Guild Wars 2

Hi,

The panel is improved from what it was in the last Beta in terms of being clearer, but could still use a little more clarity.

I thought the XP bar was close to full but not rolling over (expecting it to automatically put in the ability and use the mastery point and roll over to 0 again). After another event, I realized it actually was full and not rolling over, went to the panel, and clicked to spend the point, and then the bar went back to 0.

Thanks

I personally had an issue figuring out how to activate training a mastery. Initially I assumed you had to click on one of the actual skills, which I’ll admit was rather daft, but making it more clear you need to click the circle/check up top to enable training could be nice.

I agree the UI could be clearer. There was a lot of initial confusion in Map Chat from people who did not know to click the check box to begin getting XP torwards their chosen mastery, and where getting no reward from the DEs they did

yeah, i found the UI a bit un-userfriendly. was expecting something more along the lines of the rewards path selection from PvP.
Although the hints closed whilst i was reading them and didnt re open, which didnt help.

It is somewhat unfortunate that the ‘Hints’ icon and interaction window was removed, as one could refer back to it at any time to read or refresh one’s memory.

Dark Saviour.9410:

I personally had an issue figuring out how to activate training a mastery. Initially I assumed you had to click on one of the actual skills, which I’ll admit was rather daft, but making it more clear you need to click the circle/check up top to enable training could be nice.

You’re not the only one. The first Glider mastery was flashing but locked and unclickable so that made it extra confusing.

I’d like to chime in that it took me two or three time looking at the mastery UI before I realized how to turn it on. Noticed the light by the exp bar right away, but tried double-clicking on a few ofthem to turn them on without success. When the check mark is off, it blends too much into the top bar to warrant notice.

ClawiLewak.9128:

yeah, i found the UI a bit un-userfriendly. was expecting something more along the lines of the rewards path selection from PvP.

I was looking for that UI pattern as well!

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one confused by the mastery panel…

Perhaps either a quick tutorial/mission or better hints on the panel would be useful.

McFailsauce.8250:

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one confused by the mastery panel…

Perhaps either a quick tutorial/mission or better hints on the panel would be useful.

Whenever you move into the panel of an unchecked mastery, I’d say the checkbox should get an aura and a tooltip should pop-up (on mouseover) indicating that the mastery must be enabled before you can train it.

I agree that the mastery UI wasn’t all that straight forward. It wasn’t until someone mentioned it in map chat that I realized what I needed to do. If there was a bit more of an explanation (tooltip, tutorial, or something of the like) once you open the hero panel to the masteries tab, this would make a lot more sense and leave less room for confusion.

It was too confusing for me.

It wasn’t until towards the end that i realized they work like traits.

Equip the “trait”, then level it up. The “unspent points” confused me also.

The WvW mastery UI is way better and less confusing. They should’ve used that instead.

nexxe.7081:

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The “unspent points” confused me also.
snip

Hell yes, that’s exactly what confused me all the time. I managed to mark the gliding mastery after about 30 mins (we had a really silent map chat o.o) but I always thought those “2 unspent points” can be used right away. I’ve wasted quite some time, clicking on greyish icons until i realized those two points can’t be spent.

I would also like to state that, while not a UI concern, I’m not really fond of the XP/leveling method of ‘training’ masteries. I’d much rather see special events/mini-dungeons/encounters/etc. that unlock specific mastery abilities.

Grind ‘XP’/spend is just kind of samey and bland.

I didn’t even know about the UI Mastery until reading here after the event. So yes, it isn’t very user friendly in that regard.

Dark Saviour.9410:

I would also like to state that, while not a UI concern, I’m not really fond of the XP/leveling method of ‘training’ masteries. I’d much rather see special events/mini-dungeons/encounters/etc. that unlock specific mastery abilities.

Grind ‘XP’/spend is just kind of samey and bland.

I agree. I was disappointed as to how masteries are acquired. People will end up maxing them out in a week. It should also take longer like the WvW system. I actually thought we would have to do some gliding to increase the xp for it, or use shrooms to increase it.

my wife and I both had problems figuring out the mastery system. hell most of our guild who got a portal played like 10 to 30 mins and just gave up. this is a system that we could easily do without.

nexxe.7081:

Dark Saviour.9410:

I would also like to state that, while not a UI concern, I’m not really fond of the XP/leveling method of ‘training’ masteries. I’d much rather see special events/mini-dungeons/encounters/etc. that unlock specific mastery abilities.

Grind ‘XP’/spend is just kind of samey and bland.

I agree. I was disappointed as to how masteries are acquired. People will end up maxing them out in a week. It should also take longer like the WvW system. I actually thought we would have to do some gliding to increase the xp for it, or use shrooms to increase it.

While i agree i dont like the xp method, i highly doubt they be maxed out in a week. first of all there is different set of masteries for the new maguma jungle maps and for the old world, you only get mastery points and xp for the masteries for the area you are in, so running around in say shiverpeaks or ascalon will give you xp and allow you to find mastery points for the old world, running around in verdant brink gives you xp and mastery points towards maguma masteries.

On top of this you need a LOT of xp to max out, first level masteries took about 254k xp, 2nd level however would take around 1.1k (4 TIMES as much) if they keep increasing like that you would need like 64mil xp for each tier 5 mastery, ofc i doubt anyone would get even one t2 in the time we had in beta and deffo noone would get a t3, so noone can truly know.

but beside the xp once you got a tier grinded out you need to spend mastery points to unlock it and well looking at the panel t1 and t2 each took 1 mastery point, t3 took 4 i think, forgot t4 and t5 took 10 mastery points, which would also take a lot of time and effort to get all of them..

And we might not even have seen all the mastery lines they gonna implement at launch, so for all we know they could end up with 10 or 20 lines for each world part.

And lastly it is NOT exactly uncommon practice to speed up the gain of xp and the like during betas etc to allow ppl in the short timeframe to advance faster than they normally could

I didn’t even understand how the training worked, like what did I need to do to make the progress bar move.

I didn’t get into this beta but was in the first and I suggested that they use the UI like the WvW abilities.. It looks nicer, is easy to follow, you can put you points where you want them etc etc… I’m really hoping that the mastery UI gets changed as from the first beta, not only was it confusing but took up half my screen when it was open.

Also I still don’t understand why we have to equip a mastery to level it up.. Why not just have a pool of points (like the wvw abilities) where you can just level up, save your points and distribute them later. Not feeling this mastery system at all.

I think the one piece of constructive feedback I have is this. The Mastery UI is not intuitive enough. It was not immediately clear what I needed to do. I thought well, I have a point so let’s spend it but clicking things didn’t seem to do anything. I did eventually click something that allowed me to start collecting exp towards gliding but I spent a few very confused minutes before that trying to make sense of the Mastery UI.

Selecting a Mastery to train needs to be more intuitive. What’s available for purchase, what’s locked, better indicators for what is currently being trained could all be made clearer.