Guild Wars 2

I’m concerned about how masteries will progress under my current playstyle.

I’m an altaholic. By the time HoT launches I’ll have nine l80s and plan to start a new Revanant too. I currently play the game with two primary story characters that tend to run the new content areas and story stuff, currently in the Silverwastes, and plan to bring those characters into the new jungle. I play all the other characters too though, I leave them camped out all over the “old” world, and pop over to them to run world bosses and other events, or clear regional dailies, that sort of thing, and I enjoy that variety of experiences.

My concern comes from the recent blog update about how masteries work. My understanding of how it will apply to my current playstyle is this: I play as my two lead characters, and they both start gaining progress towards whatever mastery I have selected, right? So say I pick “gliding” to put my first point in, every XP I earn on either character would increment a shared progress bar for gliding, right? But then my characters who are out in the old world won’t be able to progress that bar? They would be incrementing some second mastery track, gaining some sort of old world skills that haven’t been explained yet? And I would need to spend two points to unlock both of these tracks, meaning that if I progress in both areas then I will be more Mastery-Point poor than a player who only focuses on the new content until he maxes it out?

I don’t know, I think if the systems are kept completely separate then they should use completely different points to unlock the tracks, or even better, that my old world alts would be able to progress the Jungle skill tracks as well. It sounds complicated and scary for an altaholic, a system that would too easily end up wasting my time when I’m playing my alts.

With the 2 different sets of masteries based on the 2 major zones, my guess would be that you progress the active track of the zone you are in. but that is only my guess and not something that we can really even infer based on the post.

That’s a weird complaint lol.

It’s account bound, mastery points are account bound. Only the XP progression is limited to the zones. Is that soooo bad? It’s your choice to park your alts and only use them for that gameplay.

It’s account bound, mastery points are account bound. Only the XP progression is limited to the zones. Is that soooo bad? It’s your choice to park your alts and only use them for that gameplay.

Yeah, but I don’t want to feel that my progress with those characters would now lack meaning. I mean, at least under the current system, any XP I gain with them turns into SP, which I can spend on stuff. And I don’t earn any less playing them than playing my Silverwastes characters. But with the sounds of this new system, what are the “old world” masteries anyways? What if they are things that I wouldn’t even care about like something to do with dungeons or Fractals? Then any XP I gained on those characters would be entirely worthless. Or if they were something useful, but required spending fungible mastery points, then it means that when I gain two points, I need to spend one in each zone, so while a player focused on the Jungle would have eight Jungle tracks unlocked, I would only have four there, or otherwise I’d have capped out my old world tracks and would again be wasting potential progress on them.

Again, I’m not saying this is the end of the world, a lot of my worry comes from what we don’t know yet, I just have some concerns based on what we’ve been told. I’m very much hoping that my concerns will be unfounded.

Mastery points acquired from Old zones can only be used for Old zone Mastery Tracks. New Zone Mastery Tracks require New Zone Mastery Points, so no your concern is unfounded.

Even if it wasn’t your concern is still unfounded. You play the way you play, not the way someone else plays. It doesn’t matter how someone else plays. If someone else is only going to play the new content through, then yes, they would level up the new content faster than you while only using their points on new content.

You don’t play that way, so you will progress on new content tracks slower, while also progressing on old content tracks. You will both have the same potential amount of total progress, just with different focus. You’re not at a disadvantage, per se.

You don’t play that way, so you will progress on new content tracks slower, while also progressing on old content tracks. You will both have the same potential amount of total progress, just with different focus. You’re not at a disadvantage, per se.

That would really depend on how much value there is to the old world progression verses the new. So far we’ve only heard about the Jungle tracks and how vital they are towards accomplishing pretty much anything in the new maps. I kind of doubt that the old world tracks will be as useful.

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t play that way, so you will progress on new content tracks slower, while also progressing on old content tracks. You will both have the same potential amount of total progress, just with different focus. You’re not at a disadvantage, per se.

That would really depend on how much value there is to the old world progression verses the new. So far we’ve only heard about the Jungle tracks and how vital they are towards accomplishing pretty much anything in the new maps. I kind of doubt that the old world tracks will be as useful.

Why? You’re still going to be playing the old world stuff. You progress on the new world stuff when you play that. It makes no difference. If it’s so important to you, then you should dramatically alter your play style to accommodate this phantom fear of yours.

I don’t get the oozing condescension, but my point is that if the old world mastery tracks don’t have much value to them, then progressing them wouldn’t have much value either. And yes, I could move everyone to the new maps, but I’d really rather not do that, I enjoy variety.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Mastery points acquired from Old zones can only be used for Old zone Mastery Tracks. New Zone Mastery Tracks require New Zone Mastery Points, so no your concern is unfounded.

Even if it wasn’t your concern is still unfounded. You play the way you play, not the way someone else plays. It doesn’t matter how someone else plays. If someone else is only going to play the new content through, then yes, they would level up the new content faster than you while only using their points on new content.

You don’t play that way, so you will progress on new content tracks slower, while also progressing on old content tracks. You will both have the same potential amount of total progress, just with different focus. You’re not at a disadvantage, per se.

This, this, and this so much so.

The value of the individual to themselves is greater than that of the value of others to them. Your progression is yours alone based on how YOU play the game, not on how someone else plays the game. Someone who does 99% combat and 1% exploration will have inferior gliding skills to someone that does 50% combat and 50% exploration; however that same person will have far superior combat skills.

In fact this is exactly like WvWvW points. Both Player A and Player B have 100 points. Player A is someone can spend all their points into arrow carts and be awesome at that. Good for them for being a well defender. However there’s Player B that’s following the Blue PIN Comm from gate to gate with rams because he spent all his points in Ram mastery. Their spending of points, although the same amount through the same time spent, is based on their preferential gameplay desires.

“Each Mastery track is tied to a region of Tyria— they must be unlocked with Mastery points gained in that region and can only be trained in that region. With the launch of Heart of Thorns, there will be two Mastery regions: the Heart of Maguuma, encompassing all PvE zones that are part of the Heart of Thorns expansion, and the core Guild Wars 2 world, encompassing all PvE zones currently available in the game today. "

See the bolded part, you are not locking yourself out of “Maguuma Masterpoints” if you spend time in both regions. Both regions are completely seperate, not only for kind of mastery tracks in which you have to invest, but also with regard to mastery point that can be earned and spent.

Also, the Masteries are account wide. So if at one point you decide to move the characters from the “old world” to the Heart of Maguuma then they have access to what the other chars in that region have already unlocked. Which is very alt friendly.

Some Mastery points in the “old world” will come from content that you may have already completed, and these Mastery points will be automatically awarded to you with the release of Heart of Thorns. So you’ll probably have some mastery points in the “old world” right from the start which you can’t spend on anything else but “old world” masteries. <— this makes me wonder how much mastery points there will actually still remain to be earned in the “old world” for veteran players.

I’m not entirely certain on this, but the way WvW points work is that there is a global pool of points. Every time I go onto a new character, I have the same number of world “mastery” points, if you will, but I can distribute them however I want. Now, if this system is comparable to how PvE mastery points will work, once you have earned a certain amount of mastery points, the new alts can spend the points on different things. Like character Human can devote the first few points to gliding while character Norn can dedicate points to mordrem fighting.

I’m not entirely certain on this, but the way WvW points work is that there is a global pool of points. Every time I go onto a new character, I have the same number of world “mastery” points, if you will, but I can distribute them however I want. Now, if this system is comparable to how PvE mastery points will work, once you have earned a certain amount of mastery points, the new alts can spend the points on different things. Like character Human can devote the first few points to gliding while character Norn can dedicate points to mordrem fighting.

I don’t think that’s how this will work. It seems more like the PvP reward tracks than the WvW system, since they say that you use points to unlock tracks, and then level grind to max out those tracks. If that system were designed how you say then you would need to level grind each character along the track individually, which seems to go against the sort of casual design they’re spotlighting. I would really hate if I would essentially have to gain 10-20 “levels” worth of XP on each of my characters, inside the jungle, before they could catch up to where my vanguard characters are.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Mastery points acquired from Old zones can only be used for Old zone Mastery Tracks. New Zone Mastery Tracks require New Zone Mastery Points, so no your concern is unfounded.

The article doesn’t say that, it says you can play any content to unlock mastery points. Mastery Points are account wide and can be spent anywhere, just like WvW points. The experience bar for each zone is shared between your characters, just like PvP reward tracks.

IRT Ohoni
I might be wrong with what I’ve said above but this is what I got from what I’ve read. The points you gain from leveling up in other zones can be spent on Maguuma tracks but points are only used to unlock tracks not level them up from what I also gathered. If you have characters in Maguuma they’ll level up whatever track you have and gain you points and your characters for other maps will do the same for the maps they are in.
So really, you’re not losing much from playing the other zones, you could possibly be unlocking tracks a lot faster than other people but not leveling up one track faster than those who are committed to that one track.

EDIT: Yeap I was wrong;

Each Mastery track is tied to a region of Tyria—they must be unlocked with Mastery points gained in that region and can only be trained in that region. With the launch of Heart of Thorns, there will be two Mastery regions: the Heart of Maguuma, encompassing all PvE zones that are part of the Heart of Thorns expansion, and the core Guild Wars 2 world, encompassing all PvE zones currently available in the game today.

Yeah, read it again.

From what I’m an understanding, your concern is that if the Old map masteries will be “weaker” than the New map masteries and since you play the Old map frequently the time you spend there may feel sub-optimal, am I correct?

If so, you are assuming that the old map masteries will be really bad, I think that those will be very important since most of the world is in the old map, so having alts getting points towards the old map masteries will be a great deal imo.

If so, you are assuming that the old map masteries will be really bad, I think that those will be very important since most of the world is in the old map, so having alts getting points towards the old map masteries will be a great deal imo.

And maybe they will be. This is just my current concern based on what we currently know, and nothing would please me better than to be completely wrong on this.

The reason I have concerns is that we now know, generally, what the Jungle masteries are for. They will unlock gliding, jump pads, special defenses and offenses that are needed for specific jungle content. While they have their own unique flavors, they are essentially in gaming terms “keys” that are used to access new content. I get that. What I don’t get is how “core” masteries will work.

We already have 100% access to the old world. There are no existing areas we cannot reach. So what will the core mastery do? Are they going to be adding whole new content areas, new mini-dungeons, JPs, world bosses, etc. that will require masteries to access? Will the core masteries just cheapen existing content, like say “reduce damage from world bosses by 10%?” Will they be things like buffs to MF, or WP fees, or what? I’m just having a hard time figuring out what sort of reward mechanisms would be as essential to game progression as the Jungle masteries seem to be for progressing through the jungle. At this point I can’t help but assume that the core masteries will be more superfluous “flavor” stuff.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Mastery points acquired from Old zones can only be used for Old zone Mastery Tracks. New Zone Mastery Tracks require New Zone Mastery Points, so no your concern is unfounded.

I’d like to contest this with a different take (which is the impression I got).

Mastery points are common to both zones. However, Mastery Tracks are zone specific. Players who have already done old content will get Mastery points, at which point, they can unlock Tracks in Maguuma and/or current world. It doesn’t make sense for players who have mastery points within the current world to not be able to unlock Mastery tracks in Maguuma right away.

The difference is that, when you’re in the old world, you’re progressing only the old world Mastery Track; when you’re in Maguuma, you’re progressing the Maguuma Track. As a result, Maguuma abilities are locked to Maguuma, Old world abilities/masteries are locked to old world.