing for 3 years now.

Also, players with multiple characters, myself included, are in for a verrrrry tedious grind if they want their alts to run elite specs as well. Ugh… I hope this gets addressed as soon as possible. It seems like this launch weekend is leaving players more worried than excited.

I agree, the mastery thing is fine (Although exp from WvW should maybe go into masteries at 80) because you only have to do it once. The elite specs are outrageously painful to unlock.

I have been grinding for nearly 20 hours in EOTM and have only received around 75 hero points… on one class, I literally have one minor trait, that’s it, this isn’t progression at all, its an endless grindfest, that must be repeated on each character.

the elite spec thing doesnt need to be changed. people are looking at it from the perspective of a character that doesnt have any of the masteries unlocked. masteries are account bound though so once you get the hero challenges on one character they will be much faster to get on subsequent characters.

the mastery gating is also fine up until the part they have said they will change

Koolaid.9152:

The Elite specialization system and mastery system will be fixed, Give it this week! Trust me. It is difficult for them to get it right on the first go. We will hear responses tomorrow.

I believe Elite Specializations unlock will change in some way. How they implement that change is anyone’s guess. The most straight-forward way would be to simply offer the same hero point scrolls awarded in WvW for a fee in the gem store. Make each 10 point hero challenge scroll 100-gems and you have a system where players must pay 4000 gems to get the 400 hero points. As chance would have it 4000 gems is what a player receives with the Ultimate Edition of Heart of Thorns. So make it so players can upgrade their basic Heart of Thorns account to the Ultimate. Casual players who love them will clearly understand how ArenaNet’s business model and either opt in or leave but at least an option will exit for causal players.

Regard Mastery’s grind and empty events on the HoT maps. I don’t see a change coming. Keep in mind there are only three maps. People have said “they are huge maps” but the first two (haven’t made it to the last yet) really are quite average compared to the core game maps. Even accounting for the vertical/layers. Point is HoT doesn’t really seem to have a lot of new content for PvE. Just three new maps, a dozen or so story instances and about 6-10 dynamic events per map. It’s not a big expansion so they have to compensate for that and make it feel longer than it is. Grinding for mastery’s is the tool they are using to accomplish that. Not sure how they would change this aspect of the game without allowing players to fly though it, but I could be wrong.

Divine Flavor.2016:

give HoT a bad metacritic score.

I didn’t even think to do this. I just posted my thoughts now – Slivyr. Thanks!

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Koolaid.9152:

The Elite specialization system and mastery system will be fixed, Give it this week! Trust me. It is difficult for them to get it right on the first go. We will hear responses tomorrow.

I believe Elite Specializations unlock will change in some way. How they implement that change is anyone’s guess. The most straight-forward way would be to simply offer the same hero point scrolls awarded in WvW for a fee in the gem store. Make each 10 point hero challenge scroll 100-gems and you have a system where players must pay 4000 gems to get the 400 hero points. As chance would have it 4000 gems is what a player receives with the Ultimate Edition of Heart of Thorns. So make it so players can upgrade their basic Heart of Thorns account to the Ultimate. Casual players who love them will clearly understand how ArenaNet’s business model and either opt in or leave but at least an option will exit for causal players.

Regard Mastery’s grind and empty events on the HoT maps. I don’t see a change coming. Keep in mind there are only three maps. People have said “they are huge maps” but the first two (haven’t made it to the last yet) really are quite average compared to the core game maps. Even accounting for the vertical/layers. Point is HoT doesn’t really seem to have a lot of new content for PvE. Just three new maps, a dozen or so story instances and about 6-10 dynamic events per map. It’s not a big expansion so they have to compensate for that and make it feel longer than it is. Grinding for mastery’s is the tool they are using to accomplish that. Not sure how they would change this aspect of the game without allowing players to fly though it, but I could be wrong.

That would actually make the game officially P2W.

So they’re going to fix the change from casual friendly to “standard MMO number 1406510”? Because this is one disappointing expansion, group required, grind required, no casuals allowed…

Skye.4983:

The only way they can fix it is by making the new elites require no more than 100 skill points in total. Then they can make the new skill challenges in the new maps give out 1 skill point instead of 10. Which will mean they can reduce their difficulty to be in line with the skill challenges in the vanilla maps. Anything less that this will not go over well.

+1 to this.
And also they need to make the maps again be soloable also for people that not
play Dark Souls and solo Lupi and Fractals 50 all day long.

Or other said it should be FUN to explore those maps and not feel like a nighmare
of work where you are happy when you never ever have to see those areas again.

Drivrius.6159:

So they’re going to fix the change from casual friendly to “standard MMO number 1406510”? Because this is one disappointing expansion, group required, grind required, no casuals allowed…

Even in all standard MMOs you can do most of the open world content solo with
no problems. EQ2 had masses of group content in vanilla but that was removed
mostly after maybe a year because not many really played that stuff. And that was
meanwhile 10 years ago.