Guild Wars 2

Cross-post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/37vvzu/mastery_tracks_gliders_and_ideas/

Idea 1
When a mastery track is completed in full, it gains a repeatable tier that rewards you with something every time you complete it (like leveling up in level 80 currently rewards you with skill points).
Those prizes would be related to the track and something the player would be happy to get (unlike skill points). For example:

• Fractals track: a pristine fractal relic or an amount of agony infusions
• Legendary track: mystic clovers, or something else rare and valuable.

Crazy ideas for Maguuma tracks:

• Gliding track: 10 minute consumable that halves the speed your glider descends, allowing you to get farther than normal.
• Mushroom track: portable jumping mushroom (consumable), that can be deployed on ground and allows you to jump for 1/3 of the height a jumping mushroom allows (if it went the full height, it could allow map breaking or trivialize content)

This way, a person that already completed all available tracks would still enjoy leveling up and care about getting XP.

Idea 2
Gliders are a great opportunity for customization. Also, we already have some back pieces that look like wings, maybe a little (Spinal Blades, Dragon Wings), maybe a lot (Black Feather Wings).
So, my proposal is that, through some recipe, people are able to convert their backpieces into a customized look for their gliders. It could take some consumables (like the one I proposed for gliding track) and many more items, making this customization something remarkable to attain.

Opinion
Mastery tracks are account bound and thus it should take a long time to complete it in full. Like, the first tier would better take only 1 hour but the whole track should take, let’s say, 50 or 100 hours. This is countered by the fact that all of your 80’s XP would contribute with the track’s progress, and once an ability is unlocked, it is so for the entire account.

TL;DR I describe an idea to make leveling up beyond 80/full masteries something people care about. Also more cosmetics.

What do you guys think?

edit: including link to reddit and changing order. Also TLDR.

50-100 hours is more than it takes to get to max level in the first place.
Now lets say that you want to max all Masteries and there are 10 of them. That means 500-1000 hours to do that, which is more time than many people have even spent in the game in total.

lordkrall.7241:

50-100 hours is more than it takes to get to max level in the first place.
Now lets say that you want to max all Masteries and there are 10 of them. That means 500-1000 hours to do that, which is more time than many people have even spent in the game in total.

I would argue that that’s what the developers are going for. Systems that keep you progressing for a long time. The usual path for most casuals is:

• People get to 80
• Get their exotics
• Discover that ascended is grindy and irrelevant
• Discover that legendary is hyper-grindy and cosmetic
• They go away.

I see in the mastery system the ability to keep progressing a little for a long time. That’s why it is account bound. Account bound progression, like WvW rank, Luck and wardrobe, is always a long-winded affair.
And, as long as it doesn’t need to be repeated on each character, I am fine with that.

The main issue is that we already know that certain content will only be doable at a certain level of Mastery. Locking that behind what is basically grinding for 50-100 hours will go against what GW2 is all about.

Some problems I see:

As the tracks currently look, there are significant bonuses for unlocking parts of a mastery. Significant to the point that not having them would make your character unable to access certain content for a very long time (perhaps forever for people that don’t have time to play every day).

From what was seen in the beta event, the second point in a mastery line takes about 4 times as long as the first. With a fairly small number of elements in each line, there would be enormous gaps in progression, to the point that trying specifically to unlock something seems meaningless.

ANet said that they want to continue to add interesting masteries as time goes on, so there’s no reason to make the initial masteries take ages to unlock. They can just add more progression options.

Well, I should have imagined that the QQ about tracks taking too long to unlock would take over the thread.

So, let’s focus on the ideas instead of focusing on my opinion about how much time tracks should take to unlock, shall we?

DDCarvalho.2071:

Well, I should have imagined that the QQ about tracks taking too long to unlock would take over the thread.

So, let’s focus on the ideas instead of focusing on my opinion about how much time tracks should take to unlock, shall we?

No one QQ’d, we commented on part of your post. If you didn’t want it in the discussion, you shouldn’t have included it.

Your idea 1: If the rewards could be reasonably balanced then sure, why not. Better than getting a djinngot every level you don’t have a mastery to work on (unless you want them, I guess).

Your idea 2: It would kind of surprise me if ANet wasn’t already planning on cosmetic gliders.

Palindrome.8904:

Better than getting a djinngot every level you don’t have a mastery to work on (unless you want them, I guess).

I think they said that level ups on level 80 will no more award skill points (or djinngots :P) when HoT drops.

They will be prizes for some high level content, but they will not be awarded on level up. That’s what got me thinking of what could be their successor for when we have maxed all mastery tracks.

I would prefer something engaging and fun, and I suggested the gliding and mushroom consumables as placeholders, but sure the community can have even better ideas if they stop focusing on one opinion they don’t agree with.