Guild Wars 2

I keep seeing people post things about the mastery system that contradict what ANET said in the blog posts, so I’m gonna try to clear things up.

Mastery points are NOT gained by leveling up. They are gained by completing certain tasks such as 100% completion of a map or completing a chapter of the PS, it also looks like Heart of Magumma will have places you can earn them similar to skill point challenges in old Tyria.
You will use MPs to unlock mastery tracks(you will then have to select the track as your active track), as you gain XP the track will progress until you hit a milestone. At the milestone you will gain that ability then you must spend more MPs to unlock the next section of the track.

Heart of Magumma and old Tyria will have have different tracks to unlock, and it looks like they will only be active and progress in their respective regions.

Will tombs of knowledge give you a mastery point? No
Will tombs of knowledge progress your mastery track? Most likely not, although writs of XP might.
Will XP boosters work with mastery tracks? probably, now this may seem wrong to some people, but if you look at it from a game design prospective you’ll realize if they don’t work many items including gem store items will have to be reworked and the overall effect a few xp boosters will have is fairly minimal.

That’s all i can think of at the moment, feel free to ask any questions, but understand i don’t have any information that isn’t already public.

“Here lies Knowledge. How we miss it now that it is gone.”

Tomes, not Tombs, please. Not sure why people insist on repeating the same mistake over and over again.

Astralporing.1957:

“Here lies Knowledge. How we miss it now that it is gone.”

Tomes, not Tombs, please. Not sure why people insist on repeating the same mistake over and over again.

They really should make a Tomb of Knowledge now which grants a mastery point when you complete it.

Cyrill Faust.9340:

Mastery points are NOT gained by leveling up. They are gained by completing certain tasks such as 100% completion of a map or completing a chapter of the PS, it also looks like Heart of Magumma will have places you can earn them similar to skill point challenges in old Tyria.
You will use MPs to unlock mastery tracks(you will then have to select the track as your active track), as you gain XP the track will progress until you hit a milestone. At the milestone you will gain that ability then you must spend more MPs to unlock the next section of the track.

Is that really how it works though?

Based on Bogotters video it did sound that if you had the Mastery track for a specific Mastery active it would automatically add Mastery points to that tracks when you gained enough XP to “level up”.

lordkrall.7241:

Cyrill Faust.9340:

Mastery points are NOT gained by leveling up. They are gained by completing certain tasks such as 100% completion of a map or completing a chapter of the PS, it also looks like Heart of Magumma will have places you can earn them similar to skill point challenges in old Tyria.
You will use MPs to unlock mastery tracks(you will then have to select the track as your active track), as you gain XP the track will progress until you hit a milestone. At the milestone you will gain that ability then you must spend more MPs to unlock the next section of the track.

Is that really how it works though?

Based on Bogotters video it did sound that if you had the Mastery track for a specific Mastery active it would automatically add Mastery points to that tracks when you gained enough XP to “level up”.

I’d rather think that there were mastery points attached to gliding for a specified time.

Once you’ve unlocked a Mastery track tier with Mastery points, you can begin training that Mastery. Mastery tracks are trained by gaining experience while the Mastery track is slotted on the Mastery training bar. Higher tiers in Mastery tracks require progressively more Mastery points and more experience to fully train.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/reimagining-progression-the-mastery-system/

I would imagine that the Mastery System is too vast too time intensive for them to show the true system in an hour demo. So thing were likely not behaving the way they will even during the open betas.

Based on the UI shown in Bog Otter’s video, I would say it would likely only take a SINGLE point to unlock any section of the track, and the numbers represent how many … let’s call them mastery levels… worth of training you need to do in order to actual learn that ability. It would certainly explain why each track starts with a power that has no numbers listed under it but you still need to drop a point into Glider Master to get your glider.

This imagining of the system makes more sense to me on several levels. If you just gain mastery points by leveling, then what is the point of having once per account mastery points laying around in the real world to begin with, while if every tier of the mastery tracks required as many mastery points as those numbers to unlock… I’m sorry, but I cannot imagine them having that much content within the jungle to hide a hundred plus mastery points PLUS what masteries they haven’t shown us yet. They made it sound like mastery point are supposed to mean something, so just gaining 29 listed so far seems reasonable, if there is training time involved as well.

[Edit: 2:15pm]
And gah. At least one hole in my theory/hope. Matt Visual had a much clearler display of the Mastery Panel during his video, and I noticed that there are point for the first trait as well, it’s just that the UI pushes those points to the far left for some reason when you select the mastery trait in question.

So… yeah. Still holding out hope that this is just an accelerated simplified version for the demo, but hope is failing.
[/Edit]

If these mastery points are anything other than level based, I can see that I won’t get bothered with them.

I can’t be bothered make any new character because I refuse to go and collect traits for them. Anet have said they are going to “fix” their trait stupidity, and I really hope they are not just replacing that with “mastery stupidity”.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

If these mastery points are anything other than level based, I can see that I won’t get bothered with them.

I can’t be bothered make any new character because I refuse to go and collect traits for them. Anet have said they are going to “fix” their trait stupidity, and I really hope they are not just replacing that with “mastery stupidity”.

Except, unlike the trait system, this will be account bound.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

If these mastery points are anything other than level based, I can see that I won’t get bothered with them.

I can’t be bothered make any new character because I refuse to go and collect traits for them. Anet have said they are going to “fix” their trait stupidity, and I really hope they are not just replacing that with “mastery stupidity”.

They have already stated very clearly that Mastery Points are account based, so if you’re problem is doing difficult tasks multiple times on multiple character they’ve already got you covered.

If you problem is instead doing difficulty tasks made more difficult to even attempt due to the nature of the open world… then I don’t know what to say since that same worry is part of the reason why I’m hoping for a “less is more” type philosophy.

An important component to masteries will be coming from sources other than leveling, though, that much has been made clear. Personal story thresholds, map completion, challenges much like skill challenges, and yes even world bosses are all on the table until they tell us otherwise.

lordkrall.7241:

Cyrill Faust.9340:

Mastery points are NOT gained by leveling up. They are gained by completing certain tasks such as 100% completion of a map or completing a chapter of the PS, it also looks like Heart of Magumma will have places you can earn them similar to skill point challenges in old Tyria.
You will use MPs to unlock mastery tracks(you will then have to select the track as your active track), as you gain XP the track will progress until you hit a milestone. At the milestone you will gain that ability then you must spend more MPs to unlock the next section of the track.

Is that really how it works though?

Based on Bogotters video it did sound that if you had the Mastery track for a specific Mastery active it would automatically add Mastery points to that tracks when you gained enough XP to “level up”.

Based on what I saw you had to actively spend a point on the track. As soon as you spend the point into the track you got the thing, in this case glider. So you can immediately unlock gliders the instant you get your first mastery point. Or unlock one of the other things.

You then earn XP to work toward unlocking the next upgrade. When you unlock it you then have to actively spend a point on it, but as soon as the point is spent you own the ability and start leveling toward the next unlock.