Guild Wars 2

Essentially your GS auto and skills will hit as hard after HoT as they do now, thats the main difference a level cap change makes. The progression is in line with GW1.

-As long as there is no power creep (which I highly doubt through the mastery system)
-Currently the mastery system adds an advanced way to play the game, whether it’s gliding to get around the map or learning the new language to access otherwise inacessable areas.

HoT is just like Eye of the North Xpack in guild wars 1
masteries are very similiar to the titles tracks like the ebon vangaurd one for more damage against charr, others like +100health in norn land is just like the ones making you better in jungle land.
and specilisations are like how eye of the north added lotsa of pve only skills, or how it just added more class skills in general.
plus the expansions added inscriptions and things whereas the base game just had preselected stats on items.
and the expansions added heros which were incredibly useful if you had no friends
you werent max without these

This is what players asked for. Its a direct response from the CDIs on horizontal progression, so i dont agree they are being sneaky here.

Ascii Red.4029:

GW1 never raised the level cap during expansions, your older lvl 20 chars never became “underpowered” because the “maximum” stayed at lvl 20. Sure extra char classes and content was added but what you had was not de-valued.

But they did add titles which gave passive benefits that made your character stronger or gave them extra abilities in certain areas, a lot like masteries. From what we’ve seen so far the difference between masteries and new levels is that masteries give very specific, context sensitive, benefits – even more so than titles in GW1.

Even with scaling a level 80 player is stronger all around than a level 70 player – they have more traits, more skills, are more likely to have a full set of matching exotic equipment, could even have ascended, can use level 80 upgrades etc. Whereas a level 80 player without HoT and one with fully trained masteries will be equally powerful.

The fact that the one with masteries can glide, use speed boost mushrooms etc. won’t give them an actual advantage. Especially not in the base game maps where those things aren’t possible.

It is a form of progression – but it’s adding more options rather than simply making what you already do stronger.

Isn’t non-stat or gear based progression exactly what the whole community wanted? I know that I love the new mastery system and am really excited to see what else it has in store for us, in the small section of VB alone there are tons of things you can do with the masteries that aren’t just MOAR POWER!!!!