Guild Wars 2

So, a lot of people feel like the new masteries are grindy, why is that? Here is my theory, ArenaNet picked experience levels that closely matched the exp required to get level 80 in the core game (I’m not 100% sure but, I feel like that use it as a point of reference). To them if nobody had issues getting to 80 they won’t have issues getting masteries. However there is a difference that is causing problems. In the core game there were loads of maps and places to explore, in fact if you started at level 1 (technically 2 after intro instance) and you just explored new content you would hit 80 well before you explored all of the content. In HoT this is not the case most people have found that you explore 90% of the new maps (where you have to be to earn the jungle mastery) well before you get near completing your masteries (even with exp boosts). One what ArenaNet looked to ‘solve’ this problem is possibly making masteries account bound so you can earn them on different characters as you explore (the same maps). There are also other good reason for account bound masteries. In the end these masteries will probably take about the same amount of time (exp) as getting to level 80 in the core game took there is just less content (maps) to explore making it feel like a repetitive grind. Truth of the matter is, once many players get their mastery complete they will remain in these new maps an grind them anyhow for gold/armor/materials so even without the masteries there players will ‘grind’ the new maps the mastries just make people more concerned about their exp gains while playing. This grind will get reduced as new maps get added in living world and with raids coming in, however most people will have gotten their mastery done by then and will not benefit from more content to explore helping the ‘Mastery Grind’. Do I think they should do anything about it? No, people just need to relax and not try to ‘rush’ and finish masteries in my opinion.

After the per character reputation grind of GW1 (EotN), I really don’t have an issue with masteries.

They are account bound, and are sort of intended to be worked on a bit at a time over the lifetime of several characters. Not simply ground out on just one, although that is your option to do if you so desire.

Granted, I’ll give you the point about less playable space, but as you said, we might see more areas with LS releases. We’ll have to wait and see on that.

No. People find them grindy because maps are empty, and if you want to get good xp you need to get on a meta train.

Getting from 1-80 in the core game you had a lot of options on how you get to 80. You get XP from lots of things. Currently, in HoT its mobs and events that give the most. In the core game you have dungeons, fractals, hearts, events and a lot of maps. In HoT you have 4, maps, and they are constantly empty. Unless you wast your playing time to taxi to a full map. I know HoT maps have challenges, but most are locked away behind events that need to be done first, and they also give out very little XP for the effort put in to get a better score than the minimum reward.

TL;DR, masteries feel like a grind because there is more to do in the Core game Vs HoT, not to mention most of the ways to get XP in HoT are locked behind events and a buggy mega server system in HoT

I’ve only done a little bit of grinding, so mastery level wise, I’m not that high. I sort of left it alone and ignored it recently after getting my first tier of Core Tyria Legendary Mastery and in just playing the game I’ve almost gotten that to tier 2. Last night I took a look at my bar and was actually surprised how close it was to leveling up.

Then again, that’s just Core Tyria, and there’s so much more content that can be done to level that up. It’ll probably be the same, as OP said, when more content comes out. This situation reminds me a lot of Launch. There were people that were Day 1 80’s back then and streaming HotW way back then. People will always rush the content, and at first it will always seem grindy, but I agree that the grind will get reduced over time.

Stuck on 19.. and so bored of exp….

Masteries are account wide and were meant to be a long term goal, long term meaning months not days. It’s only grindy for players trying to unlock them all in a relatively few days. It’s like players who grind for achievement points. I’ve lived three years without a legendary weapon, what’s another couple of months on one or more of my 80s.

Apparently it’s so I can spend the first few days/weeks in COF farming them all up and then lamenting that there’s nothing to do.
/sarcasm

As others have said, they feel grindy to me because in the expansion they replace levels. In most mmos an expansion hits they raise the max level. They keep you from running right to the end by locking it behind level/equipment requirements. In GW2 they gate content behind the masteries. They are a stand in for leveling.

But in most mmos now there are lots of ways to level up. Look at gw2. Wvw, crafting, open world content, dungeons. And this is where mastery to me falls apart. There is really one way to get it. Do open world pve events. And only one place since they split old tyria and HOT into 2 mastery paths.

I’ve found the most convenient and fun, at least for me, to leveling masteries is doing the dragon stand meta. It takes around an hour and finding an organized map once the timer resets is very easy, just use the lfg.

I posted this in another thread – but basically this:

Masteries are less of a way to progress and mostly there to disguise the otherwise lack of content.
Without them – a 4 map expansion would be done in a week, two or maybe three if you’re super casual.
Masteries disguise the fact that a lot of the new maps and content (events, mobs,rewards) aren’t fun( the most common thing i’ve heard about HoT maps is that they are confusing and not a lot of people seem to like their labyrinthian approach) – because it requires people do them regardless of their own enjoyment by gating story, Raids, legendary progress ( aka things people do care about).
Masteries are also a way for them to make content in the future repeatable regardless of gold rewards or the actual quality of said event.
Just add mastery requirements to all future content and people will have to play current content regardless of what they think about it simply out of fear of being left out or missing out ( a strong sentiment prevalent in any MMO community).

Also the problem is they are boring since you can only do Open world events to level up – unlike the core game where you could do a variety of things to level up and gain Xp such as PvP, WvW, instanced dungeons, etc.

Personally I think it’s simple as “This isn’t fun.” If you are having fun, you wouldn’t notice the time required. You know the old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun!” I think we should ask, why isn’t working on masteries fun? Keep in mind, fun is subjective.

Coyote.7031:

Personally I think it’s simple as “This isn’t fun.” If you are having fun, you wouldn’t notice the time required. You know the old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun!” I think we should ask, why isn’t working on masteries fun? Keep in mind, fun is subjective.

I completely disagree.

Last night I was having a lot of fun doing VB events and killing stuff for hours while working on my map completion and I was in a great mood until I looked down at my xp bar and realized I only got about 10% of an xp bar.

So off I went to kill mobs that give good xp in a remote corner of the zone and after an hour of mindless boring killing I had earned the other 90%.

My point is the reason everyone grinds their masteries is because doing the events just doesn’t do the job xp wise and any time doing those events is wasted if your goal is to get the mastery abilities that are going to get you further into the forest.

Mastery grind is OK. The trouble I have with it is that Mastery Points are per account. This means that it’s getting harder and harder to scrape together the points to spend on levelling.

I’m fine with exp grinding per account. Points per account are another matter.

Masteries don’t feel grindy to me in regular Tyria because there are so many different maps and DEs I can do to advance them. So many different environments.

Maguuma masteries are a different story altogether. With only 4 maps to choose from and the few DEs and a meta that usually fails on each, it feels like grinding the exact same thing over and over again.

Do people think it would help if the mastery lines were ‘merged’ and you could earn exp towards your mastery anywhere?

It’s seems that a lot of people don’t like being ‘confined’ to one ‘spot’ to ‘level’. The core game didn’t have this so why should the expansion. Maybe something to keep in mind for future expansions or even an adjustment to this one down the line.

You have to repetitively do events to get all masteries (for HOT). That even meets the traditional definition of grind.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Do people think it would help if the mastery lines were ‘merged’ and you could earn exp towards your mastery anywhere?

It’s seems that a lot of people don’t like being ‘confined’ to one ‘spot’ to ‘level’. The core game didn’t have this so why should the expansion. Maybe something to keep in mind for future expansions or even an adjustment to this one down the line.

Yes. You should be able to gain xp towards any mastery, anywhere. Since the process of gaining both HOT and central masteries is exactly the same, why shouldn’t it be interchangeable?

The problem with merging Tyrian and HoT mastery points and xp is that everyone would just go spend the next week in CoF, farming xp.

Also, some people complain that masteries are account wide, but I would truly hate to have to repeat every single thing that got me a mastery point for every single level 80 character in my account.

I grind most of my mastery xp in Verdant Brink. Get 200% map completion. Use good food/utility xp buffs. I also have the candy corn eating thing that I use to pump up my xp there as well. Keep a 10 kill steak buff going and the xp gets pretty good. Target events over and over, especially ones where there is a lot of stuff to kill. I’m currently grinding away at gliding level 4 (which is 5 mastery points) and it’s going pretty quick.

My biggest concern now is running out of mastery points, not lack of xp. I may have to take a break from xp for a few days to crank out some more mastery points. I just hope it doesn’t turn out that there are EXACTLY as many master points possible as needed to max your HoT masteries, cause some of those mastery points are really hard/expensive to get.

Nutjob.9021:

The problem with merging Tyrian and HoT mastery points and xp is that everyone would just go spend the next week in CoF, farming xp.
….
I grind most of my mastery xp in Verdant Brink. …….I’m currently grinding away at gliding level 4 (which is 5 mastery points) and it’s going pretty quick.

If you’re happy to grind for xp, why not let people grind wherever they want? I tried CoF and it is the most mind-numbing experience ever. If somebody wants to do it that way, they’re already paying a hefty price in tedium and that should be their choice.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Nutjob.9021:

The problem with merging Tyrian and HoT mastery points and xp is that everyone would just go spend the next week in CoF, farming xp.
….
I grind most of my mastery xp in Verdant Brink. …….I’m currently grinding away at gliding level 4 (which is 5 mastery points) and it’s going pretty quick.

If you’re happy to grind for xp, why not let people grind wherever they want? I tried CoF and it is the most mind-numbing experience ever. If somebody wants to do it that way, they’re already paying a hefty price in tedium and that should be their choice.

It is their choice, and people can grind wherever they want. The devs straight up said that the masteries were intended to take more than a few days worth of playtime, and said that they were not going to change the CoF farm because the method by which people get experience and the speed at which they get it are up to them as long as they aren’t doing something outside the game’s code of conduct. Furthermore, it destroys any feeling of actual progression and maps would be completely empty rather than the hit-or-miss megaservers if everyone was in CoF farming their gliding and Nuhock masteries.

UnbentMars.9126:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Nutjob.9021:

The problem with merging Tyrian and HoT mastery points and xp is that everyone would just go spend the next week in CoF, farming xp.
….
I grind most of my mastery xp in Verdant Brink. …….I’m currently grinding away at gliding level 4 (which is 5 mastery points) and it’s going pretty quick.

If you’re happy to grind for xp, why not let people grind wherever they want? I tried CoF and it is the most mind-numbing experience ever. If somebody wants to do it that way, they’re already paying a hefty price in tedium and that should be their choice.

It is their choice, and people can grind wherever they want. The devs straight up said that the masteries were intended to take more than a few days worth of playtime, and said that they were not going to change the CoF farm because the method by which people get experience and the speed at which they get it are up to them as long as they aren’t doing something outside the game’s code of conduct. Furthermore, it destroys any feeling of actual progression and maps would be completely empty rather than the hit-or-miss megaservers if everyone was in CoF farming their gliding and Nuhock masteries.

I’m… not sure what your’re saying. Your statements seem to be contradictory.

UnbentMars.9126:

It is their choice, and people can grind wherever they want.

Okay…. we agree there.

UnbentMars.9126:

The devs straight up said….they were not going to change the CoF farm

Yes, I heard that too. And I don’t really care one way or the other. I was just saying it was tedious and people are welcome to it.

UnbentMars.9126:

Furthermore, it destroys any feeling of actual progression and maps would be completely empty rather than the hit-or-miss megaservers if everyone was in CoF farming their gliding and Nuhock masteries.

This is the part that confuses me. You’re throwing out multiple arguments all intermingled together. It’s not clear what you’re arguing for. And you’re making wild assumptions like everyone is going to be in CoF. It’s a horribly tedious farm. Can you really imagine the entire population of GW2 suffering it willingly?

Nutjob.9021:

The problem with merging Tyrian and HoT mastery points and xp is that everyone would just go spend the next week in CoF, farming xp.

So what would really be wrong with this? You aren’t in competition with them. The Masteries are just core mechanics needed to navigate the new maps – nothing more. If Masteries were easy to acquire, that would not be an exploit that would hinder your game play.

I’m not arguing that Mastery acquisition should be easier, I’m just wondering why people hold ideas similar to yours regarding the virtue of new system? Even if you could purchase them with gold or gems, how would that effect you?

Behellagh.1468:

Masteries are account wide and were meant to be a long term goal, long term meaning months not days. It’s only grindy for players trying to unlock them all in a relatively few days. It’s like players who grind for achievement points. I’ve lived three years without a legendary weapon, what’s another couple of months on one or more of my 80s.

Its Grindy for all players, because the HOT ones contain basic mobility tools that are used extensively to not only get to the events, but also participate in them. The Event trains are non-existent to a Player that doesn’t have at least Bounce Mushrooms and Updraft. They thought they were being cleaver to prevent exploration burn out by locking certain mobility options behind the mastery progression…. but what ended up happening was players trying to quickly grind out the mobility options to they can freely explore and actually be able to participate in whats going on.

My first day in HOT was terrible, as I kept missing events due to having to take the long way to reach them. Worse still, the mastery progression UI is illogical, thematically. I have to kill mobs in order to learn how to open a Glider? Or do random events to understand how mushrooms work? You can tell from early HOT videos that Gliders were originally static bundles (like diving goggles) placed around the map for a specific purpose. But they disconnected this concept to make the connection between Exp progression and Masterys more obvious (in their minds) to the players who complain about stagnant progression.

Masteries should had been laid out like a skill tree, with the first few levels linked to specific guide objects/points to introduce the core mobility masteries, and make sure players got them early on. Had they done that, the current exp progression system wouldn’t have had the kind of crippling effect on players in the first several hours of Verdant Brink. It also would had made the idea of “advanced” masteries as expansive rather then mandatory to movement around Magumma.

starlinvf.1358:

Worse still, the mastery progression UI is illogical, thematically. I have to kill mobs in order to learn how to open a Glider? Or do random events to understand how mushrooms work?

When I first said the same thing, I thought I was the only one who found that strange. But the number of people who have pointed out the disconnection between the mastery and the method of training it, as you have, reassures me that I wasn’t crazy.

Harper.4173:

Masteries are less of a way to progress and mostly there to disguise the otherwise lack of content.
Without them – a 4 map expansion would be done in a week, two or maybe three if you’re super casual.

This isn’t being totally fair though. The same could be said of increased level caps in other games that have expansions… that the level cap increase is there to disguise the lack of content. Masteries are as much content as a level cap increase, if not more so.

The main issue (imo) is that too many low level masteries are too vital to the jungle and put unnecessary pressure on people who have few hours to play.

In games with level cap increase, the mob level of new zones increases slowly, so it is more like leveling up again. In HoT, it is like being tossed a rough equivalent of “level up again,” but with little to no ramping up of needed masteries for different zones.

The end result is that you can navigate any of the four zones with little more than gliding and the rest is “no need for masteries,” interspersed with random situations where you need a mastery that is anywhere from 1 to 6 on the chain. It has a kind of freedom to it, which is cool in its own right, but it’s also messy and (sadly) goes against the sort of streamlining they tried to do with the NPE.

With 20/20 hindsight vision, I think a much smarter design choice would have been to set up masteries so that it’s more like a level cap increase; if you really want to go into the next zone before you’re ready, you can, but it’s going to be infinitely harder to do. This also might have controlled the flow of players better. As it is, we have players scattered across four different maps doing four different hours long metas, none of which are easy to do without being a little organized.

They would have been trading off the freedom for people to go where they want when they want, in exchange for a potentially smoother entry experience into HoT content. Maybe they had that talk and decided the freedom was more worth it. Who knows.

Grundy is because someone want to get it now. Just play the game, run the event chains and help other players. The xp will come after you.

Doug Whisper.2465:

Grundy is because someone want to get it now. Just play the game, run the event chains and help other players. The xp will follow.

By this point, that argument feels like people are just copy-pasting it without giving a thought to what it’s actually saying. It comes across as glib and uncaring, even if the intent was to be helpful. Probably not the impression you wanted to give.

The fact is, new/less experienced players are having issues with the content and the way it’s presented to them for various reasons. Impatience is a factor in some cases but not in the generalised way you present it.

I would hazard a guess, based on my experience, that people do want to participate in the event chains as you suggest, but they’re finding it difficult due to the combination of i) lacking various required mobility masteries, ii) learning to cope with the various challenging new critters, and iii) having to run long distances through the said critters to get to an event before it’s over due to the design of having large numbers of contested waypoints.

In short, there are many factors at play. Any one of these may be fine on its own, but together they’re overloading the experience for players less experienced than yourself. Can you blame them for wanting to resolve one of those issues (the masteries) as quickly as possible so they can get on with playing the event chains and killing the new critters at their leisure?

I think the issue with these first masteries is that they are essential to unlocking gameplay, rather than opening alternative ways to play. Hopefully when new masteries are added they will open up new avenues of play and this entire debate will fade out.

But for now, let’s retire the one-size-fits-all “play the game” argument, especially when coupled with the “because someone wants it now” clause. There’s nothing useful in it. If we’re going to let people “play as you like” we have to let them rush through masteries if they want to, so they can get to the content they want to enjoy.

when you consider it is per account not per character i think you should divide the requirements by 5 minimum and you will see it is not bad at all

Goatjugsoup.8637:

when you consider it is per account not per character i think you should divide the requirements by 5 minimum and you will see it is not bad at all

I can see that levelling up your masteries on one toon can make it easier on successive toons but I don’t see how it follows that you divide the requirements by five?

Presumably, it’s the same player playing those 5 characters? That person still has to go through all the same work as a person playing one character. It doesn’t increase the number or variety of events or maps in HOT. Do you divide the total events in HOT into five sets and play each with a different profession? Does that help?

Labjax.2465:

Harper.4173:

Masteries are less of a way to progress and mostly there to disguise the otherwise lack of content.
Without them – a 4 map expansion would be done in a week, two or maybe three if you’re super casual.

This isn’t being totally fair though. The same could be said of increased level caps in other games that have expansions… that the level cap increase is there to disguise the lack of content. Masteries are as much content as a level cap increase, if not more so.

The main issue (imo) is that too many low level masteries are too vital to the jungle and put unnecessary pressure on people who have few hours to play.

In games with level cap increase, the mob level of new zones increases slowly, so it is more like leveling up again. In HoT, it is like being tossed a rough equivalent of “level up again,” but with little to no ramping up of needed masteries for different zones.

The end result is that you can navigate any of the four zones with little more than gliding and the rest is “no need for masteries,” interspersed with random situations where you need a mastery that is anywhere from 1 to 6 on the chain. It has a kind of freedom to it, which is cool in its own right, but it’s also messy and (sadly) goes against the sort of streamlining they tried to do with the NPE.

With 20/20 hindsight vision, I think a much smarter design choice would have been to set up masteries so that it’s more like a level cap increase; if you really want to go into the next zone before you’re ready, you can, but it’s going to be infinitely harder to do. This also might have controlled the flow of players better. As it is, we have players scattered across four different maps doing four different hours long metas, none of which are easy to do without being a little organized.

They would have been trading off the freedom for people to go where they want when they want, in exchange for a potentially smoother entry experience into HoT content. Maybe they had that talk and decided the freedom was more worth it. Who knows.

I agree with this.

When I first started HoT I assumed that each zone would require different masteries. When I finally left verdant I realized I could have done so much earlier.

Next time they do masteries each zone should have a set of masteries associated with it. The further you get the more that are required.

Why are they grindy?simple… The current cap is placed at 161 i heard. Every mastery point is around 600k exp, which is 2.4 old normal levels. Which means you need to get 161*2.4 = ~386 normal levels. Which is pretty much 5 complete characters of levelling.

On top of that most mastery points are locked behind achievements of which several are also gold/timesinks. Just cause a lot of players got these achievements already doesn’t mean they’re NOT there.

So why are masteries grindy? Because you need to waste a lot of time to unlock them and then another load of time to grind the experience they require.

Personally i’m getting the autoloot mastery, fractal mastery and i’m doing the HoT story, and after that i’m stopping with bothering and just stick to PvP (which currently is messed with imbalances). In short, for me this expac is failing badly and i won’t be prepurchasing their next ones if they ever get there (as i mostly care about PvP now – thank you grind – and you didn’t need the expac for all the additions of the expac).