Guild Wars 2

I made a thread about this before but it was deemed too rude and deleted so allow me to explain my issue much more civil.

This isn’t a thread about whether or not you like adventures or if you think they are good i don’t wanna discuss that…. That being said…. Adventures are kitten to the game. I don’t mean that to be insulting if you like Adventures good for you, go enjoy them. /thumbs up. But Adventures are NOT what guild wars is and forcing players to play them was and still is a huge mistake.

The game was in no way advertised around Adventures. In fact we didn’t even get to see Adventures before the game came out in any of the trailers, so for most people we didn’t really know what to expect but figure it just be some fun little side thing. Sadly its not a fun side thing it’s a mandatory frustrating thing.

In HoT they did not raise the level cap they added the mastery system. The mastery system is the new core progression system for your character. When you do things in the expansion you build up your masteries and can do cool new things. In order to cap out the Hot Masteries you have to get 117 points the total number of HoT points you can get are 139. There is a 22 point different, so it should be easy right? But wait! How many points come from adventures?? 30! So you will be forced to get at least 8 points from adventures.

Now before anyone says “Oh but the last few masteries don’t even mater!!” I’m sorry, but no. If they don’t matter then literally the dev’s should remove the entire tier from the game, so unless that’s the point you’re making don’t argue it. It is not at all a good feeling to spend hours of time actually leveling up and working on your masteries in the expansion just to get to the end and then to have no sense of pay off or satisfaction when you can’t unlock the final bar you just filled.

They also added Masteries to the elite spec collections which is another huge mistake for very much the same reason. Adventures have absolutely nothing to do with what class you play, so punishing people for choosing a class they enjoy but then find out they can’t finish the collection because they aren’t a pro at silly cell phone style games and bug collection makes no sense at all. This should just be removed because I can’t think of any reason it makes sense other then to force people to play adventures because you don’t think people would ever want to play them for fun without being forced into it.

What is happening now and what has already happened is there was a huge chuck of gw2’s community who got HoT played it and then after a week was like “wow this mastery system is BS!” and then a ton of them quit over the past few months and were like “Oh ill wait till the nerf.” Now the nerf happened and they(self included) came back and got on thinking they could finally play the game again, BUT that’s just not the case you’re still being forced to play mini games to advance in the real game and it just makes me not want to touch gw2 at all because i can’t cap out.

There are plenty of things in gw2 that are hard and I’ll never get and im fine with it. It’s part of all games, but none of those things are the core progression system of the expansion. Let me give some examples of how the current system works. If you couldn’t get past level 99 in wow unless you beat the timeless isle pet battle tournament or you couldn’t get to the final rank in LoL unless you won 10 ARAM games in a row. It’s just a very illogical system right now. It leaves people feeling cheated, frustrated, and incomplete. I understand why you did it, you put all this work into these new adventures and you wanna make sure people do them, but I’m telling you the current idea is a mistake. You need to tie a different reward to them or something because there needs to be a way to get more mastery points without them.

There is a group of people in this community who i think believe that there will be more masteries added with living story and itll fix it all, but I’m pretty sure they will be adding more points and more mastery trees with living story so it would only continue the problem. Worse it would likely lead to people being unable to get masteries they need for living story stuff by accidentally spending the points they get from living story on old unfinished masteries putting them in a place where they might not be able to even advance in the story unless they did adventures.

So anyway that is why pretty much why everyone I know has quit guild wars 2(People who used to play it all the time) and I’m struggling to keep playing when all I do is get on a fail at some adventures for an hour before giving up. Probably be saying good bye to Tyria myself soon. :/

Idk how you’d wanna fix this if you’d just pretend the issue doesn’t exist >.< , but maybe if you made it so once you finish a mastery track like say you cap out gliding, you could activate a new xp bar that gives you a mastery point at the end similar to how skill points used to work. Idk just a crazy idea…. you know…. being rewarded…. for playing the actual game a…. o.o /shrug

Or maybe simply adding a point to all the bronze rewards and swapping the collections from silver to bronze would work.

Here are my masteries.
Gliding – 31/31
Itzel Lore – 31/31
Exalted Lore – 19/19
Nuhoch Lore – 19/31
Forsaken Thicket - 0/5
7 point left over

The only available points left for me to get.
(these are pretty annoying to get)
Heart of Thorns: Act 2
Heart of Thorns: Act 3
Heart of Thorns: Act 4

(I need at least 5 of these for my raiding mastery)
Avenger of the Pact
Salvation Pass Mastery
Seimur Was Wrong
Slippery Slubling
The Big Sleep
The Shield
Beyond the Vale
Fire Extinguisher
Put to Rest
Undefeated

(Anything below here is impossible for me to get I’ve tried and tried and tried and tired.)
Tendril Torchers: Gold
Flying Circus: Gold
Bugs in the Branches: Gold
Shooting Gallery: Gold
Shooting Gallery: Silver

Tarir Challenge Winner
Fallen Masks: Gold
Fallen Masks: Silver
Sanctum Scramble: Gold
Sanctum Scramble: Silver
A Fungus Among Us: Gold
A Fungus Among Us: Silver
On Wings of Gold: Gold
The Floor Is Lava?: Gold

The Ley-Line Run: Gold
The Ley-Line Run: Silver
Scrap Rifle Field Test: Gold
Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle: Gold
Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle: Silver
Potoni Masher (I could probably get this one just haven’t tried it yet.)

Sorry for my grammar I am very sleepy. :P

TeeracK.3601:

This isn’t a thread about whether or not you like adventures or if you think they are good i don’t wanna discuss that…. That being said…. Adventures are kitten to the game.

Isn’t saying that they’re kitten to the game you voicing an opinion that you don’t like them? Probably not the best idea to voice that this thread isn’t about that but then to start off doing just that.

TeeracK.3601:

forcing players to play them was and still is a huge mistake.

You only need five mastery points from adventures if you get them from all other sources. Once living story starts back up, this should drop even further to the point that you do not need to do adventures. I will also point out that unless you plan to go for the four (sigh) HoT legendary weapons, you don’t need to max out the masteries.

TeeracK.3601:

The game was in no way advertised around Adventures. In fact we didn’t even get to see Adventures before the game came out in any of the trailers, so for most people we didn’t really know what to expect but figure it just be some fun little side thing. Sadly its not a fun side thing it’s a mandatory frustrating thing.

You’re correct that GW2 was not advertised to have adventures. However, HoT was and there was even a blog about them. We also got to experience them in the betas when events functioned correctly so they would be available..

TeeracK.3601:

In HoT they did not raise the level cap they added the mastery system. The mastery system is the new core progression system for your character. When you do things in the expansion you build up your masteries and can do cool new things. In order to cap out the Hot Masteries you have to get 117 points the total number of HoT points you can get are 139. There is a 22 point different, so it should be easy right? But wait! How many points come from adventures?? 30! So you will be forced to get at least 8 points from adventures.

It’s technically 25 excess mastery points.

TeeracK.3601:

They also added Masteries to the elite spec collections which is another huge mistake for very much the same reason. Adventures have absolutely nothing to do with what class you play, so punishing people for choosing a class they enjoy but then find out they can’t finish the collection because they aren’t a pro at silly cell phone style games and bug collection makes no sense at all. This should just be removed because I can’t think of any reason it makes sense other then to force people to play adventures because you don’t think people would ever want to play them for fun without being forced into it.

The masteries needed for the collections are pretty easy to earn and you don’t need to do adventures to get the mastery points for those. None of the adventures are all that difficult to do for the item that you get from for the collections. You only need to earn bronze now which makes them even more available than before.

TeeracK.3601:

There is a group of people in this community who i think believe that there will be more masteries added with living story and itll fix it all, but I’m pretty sure they will be adding more points and more mastery trees with living story so it would only continue the problem. Worse it would likely lead to people being unable to get masteries they need for living story stuff by accidentally spending the points they get from living story on old unfinished masteries putting them in a place where they might not be able to even advance in the story unless they did adventures.

They will and they have added excess mastery points so far so there’s no reason to assume they will not continue that trend.

TeeracK.3601:

(Anything below here is impossible for me to get I’ve tried and tried and tried and tired.)
Tendril Torchers: Gold
Flying Circus: Gold
Bugs in the Branches: Gold
Shooting Gallery: Gold
Shooting Gallery: Silver

Tarir Challenge Winner
Fallen Masks: Gold
Fallen Masks: Silver
Sanctum Scramble: Gold
Sanctum Scramble: Silver
A Fungus Among Us: Gold
A Fungus Among Us: Silver
On Wings of Gold: Gold
The Floor Is Lava?: Gold

The Ley-Line Run: Gold
The Ley-Line Run: Silver
Scrap Rifle Field Test: Gold
Scrap Rifle Field Test: Silver
Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle: Gold
Haywire Punch-o-Matic Battle: Silver
Beetle Feast: Gold
Beetle Feast: Silver
Drone Race: Gold
Drone Race: Silver
Potoni Masher (I could probably get this one just haven’t tried it yet.)

I’m sure there are many people who could offer you pointers and advice for these if you’re open to them.

Ayrilana.1396:

Isn’t saying that they’re kitten to the game you voicing an opinion that you don’t like them? Probably not the best idea to voice that this thread isn’t about that but then to start off doing just that.

Nope! Please don’t try and derail this thread with off topic stuff because you disagree.

Ayrilana.1396:

You only need five mastery points from adventures if you get them from all other sources. Once living story starts back up, this should drop even further to the point that you do not need to do adventures. I will also point out that unless you plan to go for the four (sigh) HoT legendary weapons, you don’t need to max out the masteries.

That’s mathematically wrong and it’s also something I addressed later on in my post if you read it all.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m sure there are many people who could offer you pointers and advice for these if you’re open to them.

I think you’re really missing the point of this thread. This isn’t about me finishing, I already gave up. I just felt I had to explain why myself and so many people are just done with the game. This is a thread addressing the issue that the current system being so tied to adventures right now just isn’t a smart design that only drives off lots of players. If there really wasn’t an issue there wouldn’t be +5 threads about adventures being an issue in just the first few pages of this forum which is less active then the reddit. There IS a problem you can try and rationalize anything I say how ever you want, but it doesn’t change the fact this thread and a ton other exist talking about this kinda stuff, and it doesn’t change the fact a huge chunk of the community just wasn’t interested in this kinda stuff and left. I wanna see it get fixed I don’t wanna talk about how the problem might not be so bad if you look at it in just the right way.

I mean, you actually went into detail about some adventure’s difficulty in your response and that is just beyond irrelevant for this conversation.

This isn’t about me finishing, I already gave up. I just felt I had to explain why myself and so many people are just done with the game. This is a thread addressing the issue that the current system being so tied to adventures right now just isn’t a smart design that only drives off lots of players. If there really wasn’t an issue there wouldn’t be +5 threads about adventures being an issue in just the first few pages of this forum which is less active then the reddit. There IS a problem you can try and rationalize anything I say how ever you want, but it doesn’t change the fact this thread and a ton other exist talking about this kinda stuff, and it doesn’t change the fact a huge chunk of the community just wasn’t interested in this kinda stuff and left. I wanna see it get fixed I don’t wanna talk about how the problem might not be so bad if you look at it in just the right way.

yep. this is where im at myself. wanted to make the new SB, but dont see myself able to max my mastery’s. im at 149 atm and dont see how im gonna max out w/o numerous silvers. i find it hard to even log in lately.

TeeracK.3601:

Ayrilana.1396:

Isn’t saying that they’re kitten to the game you voicing an opinion that you don’t like them? Probably not the best idea to voice that this thread isn’t about that but then to start off doing just that.

Nope! Please don’t try and derail this thread with off topic stuff because you disagree.

You brought it up despite stating that the thread wasn’t about it. I haven’t voiced my opinion in this thread yet.

TeeracK.3601:

Ayrilana.1396:

You only need five mastery points from adventures if you get them from all other sources. Once living story starts back up, this should drop even further to the point that you do not need to do adventures. I will also point out that unless you plan to go for the four (sigh) HoT legendary weapons, you don’t need to max out the masteries.

That’s mathematically wrong and it’s also something I addressed later on in my post if you read it all.

It’s not. There are 25 excess mastery points.

TeeracK.3601:

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m sure there are many people who could offer you pointers and advice for these if you’re open to them.

I think you’re really missing the point of this thread. This isn’t about me finishing, I already gave up. I just felt I had to explain why myself and so many people are just done with the game. This is a thread addressing the issue that the current system being so tied to adventures right now just isn’t a smart design that only drives off lots of players. If there really wasn’t an issue there wouldn’t be +5 threads about adventures being an issue in just the first few pages of this forum which is less active then the reddit. There IS a problem you can try and rationalize anything I say how ever you want, but it doesn’t change the fact this thread and a ton other exist talking about this kinda stuff, and it doesn’t change the fact a huge chunk of the community just wasn’t interested in this kinda stuff and left. I wanna see it get fixed I don’t wanna talk about how the problem might not be so bad if you look at it in just the right way.

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures and this will lessen as new content is released. You’re stating that the mastery system relies heavily on the mastery points from adventures when it doesn’t.

There are 5+ threads because there are people who simply do not want to do them period. Just like there were threads with people who did not want to do WvW for world completion. Anet eventually removed the need for WvW just like they will eventually remove any need with additional sources when the living story starts back up.

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

well, duh! my point was that not everyone will obtain ALL mastery points from story.
I know, some ppl will say “its easy to get all mastery points from story” , those are the same ppl that say “its easy to get silver or gold in all the adventures” well, you know what, it really isnt that easy, for everyone. and to say that those that cant dont deserve some of the things that come from maxing masterys, well, ….. you know what, im at a loss for words.

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

well, duh! my point was that not everyone will obtain ALL mastery points from story.
I know, some ppl will say “its easy to get all mastery points from story” , those are the same ppl that say “its easy to get silver or gold in all the adventures” well, you know what, it really isnt that easy, for everyone. and to say that those that cant dont deserve some of the things that come from maxing masterys, well, ….. you know what, im at a loss for words.

Well if they choose not to get mastery points from a specific area then that’s really on them rather than the existing system.

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

well, duh! my point was that not everyone will obtain ALL mastery points from story.
I know, some ppl will say “its easy to get all mastery points from story” , those are the same ppl that say “its easy to get silver or gold in all the adventures” well, you know what, it really isnt that easy, for everyone. and to say that those that cant dont deserve some of the things that come from maxing masterys, well, ….. you know what, im at a loss for words.

Well if they choose not to get mastery points from a specific area then that’s really on them rather than the existing system.

LMFAO! it not about “choosing” , its about the ability! (or lack of) wow

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

well, duh! my point was that not everyone will obtain ALL mastery points from story.
I know, some ppl will say “its easy to get all mastery points from story” , those are the same ppl that say “its easy to get silver or gold in all the adventures” well, you know what, it really isnt that easy, for everyone. and to say that those that cant dont deserve some of the things that come from maxing masterys, well, ….. you know what, im at a loss for words.

Well if they choose not to get mastery points from a specific area then that’s really on them rather than the existing system.

LMFAO! it not about “choosing” , its about the ability! (or lack of) wow

Everyone has the ability to get all of the mastery points from the HoT story. Just because something may seem difficult to someone, doesn’t mean that it is impossible. There’s a big difference from being unable to get something and choosing not to.

It’s the same as people who don’t like things (dailies, achievements, map completion, certain collections, etc.) being locked behind jumping puzzles. Not everything will be content you like, but I think it’s a mistake to say “that isn’t Guild Wars and doesn’t belong in the game.” (I say “like,” but there are also players that have extra difficulty doing jumping puzzles or adventures, for reasons like nausea or reflex problems.)

I can understand the frustration, and the feeling that you shouldn’t have to do other modes of gameplay that you dislike, but I think your disdain for adventures is making you a little bit biased. You say they’re silly and don’t belong in elite spec. collections, but collecting random junk trophies is somehow proof of your expertise? “Experiencing stealth gliding as a _______” is a common elite spec. collection, and that’s the same for everyone. Adventures are no more or less strange an inclusion, in my opinion.

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

well, duh! my point was that not everyone will obtain ALL mastery points from story.
I know, some ppl will say “its easy to get all mastery points from story” , those are the same ppl that say “its easy to get silver or gold in all the adventures” well, you know what, it really isnt that easy, for everyone. and to say that those that cant dont deserve some of the things that come from maxing masterys, well, ….. you know what, im at a loss for words.

Well if they choose not to get mastery points from a specific area then that’s really on them rather than the existing system.

LMFAO! it not about “choosing” , its about the ability! (or lack of) wow

Everyone has the ability to get all of the mastery points from the HoT story. Just because something may seem difficult to someone, doesn’t mean that it is impossible. There’s a big difference from being unable to get something and choosing not to.

No, i disagree. not everyone has the ability to get all mastery points from story. your kidding yourself if you believe that. that’s like saying everyone has the ability to do ALL the JP’s. and so on and so on.
I do agree that there’s a big difference from being unable to get something and choosing not to. thats common sense.

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

Ayrilana.1396:

slpr.2647:

You only need 5 masteries points from adventures .

This is assuming you get ALL mastery points from story.

Well yes. That’s what I meant when I said “from all other sources”.

well, duh! my point was that not everyone will obtain ALL mastery points from story.
I know, some ppl will say “its easy to get all mastery points from story” , those are the same ppl that say “its easy to get silver or gold in all the adventures” well, you know what, it really isnt that easy, for everyone. and to say that those that cant dont deserve some of the things that come from maxing masterys, well, ….. you know what, im at a loss for words.

Well if they choose not to get mastery points from a specific area then that’s really on them rather than the existing system.

LMFAO! it not about “choosing” , its about the ability! (or lack of) wow

Everyone has the ability to get all of the mastery points from the HoT story. Just because something may seem difficult to someone, doesn’t mean that it is impossible. There’s a big difference from being unable to get something and choosing not to.

No, i disagree. not everyone has the ability to get all mastery points from story. your kidding yourself if you believe that. that’s like saying everyone has the ability to do ALL the JP’s. and so on and so on.

Everyone is capable of getting those and especially since they can be done in groups. Fortunately, Anet will likely add more mastery points through the living story. If they feel that there should be more excess mastery points available then I’m pretty sure they’ll just increase how much each update provides. Eventually the issue that people have will no longer matter as they won’t have to go to adventures at all to get their mastery points. Just hang in there and wait to see how this summer pans out when they hopefully reintroduce the living story.

When you say you only need 5 mastery from adventure, do you mean you only need to get gold in 5?

Quite honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever get HOT done, I can’t even finish hero’s challenge. At least anet gate the content enough, lesser people will complain about nothing to do.

laokoko.7403:

When you say you only need 5 mastery from adventure, do you mean you only need to get gold in 5?

Quite honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever get HOT done, I can’t even finish hero’s challenge. At least anet gate the content enough, lesser people will complain about nothing to do.

Five mastery points. Sure you can get those five in gold but you can also get them all in silver or a combination of the two.I’d like to think that everyone should be able to get silver in at least five adventures.

For Haywire, you can pretty much just press the #2 skill and get silver without even trying. I just now did it again and was 6 shy of getting gold by simply spamming the #2 skill and occasionally re-positioning myself.

Drone Race, Beetle Feast, and Salvage Pit are pretty much freebies for gold. Ley-Line Run and Wings of Gold are fairly close to those as well. I think silver in Tendril Torchers can be earned fairly easily.

I’ll wish everyone good luck and hope this won’t discourage people from progressing. As GW2 is really one of the better game on the market.

I agree with OP 100%.

To navigate through the new jungle you’ll have to earn mastery points so you can progress through the jungle and succeed in the game. That is how they announced it.

They didn’t say you would have to earn masteries for GW2 by playing an irrelevant Diddy Kong racing games, and being good at it. The skills are all different, and the games have nothing to do with the GW2 you are trying to play.

The games are fine and I have nothing against them. Except you should be playing for fun, or for unique minis, or something that’s not pertinent to progressing in the main game whatsoever. They couldn’t think of anything fun in game to progress through the game while playing the main game?

I just finally got all my masteries but the last eight points I cursed the game, cursed anet, and hated everything about it. Because I wasn’t doing it for fun, I had to do it, and I had to compete at it, and I had to win at a completely different game just to progress through the game I was wanting to play.

It’s lame. Agreed OP.

I stumbled upon one I had not seen before last night. A “glide through the hoops” one. I went through the first hoop and…. never found the second one. I could have tried again, or wiki-ed it, or looked on youtube, but I didn’t because I’m really not very interested in daft mini-games. I see those things and wonder what else the devs could have done instead. Maybe something that actually does belong in an MMORPG rather than something that belongs in a Spyro game.

But I’d sure like to get my hands on those mastery points….

I have all my masteries, but like Road Range, I hated doing the Aventures master points. Why are they so boring, lame, unfunny and hated ? For me, because they are the only totally SOLO points.
All others, players can help you, not for this ones. It’s shame in a MMO.

Ah.. bugs in branches. This was hell of a hard to do gold, but it’s possible. And so rewarding once you learn and min-max all your micro movements and new tricks to be more and more efficient.

It starts to become fun once you’re starting to master the challenge and you can do about 25, that’s where your movements and strategy start to flow better and it gets really enjoyable from this point on, because you can literally feel the skill at your fingertips.

A frustrating and hard adventure at first, for sure, but extremely satisfying to master. And it took less than an hour in total. I loved this adventure, reminded me of the good old 3D platformers I played on N64, where challenges like these were a common a thing.

For me the biggest problem with adventures is that some is impossible to do with high latency, like Sanctum Scramble, while others have too much RNG like Fallen Masks and Shooting Gallery for the amount of points that you need for Silver.

Mastery system would have been great if they had left out mastery points. The mastery points just force players into content they normally would never choose to play. Experience filling the mastery bar should have been enough to get the mastery.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Mastery system would have been great if they had left out mastery points. The mastery points just force players into content they normally would never choose to play. Experience filling the mastery bar should have been enough to get the mastery.

I think that was entirely the point as to why they have it like it currently is.

Why force players into content they don’t like? That seems like a bad decision by Anet.

I never was a fan of Nintendo and I also avoid platformer games like the plague. Why must I be forced to do this stuff to progress? Vanilla gw2 never did that to its players.

If you have to “force” people into the content youve created, you might have created bad content.

If you know that you have to “force” people into content that they paid for, then it certainly seems as if you are knowingly selling bad content.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Why force players into content they don’t like? That seems like a bad decision by Anet.

I never was a fan of Nintendo and I also avoid platformer games like the plague. Why must I be forced to do this stuff to progress? Vanilla gw2 never did that to its players.

Not everyone is going to like every part of a game. Player currently only need to earn 5 MP from adventures if they plan to make the four new legendary weapons. If they don’t plan to make those, they don’t need to max out all masteries. More masteries will be added over time making it so they eventually will not need to do adventures.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Mastery system would have been great if they had left out mastery points. The mastery points just force players into content they normally would never choose to play. Experience filling the mastery bar should have been enough to get the mastery.

Forcing people into content they would normally never choose to play was done on purpose and is important to the game overall. Players as a whole enjoy many different things, but individual players will often stay in only one very small part of the game and not even attempt most of the things outside. In general, anet has an interest in having their players experience – at least once – the things they would not normally do because there is a decent chance they will find something else they like besides sitting in SW for 10 hours and will want to keep playing the game.

This is exactly the case with adventures. You are forced to play some of them a little bit in order to max our your masteries, and then you can never play them again if that’s what you want. The system is far from perfect but it wasn’t a big deal for most people. They just did a few adventures, picked up some silvers and golds here and there, and then moved on to other stuff.

It sucks for OP to find himself in the position of feeling like all remaining mastery points are unobtainable, but I don’t think this situation is the norm. Not trying to be a kitten but many of the adventures listed by OP are not difficult to complete for the majority of players, and could certainly be done within an hour after watching a video. However…

Banchou.5628:

For me the biggest problem with adventures is that some is impossible to do with high latency, like Sanctum Scramble, while others have too much RNG like Fallen Masks and Shooting Gallery for the amount of points that you need for Silver.

This is definitely an issue, since gw2 server locations pretty much mandate that players in some regions will have bad ping.

RNG on fallen masks is pretty bad but you can get silver at least eventually even if it’s by good luck lol, shooting gallery isn’t awful if you’re only looking for silver.

Ashen.2907:

If you have to “force” people into the content youve created, you might have created bad content.

If you know that you have to “force” people into content that they paid for, then it certainly seems as if you are knowingly selling bad content.

This is stupid logic. People just have different preferences in what the like to play. Furthermore, people tend to stick with things they are already comfortable with rather than trying new things all the time. I wouldn’t play WvW pretty much at all if I weren’t “forced” to by needing the badges for certain things, but it would be ridiculous of me to say that WvW is bad just because I don’t want to play it. GW2 is a huge game with many ways to play, and just because you don’t like certain content doesn’t mean it is bad.

Forcing people into content they don’t like is one reason the company is scrambling to put out the next expansion. HoT wasn’t received well.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Dashingsteel.3410:

Mastery system would have been great if they had left out mastery points. The mastery points just force players into content they normally would never choose to play. Experience filling the mastery bar should have been enough to get the mastery.

Forcing people into content they would normally never choose to play was done on purpose and is important to the game overall. Players as a whole enjoy many different things, but individual players will often stay in only one very small part of the game and not even attempt most of the things outside. In general, anet has an interest in having their players experience – at least once – the things they would not normally do because there is a decent chance they will find something else they like besides sitting in SW for 10 hours and will want to keep playing the game.

This is exactly the case with adventures. You are forced to play some of them a little bit in order to max our your masteries, and then you can never play them again if that’s what you want. The system is far from perfect but it wasn’t a big deal for most people. They just did a few adventures, picked up some silvers and golds here and there, and then moved on to other stuff.

It sucks for OP to find himself in the position of feeling like all remaining mastery points are unobtainable, but I don’t think this situation is the norm. Not trying to be a kitten but many of the adventures listed by OP are not difficult to complete for the majority of players, and could certainly be done within an hour after watching a video. However…

Banchou.5628:

For me the biggest problem with adventures is that some is impossible to do with high latency, like Sanctum Scramble, while others have too much RNG like Fallen Masks and Shooting Gallery for the amount of points that you need for Silver.

This is definitely an issue, since gw2 server locations pretty much mandate that players in some regions will have bad ping.

RNG on fallen masks is pretty bad but you can get silver at least eventually even if it’s by good luck lol, shooting gallery isn’t awful if you’re only looking for silver.

Ashen.2907:

If you have to “force” people into the content youve created, you might have created bad content.

If you know that you have to “force” people into content that they paid for, then it certainly seems as if you are knowingly selling bad content.

This is stupid logic. People just have different preferences in what the like to play. Furthermore, people tend to stick with things they are already comfortable with rather than trying new things all the time. I wouldn’t play WvW pretty much at all if I weren’t “forced” to by needing the badges for certain things, but it would be ridiculous of me to say that WvW is bad just because I don’t want to play it. GW2 is a huge game with many ways to play, and just because you don’t like certain content doesn’t mean it is bad.

People have different preferences. That is very different than gating basic character progression behind specific content that devs know that players dont like for the purpose of forcing them into content disliked content. At that point the devs’ actions are intended to cause players to be unhappy with the game.

I didnt say that content is bad because I didnt like it. Before you start calling anothers’ logic stupid you might want to work on your reading comprehension.

What I said was that if you feel that you have to force people to play your content, it might be bad.

And again, there is a huge difference between offering optional rewards for completing certain tangential content, and gating basic character progression behind the same.

No character progression is gated behind adventures. You only need to complete adventures when going for ascended weapons from those collections or to do HoT legendaries. None of which I would consider to be character progression.

But GW2 was supposed to have “adventures” or similiar things from the start.
They just called it minigames back then.

So yeah, they were advertised but they never went through with them till now.

I mean, the shooting gallery adventure is exactly the one minigame that was supposed to be part of Divinity`s Reach since release.

Ashen.2907:

People have different preferences. That is very different than gating basic character progression behind specific content that devs know that players dont like for the purpose of forcing them into content disliked content. At that point the devs’ actions are intended to cause players to be unhappy with the game.

I didnt say that content is bad because I didnt like it. Before you start calling anothers’ logic stupid you might want to work on your reading comprehension.

What I said was that if you feel that you have to force people to play your content, it might be bad.

And again, there is a huge difference between offering optional rewards for completing certain tangential content, and gating basic character progression behind the same.

I would disagree that “basic character progression” is gated behind masteries since you don’t even need that many and the final mastery has such a minor and specific use that it could hardly be called basic. But even ignoring that, this game (and pretty much every mmo) is completely filled with basic character progression being stuck behind crap that no one wants to do. I mean kitten how awful is leveling up your first character? No one goes back and plays the story or does renown hearts again, but at one point we all did because we had to. And as you go along you get introduced to different kinds of dynamic events, dungeons, farming, and all sorts of other stuff. Once you’re done you can choose what you want to do and do it.

Well guess what? As you play HoT you go through all sorts of random crap again. Hero points, meta events, more story mode, and adventures, which everyone hates even though you can get twice as many as you need in a small fraction of the time that everyone spends on the other stuff I just listed, and then never touch them again.

I also gave an example regarding WvW which I guess I’ll expand upon:

Leading a raid group is extremely inconvenient without a commander tag. The only way to get a commander tag is through WvW. If I want to lead a raid group, I must play WvW for hours (because I don’t know jack about WvW) to build up enough tokens to get a tag. So surprise, leading a raid group is gated behind WvW, let’s all get out the pitchforks. I mean sure, leading a raid group isn’t something super common, but I’d say the ability to lead a raid group is more important than having Nuhoch Alchemy, which you apparently think is “basic character progression”.

I didn’t mean that you specifically do not like adventures, but hey English pronouns aren’t great and I’m writing on an internet forum. But it’s obvious that many people do not like them at all, and it’s clear that you know this as well, so I’m not sure why this makes my logic bad.

I saw exactly what you wrote – that arenanet having to force players to do content meant that the content “might” be bad (which means it “might” be good I guess?), and heavily implied that arenanet is intentionally releasing bad content and then forcing people to do it. And I responded by saying that that’s stupid logic because people have to be forced to do things to actually try them out, and I mention WvW badge “gating” to show that there is good content that you are forced to do as well. You then responded by saying this is different because it’s basic character progression and got confused by my use of the word “you” and again said that forcing people to do stuff means the content “might be bad”. I responded to you above. Is my reading comprehension OK this time?

Ashen.2907:

People have different preferences. That is very different than gating basic character progression behind specific content that devs know that players dont like for the purpose of forcing them into content disliked content. At that point the devs’ actions are intended to cause players to be unhappy with the game.

[If] you feel that you have to force people to play your content, it might be bad.

And again, there is a huge difference between offering optional rewards for completing certain tangential content, and gating basic character progression behind the same.

Ah, this topic again. Glad to see a few other people understand good game design and recognize that the decisions going into Adventures does not qualify as good game design.

It’d be different if the Adventures had smooth controls and properly tuned difficulty. But they don’t. Half the time the controls are choppy and prone to latency issues. RNG weighs down and ruins some of them, due to excessively tight time/score requirements. Even with some of the belt-loosening with the April patch, they didn’t resolve some very basic, game-killing issues.

• Terrain shapes and general collision in these adventures are garbage. Full stop. Two seemingly identical maneuvers in a set of jumps can snag on different pixels and force you to start a 2:00+ run.
• Mentioned before, latency-prone controls are not as smooth as GW2’s regular combat experience. Characters are sluggish and the skills even moreso.
• Iteration time after failure is fine. I love that reset command. Iteration to failure is still inevitably too long. Aforementioned 2:00+ runs on some Adventures means spitting teeth after hitting a terrain snag and needing to restart. The ones without RNG are often do-or-die (do-or-reset?) tasks where one slip ends a run because it won’t succeed.
• RNG in some Adventures goes counter to the notion of iteration-training or record-keeping.
• Forced interaction with a “voluntary” system. Adventures were advertised as a ‘fun thing to do,’ not a part of the leveling/progression experience requirement. If any sort of coaxing was needed for these design-questionable items, why Silver and Gold ranks for progression rewards? It ought to be Bronze and maybe Silver, with Gold given a unique reward (minis, skins, nodes, etc).
• Adventures require Masteries to… earn other Masteries with the points they give, especially for Gold ranks. I realize there was some Metroidvania love going into the design here, but such a loose, obtuse, and poorly conveyed system didn’t need the extra complication.

I’m not even saying to take them out, but re-work the reward design and polish the kitten out of the controls, so that they’re actually enjoyable.

Seriously who thought gating content like this is right or fun?

I dislike Hot immensely but seeing the OP and thinking to myself no way i’ll ever complete even half of what he has really makes me think this game is no longer worth while even bothering with..

Holy god the amount of effort they go to to gate their content in this game now is astonishing and the actual minority that defend it is even more shocking..

Ayrilana.1396:

Dashingsteel.3410:

Mastery system would have been great if they had left out mastery points. The mastery points just force players into content they normally would never choose to play. Experience filling the mastery bar should have been enough to get the mastery.

I think that was entirely the point as to why they have it like it currently is.

Yeah, I completely agree, that’s what they’re doing. I wish they’d stop that kitten as it relates to core progression systems. Using optional rewards to incentivize optional content is fine, but the stand-in for the expanded level cap usually present in XPac’s is not really optional — it’s something everyone who buys it will want.

Ashen.2907:

If you have to “force” people into the content youve created, you might have created bad content.

If you know that you have to “force” people into content that they paid for, then it certainly seems as if you are knowingly selling bad content.

This. The forums taught ANet that they could ignore “fun” as a metric and instead could use rewards to lead players to whatever they produce, whether it be something mainstream like the story or niche stuff like adventures.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ashen.2907:

If you have to “force” people into the content youve created, you might have created bad content.

If you know that you have to “force” people into content that they paid for, then it certainly seems as if you are knowingly selling bad content.

This. The forums taught ANet that they could ignore “fun” as a metric and instead could use rewards to lead players to whatever they produce, whether it be something mainstream like the story or niche stuff like adventures.

And then, if you look a few posts above, you’ll find there are players who tag story as random crap too.

No content can satisfy everyone’s tastes so, what’s the solution then?
The only reasonable one seems to be about not gating absolutely anything behind any kind of content for a really bland progression system, and even then we would still have a problem with each player’s preferences: Getting some skin or mini might be more relevant than capping masteries for a lot of players so maybe those shouldn’t be locked behind specific content either.
I wouldn’t expect the end result of this to be any good.

I’m perfectly aware that, as someone who likes adventures, I belong to a minority, so I don’t really have any problem with ANet unlinking masteries from them or making them easier to get.
Some people have proposed to award minis, skins or some other “not progression related” items instead. The truth is, that would still upset a lot of players. In fact, already happened with some collections, and those never required anything beyond silver.
In the end, it looks like the only way to satisfy some people would be by making adventures completely irrelevant or, even better, removing them from the game altogether, and that’s a really dangerous approach.

Adding content like this can upset a lot of people – and for good reason.

When a MMORPG launches it will attract and retain players with its advertised features and core philosophy. In this case, some people played GW2 because they could progress in any content – a thing not true with the expansion.

Even if you tie progression to certain activities the playerbase might not be upset. The problem arises when the new mandatory content has a new type of gameplay – which was not advertised at all. Not to mention they’re lore and immersion breaking.

If jumping puzzles were a mandatory part of the core game, maybe people wouldn’t have been as upset.

When I heard of adventures I thought they would be short instanced events that you could do with a group/solo. I was disappointed to find out they’re more like phone platformers

Sardath.8524:

When a MMORPG launches it will attract and retain players with its advertised features and core philosophy. In this case, some people played GW2 because they could progress in any content – a thing not true with the expansion.

Even if you tie progression to certain activities the playerbase might not be upset. The problem arises when the new mandatory content has a new type of gameplay – which was not advertised at all. Not to mention they’re lore and immersion breaking.

If jumping puzzles were a mandatory part of the core game, maybe people wouldn’t have been as upset.

Jumping puzzles have been there since the very beginning as something we could play if we wanted, just like any other piece of content, and they have been part of the permanent, daily and living story achievement systems since like forever.

There’s an important subset of the playerbase who hates them, who have always avoided them or skipped them with a portal when possible, and that’s probably enough reason to untie similar content from character progression.

Not being mandatory in the core game, however, is something that can be applied to pretty much every single type of content. By that logic, we should get rid of the whole mastery system.

Vargamonth.2047:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ashen.2907:

If you have to “force” people into the content youve created, you might have created bad content.

If you know that you have to “force” people into content that they paid for, then it certainly seems as if you are knowingly selling bad content.

This. The forums taught ANet that they could ignore “fun” as a metric and instead could use rewards to lead players to whatever they produce, whether it be something mainstream like the story or niche stuff like adventures.

And then, if you look a few posts above, you’ll find there are players who tag story as random crap too.

No content can satisfy everyone’s tastes so, what’s the solution then?
The only reasonable one seems to be about not gating absolutely anything behind any kind of content for a really bland progression system, and even then we would still have a problem with each player’s preferences: Getting some skin or mini might be more relevant than capping masteries for a lot of players so maybe those shouldn’t be locked behind specific content either.
I wouldn’t expect the end result of this to be any good.

I’m perfectly aware that, as someone who likes adventures, I belong to a minority, so I don’t really have any problem with ANet unlinking masteries from them or making them easier to get.
Some people have proposed to award minis, skins or some other “not progression related” items instead. The truth is, that would still upset a lot of players. In fact, already happened with some collections, and those never required anything beyond silver.
In the end, it looks like the only way to satisfy some people would be by making adventures completely irrelevant or, even better, removing them from the game altogether, and that’s a really dangerous approach.

Story is central to the MMO genre, or has been since WoW, anyway. Quests, or the GW2 version, events, are also a part of core MMO gameplay. Mini-games, not so much, never mind to the extent ANet has emphasized them in HoT. I have absolutely no problem with skins/rare drops being behind specific content — as that’s a part of core MMO gameplay and has been since the get-go.

I just object to the core progression system of the XPac being behind side-track content which has little to nothing to do with the story or lore, and which cannot be played with my character build. I have no problem with that content existing. I have no problem with it offering rewards players can’t get elsewhere. Just not Mastery points.

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Adventures block progression for Core content. You really don’t need more of an argument to completely remove Maguuma Mastery Points from Adventures, or provide an alternate method for completing the Adventure Achievements.

You don’t need all masteries maxed to do core content. You can completely ignore adventures. Legendary weapons are rewards.

Currently players only need to get 5 MP at most from adventures. This will change over time as we get back into the living story. There are plenty of adventures with a very low skill cap that will allow players to get up to gold.

There are a lot of extra HoT points (over 30 with max masteries) so don’t do adventures if you don’t want…

And a few of those advertures get silver for just trying. Drone gives gold for completion. Watch YouTube videos.

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Ayrilana.1396:

So fanboy points equal anything that you disagree with? Yeah…

No, you just ignore every fact and point you find inconvenient. Your reply doesn’t advance the topic, instead it just dismisses the points and concerns of others.

There is a problem with adventures and your position is there is no problem with adventures, just a problem with players. Blaming customers for problems doesn’t not help Anet, GW2 or the players. And people wonder why GW2 is bleeding users. You are not helping GW2 by dismissing the concerns of others in a thread you are only in to block Anet from fixing what so many players consider a huge problem.

Here is another thing Anet should do. Remove the Adventure Achievements from the Zone Achievements and put them in their own separate Achievement category. This would keep the Zone Achievements lists from being spammed by dozens of entries of uncompleted niche content. This would make Adventures less of a nuisance to the casual achievement completionist.

That and adding something like the proof of heroics option to get those Adventure Mastery Points would pretty much solve the issue for a lot of players.

Facts? What facts? All that I saw were opinions. Opinions of your dislike for adventures and how they are keeping you from getting HoT legendary weapons because you do not want to do them.

Let’s go back to you post…

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Adventures block progression for Core content. You really don’t need more of an argument to completely remove Maguuma Mastery Points from Adventures, or provide an alternate method for completing the Adventure Achievement

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Adventures block gaining Masteries and consequently block Legendary collections.

Random Wax Orc.7695:

Seriously, Adventures and their blocking progression/content are a huge wet blanket for the entire HoT experience. Adventures block gaining Masteries and consequently block Legendary collections.

And here’s what you say after this:

Random Wax Orc.7695:

I would rather Anet bring back Hearts… at least they did not block core progression.

Except Hearts did block progression. You could not craft the old legendary weapons without gifts of exploration. Gifts of exploration required players to complete all maps. Completing all maps required players to complete hearts. So… you could not craft the old legendary weapons unless you completed hearts. So hearts blocked “progression”, in how you’re using that word, for the old legendary weapons.

Your issue is not about whether or not they block “content”. Your issue is that you do not like them and do not want to do them. In case you were not aware, many people dislike doing map completion. They find it tedious and boring. In order to craft the old legendary weapons, they had to do it.

There will be things in games that not everybody enjoys. People have differing preferences to what they enjoy. Fortunately, when it comes to adventures, you only need to get 5 mastery points at most from them currently. This will change in the future when more mastery points are introduced. It may even come to the point where players do not even need to touch adventures to max out their masteries. If they don’t want to wait until that time then they can work on doing the easier adventures which have a fairly low skill cap resulting in less time needed to learn.

Ayrilana.1396:

So if legendary weapons are core content, that means that Anet has been continuously releasing content into this game through the gem store. All of those weapon skins that are released on a monthly basis must be new content after all.

Wrong. Black Lion skins are nothing but cash bait, whether bought via RL cash or gold —> gems. Legendary items are the game’s most visible endgame goal. That’s a massive difference in emphasis, even if both are skins.

You’d be better off pointing to the fact that Legendary items have always required broader play preferences — except if bought on the TP. Still, it seems sort of silly to emphasize platforming skills in an MMO. Maybe that’s just me.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

So if legendary weapons are core content, that means that Anet has been continuously releasing content into this game through the gem store. All of those weapon skins that are released on a monthly basis must be new content after all.

Wrong. Black Lion skins are nothing but cash bait, whether bought via RL cash or gold —> gems. Legendary items are the game’s most visible endgame goal. That’s a massive difference in emphasis, even if both are skins.

You’d be better off pointing to the fact that Legendary items have always required broader play preferences — except if bought on the TP. Still, it seems sort of silly to emphasize platforming skills in an MMO. Maybe that’s just me.

They’re treating items as content. Where you get those items doesn’t matter.

I guess it IS about the skill the player can posess or to achieve.

What I’m getting at is that I’m no good at the Adventure minigame myself HOWEVER it seen I have gotten more golds and silver ranking than the OP!

Drone Racing- That’s super easy when you get posion resist! How can you NOT get gold on that???

On the Wing on Gold- Same as above when you get full gliding masteries, I got gold on my first go!

Flying Circus- Ok that one can still be tricky even with full gliding masteries but it’s all about the leaning and when to stop gliding abit.

Tendril Touch- Harder compared to above. You have to really paid attention at the extra tendrils at the start!

Scrap rifle and Haywire Golem- You need to fully utalize the skills used in those minigames.

As for getting the rest on silver (expect Sanctum Scramble, god I bloody hate them for making that minigame), it really take time and memorising it. No really, if you still getting bronze and not really remembering the patterns or the locations then you need to start remembering the sequences.

Personally, I believe that the true problem here is that the system requires Mastery Points at all, it should have been based purely on Experience Points IMO.

If the activities (not just adventures) are fun then people will play them, but they shouldn’t have to just to progress in the game, IMO.

Edit: also, people really need to accept that just because they can do something easily it does not follow that everyone else can. There are numerous reasons why others may not be able to do something you can, from disabilities to network latency. ArenaNet raised the bar with this expansion putting it beyond the reach of many of their customers. It’s up to them to decide if they’re OK with that.

I like some of the adventures and I think it is easy enough to get enough mastery points without needing gold in some of the more annoying ones (ie Tendril Torchers…). /shrug

I’m 7 mastery points away from the total and have plenty of Tangled Depths event achievements to unlock these left over. And I haven’t done most of the story achievements (only completed act 3 because that is the easy one) or a number of adventures to silver or gold (Tendrils, Flying Circus, Bugs, Fallen Masks, Fungus, etc…).

I generally agree with the sentiment here about mastery points. For the HoT zones, they feel like Anet are forcing people to play everything in HoT because of the general lack of content there.

As for Tyrian mastery points, they feel more like a cash grab that forces newer players to buy LS2 if they want to max everything. Why else would they gate mastery points behind achievements like the emperor’s new wardrobe, ascended acccoutrement, and ambrite weapon collections? Those are some of the grindiest achievements in the game. I doubt the majority of people who have been playing since launch have those achievements completed.

I never thought I’d care enough to comment on adventures. That’s until I sat down last night and focused on completing a few for the mastery points and the achievement of doing them to gold. Now I feel very different about them. And not in a good way.

Some are genuinely fun. Salvage pit, Drone race and Wings of Gold were enjoyable and with practice it didn’t take long to get gold. They’re even fun to replay.

Ley line run… not so fun.

I was determined to beat it last night. I watched videos. I practiced the run slowly to get the hang of the skills. And after two hours I got my gold. But those were two hours of frustration and swearing I’ll never get back. And I never want to do this ‘adventure’ again… which is a shame. It’s ostensibly a fast-paced race high above the ground. That sounds thrilling. The reality isn’t.

I live in Australian and I definitely felt the ping/lag other Australians have reported. Skills fired inconsistently. Sometimes pressing 1 would dash me forward immediately, sometimes it would take a second. When you have to press jump soon after to fly across a gap, you’re likely as not find yourself falling because you pressed jump before the skill fired.

I knew the course and the best path through it by heart after half an hour. I was pressing the right buttons. I was following the gold video almost exactly. And I was fighting the interface the entire time. What’s weird is that Salvage pit, drone race and wings of gold don’t seem to have this issue, or at least it isn’t significant enough in those to be noticeable. They’re perhaps more forgiving of lag. But when you’re racing a spark high above the ground to beat a 45 second countdown, suddenly every second is very important. And an unreliable interface becomes deadly.

I don’t know if it’s lag or something else, but several times I would also find myself stuck inside the models of the rocks after a dash or teleport.

And then there’s the final insult to this adventure: to get gold, it seems like you have to do it in 45 seconds. I did it in 45 seconds and didn’t get gold. I did this several times. It showed my score – 45 seconds – and below it showed the gold time – 45 seconds. But it wouldn’t award me gold. Now I know that you don’t get gold for finishing in 45 seconds. You get it for finishing BELOW 45 seconds. I tried again and again and eventually got it down to 44. Mission accomplished. Enjoyable.. not so much. And why the misleading time? If you want it done in 44 seconds, just write 44 seconds.

I don’t know how I feel about gating mastery points behind adventures. It felt satisfying to finish Salvage/Drone/Wings and get those mastery points. It felt …not satisfying, but earned.. to get them from ley line run. I worked really hard for those, and I don’t mind working hard, but in the end victory depended more on luck more than work and repeating the same actions over and over until you get a run where every skill fires when you use it. Some adventures aren’t a test of skill. They’re a test of patience.