Guild Wars 2

Yes, you can’t get everything after 2 days like every other map they’ve given, MASTERIES are account bound, once you have them, you have them for all characters and it will be x10 easier to get Hero Challenges for elite specs if you so desire. I can’t believe people calling this a grindfest, you get natural progression that feels rewarding…giving you gliding, mushrooms, pact mastery, speed mushrooms, etc..abilities to level up instead of a arbitrary LVL increase that gives you a few boring stats extra. I can’t believe people are wanting to be spoon-fed everything after 2 days, thats blowing me away. IF they did people would complain it was too easy. I feel sorry for ANET its simple catch 22 with this forum community, nothing will appease them, I see no logic in their reasons.

The only thing I would agree with is 400 points is steep but everything else is not. Its been 2 days, Im 6 mastery points leveled, 70% elite spec done. This is NOT a grind I been naturally progressing through each area and exploring new zones, events, etc.

Grind is un-enjoyed playable content that the customer feels forced to do. Clearly what people find enjoyable is highly subjective.

Anet very heavily sold Gates of Thorns on the Elite Specs – we actually saw little of anything else prior to launch; the chief bait for GoTs was Elite Specs. There was little mention of the scale of the gating on the Elite Specs.

The cost of that scale obviously depends on the customer’s play time or at least wiliness to devote an initial large hours over a short period.

The vast majority of GW2’s customer base is casual.

It’s a no brainer that a significant number of Gates of Thorns customers are going to perceive – initially at least – that the expansion is a grind fest.

Imo, they should have giving their customers a founder’s bonus with the gating cost initially lower then slowly jacked up as time progressed – i.e why not sell the expansion on customer enjoyment rather than advertisements. AS IS the gating feels like robbery to many – they have paid in expectation, giving the advertisements – for something they can’t easily enjoy giving real-life commitments AND player numbers.

I suspect ‘Raids’ will be the new advertisement bait to keep playing, and who knows what gates will pop up then!

There has been a lost of trust, the scale of the gating comes over as disingenuous.

PS: I have no problem with the gating, but I do have a problem with empty zones making gameplay a pointless endeavour – i.e. effectively adding a timing gate*. Those that are rushing thru content now should have an eye on the future of the game. Would it really have hurt so much to have giving ALL customers an initial bonus (or a joy factor) on purchasing the expansion? AS IS everything ‘feels’ gated and to many casual GoTs is poor value for real money. That may of course change in time.

*Some people may not just have limited hours to play they may have limited SPECIFIC hours they can play.

I agree except that leveling a mastery by doing events that give very little experience IS a grind. The fact that you need a group to do most events also takes more time if there aren’t any around.

Just increase the experience amount per event and the game would be great.