Guild Wars 2

Did Anet REALLY have to gate story behind hours and hours of grind?

The point I am at requires lvl 4 Itzel Mastery…..it’s taking forever to get level 3 gliding, been at it for about 3/4 hours (events are sluggish with exp etc) and I’m only half way…half way to gaining an ability to LEAN when I glide.

So you are telling me I cannot access the story because you want me to further grind?

If mastery points/exp was fun and not repetitive to get then yeh, fair enough, but you have made it necessary to zerg about with a commander (yet again), to equip my lootstick (yet again) and mindlessly follow a crowd because;

1. The events are far from soloable.

2. Only so many hero points are doable without grinding mastery and many you need a grp for.

3. Exp trickles into mastery bars. I get you want to make certain stuff ‘hard to get’ but GRINDING ISN’T DIFFICULT, IT IS BORING, A POOR MAN’S ‘INVESTMENT’.

I seriously feel like I grind less in wow compared to this game.

You should probably sort it Anet, cus if my memory serves, during the PAX announcement this came up about the mastery system;

“You do it once, this is all part of our no-grind philosophy for Guild Wars 2.”

Sheesh ONCE is enough and that still feels like a grind.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2tjxe8/pax_announcement_wordforword_transcription_of/

^ this is a link to a transcript of the PAX announcement.

Mastery does not feel like progression, it feels like another layer of grind that is in the way of me enjoying the game.

Total exp is not really the main issue here. It is the METHOD of exp gaining. It is making you grind events that nudge it forward.

In core GW2 exp is thrown at you, in HoT the amount of ways to earn exp is scarce, you are reduced to meta event farming for story progression.

Simply add that to the total exp from mastery 2-3 itzel (1.7mil) equaling leveling to 1-61 (1.7mil) and extremely low exp gains in events (story wise it is asking you do go from level 1 itzel to level 4 itzel, not 2-3 btw).

Let’s throw into the mix the basic event exp for gold rating is 19k-ish
For level 2-3 itzel I would have to do 90 events. But remember, I am leveling from 1 – 4 for a new story chapter, so that would make it exp wise; 1 million + 1.7million + 2.5 million = 5.2 million (the numbers I use are rounded DOWN http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heart_of_Maguuma_mastery_track#Itzel_Lore)

5.2 million / 19k Means I will have to do 273 events before I can continue the personal story.

So all in all tell me, is 273 events for 1 story chapter NOT grinding?

I must agree.

Even when playing with many players on a map it feels grindy and I don’t want to imagine how bad it is to play alone when not many are playing.

It’s not about gating the story. By ensuring you 100% have certain masteries it means ANet can give more fun and meaningful missions. They can rely on you have a particular skill-set, or in the early stages ensure you’re actually progressing.

Think of the first few missions as a tutorial, they’re teaching you what masteries you’ll probably need, after or in between those, go nuts.

mexay.3902:

It’s not about gating the story. By ensuring you 100% have certain masteries it means ANet can give more fun and meaningful missions. They can rely on you have a particular skill-set, or in the early stages ensure you’re actually progressing.

Think of the first few missions as a tutorial, they’re teaching you what masteries you’ll probably need, after or in between those, go nuts.

How is the story more meaningful because I grinded hours to learn how to lean while gliding or to talk to some frogs? That’s nonsense.

mexay.3902:

It’s not about gating the story. By ensuring you 100% have certain masteries it means ANet can give more fun and meaningful missions. They can rely on you have a particular skill-set, or in the early stages ensure you’re actually progressing.

Think of the first few missions as a tutorial, they’re teaching you what masteries you’ll probably need, after or in between those, go nuts.

So in order to have a few hours of fun, I have to first grind for 50 hours or whatever of no fun? What a great idea!

All I want is an official addition to the story journal that will tell me which masteries I need to unlock for the full storyline so that I can finish them before I start, thus avoiding the flow breaking mastery grind between each chapter.

I don’t mind the playing and grinding a bit, however for the bit of time I was in the new pve maps I did get frustrated. Now I did play a bit, and did start to figure some things out, however for the most part, right now everything for an event dies very quickly due to the amount of players doing the events. (Not Anet’s fault.)

The question I have is:
What will happen as the hype for the new map calms down, most of it is not able to be solo’d efficiently, and even a small 5 person group would have issue with some of it.

On a plus note:
This new expansion has been the only PvE I’ve “enjoyed” at all since GW2 released. I like how things changed and Im not just watching cut scenes the entire time. (Even though I do wish I could fast forward through some of it. lol)

Eponet.4829:

All I want is an official addition to the story journal that will tell me which masteries I need to unlock for the full storyline so that I can finish them before I start, thus avoiding the flow breaking mastery grind between each chapter.

Seems like a fair request. I’d think that info would be up on the wiki relatively soon.

I have no problem with them gating story behind mastery POINTS, but I do have a huge problem with them gating them behind the XP grind. It’s just awful. We should be able to instantly unlock any abilities so long as we have the points to do so.

Yeah sadly I have to agree with this as well.

I don’t care if you want us to grind out the Masteries to explore the world, even the fact that we have to grind out Masteries to get our Hero Points so we can unlock our Elite Specializations.

But I do have an issue with having to grind out Masteries just to see the story. It reminds me of this quote from Mike O’ Brien:

It (GW2) doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.

This is exactly what it feels like though. Preparing to have fun. And by the time I’ve grinding out all those Masteries just to continue my story, I’m so annoyed, that I just can’t have any fun anymore or get into the story.

I have to agree and also add that it blocks the open world as well. Imagine playing a “metriodvania” game that forces you to kill a bunch of monsters before you can even use the powerups you find to explore the maps. That would be incredibly boring, which is exactly what I find this map gating.

They had to do it. This is NOT a proper expansion. It is additional content like all along.

They needed to add the “new” time gated grind to complete the story line and map exploration to make it “feel” like an expansion in terms of time.

Buyers remorse so far :/

Sadly I have to agree as well.
I just want to experience and focus on the story without being interrupted constantly.

Heart of Grind

“This is what MMOS are all about. Give us $60.”

So far (3 maps) I have only experienced two dynamic events I wasn’t able to solo as regular non-herald Revenant because they had timers tuned for groups.

Two. Playing 12h with couple breaks. Excluding obvious stuff like World Bosses or other Legendary events.

I’ve been just running around, having fun, doing events and getting stuff I needed for story along the way. Really, it’s just like leveling with other MMOs but way more fun.

I felt the same thing when I saw this. I was mildly disappointed when I had to do the lvl 1 mastery of each one but when I saw the Rank 4 Itzl I just decided to log off and take a break since it was a buzz kill.

The problem for me was that I was 3/4 of the way leveling each of the other masteries before since there was no indication I should get Itzl up to 4 first

For the PS it was level gated, I guess since they didn’t increase max level here they had to find some other way to slow us down.

Sucks but it is what it is….

since when is playing a game “grinding”. this is like complaining about character levels gating gear or content (which no one does).

grinding is finding the one most efficient way to achieve a goal, and thus doing it repetitively for a very long time to the point it is no longer fun.

you don’t have to do that here…the basics are earned fairly quickly by just playing. they even start you off with a mastery point and default you to glider….so you can then get to other Hero points (and progress your elite spec) and mastery points (so you can then get mushroom jumping). the simple basics of the first few masteries allows you to do the bulk of exploration….but then you have real choices to make in prioritizing how you want to progress and what goals are most important for you to achieve. Its quite meaningful and thus…pretty cool for this specific game.

if you want a true sandbox game….play something like Skyrim or Witcher3.
GW2 tried that at launch (as much as a MMO can) and the players devoured everything in 2 weeks and then raged on the forums about lack of content and no real “endgame”. now you have some open world pve “endgame”.

Another dumb decision ANet made with the content design in HoT. I completely regret purchasing this expansion and I’m warning all my friends to stay away until they sort this out (or not…). The game feels like a chore to play, the maps are a maze that is just annoying to run through. Mastery ranks come very slowly and a lot of the content is gated behind that. I’m not playing this anymore and not supporting any future ANet products unless this changes.

There’s a difference though.
On one side, the events are actually fun and challenging to play, at least for me. And aside from that, you have plenty of activities and possibilities to get the exp you need (For example the new adventures, which yeld xp as well.)
And aside from that, it’s not like you will use those masteries only for the story – they help you throughout ALL of the content. To make a silly example, let’s say you need updraft for a certain story mission. It’s not like when you get updraft you will use it only in that story mission, but you’ll actually use it all over Maguuma, giving you a ton more movement/exploration/combat options.
Masteries will probably be if not required at least strongly recommended for raids as well, exactly due to the options they give in terms of movement and strategy.
And as other users said up there, Anet clearly wants this content to last, and be fun. And in my opinion, they absolutely did it. I love the expansion so far, and I’m happy that both in the new maps and in core tyria I have stuff I’m looking forward to do because “Yes, I need the exp points because I want to start on my legendary/I want to loot automatically/etc etc”. It gives a lot more life to the game.

The Mastery wall has to be the worst possible design A-net has ever made, it worries me because if the story is gated behind mastery then your expecting people to be patient enough to play through the game to reach it.

People have lives, GW2 was about casual friendly content that fed that addiction when they were in need for a small buzz.

Should there be an optional hardmode for the story, yes, should it force people to do the gearwall to reach it, no.

The Mastery system is bad, simply put, take it out of the requirements because its just, bad.

Absoleutley, bad.

I was ok with the mastery grind till i hit the train the itzel poison lore to continue your story.Now im done with HOT until the xp grind is toned down significantly.

I they want us to grind that much, they need to give us more ways to earn XP. Right now I’m spending way too much time finding something to do.

Okey… point 1. pacing the story…. core game did that with levels. HoT cant do that with levels because there is no level cap increase… what do you expect to finish the story in a couple of days and then what? Have Arenanet get to work on monday check their email/forum and see the following? “hey arenanet we’re done, any ETA for the next Expansion?”

point 2 which is like in my opinion the most important point of all…. can we make a distinction between playing the game and grinding please? Because unless your strategy to level up masteries is to find the first mob you see and stay there killing it over and over again than what you’re talking about is playing the game no grinding.

Eponet.4829:

All I want is an official addition to the story journal that will tell me which masteries I need to unlock for the full storyline so that I can finish them before I start, thus avoiding the flow breaking mastery grind between each chapter.

in the mastery tab theres a green star on each mastery required for story progression that also tells you exactly what episode number you need it for when you hover over it, do they really need to add more than that?

Grind, you say?

I wont even bother reading the whole thread:

The personal story has level requirements.
The new story for the expansion has mastery requirements.

SAME DEAL!

Stop complaining just because you want to rush everything.

SimBilly.8047:

Grind, you say?

i dont think YOU know what it means.

this game is a textbook grind.

Kristine Heath.1483:

SimBilly.8047:

Grind, you say?

i dont think YOU know what it means.

this game is a textbook grind.

Your post made me LOL in RL

I also totally agree with the OP. Original storylines were doable even if you were not the recommended level, but that changed so you had to be the correct level before progressing story. This was a bad enough gate.

Living world stories also were doable without any gate stopping you, you simply got past each story chapter and opened the rest.

What living world did do, was upon story completion had plenty of grind to get ascended gear and lumi armour etc. But this was after completing story.

HoT however is completely different and has completely ruined doing the story for me. Why can it not be like every other past story?

Personally I think it maybe because you might need to have all gliding mastery done as you may need it for one part of the story. I could be wrong as I came out of HoT at 68% of glider mastery.

Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best. Even more so without there being a starter area in HoT to help assist you and explain what you need to do. Maybe this expansion was rushed?

As for myself I will not be going back to HoT. The knock on effect is that specialisms will make pvp and wvw unplayable for me as I won’t have the same skills etc but I will not let that force me to do this horrid expansion.

Bad show anet, bad show.

Grind to me is doing the same thing over and over again. All I did was explore the map, do a few events here and there, and in no time I was ready to start the next part of my story. I didn’t even do the same event twice and haven’t even done half the events that pop up since still trying to figure out how to get to everywhere hehe.

I even found a Lord Faren event and laughed so hard!!

We’ve had no updates for a long time so I honestly do not know what people have been doing since the last story ended. As far as I can see most people were farming ::cough:: grinding ::cough:: Silverwastes. Guess you all wanted a new SW map with easy content that you can pretty much just afk and get credit for events.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

I also totally agree with the OP. Original storylines were doable even if you were not the recommended level, but that changed so you had to be the correct level before progressing story. This was a bad enough gate.

Living world stories also were doable without any gate stopping you, you simply got past each story chapter and opened the rest.

What living world did do, was upon story completion had plenty of grind to get ascended gear and lumi armour etc. But this was after completing story.

HoT however is completely different and has completely ruined doing the story for me. Why can it not be like every other past story?

Personally I think it maybe because you might need to have all gliding mastery done as you may need it for one part of the story. I could be wrong as I came out of HoT at 68% of glider mastery.

Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best. Even more so without there being a starter area in HoT to help assist you and explain what you need to do. Maybe this expansion was rushed?

As for myself I will not be going back to HoT. The knock on effect is that specialisms will make pvp and wvw unplayable for me as I won’t have the same skills etc but I will not let that force me to do this horrid expansion.

Bad show anet, bad show.

ohh please that was only true to a degree, at level 2 there was no way to do a level 80 story mission, yes you could tackle that at level 77 if you wanted but it still took quite a bit of time to get to level 77.

Also please be objective… this statement “Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best.” is wrong on so many level…..

1. you’re playing the game you paid for while unlocking stuff.
2. stuff is locked behind game play not grind (there is nothing specific you have to repeat to unlock any mastery as far as i know)
3. “locking” is not ridiculous, every mmo does it, its actually essential! imagine if you could finish off everything today what exactly will you be doing for the next 3 years while they work on the next expansion?
4. you make it sound like Anet are doing this for the first time in HoT when this same thing existed in the core game. You finished the whole game in the core game before you fully unlocked your character (got all skills/traits/equipment) . You had to play open world content to gain access to the next part of the story.

I still not seen the grind, I see it as a goal, maybe cause I have no problem with it, but it seem working up to the next story is good.

I tried to warn people many times.

I told people the content was too little to trust in this expansion.

So Anet did something even sillier and put in gates, and grind everywhere to stretch it out.

Enjoy?

Kristine Heath.1483:

SimBilly.8047:

Grind, you say?

i dont think YOU know what it means.

this game is a textbook grind.

If you ever played a real Grindy MMO then you wouldn’t know that this is NOT a Grind. It is a Progression System you don’t like. Fair enough. But this isn’t Grind

I have to agree with the OP about gating the story. The story was literally the only thing I was really excited for in HoT and I have to play seemingly endless events to progress it (I am at the point where u need itsel poison lore as well). I really have to say that gating the story behind masteries was a really, really bad decision that I wish Anet hadn’t made. I rarely say negative things about the game because I like it so much but this annoyed me so much that I can’t see any positives with it.
That said I have no problem at all with gating some open pve behind masteries, that is what they are for after all and I agree with them doing that. Just in future I sincerely hope that I can just play the story and afterwards focus on other things.

Galen Grey.4709:

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

I also totally agree with the OP. Original storylines were doable even if you were not the recommended level, but that changed so you had to be the correct level before progressing story. This was a bad enough gate.

Living world stories also were doable without any gate stopping you, you simply got past each story chapter and opened the rest.

What living world did do, was upon story completion had plenty of grind to get ascended gear and lumi armour etc. But this was after completing story.

HoT however is completely different and has completely ruined doing the story for me. Why can it not be like every other past story?

Personally I think it maybe because you might need to have all gliding mastery done as you may need it for one part of the story. I could be wrong as I came out of HoT at 68% of glider mastery.

Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best. Even more so without there being a starter area in HoT to help assist you and explain what you need to do. Maybe this expansion was rushed?

As for myself I will not be going back to HoT. The knock on effect is that specialisms will make pvp and wvw unplayable for me as I won’t have the same skills etc but I will not let that force me to do this horrid expansion.

Bad show anet, bad show.

ohh please that was only true to a degree, at level 2 there was no way to do a level 80 story mission, yes you could tackle that at level 77 if you wanted but it still took quite a bit of time to get to level 77.

Also please be objective… this statement “Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best.” is wrong on so many level…..

1. you’re playing the game you paid for while unlocking stuff.
2. stuff is locked behind game play not grind (there is nothing specific you have to repeat to unlock any mastery as far as i know)
3. “locking” is not ridiculous, every mmo does it, its actually essential! imagine if you could finish off everything today what exactly will you be doing for the next 3 years while they work on the next expansion?
4. you make it sound like Anet are doing this for the first time in HoT when this same thing existed in the core game. You finished the whole game in the core game before you fully unlocked your character (got all skills/traits/equipment) . You had to play open world content to gain access to the next part of the story.

1) Not necessarily. He may be working toward the unlock without any play involved.
2) See the response to number 1.
3) I disagree.
4) This is incorrect. I, for example, fully unlocked my character within a few weeks (perhaps a couple months) of launch but have yet to finish the game. Still plenty to do.

Ashen.2907:

Galen Grey.4709:

Also please be objective… this statement “Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best.” is wrong on so many level…..

1. you’re playing the game you paid for while unlocking stuff.
2. stuff is locked behind game play not grind (there is nothing specific you have to repeat to unlock any mastery as far as i know)
3. “locking” is not ridiculous, every mmo does it, its actually essential! imagine if you could finish off everything today what exactly will you be doing for the next 3 years while they work on the next expansion?
4. you make it sound like Anet are doing this for the first time in HoT when this same thing existed in the core game. You finished the whole game in the core game before you fully unlocked your character (got all skills/traits/equipment) . You had to play open world content to gain access to the next part of the story.

1) Not necessarily. He may be working toward the unlock without any play involved.
2) See the response to number 1.
3) I disagree.
4) This is incorrect. I, for example, fully unlocked my character within a few weeks (perhaps a couple months) of launch but have yet to finish the game. Still plenty to do.

1. Not sure what you mean, are you trying to imply some semantic where grinding isnt playing or anything of the sort? cause even if that were true it would be his choice, the game certainly allows people to play the new content to unlock stuff
2. see 1
3. You may disagree and you’re certainly free to do so but the whole industry has always implemented some kind of gating be it level gating, progression gating or other variations there off. They cant all be wrong!
4. You can unlock elite spec 1second after you start playing HoT on many of your characters, we arent talking about unlocking here we are talking about fully progressing them (including vertically) IE get every skill, every trait, etc… And there is no way you did that in the first 2 months because new skills/traits were released far later then that does it mean you never played the game until Anet fully released every skill/trait?

Honestly, I’m fine with every other aspect of the mastery system, besides this one. I think it’s fair that they get you to unlock level 1 in each of them, but gating missions behind level 4 means that you’re manufacturing massive pacing issues for you story.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of exp required to get all the masteries to complete the story ends up being similar to leveling from 1-80. Instead of gating the missions behind leveling, they’ve gated it behind masteries (so, still leveling).

Eponet.4829:

All I want is an official addition to the story journal that will tell me which masteries I need to unlock for the full storyline so that I can finish them before I start, thus avoiding the flow breaking mastery grind between each chapter.

If you look at the masteries tab in the hero panel, there’s a green star next to all of the masteries you don’t have that will be used in the main storyline.

Wolfeng.3784:

I wont even bother reading the whole thread:

The personal story has level requirements.
The new story for the expansion has mastery requirements.

SAME DEAL!

It’s not quite the same. The PS episodes every 10 levels themselves got you 1-2 levels. Leaving around 8 levels to “grind” in the open world. But you usually had a couple of different maps to choose from, you could craft, wvw/pvp, do pretty much what you wanted.

Now if you want to continue the new story all you can do is run around in circles on a rather confusing map doing events. At least I found it rather confusing at the beginning. More than half of the places I spotted were unreachable, the first hero point/thingy I found in a cave had a poison aura with virtually no hint that it’s impossible to achieve right now.

I found the game as is interesting and I don’t mind that some parts are inaccessible in the beginning. But please don’t break the story flow like this and don’t have more than 50% of the map inaccessible right after you enter the map with “you need to unlock mastery foo to see this content”.

I know it’s probably done as an incentive for players who moved on to the next map to come back to the previous maps, so the maps are equally populated all the time. But frankly, it’s not a very good experience for new players that stumble onto the map the first time. All in my opinion of course.

Galen Grey.4709:

They cant all be wrong!

Actually, yes. Yes, they can. That’s a typical argumentum ad populum fallacy. Just because “everyone is doing it”, doesn’t mean it’s the right way or even a good way to do things.

I agree with OP, locking things behind XP is not fun at all, and it’s off-putting to just about everyone I know, especially when there’s no quick way to progress things for those who can’t invest hours upon hours of doing unrewarding stuff on maps full of confused people. Well, I say full because you see them talking in map chat, but in truth you hardly ever see anyone because the maps are huge and the player limit is too small. Also, now I see why they destroyed any chance of using tomes and writs of experience prior to the expansion.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Keneth.6490:

Galen Grey.4709:

They cant all be wrong!

Actually, yes. Yes, they can. That’s a typical argumentum ad populum fallacy. Just because “everyone is doing it”, doesn’t mean it’s the right way or even a good way to do things.

I agree with OP, locking things behind XP is not fun at all, and it’s off-putting to just about everyone I know, especially when there’s no quick way to progress things for those who can’t invest hours upon hours of doing unrewarding stuff on maps full of confused people. Well, I say full because you see them talking in map chat, but in truth you hardly ever see anyone because the maps are huge and the player limit is too small. Also, now I see why they destroyed any chance of using tomes and writs of experience prior to the expansion.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Isn’t everything since the start of the game been lock behind xp? don’t enter this area till level 25. Chapter 3 requires at least level 30. How is this any different?

Wolfeng.3784:

I wont even bother reading the whole thread:

The personal story has level requirements.
The new story for the expansion has mastery requirements.

SAME DEAL!

Stop complaining just because you want to rush everything.

They aren’t the same thing at all, aside from the fact that they are displayed as a bar you push up by doing events/etc.

Level requirements in the PS were met by simply leveling your character. Levels are a ‘generic’ mechanic that you’re always progressing. No matter how you choose to progress your character, you’re always making the right type of progress toward accessing the next story chapter.

Mastery requirements in HoT’s story mean that you must choose to level a specific mastery in order to continue. You want to work on your gliding because you like gliding? Or your mushroom mastery to access more parts of the open world? Well, too bad, because you need to stop leveling those and work on some lore mastery in order to do the story.

With level-gating, it is impossible to play the game and not be making progress toward your next story chapter. With mastery-gating, you’re making no progress unless you select the right mastery to level, which is very likely a mastery you don’t want to level.

It would be much better if the story was gated simply by mastery level/rank, and not having a specific mastery. That would be no different than having a level-gated story. The issue lies with the fact that you must level a specific mastery in order to progress the story.

Keneth.6490:

Galen Grey.4709:

They cant all be wrong!

Actually, yes. Yes, they can. That’s a typical argumentum ad populum fallacy. Just because “everyone is doing it”, doesn’t mean it’s the right way or even a good way to do things.

I agree with OP, locking things behind XP is not fun at all, and it’s off-putting to just about everyone I know, especially when there’s no quick way to progress things for those who can’t invest hours upon hours of doing unrewarding stuff on maps full of confused people. Well, I say full because you see them talking in map chat, but in truth you hardly ever see anyone because the maps are huge and the player limit is too small. Also, now I see why they destroyed any chance of using tomes and writs of experience prior to the expansion.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

One problem with your argumentum ad populum fallacy statement… saying that absolutely (and keep in mind here we mean 100% not some number close to 100%) all MMOs implememnt some form of gating doesnt make the statement right, you’re right about that… but the definition of argumentum ad populum fallacy simply states that the argumentum ad populum fallacy proves popularity not validity. Now people play what they like… plenty of games that are P2W but just cause they exist doesnt mean people flock to play them. Yet an incredible number of people play MMOs and each and every one implements gating. Which brings us for circle….
All MMOs implement some form of gating : Fact
Countless millions of People play them : Fact
Why would something that implements a mechanic that people hate be popular if it is not doing it right?

also be careful of the argumentum ad populum fallacy, it also works in reverse. Thinking a statement is false simply because someone states everyone is doing is an argumentum ad populum fallacy in itself.

I don’t have an issue per se with some mastery gating of the story steps. It makes sense in-character that you have to gain knowledge to progress, and out-of-character it helps with the pacing so we can’t just blow straight through the content and our gains took some effort.

That said, I feel like the amount of XP required to progress is not tuned right. The time spent earning the right to progress is too long, and XP gains feel too slow. My preference would be that for a moderate-length play session (say, an hour) I have the opportunity to advance the story at least once. I also feel that mastery point gain and XP gain need to be scaled to each other better – currently I’m sitting on several mastery points I’ve earned but I’m not allowed to use, which is kind of frustrating and makes my progress feel slower.

I’m fine with optional skills taking more time to acquire, but for me the completion time to advance the story is a bit too much and needs to be downward adjusted a bit.

Totally, PLS REMOVE THE REQUIREMENT.

I get gating things like map completion behind masteries that’s fine, I paid for your game and I’m going to enjoy it, I would however enjoy it ALOT more if the story wasn’t gated behind masteries. I love the gw2 story and for me to have to farm the amount of exp you want me to I will pretty much be logging in after work for a couple of hours a night farming exp and not even leveling the mastery 1/4 of the way and log out, not to mention if I want HoT masteries I can’t do things like fractals or dungeons I have to go farm world events I’ve already farmed time and again just because they’re not a part of vanilla gw2. It was a really poor decision to gate story behind masteries and if gw2 survives another 3 years for another expansion I’m just crossing my fingers you’ll change things this next time around.

My signature has never felt so relevant :P

To clarify, level 1 masteries = fair enough, they don’t take too long.

Level 4 mastery? Hell naw. I’ve played a full 10 hours today by doing some hero points, adventures, events, map completion (as much as I can), a guild hall capture etc and I have pushed my Itzel mastery to just over half way to the 3rd level.

Level 4 is just going to take too kitten long for me to enjoy ANY continuity with the story. I would probably have to play the previous episode again to remember what exactly has gone on -.-