Guild Wars 2

There are just some things that need to be changed with HoT. Be warned, I’m not going sugar coat this post. This is just how it is.

1.) Content designed for groups only, leads solo players to believe its too hard. For them it is.
Difficulty for the new zones needs to be toned much lower. The majority of the player base are casual players with limited time. This is especially true for tangle root.

EDIT: I want to point out that difficulty is not just the problem. Having a hard game is one thing, and to an extent that is ok. But HoT is meant for groups, its hard because THE ENTIRE EXPAC was designed for a 5+ man group. People going at the game solo or leveling at their own pace are going to come up against unfair situations where they will just get their face pushed in because they are traveling alone. This is not an issue of difficulty at this point, but impossibility.

There is no disclaimer in the game that warns you about this. Solo players are and will be punished in this game and sometimes that is mistaken as “difficulty.” This type of design is bad design, because solo players are a large segment of the playerbase. Sometimes players want to grow at their own pace and don’t want to be held back or left behind by other players. Grouping brings its own set of social rules and sometimes can greatly extend a player’s time to complete an objective to far more than they have to play.

If you want hard content, go play the raids or high level fractals. This goes for grouping. Some players like to group for GROUP content, but want to level at their own pace. I don’t want to sit there for 15mins with someone who is bad at jumping puzzles waiting at the boss while they take forever to complete it, do you? HOT forces these situations.

So read the above, please don’t assume my gripe is on difficulty alone. The issue is more complex and needs to be addressed.

2.) Hero Point difficulty needs to be toned down
People don’t like the personal progression of their hero tied to groups or requiring friends/begging for help. Some of these 5 man hero point bosses that ares gated behind mastery requirements and/or jumping puzzles need to go or be nerfed to hell. Having hard content is fine, having that hard content gating players from personal growth towards their elite spec is not cool.

3.) Ranger Pet location for some pets needs to change
Rangers already cried bloody murder over this. Pets that impact your playstyle by a large margin should not be locked behind 3 hour pve events. What about WvWer’s who will NEVER gain access to these pets due to how horrible their acquisition is?

4.) Mastery system needs a review
The system is a total and catastrophic failure, forcing people to grind in silly ways just to do the content they like. Example is fractal mastery and people being unable to get enough agony resist because the fractal vendor with +7 infusions is tied to a generic experience bar and they didn’t grind out enough CoE P1 to get it. This system is so monumentally bad (starwars NGE level of bad), I have no idea how to “undo” the damage it wrought.

One way I can think to improve the mastery system is to tie mastery acquisition to a specific achievement instead of an XP grind bar. For example, fractal mastery can be tied to completing fractals. Pact mastery can be tied to completing group events.

The idea is to advance players in masteries based on the content they do, not to lock them out of the content they like with a mindless grind and XP bar. Imagine fractal players, who have to sit there and farm CoE p1 just so they can do higher fractals? That’s silly. Who thought of this?

5.) Rewards need to be better
There just needs to be better rewards to incentivize players into doing content like Dragon’s Stand and Tangle Root’s meta. Sitting there for 3hrs for a box of greens is not going to cut it anymore. Even the professional reviewers ripped the game for this. Rewards suck, they have always sucked. Now that content is harder and takes more time, that needs to change. It’s silly how many people are in SW still chest running because the HoT rewards are so terrible.

6.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now. Something needs to be done to funnel people into dead zones to complete the meta. Make a weekly quest with a good reward and have that quest go and complete the meta for these zones to get players to do this content.

7.) Get a better balance team
Everyone can agree, it took the balance team forever to get game balance decent prior to the new specialization system. Even since then, its been a nightmarish mess of failed tournaments and low twitch views in PvP. Classes are so horribly imbalanced in PVP, PVE, and WvW. Certain classes just suck at certain content (like thief outside of D/P).

8.) Get your class roles and visions straight
WTF is going on with healing? You state how zerker meta won’t cut it, introduce healers, then fill the game with timed bosses that enforce even more zerk? Whhhhhuuuuuuuuttt? I just head desk so hard looking at this.

9.) Your communication with the community/fanbase sucks, fix it
Alot of players didn’t see these sweeping changes coming and weren’t warned about the difficulty or the 400 hero points. If you told us about the 400 HP, we could have told you it was a s——-y idea to begin with. Communication and morale is at an all time low. You guys rip entire systems out of the game and barely give us notice, leading to so much wasted time and progression. Like look at all the guilds that whose contribution points became useless because the announcement was made so late. Was anything learned after the fractured update?

You need a public test server. So much of this stuff can be fixed with simple community input. Instead you hide everything from us, like we are some sort of evil gremlins that will steer the game wrong with our protests. It’s better to hear it from us early and be open; rather than watch the professional reviewers tear HoT apart like they are doing now while are all going “we told you so” or “we could have helped.”

A lot of your points are very subjective, and more than a little unrealistic considering the game came out a little over a week ago. You could use the BWEs as ammunition to further your argument but we wouldn’t have anywhere near the amount of balance we would without them. Balance will come with time, whether we shout about it or not.

lordhelmos.7623:

1.) It’s too kitten hard
If you want hard content, go play the raids or high level fractals.

No. I’ll answer you with the similar proposal: If you want easier content, go play in any other region. Finally player needs to pay attention and can’t faceroll everything. And this is coming from a casual player with limited time, you mentioned.

Balance for WvW? Good luck on that will never happen, you can’t balance something that isn’t too structured, unless you’re talking about roaming.

What part that the expansion was suppose to be challenging for level 80s that was unclear?

1. Many of us have been looking for engaging open world content for quite some time. We finally got it, so don’t ask for it to be taken away please…

2. So they did, I managed to max three of my characters without much of a hassle. Tome-of knowledge levelled chars will need either groupwork or masteries, which is ok with me, for masteries are account bound.

3. Cant discuss this one, no ranger.

4. It’s a system that allows character progression without the feeling that people that put more time in it are actually stronger. It doesnt force people to grind, for most masteries are not nessecary at all. It allows people to grind, which was the exact intention of the system.

4 again. This one I am not sure of. The rewards don’t feel veey rewarding, but then, the meta events still fail usually this early in the game. It might be you’re right, might be it needs some time.

5. This would be nice, something like a seperate daily.

6. They said they are going to release balance patches more frequent. However, I am skeptical… All we can do is hope for the best, right?

7. The timed bosses don’t force zerker meta at all. The lack of usefullness of other stats does. Timed bosses are there to prevent a nomad meta, which would be even more unhealthy for the game than zerker. I did hear that the ones who succeeded in the raid still used mainly zerker. The changes in HoT were a step in the right direction, there need to be still more. It’s curious that you want the game to become easier, AND zerker meta to dissapear, for it will have the exact opposite effect.

8. There is a perfectly explainable reason for the lack of testing regarding the HP requirements for elite specs. To test the elite specs, which was most important imo, the specs had no requirements in the tests. When the game launched, an the (justified) complaining began, Anet listened and realized their mistake.

1. No game is not too hard , get a good build and use tactics to fight certain enemies
2. Hero points only difficult because most are champions , just get group of 5 no biggie
3. I agree with this , needs changing
4. I Dont mind just playing the new content and getting mastery exp casually . There should be better rewards and titles for achievements
5. Eventually content gets left behind , dungeons apart from farming exp have been left behind , dry top and SW are still active in peak times
6. I think the balance team do a good job i dont agree , expansion with new class/skills was bound to be out after a new launch . it will get fixed
7. Totally agree with this dps race events and group events will just create more boring zerker play , i was expected to belive support / healing roles would be needed , im yet to see this
8. I dont expect to see this change Anet has had this approach since gw1 , youll know when they let you know " when its ready lol "
9. Public test server would be an advantage for sure , especially for balance updates

peace , my honest opinion

lordhelmos.7623:

5.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now.

I’d like to address this one argument. I visit Dry Top every day, I see people and I crafted Mawdrey just a few weeks ago. I don’t even understand why you link a lack of players to crafting Mawdrey? They’re unrelated.

You also have no basis for claiming a region is dead, unless you have access to Anet’s player statistics. Personal observation, yours or mine, proves nothing. This argument, like most of the others, is sensationalist to the point where any real merit in it is lost in the hyperbole, and that’s a shame.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

lordhelmos.7623:

5.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now.

I’d like to address this one argument. I visit Dry Top every day, I see people and I crafted Mawdrey just a few weeks ago. I don’t even understand why you link a lack of players to crafting Mawdrey? They’re unrelated.

You also have no basis for claiming a region is dead, unless you have access to Anet’s player statistics. Personal observation, yours or mine, proves nothing. This argument, like most of the others, is sensationalist to the point where any real merit in it is lost in the hyperbole, and that’s a shame.

I have about 5 amberite fossils in my inventory, not once in my daily checks at 7-9AM EST have I seen a Tier IV dry top last month. There was one point in time, about 3 weeks again where the chains of duty guild attempted to organize a run and failed at Tier III/80% before the sandstorm hit.

So yeah to me, that content is dead.

leviathan.2148:

No. I’ll answer you with the similar proposal: If you want easier content, go play in any other region. Finally player needs to pay attention and can’t faceroll everything. And this is coming from a casual player with limited time, you mentioned.

Can we PLEASE stop saying this? It’s really grinding my gears. You’re giving us people who like the new content a VERY bad name by saying exclusionary elitist bullkitten like this. Everyone is allowed in the new areas. They just need to get better at the game.

Anyway @ Original Poster:

A lot of the things you say are very subjective, and the majority of people disagree with you. You just don’t see them here because they’re too busy playing the actual game.

Also getting a group for hero points isn’t hard.

Re: Dead content: It’s not as bad as you think, you just gotta know how to find it. Have you tried organizing it with a guild? If that’s not an option, have you tried LFG?

lordhelmos.7623:

I have about 5 amberite fossils in my inventory, not once in my daily checks at 7-9AM EST have I seen a Tier IV dry top last month. There was one point in time, about 3 weeks again where the chains of duty guild attempted to organize a run and failed at Tier III/80% before the sandstorm hit.

So yeah to me, that content is dead.

try 7-9pm EST instead.. thats when i was last in a tier 6 map a couple of weeks ago…. yup totally dead…

also outside of your point about ranger pets i wholeheartedly disagree with all your points

The HoT maps are actually engaging with mobs that require you to do more than repeatedly slam your face into the 1 key to kill. This is a very good thing and if you can’t do it then either change your build or approach things in a different way until you succeed. For example, I swapped from a zerk set to a marauder set on my ele because I was melting and that fixed my problems. Tho, tangle root is a nightmare to navigate and may be populated a bit too densely.

Most hero points, with a few exceptions are easy enough to duo or at most trio. Balthazaar being the most notable exception.

The mastery system is great. It provides long term goals and due to maguuma mastery’s being tied to maguuma maps means that at least some of the maps are going to have a solid population level. This actually makes experience matter again, instead of getting your 2000th skill point and literally not caring at all about exp.

Rewards, well they aren’t superb by any means but tarir has 27 chests upon completing the meta event not to mention all of the champ bags from getting to the meta. Now tweaking the rewards to give more is precarious as it can have an extreme effect on the economy if it’s tweaked poorly. Given how many mats you get from salvage tho, its pretty decent.

Regarding class roles and communication, as an ele main, cannot argue with you there. There needs to be more communication for sure.

1 content was already nerfed to shreds
2 heropoints have been nerfed to shreds as well. yes some champions remain, but manyhavee the mastery gating removed or the champ was moved somewhere else.
3 I really do not like the pets being behind a wall only opened with event’s with a limited time to get -BOTH- the tiger and the fire wyvern (if I’m right)
4 Well they want us to keep playing,and while gold will be a less used ommodity due o supposed better balancing of the game…. well… I agree with the fact I hould be able to get some cash from somewhere… (A fervent dungeon runner)
5 dead content?
Like:
Orr temple-chains (meta events of end game gw2),
Southsun Cove (so called endgame content with 1 meta event: the karka queen),
Dry Top (meta events LSS2 prt1 no rewards),
Dungeons (no rewards)
???

Silverwastes still has some instances…. As long as poeple have keys…
6 Well balance can be tricky but introducing a new stat set (or in this case multiple) while simultaneously destorying another stat (well thing rabid, dire, sinister here, or in other words ALL USED CONDITION DMG BUILDS) should warrant a rechoice of stats on armors… I am losing 2 sets of aristocracy runes due to some person saying well this isn’t balanced let’s change stuff and see how it goes. My answer it doesn’t It just kittenes me off in a very bad way. Costing me 400 gold in new gear, new stats, new rune sets and in the end It could be more powerfull, IF and only IF the sets are complete, and they seem NOT complete at this time….

Do “casuals” think they own the game or something? If you’re afraid to kill mobs or want to one shot stuff, then idk what to tell you, go play second life or something.
Most of content in new maps is very soloable, and for the rest wait for other players, invite a friend or guldie. Two players together can do pretty much everything.
You can’t just say that all casuals, just because they are “casuals” don’t like hard content. You can be casual and like hard content, so you have no idea how many people actually want this or not.

Please don’t use the word casual like that. I’m a casual and I like the new content. Don’t lump me in with these people.

EDIT: Sorry I didn’t completely read your post until just now.

lordhelmos.7623:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

lordhelmos.7623:

5.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now.

I’d like to address this one argument. I visit Dry Top every day, I see people and I crafted Mawdrey just a few weeks ago. I don’t even understand why you link a lack of players to crafting Mawdrey? They’re unrelated.

You also have no basis for claiming a region is dead, unless you have access to Anet’s player statistics. Personal observation, yours or mine, proves nothing. This argument, like most of the others, is sensationalist to the point where any real merit in it is lost in the hyperbole, and that’s a shame.

I have about 5 amberite fossils in my inventory, not once in my daily checks at 7-9AM EST have I seen a Tier IV dry top last month. There was one point in time, about 3 weeks again where the chains of duty guild attempted to organize a run and failed at Tier III/80% before the sandstorm hit.

So yeah to me, that content is dead.

Thanks for the clarification. Doesn’t it seem like you’ve really hit the nail on the head there? It’s all subjective. Whether dry top is dead, whether HOT is too hard. It all depends on who you ask. The best thing you can do is not say “this is how it is” but rather “this is my experience of it”. There’s nothing wrong with that. Your experience is valid. It doesn’t need to be couched in concrete or overly dramatised. And it probably needs more time to get used to things. I know my perspective on HOT has changed dramatically since launch. Give it some time. If you do and you still feel the same way, at least you’ll know your arguments aren’t impulsive.

I kind agree with your point 4. (masteries should be content-based), strongly disagree with 1. (I am a casual player btw). Can’t really comment on anything else.

serialkicker.5274:

Do “casuals” think they own the game or something? If you’re afraid to kill mobs or want to one shot stuff, then idk what to tell you, go play second life or something.
Most of content in new maps is very soloable, and for the rest wait for other players, invite a friend or guldie. Two players together can do pretty much everything.
You can’t just say that all casuals, just because they are “casuals” don’t like hard content. You can be casual and like hard content, so you have no idea how many people actually want this or not.

Technically, anybody who bought the game owns it, whether they consider themselves ‘casual’ or not. But that’s beside the point. Can we just stop using the term ‘casual’ like this. It’s starting to create a us-versus-them mentality and it’s also a false dichotomy. In fact, it’s completely absurd. There’s only players. Some play longer than others, some are more into the technical details than others. If somebody wants to identify as casual or hardcode, power to them. But it’s useless for any kind of statistical analysis or grouping.

(EDIT: Incidentally, the filter on this website thinks putting ‘an’ in front of ‘us-versus-them’ is a swear word, so I had to use ‘a’. How crazy is that?)

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

lordhelmos.7623:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

lordhelmos.7623:

5.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now.

I’d like to address this one argument. I visit Dry Top every day, I see people and I crafted Mawdrey just a few weeks ago. I don’t even understand why you link a lack of players to crafting Mawdrey? They’re unrelated.

You also have no basis for claiming a region is dead, unless you have access to Anet’s player statistics. Personal observation, yours or mine, proves nothing. This argument, like most of the others, is sensationalist to the point where any real merit in it is lost in the hyperbole, and that’s a shame.

I have about 5 amberite fossils in my inventory, not once in my daily checks at 7-9AM EST have I seen a Tier IV dry top last month. There was one point in time, about 3 weeks again where the chains of duty guild attempted to organize a run and failed at Tier III/80% before the sandstorm hit.

So yeah to me, that content is dead.

Thanks for the clarification. Doesn’t it seem like you’ve really hit the nail on the head there? It’s all subjective. Whether dry top is dead, whether HOT is too hard. It all depends on who you ask. The best thing you can do is not say “this is how it is” but rather “this is my experience of it”. There’s nothing wrong with that. Your experience is valid. It doesn’t need to be couched in concrete or overly dramatised. And it probably needs more time to get used to things. I know my perspective on HOT has changed dramatically since launch. Give it some time. If you do and you still feel the same way, at least you’ll know your arguments aren’t impulsive.

This is a fair assessment, I don’t think the playerbase was prepared for something like this. This is radically different from the gameplay experience we are used to. Sometimes that can be a bad thing.

New ideas don’t always work, metroidvania MMO might have worked on paper but the formula now seems to be having issues, or at least they may not have implemented the idea the best way.

I think in time, we will see how the official reviewers feel. There are already some low scores. Once those go up, they don’t come back down.

If I can look back and see that HoT scored under a 75% from professional critics on metascore, I can then say.

Well I was right.

I remember when the Wrath babies were talked down to back when we complained about the new Heroic/Raid difficulty hell even Ghost Crawler was giving us crap, you know what happened, we quit and the subscriptions tanked; then the Dragon Soul patch hit with 3 easier 5 mans and Raid Finder, less of us came back than left because we found other options. Then Pandy Land came out and they realllly over corrected.

ANets got a chance to learn from other company’s failures including the Goliath I was referring to. The only thing you guys are going to do is discourage us and then ANet will have less capital; this leads to crappier expansions with less content (this is actual history I’m referring to it happened).

The only ones I’ll agree with are 4, 5, and 6.

Scratch that. You have 4 on the list twice. So technically it would be 5, 6, and 7.

As for masteries, I feel like you should get mastery experience from doing the thing the mastery is for. To get glider experience you use the glider. To get exalted experience you study the ruins and use the armors and so on. The generic experience to level them feels a bit strange and is un-inventive. Normal experience can apply to masteries but you should still get progressive towards them from actually using them which logically makes sense.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

I remember when the Wrath babies were talked down to back when we complained about the new Heroic/Raid difficulty hell even Ghost Crawler was giving us crap, you know what happened, we quit and the subscriptions tanked; then the Dragon Soul patch hit with 3 easier 5 mans and Raid Finder, less of us came back than left because we found other options. Then Pandy Land came out and they realllly over corrected.

ANets got a chance to learn from other company’s failures including the Goliath I was referring to. The only thing you guys are going to do is discourage us and then ANet will have less capital; this leads to crappier expansions with less content (this is actual history I’m referring to it happened).

The difference here is that Wrath was actually pretty well balanced and casual friendly through the leveling process. The Dalaran instances released were pretty fair and accessibly to players of varying skill levels.

Only the final raids were extremely hard. Yet this was enough to cause an uproar.

With Gw2 Heart of Thorns, I would not say that difficulty is what the issue is. The issue is that the ENTIRE game is tuned for a zerg/raid. If your a lone wolf, your going to have a hard time.

Yeah its hard, but its only hard because it was designed for 5 of you. Lone wolves trying to push through the content for their own character growth are going to come up against unfair and impossible odds.

Hard is one thing, but the game is straight up unfair. Unfair because it wasn’t made for just you. You have to bring friends or die.

But some of us don’t like begging in map chat, some of us work late hours and have a small friends list, some of us enjoy leveling at our own pace and don’t want to be weight down or left behind by a group.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

I remember when the Wrath babies were talked down to back when we complained about the new Heroic/Raid difficulty hell even Ghost Crawler was giving us crap, you know what happened, we quit and the subscriptions tanked; then the Dragon Soul patch hit with 3 easier 5 mans and Raid Finder, less of us came back than left because we found other options. Then Pandy Land came out and they realllly over corrected.

ANets got a chance to learn from other company’s failures including the Goliath I was referring to. The only thing you guys are going to do is discourage us and then ANet will have less capital; this leads to crappier expansions with less content (this is actual history I’m referring to it happened).

What complete nonsense, you realize those dungeons were part of the ‘catchup’ tier right? to get people into the new raid faster, not because the content needed to be ‘easier’ (not that it was remotely hard in he first place just rather time consuming.)

Anyway to the OP

1 – Literally every BWE test was met with praise on how much more fun and engaging the content was based on the difficulty of mobs, even so much that people outright complained in mass when they thought open world mobs were nerfed in BWE3. I’m not going to give you some vitrol driven argument like you have – But you need to change your playstyle once in awhile. I see everyone running around in ‘meta’ dungeon running builds refusing to change utilitys or anything of the sort or explore their kit to help them overcome the content, die and complain that “dat frog is op it just shotgunned me for 17k and im 12k hp berserkers” – Again not a rally to drop berserkers, just adapt (it’s really not that hard, nearly all the mobs sans maybe mushrooms have HUGE tells and telegraphs)

2) Only half agreeable point, the dynamic scaling system needs to be in place here. otherwise I can forsee people doing alot of charity work for HP’s later on when the zones are somewhat less popular.

3) Only unreasonable one is the dragon stand meta, outside of that I had no problem casually picking them up. Nor should the system change just because “You’re a WvWer” you’re a PvEer taking on zerg/roamer pvp, not allowed special allocations like people who are purely sPvP dedicated.

4) you can max out the spec in the first two zones with barely a handful of masterys, the ones required to complete the story will get you a maxed spec in VB and AB with 0 to no effort.

4.2) Have you done DS or AB? Their insanely rewarding for doing the meta.

5) All the content has fleshed links to somewhere else, be it legendarys, living story, achievements or just straight farms. Not to mention it’s so easy to actually make a difference solo by taxing people in towards map cap. It has scored me quite afew favour 6’s

6) Yes twitch is the basis on which the balance of the game or the state of it is good /s – that being said when you whine like this with nothing constructive to offer you’re just as bad. and chances are anything you’ve conducted in your head as a change will be extremely harmful to the class pertaining it or way to good.

7) Like what? Most of the content in HoT (you are posting in the HoT forum) requires coordination not high dps numbers, druid fills its roll just like another and it’s still attached to a extremely capable dps class, so it’s not like your pidgeonholed into healing zerg randoms and feeling useless because you’re using it outside of a organized setting.

8) " Communication and morale is at an all time low." Also known as “I read only bad things on the forums and use that as my basis for the game”.

Just a quick parse through the OP’s history is just full of salt and vitrol towards the game, such as making amazingly construtive threads like “Tanged roots is bad dont make a map like this again” or “look at the bad review this magazine gave the game”. You don’t even strike a middleground of criticism of something you enjoy, you just seem to flat out dislike the game.

People wishing an end to the zerker meta are going to regret it when they make content that forces you to have several full sets of ascended gear and weapons with different stats for each encounter on hand.

You think gold sinks are bad now? Expect them to get worse when you need to sink 600+ gold per ascended set of stats. One set for power, one set for condi, one set for survival/healing.

Verenhimo.3296:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

I remember when the Wrath babies were talked down to back when we complained about the new Heroic/Raid difficulty hell even Ghost Crawler was giving us crap, you know what happened, we quit and the subscriptions tanked; then the Dragon Soul patch hit with 3 easier 5 mans and Raid Finder, less of us came back than left because we found other options. Then Pandy Land came out and they realllly over corrected.

ANets got a chance to learn from other company’s failures including the Goliath I was referring to. The only thing you guys are going to do is discourage us and then ANet will have less capital; this leads to crappier expansions with less content (this is actual history I’m referring to it happened).

What complete nonsense, you realize those dungeons were part of the ‘catchup’ tier right? to get people into the new raid faster, not because the content needed to be ‘easier’ (not that it was remotely hard in he first place just rather time consuming.)

Anyway to the OP

1 – Literally every BWE test was met with praise on how much more fun and engaging the content was based on the difficulty of mobs, even so much that people outright complained in mass when they thought open world mobs were nerfed in BWE3. I’m not going to give you some vitrol driven argument like you have – But you need to change your playstyle once in awhile. I see everyone running around in ‘meta’ dungeon running builds refusing to change utilitys or anything of the sort or explore their kit to help them overcome the content, die and complain that “dat frog is op it just shotgunned me for 17k and im 12k hp berserkers” – Again not a rally to drop berserkers, just adapt (it’s really not that hard, nearly all the mobs sans maybe mushrooms have HUGE tells and telegraphs)

2) Only half agreeable point, the dynamic scaling system needs to be in place here. otherwise I can forsee people doing alot of charity work for HP’s later on when the zones are somewhat less popular.

3) Only unreasonable one is the dragon stand meta, outside of that I had no problem casually picking them up. Nor should the system change just because “You’re a WvWer” you’re a PvEer taking on zerg/roamer pvp, not allowed special allocations like people who are purely sPvP dedicated.

4) you can max out the spec in the first two zones with barely a handful of masterys, the ones required to complete the story will get you a maxed spec in VB and AB with 0 to no effort.

4.2) Have you done DS or AB? Their insanely rewarding for doing the meta.

5) All the content has fleshed links to somewhere else, be it legendarys, living story, achievements or just straight farms. Not to mention it’s so easy to actually make a difference solo by taxing people in towards map cap. It has scored me quite afew favour 6’s

6) Yes twitch is the basis on which the balance of the game or the state of it is good /s – that being said when you whine like this with nothing constructive to offer you’re just as bad. and chances are anything you’ve conducted in your head as a change will be extremely harmful to the class pertaining it or way to good.

7) Like what? Most of the content in HoT (you are posting in the HoT forum) requires coordination not high dps numbers, druid fills its roll just like another and it’s still attached to a extremely capable dps class, so it’s not like your pidgeonholed into healing zerg randoms and feeling useless because you’re using it outside of a organized setting.

8) " Communication and morale is at an all time low." Also known as “I read only bad things on the forums and use that as my basis for the game”.

Just a quick parse through the OP’s history is just full of salt and vitrol towards the game, such as making amazingly construtive threads like “Tanged roots is bad dont make a map like this again” or “look at the bad review this magazine gave the game”. You don’t even strike a middleground of criticism of something you enjoy, you just seem to flat out dislike the game.

1.) You make a good point here and the BWEs were conducted in full celestial so the reaction was skewed due to people having alot more survivability than the meta they were used to. I think a more accurate assessment would have happened if people were allowed to choose their own gear, which did happen in BWE3 and resulted in the massive nerfing of the mobs. So mission completed.

Now I think there are some deeper aspects of this, namely the content being designed for groups. I pushed 4 characters so far into fully unlocked specializations. One of them being arguably the weakest character in the game (Daredevil Thief), in full knight gear with signet of malice to compound my survival.

Against normal mobs, no problem. However the misconception of difficulty comes from the fact that the entire expac was designed for a group, with little regard for the solo player. That stated, you will reach parts in the game (many times without warning), where you will get WTF owned no matter what gear you are wearing just because you don’t have a friend. Or your friend failed a glide and isn’t with you.

This goes beyond “difficulty” to just plain “impossibility.” There are many encounters/events/hero points/random locations in HOT that will KILL YOU regardless of how you setup just because you are alone. This is perceived by many as “too hard.” But what it really is, is bad design.

Bad design of the game throwing unprepared solo explorers into group content with no warning. I don’t know a single instance of open world group content that was successful outside of RIFT. And even then, organize raid rifts were segregated from outsiders once they started. In Gw2 anyone can ruin an event. Anyone can drag a 5 man champ into a group. Anyone can glide past and force 5 veteran chak on an unwary solo explorer.

These are the same factors that forced games to segregate forced group content and place them into instances. Even today in Aion, people avoid the group quests like the plague. TERA downgraded all group BAMs to solo content. People DO NOT like forced grouping.

But grouping by choice and the escalation of difficulty, along with ample warning is the right way to do things. I think in Gw1, group events were handled in this manner and they worked.

Honestly I haven’t had too much problems myself although there are so many people running around that no matter what I seem to do – I never end up doing them solo it seems. I have some friends though that just want to run around on their own and explore solo and I know they are having some issues. I think they could have balanced it a bit better in the sense that people who prefer solo play could find some more enjoyment and at the same time there could be hard events which people needs to team up for. I absolutely cannot understand people with the attitude “gtfo the zone if you think it’s too hard”, which quite a few have been saying. It’s an expansion everyone has paid for so it should be a grand effort from ArenaNet to make sure everyone has lots they can enjoy, no matter which playstyle they prefer.

Mastery system I agree needs a review and should be more based on “I’m doing this thing and I become better at it” not “I’m doing CoE and become better at a totally different thing”. Like for example you find and click 50 bouncing mushrooms, you understand how they work and can start using them, or whatever, but at least related to the thing you want to “master”.

Okay then mister smart guy, what do you suggest we use exp for if not masteries?

I dunno i think people r exaggerating…im mot a very good player, i press the wrong buttons often in stess situations, im not good at pvp, im extremly casual and i dont run optimised builds but what i think is “cool”…after 4 days im at mastery 15 and have unlocked elites for all my 5 chars – i did never rhink it was waaaaaaay to hard….i managed it with all my classes a d mostly solo….many hp i could even solo that need mpre people…i think the truth is that a lot of people just need to get ridd of their zerker gear…

Sounds like someone needs to get off the crybaby express and get good. The content isn’t too hard, you’re just not good enough to complete it. There is a difference, one can be rectified by you, by simply getting better at the game. (GASP SHOCK! Improving ones skills?! HERESY everything needs to be handed to us!)

Nemesis.6938:

I dunno i think people r exaggerating…im mot a very good player, i press the wrong buttons often in stess situations, im not good at pvp, im extremly casual and i dont run optimised builds but what i think is “cool”…after 4 days im at mastery 15 and have unlocked elites for all my 5 chars – i did never rhink it was waaaaaaay to hard….i managed it with all my classes a d mostly solo….many hp i could even solo that need mpre people…i think the truth is that a lot of people just need to get ridd of their zerker gear…

I don’t think berserker gear is the problem, it’s people’s inability to adapt to change and explore the options their class has instead of feeling like they need to live and die by these ‘meta’ dungeonscum builds.

Been playing through most events and maps of HoT with a full zerk ele, necro and even a revenant that only had zerk armor and no trinkets at all and that solo. Sure you die at times but honestly, just learn to dodge. If you fail, try again. I get that the new content is a lot more challenging but this challenge really is needed. I keep seeing people die in CoF to trash mobs for no reason and then going with the “spam 1, don’t dodge” mindset into HoT sure won’t help.

If you have difficulties, tank up a bit, learn the animations. Some Hero challenges might require some help but most of them can be solo’d and if not, just ask in map chat or tag up if you have a tag – there are enough people that don’t have certain HP yet and gladly help you getting them no matter what time it is.

lordhelmos.7623:

There are just some things that need to be changed with HoT. Be warned, I’m not going sugar coat this post. This is just how it is.

1.) Content designed for groups only, leads solo players to believe its too hard. For them it is.
Difficulty for the new zones needs to be toned much lower. The majority of the player base are casual players with limited time. This is especially true for tangle root.

EDIT: I want to point out that difficulty is not just the problem. Having a hard game is one thing, and to an extent that is ok. But HoT is meant for groups, its hard because THE ENTIRE EXPAC was designed for a 5+ man group. People going at the game solo or leveling at their own pace are going to come up against unfair situations where they will just get their face pushed in because they are traveling alone. This is not an issue of difficulty at this point, but impossibility.

There is no disclaimer in the game that warns you about this. Solo players are and will be punished in this game and sometimes that is mistaken as “difficulty.” This type of design is bad design, because solo players are a large segment of the playerbase. Sometimes players want to grow at their own pace and don’t want to be held back or left behind by other players. Grouping brings its own set of social rules and sometimes can greatly extend a player’s time to complete an objective to far more than they have to play.

If you want hard content, go play the raids or high level fractals. This goes for grouping. Some players like to group for GROUP content, but want to level at their own pace. I don’t want to sit there for 15mins with someone who is bad at jumping puzzles waiting at the boss while they take forever to complete it, do you? HOT forces these situations.

So read the above, please don’t assume my gripe is on difficulty alone. The issue is more complex and needs to be addressed.

2.) Hero Point difficulty needs to be toned down
People don’t like the personal progression of their hero tied to groups or requiring friends/begging for help. Some of these 5 man hero point bosses that ares gated behind mastery requirements and/or jumping puzzles need to go or be nerfed to hell. Having hard content is fine, having that hard content gating players from personal growth towards their elite spec is not cool.

3.) Ranger Pet location for some pets needs to change
Rangers already cried bloody murder over this. Pets that impact your playstyle by a large margin should not be locked behind 3 hour pve events. What about WvWer’s who will NEVER gain access to these pets due to how horrible their acquisition is?

4.) Mastery system needs a review
The system is a total and catastrophic failure, forcing people to grind in silly ways just to do the content they like. Example is fractal mastery and people being unable to get enough agony resist because the fractal vendor with +7 infusions is tied to a generic experience bar and they didn’t grind out enough CoE P1 to get it. This system is so monumentally bad (starwars NGE level of bad), I have no idea how to “undo” the damage it wrought.

One way I can think to improve the mastery system is to tie mastery acquisition to a specific achievement instead of an XP grind bar. For example, fractal mastery can be tied to completing fractals. Pact mastery can be tied to completing group events.

The idea is to advance players in masteries based on the content they do, not to lock them out of the content they like with a mindless grind and XP bar. Imagine fractal players, who have to sit there and farm CoE p1 just so they can do higher fractals? That’s silly. Who thought of this?

5.) Rewards need to be better
There just needs to be better rewards to incentivize players into doing content like Dragon’s Stand and Tangle Root’s meta. Sitting there for 3hrs for a box of greens is not going to cut it anymore. Even the professional reviewers ripped the game for this. Rewards suck, they have always sucked. Now that content is harder and takes more time, that needs to change. It’s silly how many people are in SW still chest running because the HoT rewards are so terrible.

6.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now. Something needs to be done to funnel people into dead zones to complete the meta. Make a weekly quest with a good reward and have that quest go and complete the meta for these zones to get players to do this content.

7.) Get a better balance team
Everyone can agree, it took the balance team forever to get game balance decent prior to the new specialization system. Even since then, its been a nightmarish mess of failed tournaments and low twitch views in PvP. Classes are so horribly imbalanced in PVP, PVE, and WvW. Certain classes just suck at certain content (like thief outside of D/P).

8.) Get your class roles and visions straight
WTF is going on with healing? You state how zerker meta won’t cut it, introduce healers, then fill the game with timed bosses that enforce even more zerk? Whhhhhuuuuuuuuttt? I just head desk so hard looking at this.

9.) Your communication with the community/fanbase sucks, fix it
Alot of players didn’t see these sweeping changes coming and weren’t warned about the difficulty or the 400 hero points. If you told us about the 400 HP, we could have told you it was a s——-y idea to begin with. Communication and morale is at an all time low. You guys rip entire systems out of the game and barely give us notice, leading to so much wasted time and progression. Like look at all the guilds that whose contribution points became useless because the announcement was made so late. Was anything learned after the fractured update?

You need a public test server. So much of this stuff can be fixed with simple community input. Instead you hide everything from us, like we are some sort of evil gremlins that will steer the game wrong with our protests. It’s better to hear it from us early and be open; rather than watch the professional reviewers tear HoT apart like they are doing now while are all going “we told you so” or “we could have helped.”

The content is not to hard at all , I defended a outpost at night alone , and captured a rally point alone. With the change to HP everything is solo-able.

Dry top is FAR from dead , It is accually getting to T5 and T6 now. I went there to farm sand for Guild Hall and there is a TON of people

" If you want hard content, go play the raids or high level fractals."

Fractals aren’t even hard you just need money for the infusions and frankly I have better things to spend my money on, also fractals are the same boring repetetive stuff the entire time, No one wants to only do that.

Raids? are you serious? Raids aren’t even out.

Dengar.1785:

Okay then mister smart guy, what do you suggest we use exp for if not masteries?

It could do the same thing as it does in WvW. I don’t mean WXP, but character XP.

lordhelmos.7623:

There are just some things that need to be changed with HoT. Be warned, I’m not going sugar coat this post. This is just how it is.

1.) Content designed for groups only, leads solo players to believe its too hard. For them it is.
Difficulty for the new zones needs to be toned much lower. The majority of the player base are casual players with limited time. This is especially true for tangle root.

EDIT: I want to point out that difficulty is not just the problem. Having a hard game is one thing, and to an extent that is ok. But HoT is meant for groups, its hard because THE ENTIRE EXPAC was designed for a 5+ man group. People going at the game solo or leveling at their own pace are going to come up against unfair situations where they will just get their face pushed in because they are traveling alone. This is not an issue of difficulty at this point, but impossibility.

There is no disclaimer in the game that warns you about this. Solo players are and will be punished in this game and sometimes that is mistaken as “difficulty.” This type of design is bad design, because solo players are a large segment of the playerbase. Sometimes players want to grow at their own pace and don’t want to be held back or left behind by other players. Grouping brings its own set of social rules and sometimes can greatly extend a player’s time to complete an objective to far more than they have to play.

If you want hard content, go play the raids or high level fractals. This goes for grouping. Some players like to group for GROUP content, but want to level at their own pace. I don’t want to sit there for 15mins with someone who is bad at jumping puzzles waiting at the boss while they take forever to complete it, do you? HOT forces these situations.

So read the above, please don’t assume my gripe is on difficulty alone. The issue is more complex and needs to be addressed.

2.) Hero Point difficulty needs to be toned down
People don’t like the personal progression of their hero tied to groups or requiring friends/begging for help. Some of these 5 man hero point bosses that ares gated behind mastery requirements and/or jumping puzzles need to go or be nerfed to hell. Having hard content is fine, having that hard content gating players from personal growth towards their elite spec is not cool.

3.) Ranger Pet location for some pets needs to change
Rangers already cried bloody murder over this. Pets that impact your playstyle by a large margin should not be locked behind 3 hour pve events. What about WvWer’s who will NEVER gain access to these pets due to how horrible their acquisition is?

4.) Mastery system needs a review
The system is a total and catastrophic failure, forcing people to grind in silly ways just to do the content they like. Example is fractal mastery and people being unable to get enough agony resist because the fractal vendor with +7 infusions is tied to a generic experience bar and they didn’t grind out enough CoE P1 to get it. This system is so monumentally bad (starwars NGE level of bad), I have no idea how to “undo” the damage it wrought.

One way I can think to improve the mastery system is to tie mastery acquisition to a specific achievement instead of an XP grind bar. For example, fractal mastery can be tied to completing fractals. Pact mastery can be tied to completing group events.

The idea is to advance players in masteries based on the content they do, not to lock them out of the content they like with a mindless grind and XP bar. Imagine fractal players, who have to sit there and farm CoE p1 just so they can do higher fractals? That’s silly. Who thought of this?

5.) Rewards need to be better
There just needs to be better rewards to incentivize players into doing content like Dragon’s Stand and Tangle Root’s meta. Sitting there for 3hrs for a box of greens is not going to cut it anymore. Even the professional reviewers ripped the game for this. Rewards suck, they have always sucked. Now that content is harder and takes more time, that needs to change. It’s silly how many people are in SW still chest running because the HoT rewards are so terrible.

6.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now. Something needs to be done to funnel people into dead zones to complete the meta. Make a weekly quest with a good reward and have that quest go and complete the meta for these zones to get players to do this content.

7.) Get a better balance team
Everyone can agree, it took the balance team forever to get game balance decent prior to the new specialization system. Even since then, its been a nightmarish mess of failed tournaments and low twitch views in PvP. Classes are so horribly imbalanced in PVP, PVE, and WvW. Certain classes just suck at certain content (like thief outside of D/P).

8.) Get your class roles and visions straight
WTF is going on with healing? You state how zerker meta won’t cut it, introduce healers, then fill the game with timed bosses that enforce even more zerk? Whhhhhuuuuuuuuttt? I just head desk so hard looking at this.

9.) Your communication with the community/fanbase sucks, fix it
Alot of players didn’t see these sweeping changes coming and weren’t warned about the difficulty or the 400 hero points. If you told us about the 400 HP, we could have told you it was a s——-y idea to begin with. Communication and morale is at an all time low. You guys rip entire systems out of the game and barely give us notice, leading to so much wasted time and progression. Like look at all the guilds that whose contribution points became useless because the announcement was made so late. Was anything learned after the fractured update?

You need a public test server. So much of this stuff can be fixed with simple community input. Instead you hide everything from us, like we are some sort of evil gremlins that will steer the game wrong with our protests. It’s better to hear it from us early and be open; rather than watch the professional reviewers tear HoT apart like they are doing now while are all going “we told you so” or “we could have helped.”

Agree 100% the games a mess and need fixed.

This game is not a mess, just that it needs some more polishing. There are still bugs present (such as an NPC collector at one event that doesn’t always allow you to give your stuff to him unless you drop it and then collect it again, wasting precious time before the nightfall begins timer runs out.), some rewards for certain tiers are either to high or to low (crowbars for a tier 3? serious?) and more then half of the people are still busy leveling.

To me, this isn’t a hard game anymore, even as a solo player. It’s become a drag doing the events on one map over and over and over and over to get to a tier to get a small chance at an armor box. THAT… is what is turning me away from the game right now.

Once you explored the stuff, it gets boring real fast. Sure, a lot of events, but not enough to make it appealing to grind those masteries, as they become very natural after a few hours.

I do agree that the game contradicts itself at some points. Atleast, that’s how it feels…
I think I’ll take a break and come back when some things are smoothened out. (or nerfed.)

Was a great journey over 3 maps (I don’t count the last as a real map as it’s so small you basicly are “camping” out for the meta event to start out, semetrical (sp) maps in PvE are a waste in MMORPG’s.) but I’ve seen it all, don’t half of it (never saw any of the end meta events on the maps completed except Tarir sometimes), gg.

Felt even shallower then Factions at the time. Same rushed based stuff, more crowd, less completed bosses. Semi wasted money. (nice designed map and graphics, beautiful soundtrack… to bad the rest can’t cope.)

Terrahero.9358:

Dengar.1785:

Okay then mister smart guy, what do you suggest we use exp for if not masteries?

It could do the same thing as it does in WvW. I don’t mean WXP, but character XP.

So instead of a system we invest XP into to get better at a certain thing you want to change it to a system where we invest WXP into to get better at doing certain things?

Like what other conclusion is there to draw from that statement there both identical systems minus one having catalysts to gated content.

lordhelmos.7623:

*1.) Content designed for groups only

No. Some content is designed for groups. Most is soloable. The story is soloable except the very last step (and that only because of bugs). Hero Points are partly soloable, some not. Exploring is soloable. Events chains are the usual GW2 fare: you can play alone with others (because you simply cannot avoid other players helping you – and why should you?).

Not only is your statement false, it is also misleading, in that we play a Massive Multiplayer game. This category of games hints strongly at doing something with other people.

There is no disclaimer in the game that warns you about this.

The disclaimer is the fact that GW2 is a MMO.

My opinion: Don’t change anything here.

2.) Hero Point difficulty needs to be toned down

No. They are HERO challenges for a reason. They give you 10 times HP than the Tyrian ones, and it is only natural that they are more difficult for that. Sadly ArenaNet has already turned the difficulty down with some hero challenges. Please do not water down them more. If people do not like to play with other people in a MMO, they play the wrong kind of game.

4.) Mastery system needs a review
The system is a total and catastrophic failure, forcing people to grind in silly ways just to do the content they like. Example is fractal mastery and people being unable to get enough agony resist because the fractal vendor with +7 infusions is tied to a generic experience bar and they didn’t grind out enough CoE P1 to get it. This system is so monumentally bad (starwars NGE level of bad), I have no idea how to “undo” the damage it wrought.

The mastery system is ingenious. New masteries should (and as I understand it: will) be introduced to keep up the sense of endgame progression. There is no grind necessary. It is possible for the impatient, but not necessary. That said, I think they should nerf the cof p1 farm in the near future. It is not healthy for the game. My opinion: Do not change the mastery system.

5.) Rewards need to be better
There just needs to be better rewards to incentivize players into doing content like Dragon’s Stand and Tangle Root’s meta. Sitting there for 3hrs for a box of greens is not going to cut it anymore. Even the professional reviewers ripped the game for this. Rewards suck, they have always sucked. Now that content is harder and takes more time, that needs to change. It’s silly how many people are in SW still chest running because the HoT rewards are so terrible.

I don’t think the rewards need to be better in the sense of “being worth more gold”. But it would be nice to have even more map specific rewards which are account bound (not tradeable). When I do an event circle in Auric Basin my inventory (max bags, all 20) is usually full. And only after I cleaned it up I can open the countless containers.

6.) Dead content needs to be put into a incentivizing rotation
Do you see people in dry top? I don’t. Good luck getting mawdrey or amberite weapons now. Something needs to be done to funnel people into dead zones to complete the meta. Make a weekly quest with a good reward and have that quest go and complete the meta for these zones to get players to do this content.

That would be a good idea.

7.) Get a better balance team

I think they do a good job. Not that the balance is perfect: there will be always balance issues, that comes with the nature of the beast. And shortly after HoT dropped it can’t be expected that all professions are balanced in all game modes with the elite specs. But all in all I am cautiously optimistic.

8.) Get your class roles and visions straight
WTF is going on with healing? You state how zerker meta won’t cut it, introduce healers, then fill the game with timed bosses that enforce even more zerk? Whhhhhuuuuuuuuttt? I just head desk so hard looking at this.

I don’t get your point here. If the raids are designed correctly (that means: making healing valuable), you can’t survive without a healer, just because you need berserker or sinister gear.

9.) Your communication with the community/fanbase sucks, fix it

Just now the communication is very good. The 400 hp issue was not an issue for me, but sadly ArenaNet gave in to the protests, and they did it very quick while communicating openly about it.

Terrahero.9358:

It could do the same thing as it does in WvW. I don’t mean WXP, but character XP.

You don’t get character XP in WvW.

lordhelmos.7623:

1.) Content designed for groups only, leads solo players to believe its too hard. For them it is.

As a casual – and by casual I mean I’ve played since the beginning, and yet haven’t completed all of the dungeons, my Fractal level is 3 and the only piece of Ascended gear I have outside of the laurel gear is the Shadow of Grenth – solo player with very little time myself I completely disagree.

Quite a few of the events I have been able to do solo or paired, outside of the map meta events. I’ve also been able to traverse the game as a solo player. Sure, I had to change my builds up a bit to increase my survivability, but that’s healthy for a game.

lordhelmos.7623:

4.) Mastery system needs a review

While I think you’re being a bit dramatic, I do agree that the Mastery system progression, thematically and mechanically, doesn’t make much sense.

lordhelmos.7623:

You need a public test server.

The flip-side of this is that you’ll get people who use this test server not to test the content – both for bugs and gameplay – but to simply preview the content.

No, a lot of the issues could be brought to light with clearer communication rather than a test server.

1) Disagree. The new maps is not hard, it’s simply tedious (long chain events) and obstructive (gated by masteries). I solo open world PvE content 95% of the time and get along fine. Hardly even ask for help unless it’s dps/timed like the legendary/champions.

2) Agreed. There are a few HP which are stupidly designed. Rather than making them ‘challenging’, the mobs simply 2-hit KO you irrelevant of gear. My necro can get 3 shot from the Coztic Bladedancer champion with soldier gear (thankfully have auto DS trait). I cannot imagine running around on a thief, often see thief players get instant downed.

3) Agreed. Having pets obtained through events may sound like a cool idea but it comes with a drawback. Pets are essentially part of ranger’s class mechanic and puts an additional wall on the profession. I believe the Tiger haven’t even been discovered yet (if it’s in the current maps at all).

5) Neutral. SW is definitely more rewarding in both chest farms and Vinewrath. Farming in the HoT maps rewarded me bags full of greens/blues and hardly any rares, thus it’s unsatisfying when you realised you can get better rewards elsewhere. However beating the new bosses on the new map is still fun, loving the Wyvern Patriarch fight.

7) Neutral. That’s actually a funny point as 6/9 elite specialisations are offensive based, 2/9 are party support via buffs and only 1 is healing. Considering the damage some mobs do, players might go down before you’ll even get the druid heals off.

Dengar.1785:

Terrahero.9358:

It could do the same thing as it does in WvW. I don’t mean WXP, but character XP.

You don’t get character XP in WvW.

Yes you do. Even after hitting lv80.

That doesn’t make any sense. There are no masteries in WvW, why would there be exp?

Doesn’t exp gained by members of a guild tie into how much influence or something a guild earns?

I disagree with almost all of your points.

I agree with number 3 about the ranger pets, but I’m not worried about it, I can do without them.

About number 4, the problem I have with the mastery system isn’t the XP, you get that from just playing the game, it’s just going to be slow and take time. What I have an issue with is gaining enough mastery points to unlock them.

We’re not only behind a huge XP wall (which I don’t have a problem with) we’re also behind a mastery point wall. It looks like most of the points are tied to achievements and I’m not one to go chase achievements, but it looks like I’m going to be forced to do them if I want to unlock more masteries.

The way I see it, this is no different then if they had raised the level cap by 10 levels, it might actually be worse because of the amount of XP needed. The only difference would be the gear, but maybe they could have found a way to have the gear level up with us if they don’t want a gear treadmill.

For the pass week I have been trying to complete Tangled Depths Meta. It was so dreadful to wait hours after hours for the numbers to attempt once, but of course failed every single time.
Completed once yesterday but the Mistward Helm casting did not drop for me. My luck was spent just to get the raid going so I got punished on loot. Am I gonna try again? No, I wouldn’t bother anymore. My original plan was do it once, get the quest item and never come back to Tangled Depths. Now I just won’t come back anyway because it is not worth the time.

You didn’t get the helm casting because you did not actually complete it. You probably just downed your own Gerent. It needs to be killed on all 4 sides lol.