Guild Wars 2

I’ll start:

Make the first 2 tears on the glider mastery given after you do the first story mission.
Make elite specs unlocking much easier, I don’t mind a bit of grind, but I do have to work too, and 400 HP is just excessive.

All abilities/mysteries you unlock should give you a bonus only and NOT be mandatory to progress in HoT. Rewards for progressing are good, and feel good. However, if you are forced into grinding in order to “unlock” the jungle it becomes more of a job than a game.

I’ve only had time to play maybe 5 or 6 hours so far, but I agree with #1. I felt like I hit a brick wall when I came out of that first story instance in verdant brink. There was no clear story marker to proceed, the game suggested exploring the itzel village and doing events, but there was nothing going on at the itzel village. I couldn’t really go anywhere without a glider and there were literally no players doing events in that area. Half the activities require a glider or mushroom training. It feels weird not having the gliders explicitly referenced in the story before being required to go out and get one. It’s like “Oh here’s a story” and then “…oh and some glider stuff.. if you want…” except that you can’t really continue the story without it.

I feel like masteries could use some work making them more logical and tie into the story more directly (although I may be wrong… I haven’t made it to the next story instance yet…) I ran into a mastery point in a cave with poison clouds around it. The poison effect said “train itzel lore to survive”. Great. So I need mastery points to get this mastery point? That’s some bad circular logic.

As far as elite specs go though… I dunno. I logged on to my alt who had map completion from vanilla and instantly unlocked half the elite spec. When they originally held the CDI thread for long term character progression, (elite) specializations were the resulting idea. Seems to me that it’s meant to be a long term goal, not something you quickly unlock in an afternoon. Personally I’ll feel more attached to my character, and more satisfied once I finish the elite spec all because of how much effort it requires. If it was quick and easy what reason would I have to care about my character? Why am I invested in this game? Like I said I haven’t had time to play enough to really feel the grind, so whatevs. I just don’t want to be handed everything quickly. I want to feel like I’m progressing my character’s strength leading to the final story arc, and then even further if I get into raiding.