Guild Wars 2

So been playing HoT since launch, as often as I could, and I have to say, they story gating behind masteries is getting really, really annoying. We all went through this with the Core game, and lots of people complained that having to stop often to level broke the flow of the story. Hence the NPE changes to the story, that make it flow mush better. It would seem that ANet have made the same mistake here too. I don’t mind having to level say the first level of a mastery, but when you have to start leveling a different one, once you hit a different story part, it’s annoying. I could have been leveling that one, over the next level of the one I was doing. This slows the whole thing down even more.

I’m really enjoying the story so far. But all the having to do the masteries is just starting to bore me. I have to say I’m not enjoying the HoT maps. They all feel the same, are a complete pain to navigate. But my god, they look incredible. I wouldn’t even say they are too hard, the only thing making mobs hard are the break bars that have been slapped on to practically everything. ANet said they wanted us to think about our skill bars, yeah it’s simple, don’t take any CC skills, they are worthless thanks to brake bars.

The masteries are nice touches to make maps harder to explore, but at the same time, also is a frustration. I have no problem having to have higher levels of masteries before I can 100% a map. But locking the story behind them, as I have already said, was the wrong move in my mind. I should want to play in a map, not feel like I have too to move forward with what I want to do with in the game. I think this might be why I’m not enjoying the maps. as I want to continue with the story, to having to do events to get the mastery to continue feels like a chore.

The saving grace with all of this is that I will not have to do the mastery tracks with a different character from scratch. This is by far the best decision ANet made in regards to HoT.

I do like the new Skins added with Hot, some are really nice, I’ve not seen them all yet, as I’m still working my way through the game, I’ve just reached Tangled depths. I’m hoping I wont have to do anymore masteries after this one, so I can finish the story, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

TL;DR Story gated be hind multi level masteries is a bad idea, Just like it was pre NPE. Map look amazing, but can be difficult to navigate. Break bars are making the game artificially harder, by taking away CC skills, seems lazy to me. new skins are very nice, and great story so far. I’d give the game an 7.5 out of 10.