Guild Wars 2

My fiance finally started going into the new areas and quickly realized that everything she wants to do requires a mastery first. Bouce on a shroom? Mastery. Use a shroom to run fast? Mastery. Make Fractals not give garbage loot? Mastery. Access vendors in new area? Mastery.

What doesn’t require a mastery now? Do players seriously have to grind out these ridiculous experience bars in order to access the content? I stopped playing a while ago, but was following HoT news and considered it until now. I have limited time since I’m studying almost constantly , and I don’t want to have to grind quests and whatnot in order to fully play the new content! It’s not a matter of not wanting to work, its a matter of the content I paid for being stuck behind a wall of experience bars.

That and its quite hard to solo. My fiance isn’t an expert player by any means, but kitten . Some of us don’t spend hours on end every day practicing our dodging or whatever it is that the top-tier-fractal-running players do. We just want to log on, relieve some stress, have a good time, and log off a couple hours later.

I dont think speed mushroom is ever required, bounce mushroom is required like, once, for the fractals its like the first level mastery, do 2-3 dungeons paths and you’ll have it. Nothing stops you from enjoying the base game if HoT is too hard.
It is suposed to bring a bit more difficulty than the lolpress1 open world we had before.
And at first its hard but once you get used to it, HoT open world isnt so hard. Just take your time and try not to aggro the whole neighbor when you get into a fight

I was a bit frustrated at first, but after unlocking gliding and using another character (I couldn’t make the mesmer work, but I think now I might) it became a lot better and after unlocking gliding II I am dreading going back to the old maps :p . Gliding is awesome. In the first map you only need gliding I and II and the frog I and II for map completion, though to be honest I got the point from the frogs before I had II in the mastery.

I got full clear on verdant brink with jump shroom and gliding 2. You were expecting full access to everything right off the bat? Where is the fun in that? I wouldn’t recommend trying to clear VB though, it would be too much work.

You can get gliding and bouncing mushrooms fast. Both are low exp, first tier Masteries. Once you’ve got that, you have most of what you need for getting around in that zone.

I agree.

Game would be fun and interesting with lots to do WITHOUT artificially inflated exp grind that this mastery system is. It is obnoxious how much exp you need for some of these masteries not to monetion how much content is gated behind high tier masteries, like ley-line gliding or poison resistance.

Seriosuly, Isn’t getting all the points themselves time gated enough? Was it really necessery to add this HUGE exp gate too?

Not to mention getting exp in new maps is ridiculously slow, even if you do focus on doing them. 5k for single event is nothing not to to mention the exp you get for 2 hours of meta event. Laughable.

Yeah, i understand Anet doesn’t want people to rush through everything in one day. but come on, this is ridiculous.

McNinja? Doctor McNinja…? Can it be?

I agree in part. It’s silly that the basics like mushroom jumping require a mastery, and I’ve said that elsewhere. We use jump crystals with no training in Dry Top. We use skritt tunnels without training in SW yet tunnels in HOT require training. Some basic human functions like jumping or crawling should not require training. That annoyed me.

On the other hand, the training required to learn the Exhalted language and stuff does make sense. I hope we get more of that kind of thing. Mastery tracks for skills that aren’t required for basic gameplay but extend your skill set would be good.

So, in answer to your first question…. yeah, there’s quite a bit of experience and mastery point gathering required to unlock the skills needed to explore every nook and cranny, but if you just get the basics (gliding, bouncing, updraft) you’ll be covered for most of the jungle. There are commanders leading zergs around to help with the levelling up and if you ever need help, you’re welcome to give me a yell too.

I think the thing is to get Gliding 1 asap – ive only been in Verdant Brink a couple of times – the game and story seemed to be sending me down the ramp into Meta events I couldn’t do without gliding or West which I couldn’t get too either, I was about to log out miffed then decided to go North to the Itzel(?) camp in the canopy immediately came across some much easier events and after 4 had enough XP for Gliding 1 – still haven’t made it West as im a terrible Glider but that seems to be the place to start.

But yes it did feel frustrating to be IMMEDIATELY blocked from content – there was a tagged Comm waiting there that I couldn’t follow because he warned us no one without gliding could – I think they could have gone much easier for the first part

Building masteries into the ability to fully explore the jungle was how they slowed down player consumerism.

And, you know, to give progression.

yeah, I think they went a little all in on masteries.

They are fine and all, but a lot are just uninteresting and are basically grind gates. Ones like gliding add gameplay…..ones like lore, or poison mastery etc, dont. They are pure grind gates.