Guild Wars 2

It’s been a few weeks now and now that I’ve completed the story, and put some time into the various content in HoT, I can now say, without being cut off by someone saying “why don’t you just wait and see how it’s like when it goes live” that many of my gripes about how the mastery system was implemented ever since I first experienced it in beta have held true.

The main gripe, is the xp bar barrier. Earning mastery points themselves is quite fun. I glided, bounced on mushrooms, explored nooks and crannies, did odd achievements, practiced and improved on adventures, and killed bosses to earn them.

For the first few tiers of masteries, I explored the map on different characters, I did meta events, I did the story, and that was all fine. But now that I’m in the running for 2.5 million + xp masteries, I find I’m not just doing meta events… but I’m repeating them over and over.. ankitten ow actually doing the thing I hate most in MMO’s.. soul sucking mob grind, just running in circles killing the same mobs over and over, in a game that advertised from its conception, that this was not a game where that was the goal. The game director, Colin Johanson, has even been a meme for standing on stage mocking other MMO’s for featuring this kind of grind, famously saying “I… swung a sword…. I swung a sword again….hey-hey! I swung it again that’s great”, and I now hear it in my head as “I …. did an event…. I did an event again.. hey-hey! I did it again that’s great” or more accurately now “I… killed a veteran jungle spider… I killed a veteran jungle spider again… hey-hey! I killed it again that’s great”. It isn’t fun or engaging, and I find myself thinking, "how does killing these spiders over and over teach me the language of frog people? How does doing this event over and over make me better at hang gliding?

To top it off the payout for many of these masteries is often minimal, poison lore will allow me to get 1 Hero point and a mastery insight per map, if that, same with leyline gliding. I need stealth detection and exalted gathering just for the treasure mushrooms and rare mineral to complete the collections for all elite spec weapons but they have no applications beyond that

Before people counter that you need the xp bar with high xp requirements to encourage people to do the events, I’m going to assert that you really don’t. The xp requirements have caused people to find more efficient ways to tackle them than do events for one, people farmed mushrooms at the expense of completing an event until it was fixed so those mushrooms gave no experience, and that right there is telling, that people find the event xp too low to be of value vs soul sucking grind. People have moved on to spider farming because it’s still more efficient than any event chain in the game and because it does not obstruct event completion, anet will allow it to persist. Why do people do the event chains and meta events? There’s tons of reasons to do them. Achievements, some of which grant mastery points, currencies for the map vendors (once you have the masteries to speak to them), new armor set boxes, gold, champ bags, crafting materials for high tiers, etc.

Silverwastes farming persisted for months and nobody was doing it for xp. In fact as the spider farming shows, xp requirements draw people AWAY from event chains in order to get the masteries needed so that people can complete maps and their class spec collections.

When I first envisioned the mastery system based on the announcement conference for HoT, I thought of a metroidvania or zelda like system where you found masteries through exploration. For example to learn gliding, you’d scale tall places, maybe just one, maybe a few, and once you reached the top(s), you had to learn to glide to get down, maybe an adventure, maybe part of a story quest, but you were actually TAUGHT to glide somehow, rather than killing mobs over and over and somehow you just picked up gliding skill by osmosis. To learn the language of a tribe, maybe you did some events on behalf of those people, specific events, not just killing random mobs or doing any random events in any map to grind up an xp bar, to gain their trust and they taught you their language. Basically, closer to how acquiring mastery POINTS works, but instead of generic mastery points the ones you found were very specific in purpose.

What I’d like to see from this point forward is 3 things:

1. Reorganization of some mastery lines. Gliding is pretty good as is, with the exception of earning it through xp rather than learning it, but the other 3 lines are not organized very well. Exalted acceptance/Itzel Language/Nuhoch Language should come FIRST in those lines. Have them cost half the xp of what is currently the first tier of masteries in each of those lines to maintain the same xp requirements for the story required masteries (which would be Tier 2 in most cases now) so that story progression maintains about the same time requirements if you’re happy with that (while reducing the xp requirements for higher tiers significantly just through that one restructuring). This would also encourage event participation as the language/acceptance is needed in order to use the vendors so that you can spend the map currencies. The sooner you can spend what you earn, the more likely you are to want to stick around and earn map currencies. It’s not rocket science.

2. Add more to some niche masteries like itzel poison lore, nuhoch stealth detection, and exalted gathering. Itzel poison lore should enable you to take less damage from the poison condition, in particular take less damage from various hylek poison attacks (we were told some masteries would be combat oriented and allow us to better conquer the difficult enemies we face). Nuhoch stealth detection should allow you to see Coztic Shadowleapers and Bladedancers when they use stealth, and perhaps hit smokescales in their smoke field, also skale (heck, if technically possible, all skale not just those in maguuma) It currently only works on treasure mushrooms, mordrem guard snipers, and 1 gimmicky boss in VB. Exalted gathering should apply to all maguuma jungle nodes not just Auric Basin nodes, and various other crafting mats should be available from various different nodes with that mastery.

3. Reconsider how masteries are unlocked. Grinding through xp bars is pretty boring and unfulfilling, while finding the mastery points themselves is fun.

What’s your rush. The game is 3 weeks old. Raids are coming soon and apparently they are supposed to give decent XP too.

The thing is, you’re trying to do it fast. What else would you be doing and why aren’t you doing it?

You’re right about how useless the masteries can become. I maxed gliding and then looked at the rest and shrugged. Vendors? A daily champ on each faction? Why even bother?

Vayne.8563:

What’s your rush. The game is 3 weeks old. Raids are coming soon and apparently they are supposed to give decent XP too.

The thing is, you’re trying to do it fast. What else would you be doing and why aren’t you doing it?

I can’t speak for the OP, but I feel pressured into doing the masteries.

I can’t do old world completion because of the “world completion removes your HoT completion rewards” bug, meaning I HAVE to get the exploration masteries to complete the new maps before doing the old stuff.

because I have to do masteries in the relatively small HoT zones, I have two choices: do events over and over again until I am sick of them and never want to see that zone again, or grind spiders.

my main problem is Ley-Line gliding, it’s an exploration mastery, it should NOT be that far down the gliding line, it should be the third mastery at most.

I’d like to do events for their own sake, not because I have to grind masteries, the mastery grind is actually making me resent the events from repetition.

the other masteries, sure, the rush isn’t needed I’m fine with slowly getting progress towards things like vendors or hidden mushrooms or bonus materials, but things like ley-line gliding, poison mastery, updrafts, and nuhoch wallows are things that I feel like I NEED to rush because they block important content like map completion

I have no issue with masteries as is, besides the XP gate. Not all of them will feel as fulfilling as the last, they are quality of life changes to the first tier. Kind of like upgrading your endgame armor in other mmos.

I’ll use this example (May not make sense for those who have not raided in other games) I was a top tier raider in everquest 2, and everytime an expansion came out, the gear stat jump wad INSANE, cuz you know, big numbers=big fun. The first piece of raid fear you got for that expansion was a huge upgrade to what you had in the last expansion, but each piece after that, while still being an upgrade, was not nearly AS big of a damage boost.

Masteries work similarly. Unlocking gliding is HUGE. It allows you to do much more than what you could before, like the damage spike from new raid gear in eq2. But, the next tiers of gliding feel less and less like a significant change, like upgrading from that first piece and moving on.

That may not be the Best analogy,but it makes sense to me.

The only thing I think would make the mastery system a heck of a lot more fun would be making them level up differently.

So fir gliding, the first tier would be unlocked via speaking to an NPC who dreams of flight. You then gather things with this nps and make a functional hut not great glider. After that first tier, rather than just killing things to get XP that has nothing to do with the gliding, maybe have the first tier unlock after a curtain amount of time spent gliding, then the next you unlock for reaching places exclusive to gliders, etc.

I think this would be much more engaging than XP farming, which I’ll ne honest, I did a kitten ton of, I am mastery 161 now.

I might make a forum post here in a bit with my suggestions on a better levl up experience for each mastery track to see what people would think of my ideas =P

Ranlares.2513:

I have no issue with masteries as is, besides the XP gate. Not all of them will feel as fulfilling as the last, they are quality of life changes to the first tier. Kind of like upgrading your endgame armor in other mmos.

I’ll use this example (May not make sense for those who have not raided in other games) I was a top tier raider in everquest 2, and everytime an expansion came out, the gear stat jump wad INSANE, cuz you know, big numbers=big fun. The first piece of raid fear you got for that expansion was a huge upgrade to what you had in the last expansion, but each piece after that, while still being an upgrade, was not nearly AS big of a damage boost.

Masteries work similarly. Unlocking gliding is HUGE. It allows you to do much more than what you could before, like the damage spike from new raid gear in eq2. But, the next tiers of gliding feel less and less like a significant change, like upgrading from that first piece and moving on.

That may not be the Best analogy,but it makes sense to me.

The only thing I think would make the mastery system a heck of a lot more fun would be making them level up differently.

So fir gliding, the first tier would be unlocked via speaking to an NPC who dreams of flight. You then gather things with this nps and make a functional hut not great glider. After that first tier, rather than just killing things to get XP that has nothing to do with the gliding, maybe have the first tier unlock after a curtain amount of time spent gliding, then the next you unlock for reaching places exclusive to gliders, etc.

I think this would be much more engaging than XP farming, which I’ll ne honest, I did a kitten ton of, I am mastery 161 now.

I might make a forum post here in a bit with my suggestions on a better levl up experience for each mastery track to see what people would think of my ideas =P

It’s the same in this game. Getting your exotic armor is a huge boost. Want to go up higher? Well yes you can add some infusions for laurels at a relatively high price for relatively few stats.

I can in some way relate to the OP. Actually there are two points I totally agree with:

1. There is absolutely no connection between killing a monster or helping some NPCs succeed in their tasks and learning how to glide, learning a foreign language or how to withstand dangerous poison.
2. Even if I slow down my progression (which is totally fine) I am bound to a very limited spectrum of sources of experience so that it somewhat gets to a daily routine after only a few weeks of new content.

The second point may be put into perspective with the release of the raids as long as you don’t get totally locked out by missing masteries or community gating (missing guild, missing equipment, etc.).

If ArenaNet does not want to move from the really unrealistic correlation between experience and the current masteries there might be some ways to release the pain of getting experience:

• Reset the first time experience of the adventures once a week. Thereby they get a bit more interesting and one might try to improve doing them.
• The map “Auric Basin” has nothing on it besides the events that are related to the meta event. You cannot do anything there in it’s downtime. Fill the map with new life – at least in the meta events downtime since map chat beef might occur when they run at the same time. Unlock the adventures more often. They are locked most of the time because it is to dangerous when actually nothing really happens.
• For “Tangled Depths” there could be maps that you can buy from basic vendors which show you the way to active events with these green arrow hints from personal story. That might change the opinion of players towards the map and bring life into it – additional to broadening the exp earning possibilities. The map would still require people to walk the tangled ways of a dangerous jungle. Also all the secrets would be unaffected and still need the cunning of an explorer.

That’s all I can think of right now. Maybe I find some more suggestions later.

Vayne.8563:

Ranlares.2513:

I have no issue with masteries as is, besides the XP gate. Not all of them will feel as fulfilling as the last, they are quality of life changes to the first tier. Kind of like upgrading your endgame armor in other mmos.

I’ll use this example (May not make sense for those who have not raided in other games) I was a top tier raider in everquest 2, and everytime an expansion came out, the gear stat jump wad INSANE, cuz you know, big numbers=big fun. The first piece of raid fear you got for that expansion was a huge upgrade to what you had in the last expansion, but each piece after that, while still being an upgrade, was not nearly AS big of a damage boost.

Masteries work similarly. Unlocking gliding is HUGE. It allows you to do much more than what you could before, like the damage spike from new raid gear in eq2. But, the next tiers of gliding feel less and less like a significant change, like upgrading from that first piece and moving on.

That may not be the Best analogy,but it makes sense to me.

The only thing I think would make the mastery system a heck of a lot more fun would be making them level up differently.

So fir gliding, the first tier would be unlocked via speaking to an NPC who dreams of flight. You then gather things with this nps and make a functional hut not great glider. After that first tier, rather than just killing things to get XP that has nothing to do with the gliding, maybe have the first tier unlock after a curtain amount of time spent gliding, then the next you unlock for reaching places exclusive to gliders, etc.

I think this would be much more engaging than XP farming, which I’ll ne honest, I did a kitten ton of, I am mastery 161 now.

I might make a forum post here in a bit with my suggestions on a better levl up experience for each mastery track to see what people would think of my ideas =P

It’s the same in this game. Getting your exotic armor is a huge boost. Want to go up higher? Well yes you can add some infusions for laurels at a relatively high price for relatively few stats.

Going from tier to tier in this game is not ever a huge boost, not in comparison to having a glider and not having a glider. Yoy either don’t understand what I was saying or you don’t have that frame of reference, either way like I said analogy might not make sense to ever one.

Going from rare to exotic is not a huge jump, and neither is exotic to ascended

Hey when you release a full-priced expansion with just 4 new maps, 1 new class and some other minor stuff you need to have some grind in the mix, right?

Xp is hardly the problem. Xp is given for everything in this game. Kill a mob, xp! Complete an event, xp! rez a player, xp! harvest a node, xp! stand around afk, meta event xp!

However good luck getting gold on most of the adventures to get enough mastery points to actually finish all those masteries! There are only like 15 extra mastery points in the entire expansion, which means you need to do all the story achievements, all the adventures to at least silver, all the map achievements, and about half of the gold medals for adventures.

I’ve been capped on xp for a while now, just from collecting things for my Nevermore. The problem is definitely mastery points if you think there is a problem.

Honestly, I’d rather grind 5 million EXP per tier than trying to do adventures I really suck at to reach silver and gold (while I can’t even make the least rank due to being disabled) or run after stupid achievements to farm mastery points…
I’ll never have enough to max out all masteries, not even the necessary ones, os I chose gliding and gave up on the rest.
Don’t like the grind for crystalline Ore too, after getting my 13th elite (of 20 lvl 80’s) there’s only one thing to get for now and I’m done for good. And that’s a bugger too, seeing that no one seems to be able to do the TD meta…

Btw leveling masteries isn’t much of a big deal if you have the mastery points, I didn’t have to grind and got 6/2/3/3 easily while playing anyway. Same goes for Tyria masteries, that are Max/1/Max already. (Okay I did the CoF thingy for 4hrs once, but only because the magical auto loot is a great relief.)

I loved masteries since first day.. what you have to do to learn new language? Kill dinos, mordrem etc. Now i will be controversial so dont read this thing in spoiler

Now to those that have read it..yes its olny a game but it doesnt make much sense still right? We should search for books and such to slowly learn language, to improve gliding you should glide etc but instead we got masteries in a grind way..farm farm like mad to unlock them. Its a joke if you ask me. If anything masteries are a lazy way to lock progress in this ls3 to let people think that theres a lot to do..but there inst. Its a half finished rushed product and it has no rights to be called expansion. At best it can be called dlc.

Guys, why are you searching reasons to grind, just play the game, I am at the 2nd map, I even didn’t rush to open other maps.

Just play the game, you will get the masteries one day.

Personally, I do META events until I am bored, then go to fractals when bored from those, when I am done with them some PVP, when that is done some Teqahl/Karka Queen gold rush, when that is done, legendary hunt….

There is no reason to grind like mad to get that 160 MPs, play the game you will get there one day eventually.

Ranlares.2513:

Vayne.8563:

Ranlares.2513:

I have no issue with masteries as is, besides the XP gate. Not all of them will feel as fulfilling as the last, they are quality of life changes to the first tier. Kind of like upgrading your endgame armor in other mmos.

I’ll use this example (May not make sense for those who have not raided in other games) I was a top tier raider in everquest 2, and everytime an expansion came out, the gear stat jump wad INSANE, cuz you know, big numbers=big fun. The first piece of raid fear you got for that expansion was a huge upgrade to what you had in the last expansion, but each piece after that, while still being an upgrade, was not nearly AS big of a damage boost.

Masteries work similarly. Unlocking gliding is HUGE. It allows you to do much more than what you could before, like the damage spike from new raid gear in eq2. But, the next tiers of gliding feel less and less like a significant change, like upgrading from that first piece and moving on.

That may not be the Best analogy,but it makes sense to me.

The only thing I think would make the mastery system a heck of a lot more fun would be making them level up differently.

So fir gliding, the first tier would be unlocked via speaking to an NPC who dreams of flight. You then gather things with this nps and make a functional hut not great glider. After that first tier, rather than just killing things to get XP that has nothing to do with the gliding, maybe have the first tier unlock after a curtain amount of time spent gliding, then the next you unlock for reaching places exclusive to gliders, etc.

I think this would be much more engaging than XP farming, which I’ll ne honest, I did a kitten ton of, I am mastery 161 now.

I might make a forum post here in a bit with my suggestions on a better levl up experience for each mastery track to see what people would think of my ideas =P

It’s the same in this game. Getting your exotic armor is a huge boost. Want to go up higher? Well yes you can add some infusions for laurels at a relatively high price for relatively few stats.

Going from tier to tier in this game is not ever a huge boost, not in comparison to having a glider and not having a glider. Yoy either don’t understand what I was saying or you don’t have that frame of reference, either way like I said analogy might not make sense to ever one.

Going from rare to exotic is not a huge jump, and neither is exotic to ascended

You don’t understand what I’m saying.

There’s a huge difference between having a glider and not having a glider. There’s a lot less of a difference though as you move up the line. Like having a glider was leyline mastery isn’t twice as effective as having a glider. For the most part it’s convenience.

In other words the earlier masteries, which are cheaper and faster to level are important as you go deeper into each tree the become less and less necessary.

So you train up a handful of early masteries and then you can take your time and not really worry about the later ones.

Vayne.8563:

What’s your rush. The game is 3 weeks old. Raids are coming soon and apparently they are supposed to give decent XP too.

The thing is, you’re trying to do it fast. What else would you be doing and why aren’t you doing it?

I want to get some of the elite spec weapons, and they’re mastery gated. I’ve already done what exploring I can with the masteries I have, any further exploration is gated by masteries. Any further progression of my characters, is gated by masteries. Everything I want to do, is gated by masteries.

I’m sorry but standing around bars in Divinities Reach talking in emotes does not appeal to me.

I found that once I unlocked the mastery I needed, I enjoyed playing more, like, unlocking advanced gliding, that made things more fun.

Grinding that xp bar to unlock it however. Bored me to tears.

Tom Gore.4035:

Hey when you release a full-priced expansion with just 4 new maps, 1 new class and some other minor stuff you need to have some grind in the mix, right?

It’s fairly obvious to me that some of the new content was just so we don’t run through the rest of the new content too soon.

Ranlares.2513:

Vayne.8563:

Ranlares.2513:

I have no issue with masteries as is, besides the XP gate. Not all of them will feel as fulfilling as the last, they are quality of life changes to the first tier. Kind of like upgrading your endgame armor in other mmos.

I’ll use this example (May not make sense for those who have not raided in other games) I was a top tier raider in everquest 2, and everytime an expansion came out, the gear stat jump wad INSANE, cuz you know, big numbers=big fun. The first piece of raid fear you got for that expansion was a huge upgrade to what you had in the last expansion, but each piece after that, while still being an upgrade, was not nearly AS big of a damage boost.

Masteries work similarly. Unlocking gliding is HUGE. It allows you to do much more than what you could before, like the damage spike from new raid gear in eq2. But, the next tiers of gliding feel less and less like a significant change, like upgrading from that first piece and moving on.

That may not be the Best analogy,but it makes sense to me.

The only thing I think would make the mastery system a heck of a lot more fun would be making them level up differently.

So fir gliding, the first tier would be unlocked via speaking to an NPC who dreams of flight. You then gather things with this nps and make a functional hut not great glider. After that first tier, rather than just killing things to get XP that has nothing to do with the gliding, maybe have the first tier unlock after a curtain amount of time spent gliding, then the next you unlock for reaching places exclusive to gliders, etc.

I think this would be much more engaging than XP farming, which I’ll ne honest, I did a kitten ton of, I am mastery 161 now.

I might make a forum post here in a bit with my suggestions on a better levl up experience for each mastery track to see what people would think of my ideas =P

It’s the same in this game. Getting your exotic armor is a huge boost. Want to go up higher? Well yes you can add some infusions for laurels at a relatively high price for relatively few stats.

Going from tier to tier in this game is not ever a huge boost, not in comparison to having a glider and not having a glider. Yoy either don’t understand what I was saying or you don’t have that frame of reference, either way like I said analogy might not make sense to ever one.

Going from rare to exotic is not a huge jump, and neither is exotic to ascended

Your analogy was severely flawed because this isn’t like, a small boost to your gear, which while it may be a small boost, it affects everything you do. This is like introducing a stat on your gear that increases the damage you do to one specific mob in one specific instance only on a specific day between the hours of 4pm-7pm EST. It’s gimmicky, but largely useless. Nuhoch stealth detection doesn’t work for the Coztic frogs who use stealth, Skale, Smokescales, or well, anything but Mordrem Guard Snipers, and Treasure Mushrooms, and the one axe wielding boss in Verdant Brink at nighttime. It being so finnicky on what it affects makes it feel less like character progression, and more like a stupid gimmick, it just happens to be a stupid gimmick that is required to complete any of the elite specialization collections.

if it worked on ALL PVE enemies that used stealth, it would suddenly feel like worthwhile character advancement. Hey this is useful progression, I know where the Skale are when they go stealth, so I can see them telegraph their lunge attack to dodge it rather than just guessing!

So that’s why I’m just asking for them to have more applications for these various masteries that for right now only fulfill one very niche purpose usually collection oriented.

Tom Gore.4035:

Hey when you release a full-priced expansion with just 4 new maps, 1 new class and some other minor stuff you need to have some grind in the mix, right?

If you think this is bad take a look at Heavensward. $40 and $15 a month and the only content addition is a new Raid for 1% of the population. You got to grind a linear path for levels so that you can grind that new raid for gear. No deviation, no exploring, grind grind grind. I actually enjoy the PvE in that game and for me it was still a mindless grind to gain those levels.

Masteries are a much better system in that you can do a number of things to gain XP rather than grind the same dungeon path 10 or so times for a level before going to the next linear dungeon path map for 10 more runs and another level.

Masteries are only a necessity for the first 1 or 2. The rest are nice and fun. Are some necessary for collections? Yes, but that can take time. There is nothing saying “You must have this mastery or you cant do the thing!”

Actually, there is ONE, the Stealth detection for the boss in Verdant Brink. Thats the only thing coming to mind. They always said the Masteries would simply be useful lateral progression that you will gain. You are welcome to grind them up all you want, but you do not have to. I have 2 in each tier in the Jungle, and 3 in Nuhoch just from doing the events, and that’s been perfectly enough.

On the other point int he exp necessary in general, yes it is rediculous amounts of exp.

gricks.1897:

Masteries are only a necessity for the first 1 or 2. The rest are nice and fun. Are some necessary for collections? Yes, but that can take time. There is nothing saying “You must have this mastery or you cant do the thing!”

Actually, there is ONE, the Stealth detection for the boss in Verdant Brink. Thats the only thing coming to mind. They always said the Masteries would simply be useful lateral progression that you will gain. You are welcome to grind them up all you want, but you do not have to. I have 2 in each tier in the Jungle, and 3 in Nuhoch just from doing the events, and that’s been perfectly enough.

On the other point int he exp necessary in general, yes it is rediculous amounts of exp.

The point I’m making is not that about its necessity but more about how just plain not fun they are to grind out the xp, and how some of them have such niche uses, while I am giving positive suggestions on how to improve those masteries to be more useful, and also a positive suggestion on how to reorganize the mastery lines in a way that reduces grind and encourages doing the events (opening up the vendors at tier 1 of a mastery line is better than tier 2 or 3 if you want to encourage event completion because if I’m earning currencies that I can’t even spend, I’m less compelled to continue doing the content)

I don’t like the concept of gating something fun behind something not fun in a video game, where a video game is meant to be played for fun, it should all be fun. But the way it’s gated is not fun.

I don’t understand the need. But then I’m pretty casual. I completed the personal story in the first couple days getting the first tier in all the masteries fast, cause it’s really easy to do the first tier. Then I grabbed the second tiers in a couple and now I’m just working my way through gliding. But I already have all the gliding I actually need, the rest isn’t needed it’s just something to have.

I want Stealth Detection because it’s more than just seeing mushrooms. It means that every time any of the almost half the mobs stealth you’ll still be able to see them. That’s extremely useful in most parts of the game.

It’s only a grind if you try to max them in a short amount of time. If you relax and play the content, the XP will come naturally.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I don’t understand the need. But then I’m pretty casual. I completed the personal story in the first couple days getting the first tier in all the masteries fast, cause it’s really easy to do the first tier. Then I grabbed the second tiers in a couple and now I’m just working my way through gliding. But I already have all the gliding I actually need, the rest isn’t needed it’s just something to have.

I want Stealth Detection because it’s more than just seeing mushrooms. It means that every time any of the almost half the mobs stealth you’ll still be able to see them. That’s extremely useful in most parts of the game.

This is why I didn’t buy the x-pac. An admittedly casual player beat the story in a few days. My criticism isn’t quality. ArenaNet’s games are quality. There isn’t enough content though for the price point. Moreover, there isn’t enough cosmetic stuff to go out and earn. Heck, they are even delaying the release of some of the cosmetic rewards in the raids. They never delay gem shop stuff though. Maybe their level of quality is going down and I am cutting them too much slack.

One thing I have noticed is that one’s first impressions, in games, are normally absolutely correct.

You think something, when you have just started playing and you think; “I mustn’t jump to conclusions – I must give it more time.”.

But, the truth is, that the vast majority of the time, it turns out you were right all along.

Iason Evan.3806:

Kal Spiro.9745:

I don’t understand the need. But then I’m pretty casual. I completed the personal story in the first couple days getting the first tier in all the masteries fast, cause it’s really easy to do the first tier. Then I grabbed the second tiers in a couple and now I’m just working my way through gliding. But I already have all the gliding I actually need, the rest isn’t needed it’s just something to have.

I want Stealth Detection because it’s more than just seeing mushrooms. It means that every time any of the almost half the mobs stealth you’ll still be able to see them. That’s extremely useful in most parts of the game.

This is why I didn’t buy the x-pac. An admittedly casual player beat the story in a few days. My criticism isn’t quality. ArenaNet’s games are quality. There isn’t enough content though for the price point. Moreover, there isn’t enough cosmetic stuff to go out and earn. Heck, they are even delaying the release of some of the cosmetic rewards in the raids. They never delay gem shop stuff though. Maybe their level of quality is going down and I am cutting them too much slack.

That’s taken out of context. I took launch week off work and all I did all day for those several days was play the game.

Yes, the story is still pretty short. I don’t understand why it’s only 4 parts, this isn’t Living World they could have made more parts per zone, but that’s not how it worked out.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I don’t understand the need. But then I’m pretty casual. I completed the personal story in the first couple days getting the first tier in all the masteries fast, cause it’s really easy to do the first tier. Then I grabbed the second tiers in a couple and now I’m just working my way through gliding. But I already have all the gliding I actually need, the rest isn’t needed it’s just something to have.

I want Stealth Detection because it’s more than just seeing mushrooms. It means that every time any of the almost half the mobs stealth you’ll still be able to see them. That’s extremely useful in most parts of the game.

Did you read what I wrote? The stealth detection does not affect most mobs that can stealth. The stealth frogs will still be invisible as will skale.

Stealth detection affects treasure mushrooms, the axe legendary mob in verdant brink canopy, and mordrem guard snipers. That is it.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s only a grind if you try to max them in a short amount of time. If you relax and play the content, the XP will come naturally.

Here’s what you don’t grasp. I’ve already played through all the content, except the areas that I cannot reach because of mastery gating, and except the TD meta event because there is no clear timer on it so it pretty much always fails. Every other meta I’ve done and gotten most of the map completed (VB I’ve completed on 3 characters now).

At this point it’s just repetition. Repetition stops being fun just to do it for it’s own sake after a few times, then you’re going for progression or rewards.

Devildoc.6721:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s only a grind if you try to max them in a short amount of time. If you relax and play the content, the XP will come naturally.

Here’s what you don’t grasp. I’ve already played through all the content, except the areas that I cannot reach because of mastery gating, and except the TD meta event because there is no clear timer on it so it pretty much always fails. Every other meta I’ve done and gotten most of the map completed (VB I’ve completed on 3 characters now).

At this point it’s just repetition. Repetition stops being fun just to do it for it’s own sake after a few times, then you’re going for progression or rewards.

I never said anything about not repeating content. That is part of playing the game.

Tigaseye.2047:

One thing I have noticed is that one’s first impressions, in games, are normally absolutely correct.

You think something, when you have just started playing and you think; “I mustn’t jump to conclusions – I must give it more time.”.

But, the truth is, that the vast majority of the time, it turns out you were right all along.

Usually my experience as well, but when I talked about the xp part of masteries not being fun in beta, I got hounded by “Well it’s not even out yet! Just wait and see!”

Turns out I was right all along.

In fact they made it worse. You used to be able to get gliding mastery just by doing the first story quest, and you could repeat it on multiple characters to also get bouncing mushrooms and start working on updrafts. In 2 hours you could have basic gliding, bouncing mushrooms, and updraft use, maybe more. Nuhoch and Exalted masteries weren’t available yet.

posthumecaver.6473:

Guys, why are you searching reasons to grind, just play the game, I am at the 2nd map, I even didn’t rush to open other maps.

Just play the game, you will get the masteries one day.

Personally, I do META events until I am bored, then go to fractals when bored from those, when I am done with them some PVP, when that is done some Teqahl/Karka Queen gold rush, when that is done, legendary hunt….

There is no reason to grind like mad to get that 160 MPs, play the game you will get there one day eventually.

How about you play your way and I will play mine. I don’t care how you play or what you do. Just because you don’t have a reason to do something doesn’t mean every one else feels the same way or even should feel the same way. We all enjoy doing different things, one persons playstyle is not right or better than anyone else’s. So keep that crap about how people should spend their own time to yourself.

I made much the same points several days ago, and other people made them before me. I’m not unhappy with what’s there, but it feels like a simplification of what could have been, perhaps even a wasted opportunity.

Apart from anything else that can be said, masteries are jarring in that all you need to master anything (from gliding to bouncing to languages) is not to practice those things… but to kill. (I made the analogy that if this method applied in real life, I could learn the guitar by killing.)
This has the effect of making the training for every mastery identical and repetitious. I made the suggestion in another thread that practicing an activity (e.g. gliding) should give you a small amount of xp towards that mastery, as a means of creating some (albeit) slight connection between the training of the mastery and the purpose of it.
Ideally, there would be unique adventures to gaining each mastery but understandably the development costs might be prohibitive.

I think it’s also clear that the frustration is increased by the small area in which you can train HOT masteries, the 4 new maps. This limitation flies in the face of the “play as you like” mantra. And it makes no sense with the way masteries are designed. You have to kill to train HOT masteries, you have to kill to train central Tyria masteries. There’s no difference in the training, so why not allow any mastery (HOT or central) to be trained anywhere in Tyria? When people get tired of HOT they can go to Kessex or Orr or wherever and continue training their mushroom bouncing.

Another thing to mention is that not only are there the issues that the OP mentions, but there are layers of dependencies. Example:

I get gliding in the first zone. It’s pushing me to do mushrooms, but I see updrafts and think I’ll push for that. It takes a long time, and I have to think outside of the box, but I manage it. I do the story line and it leads me to the second zone. And… the next step of the story line requires mushrooms. OK, I start mushrooms — though I find updrafts really cool — and it takes a much longer time to get the first mushroom skill than theory says. A frustratingly long time, considering that I also now have those markings to master as well. (And I’m of course, ignoring two other mastery lines.)

I’m locked out of following the story and even participating fully in the zone because of how masteries work. It really does become a grind.

Oh, masteries, HP, and views are fun in one way, but often involve frustrating jumping puzzles and yield no real XP as you’re struggling to get the perfect glide, jump, etc, to complete them. You can spend an hour to finally get to that important point and you’ve gotten zero XP and your masteries have advanced zero.

.. but you’ve gotten hero points or mastery points, which still are progression on your character. I have 0 problem with jumping puzzle oriented masteries. In fact I like them a lot, I often find them more fun than the combat oriented ones. At least every jumping puzzle is different where a lot of combat begins to feel like just going through the motions and slogging through monotony after enough repetition.

I’m bored out of my mind with the events in maguma. I’ve ran 3 characters through the story now (fyi barely half a exp bar for rank 4 or above tracks including all the remap exploration and HPs on the way), adventures are all gated 90% of the time so I can’t play them for exp dailies because I don’t have time to camp each map just to wait for them to unlock.

The most exp efficient thing to do is literally farm mobs in remote areas… This game made just a huge grind wall with no rewards at the end. The only reason any one farms that kitten is because you need random kitten things (like lay line) to get map completion (or a Mesmer friend)

I cant enjoy the maps solo because all the HPs require 5 min, as do most events, nothing scales properly down.

The new anti tag and run keeps you from effectively farming exp by doing multiple events at once slowing you down further.

The armor/wep rewards are crappy in maguma so I have no desire for them.

The only thing I want to finish is the mistwalker set which is gated behind a massive dps check that requires an entire map of people who actually know how to run glass builds (ie not many people…) that you can only attempt every 2 hours and only if you find a map…

I get nothing from PvP but massive unbalence introduced into my favorite thing to do, no exp no rewards etc (oh you get new finishers! Yeah kitten you, we need exclusive rewards and you to let us go back to ranked kittening unranked is hell with the mmr diversity and kittenty matchmaking system)..

Fractals drops less rewards and no exp

Dungeons where killed

Old GW maps dont even give me exp towards my maguma Masteries

Honestly idk how anyone could enjoy this grind without having birthday/celebration/other exp boosters/food flowing out of their kitten because i though it was a horrible grind the first few tiers with maxed out exp boosters and now I’ve ran out and the exp bars got longer.. Honestly I kittening log in attempt a Chalk log out and try again the next day. I wont farm more mysteries until I need them for raids, which will be the only saving grace of this expansion.

TLDR kitten the expansion

10+ for Devildoc.

I dont mind working for achievements in GW2. I dont mind challenges, even if I am a very casual player (about 2-3 hrs /week). I looove Open-World events (much more than instanced events).

But what really bugs me with this horizontal mastery levelling is its – gated – XP imbalance. Why is there so few XP / reward for exploring the World and interacting with the NPC’s? Why is all XP achievrment and focus on (meta) events and adventures?

Agree with Devildoc, when I listened to Colin at Pax, he said that the different masteries will be connected to the races. I, too, imagined that I have to do special Itzl / Nuhoch / Exalted stuff to level these masteries (like “Mini Quests / Missions”). That didnt come true. Arenanet missed a big opportunity of exciting and engaging storytelling here, imho.

Tigaseye.2047:

One thing I have noticed is that one’s first impressions, in games, are normally absolutely correct.

You think something, when you have just started playing and you think; “I mustn’t jump to conclusions – I must give it more time.”.

But, the truth is, that the vast majority of the time, it turns out you were right all along.

Of course there are exceptions too. Recently a reviewer who gave Guild Wars 2 a terrible review, came back, played it again and called it the best free to play MMO on the market.

So many people tried this game, didn’t like it, tried it again, didn’t like it, came back and found they enjoyed it immensely.

Sometimes it has to do with expectations and approach.

Just get a xp booster / guild hall xp boost / food that givea extra xp per kill and some banners and get into an organized dragon stand map.
That map is like masteries powerleveling area…
Just too much xp all over the place… events one over the other and so many mobs to kill… you will unlock them in no time.

Ayrilana.1396:

I never said anything about not repeating content. That is part of playing the game.

You said it’s only a grind if you try to do it fast. Your two points aren’t meshing well with each other.

And yes repetition is a part of the game but we have very little choice in what repetition we can do. If you want to level up Maguuma masteries then events are literally the only thing you can do. The same events, over, and over, and over. This is what the OP was complaining about. We all have different tolerances for different repetition. I find WvW horribly boring and repetitive. Same for event-only maps such as these new ones (edit: don’t get me wrong, the maps are gorgeous and I do like the events, but I tire of them after the 10th time), Orr, DT and SW. But dungeons? Fractals? I can repeat the heck out of those. If we’d have gotten a new dungeon cluster (ie, more than one raid….), I’d be spending every night in there, happily playing and progressing my masteries. But with what we have right now, I’m becoming increasingly worried about how long these new zones will last me.

So it is a grind to some people and your opinion doesn’t change that.

Calcifire.1864:

the other masteries, sure, the rush isn’t needed I’m fine with slowly getting progress towards things like vendors or hidden mushrooms or bonus materials, but things like ley-line gliding, poison mastery, updrafts, and nuhoch wallows are things that I feel like I NEED to rush because they block important content like map completion

I wish they would have let us have more freedom over choice, instead of this tiered business. It would have been a nice compromise so people could go after what they wanted most or felt was most important (poison lore before speed mushrooms for example ) without having to go through an uninspired tier such as Exalted Assitance.

Yeah, if I could simply bypass certain masteries and only level what I want, I’d have a lot more of them right now.

With the exception of moving up the languages/exalted acceptance to tier 1 of each mastery line (making vendors available faster to encourage event participation), I’m okay with them progressing in tiered fashion. I’m just not thrilled about grinding out that xp bar regardless of whether or not it’s a tiered system or open system.

You guys who just say that you will max out one day aren’t getting the point.

It is very unfun to try to get somewhere just to figure out through exhaustive searching 1 hour later that you do not have the required mastery to do it.

Now that I’ve rushed the content blocking masteries, the game is 10x more fun. They could’ve just done away with content blocking masteries, or at least put the worst offenders in the last map.

The xp requirement to unlock masteries is too much. It seems to have been in place to prevent everyone from accessing content so quickly. it’s the same deal that happened with the number of hero poitns requires for elite specs. it’s simply too much. the progression doesn’t feel FUN. in a game where fun is supposed to be the point, the massive jumps in xp requirements between tiers isn’t fun. plus the fact that tomes of knowledge etc. don’t contribute to mastery gains and we can’t even use little xp scrolls to gain experience for masteries either is again something that prevents fun from being had. i’ve actively been avoiding HoT content because it’s become really grindy. the story progression has slowed to a crawl because i keep on facing barriers to gameplay that have only one solution. this is way too much to preparing to have fun.

i didn’t buy HoT to prepare to have fun. I bought HoT to HAVE fun. and the massive leaps in xp gains for masteries aren’t fun. Using masteries in smart ways to get to other mastery points is a great idea and what i had expected them to be. not grind grind grind. i havent even been able to access any of the adventures, which i was really looking forward to, to even get xp that way. Again this is a lot of preparing to have fun.

I’ve already quit the game. As soon as I finished the first zone and stepped in to Auric Basin and saw the new mastery line that I wouldn’t even obtain until I had left the zone, I had no desire to play any more. They may have spent the last 2 years making 5 zones but for me it was all spent making 1 zone, and not one where I want to spend my time.

Lothirieth.3408:

Ayrilana.1396:

I never said anything about not repeating content. That is part of playing the game.

You said it’s only a grind if you try to do it fast. Your two points aren’t meshing well with each other.

And yes repetition is a part of the game but we have very little choice in what repetition we can do. If you want to level up Maguuma masteries then events are literally the only thing you can do. The same events, over, and over, and over. This is what the OP was complaining about. We all have different tolerances for different repetition. I find WvW horribly boring and repetitive. Same for event-only maps such as these new ones (edit: don’t get me wrong, the maps are gorgeous and I do like the events, but I tire of them after the 10th time), Orr, DT and SW. But dungeons? Fractals? I can repeat the heck out of those. If we’d have gotten a new dungeon cluster (ie, more than one raid….), I’d be spending every night in there, happily playing and progressing my masteries. But with what we have right now, I’m becoming increasingly worried about how long these new zones will last me.

So it is a grind to some people and your opinion doesn’t change that.

Umm… I only ever had one point. You can create an additional point and claim it’s not meshing with mine all that you want.

You do realize that events are not the only thing that provide XP, right? You can do adventures, map completion, the story, kill things, and so on. In fact, the vast majority of the XP I earned was from kills. There are also numerous event chains so you can get pretty far towards maxing your masteries before you start repeating them.

Of course I can’t change what some people consider to be a grind. Some people use it so loosely that repeating anything more than once is a grind. This still doesn’t change that a lot of the grind that people experience is caused by them and their desire to have everything immediately.

I haven’t done anything I would call grinding and my HoT masteries are like 80% done (need 24 mastery points worth of xp for max).

I’ve done Dragon’s Stand a lot, also Octovine, and events in VB and TD, and a ton of other stuff. Having a lot of fun and it’s not grinding.

So I think it’s perfectly fine also considering HoT hasn’t been out for a month.