Guild Wars 2

Let me begin by saying that I don’t like doing the adventures. They don’t interest me, and doing them gives me just as much, if not more, frustration as doing a jumping puzzle (oh, how I hate jumping puzzles). I know other people like adventures (and jumping puzzles, although I can’t understand why) but I just don’t.

And yet, I’m forced to have to do these so I can get mastery points to max out the last couple HoT masteries. I really don’t like this. Please find a way for me to be able to max out masteries without having to do adventures (either by adding more ways to get mastery points, allowing different achievements to give out X mastery points instead of just one, and/or decreasing the amount of points required to max out mastery lines).

The difference between the number of mastery points available and the number you need to max out all your masteries is incredibly slim (about 19 or so) and about 31 of the current total mastery points available are related to the adventures (give or take a couple). It takes 112 points to max out all your masteries, so please, why can’t there be like 170 available options to get mastery points instead of just like 131 or so? I think it’d be better if there were various different ways that players could choose to get mastery points and max out their HoT masteries instead of being forced to do a certain type of content.

Maybe you could make it so that the adventures give out X amount of mastery points (1 for bronze, 2 for silver, 3 for gold) and that would be the incentive to do adventures if you wanted to do adventures; you’d be able to get mastery points needed to max out masteries quicker than getting them one by one via other achieves. And if you didn’t want to do adventures, you could still get the amount of mastery points you need to max out your masteries by doing other achievements, which would give out 1 mastery point.

There’s a good chunk of Maguuma mastery points tied to story completion and story achievements. People who don’t like to play story still have to do it if they want to max out their Maguuma masteries.

There’s also a ton of core Tyria mastery points tied to personal story completion (including 3 points per race and 1 point per order, so you’ll have to do story on 5 characters to level 30, on 3 of them to level 40 and on one to the very end at minimum), as well as living story season 2 including all achievements.

There’s also a good chunk of mastery points gated behind fractal achievements. There are quite a few people in this game who don’t want to play fractals at all though.

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

And even if you skip all of the adventures now, just get silver in a single one (there are some really easy and painless ones), and as long as you get all non-adventure mastery points you’ll be able to unlock every Maguuma mastery except for a single lvl 6 one.

Disclaimer: I’m not good at adventures at all, nor at many of the other achievements. I’m currently sitting at a little over 40 Maguuma mastery points and have no clue if I’ll ever reach 112 or not, but it’s a form of progression that’s variable enough that I don’t mind if a few of the top-end masteries will eventually be locked behind mastery points that’ll be hard to earn for me and make me go out of my way to play stuff I’m not comfortable with.

Ive been doing fallen masks for the last 2 days, and some people are really brilliant at these adventures, but one thing I am hating, is theirs no pattern, and when you sometimes try mushroom jump, the number of times it fails and you have to keep jumping on the shroom to activate it, or you jump and don’t want youre wings to deploy and you miss the target. So, my point is this, some people may have coordinates to do specific things in the games, but not everyone fits the bill, and to try get silver when after 2 days I can only get 12/15 is frustrating (NOT everyone is proficient at jumping puzzles) yet again, more JP’s, more frustration. The problem is not so much the mastery points, but they have linked weapons to this (Dark Harvest). So, is their any way to do this except using a bot which I presume people are using to do these tasks?
I am amazed at the complexity, the beauty and sheer brilliance of the HoT expansion, but their are so many things that need tweaking and looking at, as I am really at the end of this journey. I feel that as much as I enjoy this game, I’ve needed something new to keep the interest, but at what cost? Is it worth it for a few more pixels? (and just to indicate how much I play, I upgraded 16 level 80 toons within 2 weeks to new elite specs).

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,.
That is what I want. Why do you have a problem with that?

The big problem I have with adventures is that they feel completely out of place thematically and mechanically. Take Shooting Gallery for example. Thematically Verdant Brink is about the survivors of the pact fleet scrambling to organise themselves and defend against the jungles dangers. So why did they set up a shooting gallery while they had to do so much just for their own survival ?

Mechanically, what’s an FPS minigame doing in a tab-targeting RPG ?
If I wanted an FPS, I’d go play an FPS. I own several good ones. Even the bad ones I own are better than Shooting Gallery.

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

Yes.

adormtil.1605:

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,.
That is what I want. Why do you have a problem with that?

That’s a yes then ?

But yes I have to agree as well, that’s what I want.

(Puts in hat on, incoming).

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

The big problem I have with adventures is that they feel completely out of place thematically and mechanically. Take Shooting Gallery for example. Thematically Verdant Brink is about the survivors of the pact fleet scrambling to organise themselves and defend against the jungles dangers. So why did they set up a shooting gallery while they had to do so much just for their own survival ?

Mechanically, what’s an FPS minigame doing in a tab-targeting RPG ?
If I wanted an FPS, I’d go play an FPS. I own several good ones. Even the bad ones I own are better than Shooting Gallery.

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

Yes.

If there’s anything gaming in general and this genre in particular can teach us, it’s that gating anything of any kind of value behind mini-games is an utterly terrible idea.

The people who enjoy them would play them anyway
The people who don’t feel forced to play them
The in-betweeners like myself are turned off them because of the non-optional aspect

I would be fine with them giving a one off reward for each tier and even a daily bonus, but gating something essential like mastery points is just really, really bad design. Particularly considering just how many are gated behind them, and how diverse they are thematically. Getting gold in any single adventure doesn’t leave you any better equipped to do any other adventure.

There definitely needs to be way more ways to get mastery points,forcing me to replay the story on different classes ect is bullkitten and some of these adventures are just undo able.
im mastery lvl 140 with xp bars full just waiting on the mastery points it looks like il never get.More and more players are going to run out of points to spend long before they run out of xp to grind.

eldrin.6471:

There definitely needs to be way more ways to get mastery points,forcing me to replay the story on different classes ect is bullkitten and some of these adventures are just undo able.
im mastery lvl 140 with xp bars full just waiting on the mastery points it looks like il never get.More and more players are going to run out of points to spend long before they run out of xp to grind.

Yup just about to use my last 8 points, that leaves me with none.

The next mastery is 10 or more points.

Duh screwed.

I only ever had one character, even more screwed.

And I’m only mastery 32.

adormtil.1605:

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,.
That is what I want. Why do you have a problem with that?

I don’t have a problem with you wanting that, but I do see a fine line between enough and too many mastery points.

It’s a bit like the daily iterations we’ve had in this game: at one point dailies were so easy to do, most people got theirs done without even thinking about it in the course of their regular gameplay. That way, pretty much everyone got their daily rewards by default, which made some people rejoice for getting the rewards, while taking the sense of achievement away from others that don’t feel they achieved anything until they went off their beaten path for it.

Distribution of mastery points require ArenaNet to make a similar decision: do they want them to be so plentyful that everyone will just get them playing whatever they like, or are they restricted to make people go for specific tasks if they want to max out everything? Where is the sweet spot that makes achievers still feel like they achieved something, while allowing explorers to skip the more complex adventures and killers to not worry about story?

Personally, I wouldn’t mind a few more points available, to give me a bit more freedom to skip adventures and the harder achievements (my reflexes on those things clearly show me that I’m way past the perfect age for that kind of gameplay ), but I can see why ArenaNet won’t want that. Whether I’ll manage eventually to gather enough points for all masteries only time will tell (currently I only have a little over 40 of the Maguuma ones).

Despite the fact that I don’t even know if I’ll ever gather enough mastery points, I still like the way the system is set up. It challenges me to try and learn content that doesn’t come naturally to me (like that drone race adventure everybody claims is so easy … I have yet to finish it even once ). Even if it’s like the coddler’s cove jp that literally took me a year to get done, it’s a goal to go for. Experience to fill the mastery bar already is a by-product of regular gameplay, don’t make mastery points the same or there’s no need to have them anyway.

I do not see the issue if people like to jump and to puzzles to get mastery points they have that option. If people want to do fractals to have enough points they should do that. If they want to do events to get masteries they should do that. They should not have to do all of them.

Why should players like me who only play one character be at a disadvantage?
The mastery system should have been separate from achievements,not another layer on top.

I don’t mind adventures, but what I do mind is knowing I’ll never be able to get gold in some adventures due to my internet connection.

I personally hope they switch the current system of silver / gold yielding mastery points to bronze / silver giving said points alongside gold giving some sort of title / currency / exotic box / [insert idea here]. As it stands I know quite a few of us are facing the harsh reality that we’ll never get gold due to something completely out of our control.

eldrin.6471:

Why should players like me who only play one character be at a disadvantage?
The mastery system should have been separate from achievements,not another layer on top.

I don’t understand why you’re at a disadvantage with only one character, since achievements are account wide you only get credit once (and so only get the MP once for those achievements that reward them) so having one or a dozen characters doesn’t seem to me to make any difference.

adormtil.1605:

I do not see the issue if people like to jump and to puzzles to get mastery points they have that option. If people want to do fractals to have enough points they should do that. If they want to do events to get masteries they should do that. They should not have to do all of them.

I guess this is the point where we have to agree to disagree. I don’t think anyone should be able to max all their masteries by just playing a very narrow part of the possible gameplay available, because max masteries to me should mean at least dabbling in all parts of the game and mastering several of them.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

The big problem I have with adventures is that they feel completely out of place thematically and mechanically. Take Shooting Gallery for example. Thematically Verdant Brink is about the survivors of the pact fleet scrambling to organise themselves and defend against the jungles dangers. So why did they set up a shooting gallery while they had to do so much just for their own survival ?

Remember the event chain? It was also a training camp. The shooting gallery is soldier training, just like that one heart in Queensdale. It might have been more obvious to link it to the sylvari sniper team however.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Mechanically, what’s an FPS minigame doing in a tab-targeting RPG ?

GW2 is a hybrid action RPG designed with the skill based combat of an action RPG while still supporting the friendliness of targeting. The action camera is a sample of full action combat and it has always been mechanically supported; there just wasn’t a UI for it.

Rasimir.6239:

adormtil.1605:

I do not see the issue if people like to jump and to puzzles to get mastery points they have that option. If people want to do fractals to have enough points they should do that. If they want to do events to get masteries they should do that. They should not have to do all of them.

I guess this is the point where we have to agree to disagree. I don’t think anyone should be able to max all their masteries by just playing a very narrow part of the possible gameplay available, because max masteries to me should mean at least dabbling in all parts of the game and mastering several of them.

What even the parts we hate.

We shouldn’t be forced into doing stuff we don’t like, just to get mastery points.

There should be other options.

While I respect that not everyone enjoys every game mode or part in that mode….
Adventures are (in general) not hard. Pick the easy ones
- Torch Tendrils (silver is very easy)
- Salvage pit (if you don’t get gold I don’t understand)
- Bugs in the Branches (gold takes some practice but again fairly easy)

- The floor is lava (silver is easy)
- Wings of Gold (Gold is easy)

- Drone Race (Gold is just knowing the path, silver is almost given away)
- Lay Line Run (Silver is easy, Gold is little bit of practice)
… that should get you 10+ Mastery points with very little work put in.