Guild Wars 2

Had a bit of a chat with some other players about the mastery system and how much I personally hated it. Now, i thought this was due to the slow exp grind required to get the mastery system going smoothly, but as the comments and replies flowed in I realised I have no problem with grinding as a whole, I’ll happily spend hours repeating events for map currency , my love of JRPG’s can attest to the fact I love powerleveling and I have no issues with the new mastery track or bloodstone fen compared to verdant brink at the start of HoT.

So what was it about the mastery system that had my finger literally hovering over the uninstall button like the sword of Damocles?

Look at vanilla Gw2 for the answer. Even though the maps are old hat for most of us now (open beta player here so yeah) You start off any new alt with a choice of five different levellling zones as well as Cities to explore. You always have a choice on what to do to level those characters. A new zone, a lower level zone, dungeons, wvw, exploring , crafting or whatever else you fancy doing, you can do when you want.

Heck i’m sure people have taken level 1 alts down to orr for giggles since the game would let you if you can make it.

Then HoT came along and Gw2 went from being an awesome list of fun things I could do as and when I please to an awesome list of fun things I can’t possibly do at all unless I follow the mastery system tour guide.

HoT was a linear, on rails path that demanded I do masteries, areas , heck even certain events at certain times because everything else was gated off. Completing a mastery and opening the next gate just led to another gate that would take longer to open. The freedom that vanilla Gw2 had always had was gone and I hated it.

What was worse, that feeling of exploration and wonder was not only gone, trying to free oneself from the HoT straightjacked was discouraged by the game simply stating there are no rewards or fun here because you haven’t ground out mastery x , or in many cases, outright killing you for daring to step away from the established, on rails path.

Even worse than that, by the time I had opened up sufficient masteries to go wherever I chose, I’d been spoon fed so many small , inconsequential morsels of ‘fun’ that I’d eaten practically the whole cake without knowing it. There wasn’t anywhere left that was interesting, nowhere I could go that the game hadn’t already shoved in my face as the next stop on the HoT tour. I completely lost interest in everything the expansion had to offer.

Enter bloodstone fen in season three and I’m having more fun with that one small map than the entirety of season 2 HoT. The reason is simple, I have my freedom back and am currently happily farming bloodstone rubies for the ascended backpiece there.

Well there you go. That explains it as best I can and I sincerely hope Gw2 never has to go that route again.

Okay but, in each of those cases, you have to level each character seperately. HoT, on the other hand, you level your masteries one single time and you’re done. Once you unlock gliding on one character, all your characters have gliding.

Nor is HoT particularly linear. While you don’t have the options to have five starter zones, you don’t have to level each character differently.

I played HoT a lot like I played the core worlds. Even from the first waypoint in HoT, there are two directions you can go, leading to two different outposts, with two different event chains.

Some people just level their masteries via raids. Some people play open world stuff. If you have a lot of characters, you can even level by doing the story over and over again. Adventures give a ton of experience.

If you’re seeing HoT as linear, I assure you it’s not. It’s like anything else, you have to run through zones to get to the next zone, but even taht’s not 100%. For example if you have the AB guild hall, you can get into AB without ever setting foot into VB.

Vayne.8563:

Okay but, in each of those cases, you have to level each character seperately. HoT, on the other hand, you level your masteries one single time and you’re done. Once you unlock gliding on one character, all your characters have gliding.

Nor is HoT particularly linear. While you don’t have the options to have five starter zones, you don’t have to level each character differently.

I played HoT a lot like I played the core worlds. Even from the first waypoint in HoT, there are two directions you can go, leading to two different outposts, with two different event chains.

Some people just level their masteries via raids. Some people play open world stuff. If you have a lot of characters, you can even level by doing the story over and over again. Adventures give a ton of experience.

If you’re seeing HoT as linear, I assure you it’s not. It’s like anything else, you have to run through zones to get to the next zone, but even taht’s not 100%. For example if you have the AB guild hall, you can get into AB without ever setting foot into VB.

In hindsight, you are somewhat correct. With experience it’s easy to see the paths and options HoT presented to a fresh player, despite how limited they were. However this was all but drowned by a tidal wave of negative reinforcement for trying to do anything BUT those couple of options, either by constantly pointing to the mastery page in the most obnoxious fashion or outright killing the player with no warning and then pointing to the mastery page anyways.

HoT stopped being about things I could do and became about everything i couldn’t do and the mastery system wasn’t about unlocking cool abilities to open up the world, but about removing unnecessary barriers to actually playing the game. Luckilly once completed, those masteries stay on my account forever and I never have to bother with it ever again, which is one of the only reasons I sat through it.

Well it’s a lot easier since April, so this post is probably several months too late. If you were starting now, it would likely be a different ball game.

Well I just came back after a few years and though the xp grind is a bit annoying sometimes, I actually quite like getting these masteries. The reason why it is annoying sometimes actually has nothing to do with the mastery system, but is about whether or not there is a decent amount of players around to do the event chains that give some nice xp.

I haven’t set foot in dungeons or raids and not sure if I have that interest but as long as there are people around to do the events then it seems ok to me. So for me it’s really something that adds to the game. I did notice with my guardian though that it certainly became a lot easier once I unlocked the specialization. That makes a big difference.

I will say though that I’m not particularly engrossed in the story so I don’t care so much that I have to wait for the next part of the story until I have a certain mastery unlocked.

MasterKaon.4027:

In hindsight, you are somewhat correct. With experience it’s easy to see the paths and options HoT presented to a fresh player, despite how limited they were. However this was all but drowned by a tidal wave of negative reinforcement for trying to do anything BUT those couple of options, either by constantly pointing to the mastery page in the most obnoxious fashion or outright killing the player with no warning and then pointing to the mastery page anyways.

HoT stopped being about things I could do and became about everything i couldn’t do and the mastery system wasn’t about unlocking cool abilities to open up the world, but about removing unnecessary barriers to actually playing the game. Luckilly once completed, those masteries stay on my account forever and I never have to bother with it ever again, which is one of the only reasons I sat through it.

Let’s just call it what it is. The HoT maps were too much for you. The exploration, the combat. It was too difficult and frustrating for your tastes. The complaints about masteries being a barrier are all in your head. You need only 3 masteries to explore the vast majority of locations in all of the HoT maps: gliding, bounce mushrooms, and updrafts.

Yes, you need expensive masteries like Itzel poison lore and leyline gliding to reach a handful of locations and achieve 100% map completion, among other things. But there is no reason you need to have 100% map completion the moment you enter HoT. There is no reason you need to complete every single objective from the moment you walk in. That was an expectation you had which was not met, but you were not in fact prevented from exploring these maps by the mastery system.

When I did HoT, I actually loved VB and the intro to the jungle that I just stuck around there until I had that map figured out. Then I went to AB, played around a bit, wasn’t really feeling it and went on to TD. 6 months later I have 102 mastery level, all of the more relevant masteries unlocked, 100% map completion on all maps, but I did it my way. I love VB and TD more than DS and AB, so those are the maps I spent most of my time on.

You have freedom in HoT. It sounds like you simply chose not to use it. Perhaps you listened a bit too much to the whining on the forums? A lot of the complaints here are very similar, but seem to originate from players who never liked HoT to begin with and don’t know what they’re talking about.

Mastery system blocks progress.

Totally not playing Gw2 because of said blocked progress.

Oh Anet you want me to collect X more mastery points to level up whatever just to get through the story? Nope. lol. Story isn’t that good and there’s youtube to see what happens. You’re not making me play through the trash this time.

Edit: And done watching spoiler video. Yay. This why you bad anet, I’d rather watch someone else play the story instead playing catch up masteries to see it myself.

I’m fine with the mastery system, but I hate how mastery points are distributed. Putting a lot of them behind gimmicky, optional and challenging mini-games is a nightmare to a player who wants to enjoy GW2 as an RPG and not as a platformer. This forces you to hunt for other “optional”, extremely hidden or time-gated points, which require you to be at the right place in the right time, and such a thing can take hours if you miss a single event. And that’s for 1 point, when yo’ll need as many as 24+ to complete the remaining masteries.

One of the best things bloodstone fen had, was requiring only 1 new mastery point but offering 5-6(?) easy ones. Thank god for that.

Nethod.7068:

Mastery system blocks progress.

Totally not playing Gw2 because of said blocked progress.

Oh Anet you want me to collect X more mastery points to level up whatever just to get through the story? Nope. lol. Story isn’t that good and there’s youtube to see what happens. You’re not making me play through the trash this time.

Edit: And done watching spoiler video. Yay. This why you bad anet, I’d rather watch someone else play the story instead playing catch up masteries to see it myself.

How is this a mastery system design issue? The underlying cause of your particular complaint is that you clearly dislike HoT gameplay.

Just to put it in perspective, to unlock the critical masteries you need to explore the jungle and complete the storyline, only 2 million experience (about the equivalent of leveling from 70-80) is required along with 4 MPs. That really isn’t a lot of time/effort. If you had any interest at all in trying the new maps you would earn that much just in the process of exploring and trying out the events for a few hours.

I know players in this game are used to doing things on their own terms, but even the core game didn’t allow you 100% freedom in this sense. You still had to put in effort to achieve objectives, frequently in game modes that might not be your cup of tea. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of JPs. I still have to do them now and then if I want the rewards. But as long as the entire game isn’t one big JP, I don’t consider that unreasonable.

AliamRationem.5172:

Nethod.7068:

Mastery system blocks progress.

Totally not playing Gw2 because of said blocked progress.

Oh Anet you want me to collect X more mastery points to level up whatever just to get through the story? Nope. lol. Story isn’t that good and there’s youtube to see what happens. You’re not making me play through the trash this time.

Edit: And done watching spoiler video. Yay. This why you bad anet, I’d rather watch someone else play the story instead playing catch up masteries to see it myself.

How is this a mastery system design issue? The underlying cause of your particular complaint is that you clearly dislike HoT gameplay.

Just to put it in perspective, to unlock the critical masteries you need to explore the jungle and complete the storyline, only 2 million experience (about the equivalent of leveling from 70-80) is required along with 4 MPs. That really isn’t a lot of time/effort. If you had any interest at all in trying the new maps you would earn that much just in the process of exploring and trying out the events for a few hours.

I know players in this game are used to doing things on their own terms, but even the core game didn’t allow you 100% freedom in this sense. You still had to put in effort to achieve objectives, frequently in game modes that might not be your cup of tea. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of JPs. I still have to do them now and then if I want the rewards. But as long as the entire game isn’t one big JP, I don’t consider that unreasonable.

I solved my issue with the mastery system. I watched a youtube to see the story this time instead of playing through the trash to get the masteries points and mastery xp required to finish it. /winning.

leveling is not really the problem i have with mastery system most my hate is directed towards how you get the points some things like adventures are not easy to do or are in areas where the meta kinda ramps up the fps and makes lag during the challenge, or my favorite an npc frog goes attacks me while i do the mastery challenge. if they want to fix some of them like add a 30 sec-min for silver or change the skills not to have a freaking cooldown (fungus among us worst adventure ever created it can just be removed for all i care).

Nethod.7068:

I solved my issue with the mastery system. I watched a youtube to see the story this time instead of playing through the trash to get the masteries points and mastery xp required to finish it. /winning.

To each their own. If it’s trash to you, then it’s trash. Personally, I’m a big fan of HoT, but my concern in this case is the mastery system. I think a certain amount of gating is acceptable (e.g. 4 mastery points for story completion and 90%+ map completion) and contrary to your position, the requirements for general exploration and storyline completion are minimal.

The masteries gave me some serious QoL upgrades that I felt were worth the effort. It gave me a reason to play in maps I enjoyed anyway. That’s solid game design. But obviously, since you don’t enjoy HoT, what was a great reason for me to explore these maps to the fullest was your reason for resorting to youtube.

Your trash is my treasure on this one. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find an agreeable solution. Toward that end, I suggest the following:

Grant gliding, updrafts, and bounce mushrooms as baseline via the personal storyline. Reduce the number of tiers and respective costs for the remaining masteries. This would result in a reduction of 32 mastery points and about 2.8 million experience from the total cost of earning all of the Itzel lore and Gliding masteries. Alternatively, the lost tiers could be replaced with new skills that don’t present a critical barrier to exploration or personal storyline completion.

In either case, players would be free to complete their personal storyline and explore the vast majority of the jungle while leaving the mastery system mostly intact.

ZerotheFang.5890:

leveling is not really the problem i have with mastery system most my hate is directed towards how you get the points some things like adventures are not easy to do or are in areas where the meta kinda ramps up the fps and makes lag during the challenge, or my favorite an npc frog goes attacks me while i do the mastery challenge. if they want to fix some of them like add a 30 sec-min for silver or change the skills not to have a freaking cooldown (fungus among us worst adventure ever created it can just be removed for all i care).

I’m with you there. I can’t stand adventures! For that reason I’m totally for adding more mastery points so the system offers greater flexibility to players. I like that the mastery system gives us nice perks to work toward. I don’t think it necessarily needs to be so restrictive, however. The effort is enough.

I think they did a good job of minimizing the true barriers. But if you want to earn all of the masteries it does force you to really play every single one of those adventures out. I think it’s more GW2’s style to give players a choice in how they achieve their goals, where possible. This is probably one of those areas it wouldn’t cause any great harm to do so.

AliamRationem.5172:

Nethod.7068:

I solved my issue with the mastery system. I watched a youtube to see the story this time instead of playing through the trash to get the masteries points and mastery xp required to finish it. /winning.

To each their own. If it’s trash to you, then it’s trash. Personally, I’m a big fan of HoT, but my concern in this case is the mastery system. I think a certain amount of gating is acceptable (e.g. 4 mastery points for story completion and 90%+ map completion) and contrary to your position, the requirements for general exploration and storyline completion are minimal.

The masteries gave me some serious QoL upgrades that I felt were worth the effort. It gave me a reason to play in maps I enjoyed anyway. That’s solid game design. But obviously, since you don’t enjoy HoT, what was a great reason for me to explore these maps to the fullest was your reason for resorting to youtube.

Your trash is my treasure on this one. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find an agreeable solution. Toward that end, I suggest the following:

Grant gliding, updrafts, and bounce mushrooms as baseline via the personal storyline. Reduce the number of tiers and respective costs for the remaining masteries. This would result in a reduction of 32 mastery points and about 2.8 million experience from the total cost of earning all of the Itzel lore and Gliding masteries. Alternatively, the lost tiers could be replaced with new skills that don’t present a critical barrier to exploration or personal storyline completion.

In either case, players would be free to complete their personal storyline and explore the vast majority of the jungle while leaving the mastery system mostly intact.

Nice. Well, see you on youtube, make me some vids.
Edit: And if you actualy do make videos, you can leave off the stuff you do on map, just the story stuff I’d be interested in.

Nethod.7068:

AliamRationem.5172:

Nethod.7068:

Mastery system blocks progress.

Totally not playing Gw2 because of said blocked progress.

Oh Anet you want me to collect X more mastery points to level up whatever just to get through the story? Nope. lol. Story isn’t that good and there’s youtube to see what happens. You’re not making me play through the trash this time.

Edit: And done watching spoiler video. Yay. This why you bad anet, I’d rather watch someone else play the story instead playing catch up masteries to see it myself.

How is this a mastery system design issue? The underlying cause of your particular complaint is that you clearly dislike HoT gameplay.

Just to put it in perspective, to unlock the critical masteries you need to explore the jungle and complete the storyline, only 2 million experience (about the equivalent of leveling from 70-80) is required along with 4 MPs. That really isn’t a lot of time/effort. If you had any interest at all in trying the new maps you would earn that much just in the process of exploring and trying out the events for a few hours.

I know players in this game are used to doing things on their own terms, but even the core game didn’t allow you 100% freedom in this sense. You still had to put in effort to achieve objectives, frequently in game modes that might not be your cup of tea. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of JPs. I still have to do them now and then if I want the rewards. But as long as the entire game isn’t one big JP, I don’t consider that unreasonable.

I solved my issue with the mastery system. I watched a youtube to see the story this time instead of playing through the trash to get the masteries points and mastery xp required to finish it. /winning.

All you solved was not being able to get around in the new zone.

Vayne.8563:

Nethod.7068:

AliamRationem.5172:

Nethod.7068:

Mastery system blocks progress.

Totally not playing Gw2 because of said blocked progress.

Oh Anet you want me to collect X more mastery points to level up whatever just to get through the story? Nope. lol. Story isn’t that good and there’s youtube to see what happens. You’re not making me play through the trash this time.

Edit: And done watching spoiler video. Yay. This why you bad anet, I’d rather watch someone else play the story instead playing catch up masteries to see it myself.

How is this a mastery system design issue? The underlying cause of your particular complaint is that you clearly dislike HoT gameplay.

Just to put it in perspective, to unlock the critical masteries you need to explore the jungle and complete the storyline, only 2 million experience (about the equivalent of leveling from 70-80) is required along with 4 MPs. That really isn’t a lot of time/effort. If you had any interest at all in trying the new maps you would earn that much just in the process of exploring and trying out the events for a few hours.

I know players in this game are used to doing things on their own terms, but even the core game didn’t allow you 100% freedom in this sense. You still had to put in effort to achieve objectives, frequently in game modes that might not be your cup of tea. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of JPs. I still have to do them now and then if I want the rewards. But as long as the entire game isn’t one big JP, I don’t consider that unreasonable.

I solved my issue with the mastery system. I watched a youtube to see the story this time instead of playing through the trash to get the masteries points and mastery xp required to finish it. /winning.

All you solved was not being able to get around in the new zone.

Solved was all. Praise jebus for youtube.

AliamRationem.5172:

MasterKaon.4027:

In hindsight, you are somewhat correct. With experience it’s easy to see the paths and options HoT presented to a fresh player, despite how limited they were. However this was all but drowned by a tidal wave of negative reinforcement for trying to do anything BUT those couple of options, either by constantly pointing to the mastery page in the most obnoxious fashion or outright killing the player with no warning and then pointing to the mastery page anyways.

HoT stopped being about things I could do and became about everything i couldn’t do and the mastery system wasn’t about unlocking cool abilities to open up the world, but about removing unnecessary barriers to actually playing the game. Luckilly once completed, those masteries stay on my account forever and I never have to bother with it ever again, which is one of the only reasons I sat through it.

Let’s just call it what it is. The HoT maps were too much for you. The exploration, the combat. It was too difficult and frustrating for your tastes. The complaints about masteries being a barrier are all in your head. You need only 3 masteries to explore the vast majority of locations in all of the HoT maps: gliding, bounce mushrooms, and updrafts.

Yes, you need expensive masteries like Itzel poison lore and leyline gliding to reach a handful of locations and achieve 100% map completion, among other things. But there is no reason you need to have 100% map completion the moment you enter HoT. There is no reason you need to complete every single objective from the moment you walk in. That was an expectation you had which was not met, but you were not in fact prevented from exploring these maps by the mastery system.

When I did HoT, I actually loved VB and the intro to the jungle that I just stuck around there until I had that map figured out. Then I went to AB, played around a bit, wasn’t really feeling it and went on to TD. 6 months later I have 102 mastery level, all of the more relevant masteries unlocked, 100% map completion on all maps, but I did it my way. I love VB and TD more than DS and AB, so those are the maps I spent most of my time on.

You have freedom in HoT. It sounds like you simply chose not to use it. Perhaps you listened a bit too much to the whining on the forums? A lot of the complaints here are very similar, but seem to originate from players who never liked HoT to begin with and don’t know what they’re talking about.

I wish the combat and exploration had presented even a minuscule challenge or it might have given at least some small sense of satisfaction. It did not. The combat was bog standard Gw2 fare, not bad at all since I like the way the game handles combat, but no real test of ability.

The exploration people seem to think was in early HoT consisted of two linear paths. That’s it. Then when I did get mastery points I still had no sense of exploration at all as I had already seen where the game wanted me to go next , how to get there and what reward i’d be getting when I did, but had told me to either buzz off till I had ground out the required master or outright killed me. Negative reinforcement at every turn.

“Oh but all you need is gliding updrafts and mushrooms to explore” thank you for validating my point. How long it may or may not have taken an individual player to unlock those masteries is wholly irrelevant when that exploration and the majority of the content was gated off behind masteries for everyone from the get go and instead of saying NO bad player and bonking them with a rolled up newspaper when they tried to see what was over the next hill, reward that curiosity instead.

So if a player tried to use a jumping shroom before mastery acquisition, have them play a directional minigame to keep their balance on the mushroom. It’s far too slow to use in a combat situation but gives the player a direct challenge to overcome in order to use the mushrooms till they unlock the trait rather that just telling the player to get lost till they clubbed enough pocket raptors to magically realise how to use mushrooms.

Masteries were a tour guide system that fed content to players in the most nonsensical way , unlocking a few scraps of additional content one mastery at a time in a manner that made no contextual sense. Instead of bashing monsters over the head for a couple of hours and suddenly being immune to poison, why not have an area of VB with a large cloud of non lethal but debilitating poison in it and players can actively survive in there by doing events, maybe gathering medicinal herbs and the like to build up a poison immunity? Then have a meta event there where they need poison mastery to access a special chest that can give them an armour skin? There you have logical, contextual , thematic acquisition of a Mastery skill with a very tangible reward at the end other than another couple of mastery points.

MasterKaon.4027:

AliamRationem.5172:

MasterKaon.4027:

In hindsight, you are somewhat correct. With experience it’s easy to see the paths and options HoT presented to a fresh player, despite how limited they were. However this was all but drowned by a tidal wave of negative reinforcement for trying to do anything BUT those couple of options, either by constantly pointing to the mastery page in the most obnoxious fashion or outright killing the player with no warning and then pointing to the mastery page anyways.

HoT stopped being about things I could do and became about everything i couldn’t do and the mastery system wasn’t about unlocking cool abilities to open up the world, but about removing unnecessary barriers to actually playing the game. Luckilly once completed, those masteries stay on my account forever and I never have to bother with it ever again, which is one of the only reasons I sat through it.

Let’s just call it what it is. The HoT maps were too much for you. The exploration, the combat. It was too difficult and frustrating for your tastes. The complaints about masteries being a barrier are all in your head. You need only 3 masteries to explore the vast majority of locations in all of the HoT maps: gliding, bounce mushrooms, and updrafts.

Yes, you need expensive masteries like Itzel poison lore and leyline gliding to reach a handful of locations and achieve 100% map completion, among other things. But there is no reason you need to have 100% map completion the moment you enter HoT. There is no reason you need to complete every single objective from the moment you walk in. That was an expectation you had which was not met, but you were not in fact prevented from exploring these maps by the mastery system.

When I did HoT, I actually loved VB and the intro to the jungle that I just stuck around there until I had that map figured out. Then I went to AB, played around a bit, wasn’t really feeling it and went on to TD. 6 months later I have 102 mastery level, all of the more relevant masteries unlocked, 100% map completion on all maps, but I did it my way. I love VB and TD more than DS and AB, so those are the maps I spent most of my time on.

You have freedom in HoT. It sounds like you simply chose not to use it. Perhaps you listened a bit too much to the whining on the forums? A lot of the complaints here are very similar, but seem to originate from players who never liked HoT to begin with and don’t know what they’re talking about.

I wish the combat and exploration had presented even a minuscule challenge or it might have given at least some small sense of satisfaction. It did not. The combat was bog standard Gw2 fare, not bad at all since I like the way the game handles combat, but no real test of ability.

The exploration people seem to think was in early HoT consisted of two linear paths. That’s it. Then when I did get mastery points I still had no sense of exploration at all as I had already seen where the game wanted me to go next , how to get there and what reward i’d be getting when I did, but had told me to either buzz off till I had ground out the required master or outright killed me. Negative reinforcement at every turn.

“Oh but all you need is gliding updrafts and mushrooms to explore” thank you for validating my point. How long it may or may not have taken an individual player to unlock those masteries is wholly irrelevant when that exploration and the majority of the content was gated off behind masteries for everyone from the get go and instead of saying NO bad player and bonking them with a rolled up newspaper when they tried to see what was over the next hill, reward that curiosity instead.

So if a player tried to use a jumping shroom before mastery acquisition, have them play a directional minigame to keep their balance on the mushroom. It’s far too slow to use in a combat situation but gives the player a direct challenge to overcome in order to use the mushrooms till they unlock the trait rather that just telling the player to get lost till they clubbed enough pocket raptors to magically realise how to use mushrooms.

Masteries were a tour guide system that fed content to players in the most nonsensical way , unlocking a few scraps of additional content one mastery at a time in a manner that made no contextual sense. Instead of bashing monsters over the head for a couple of hours and suddenly being immune to poison, why not have an area of VB with a large cloud of non lethal but debilitating poison in it and players can actively survive in there by doing events, maybe gathering medicinal herbs and the like to build up a poison immunity? Then have a meta event there where they need poison mastery to access a special chest that can give them an armour skin? There you have logical, contextual , thematic acquisition of a Mastery skill with a very tangible reward at the end other than another couple of mastery points.

Yeah, Like Megaman Zero taught you every game mechanic while you played through.

This game – “Hey…Uh…We need you to go level up these mastery things, so stop what your doing in the story and go do it that stuff…Yes…All that stuff we Didn’t have you do while you were doing the story…go do all that…”

AliamRationem.5172:

Let’s just call it what it is. The HoT maps were too much for you. The exploration, the combat. It was too difficult and frustrating for your tastes. The complaints about masteries being a barrier are all in your head. You need only 3 masteries to explore the vast majority of locations in all of the HoT maps: gliding, bounce mushrooms, and updrafts.

Yes, you need expensive masteries like Itzel poison lore and leyline gliding to reach a handful of locations and achieve 100% map completion, among other things. But there is no reason you need to have 100% map completion the moment you enter HoT. There is no reason you need to complete every single objective from the moment you walk in. That was an expectation you had which was not met, but you were not in fact prevented from exploring these maps by the mastery system.

When I did HoT, I actually loved VB and the intro to the jungle that I just stuck around there until I had that map figured out. Then I went to AB, played around a bit, wasn’t really feeling it and went on to TD. 6 months later I have 102 mastery level, all of the more relevant masteries unlocked, 100% map completion on all maps, but I did it my way. I love VB and TD more than DS and AB, so those are the maps I spent most of my time on.

You have freedom in HoT. It sounds like you simply chose not to use it. Perhaps you listened a bit too much to the whining on the forums? A lot of the complaints here are very similar, but seem to originate from players who never liked HoT to begin with and don’t know what they’re talking about.

For the start, I have 142 points and had 133 before Bloodstone Fen. so I was in HoT quite a while, despite hating it for most of the time before I rose up to a “meh” and then to “ok” stance with it.

What you say is basically right. you can absolutely play HoT with the masteries you mention and get xp by doing events and exploration. But let´s be honest here, how funny is it to explore VB with basic gliding? Not funny at all, you fall into this and that all the time. It´s also not funny to be killed by unavoidable poison which ironically guards a way to counter said poison.

I still don´t have map completion as this is tedious and tiresome at best for me. all those walls, false ways, multilayering and hidden stuff…

Nethod.7068:

AliamRationem.5172:

Nethod.7068:

I solved my issue with the mastery system. I watched a youtube to see the story this time instead of playing through the trash to get the masteries points and mastery xp required to finish it. /winning.

To each their own. If it’s trash to you, then it’s trash. Personally, I’m a big fan of HoT, but my concern in this case is the mastery system. I think a certain amount of gating is acceptable (e.g. 4 mastery points for story completion and 90%+ map completion) and contrary to your position, the requirements for general exploration and storyline completion are minimal.

The masteries gave me some serious QoL upgrades that I felt were worth the effort. It gave me a reason to play in maps I enjoyed anyway. That’s solid game design. But obviously, since you don’t enjoy HoT, what was a great reason for me to explore these maps to the fullest was your reason for resorting to youtube.

Your trash is my treasure on this one. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find an agreeable solution. Toward that end, I suggest the following:

Grant gliding, updrafts, and bounce mushrooms as baseline via the personal storyline. Reduce the number of tiers and respective costs for the remaining masteries. This would result in a reduction of 32 mastery points and about 2.8 million experience from the total cost of earning all of the Itzel lore and Gliding masteries. Alternatively, the lost tiers could be replaced with new skills that don’t present a critical barrier to exploration or personal storyline completion.

In either case, players would be free to complete their personal storyline and explore the vast majority of the jungle while leaving the mastery system mostly intact.

Nice. Well, see you on youtube, make me some vids.
Edit: And if you actualy do make videos, you can leave off the stuff you do on map, just the story stuff I’d be interested in.

Well, considering that most of HoT’s story is on the maps themselves, with only a little bit in the instanced content…

Vayne.8563:

All you solved was not being able to get around in the new zone.

Which might be just what he wanted. Maybe he doesn’t care about the story.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

All you solved was not being able to get around in the new zone.

Which might be just what he wanted. Maybe he doesn’t care about the story.

The new zone isn’t just about story though. It’s also about getting ascended accessories that you can set the stats too just by farming the zone. Pretty much the cheapest ascended back piece in the game now, for example.

The new zone is partly about story but it’s also partly about rewards and experience. Saying I don’t need any masteries because I watched it means not playing any new PvE content going forward, if they require those masteries.

Youtube doesn’t solve that problem at all, unless you’re not going going to forgo the story but the rewards for the new zones and the experience for playing those zones.

While HoT is theoretically possible to easily do without adventure HPs (I need to make some rageposts on that subject, however), if you don’t do the “ideal” progression of mastery points (and look up guides for strongboxes) you can easily find yourself in a position where traversing maps to get further mastery points becomes a nightmare. Tangled depths is the best example of this-if someone takes gliding heavily to help them with VB, then works on anything that isn’t Nuhoch, they can hit TD with no mastery points and no reliable way of getting round the map.

Perhaps allowing respec of mastery points should be allowed?

SolarDragon.7063:

While HoT is theoretically possible to easily do without adventure HPs (I need to make some rageposts on that subject, however), if you don’t do the “ideal” progression of mastery points (and look up guides for strongboxes) you can easily find yourself in a position where traversing maps to get further mastery points becomes a nightmare. Tangled depths is the best example of this-if someone takes gliding heavily to help them with VB, then works on anything that isn’t Nuhoch, they can hit TD with no mastery points and no reliable way of getting round the map.

Perhaps allowing respec of mastery points should be allowed?

If a player can’t manage to follow the road to Teku Nuhoch or Ogre camp when they’re clearly marked on the map complete with cave entrances/exits, why should we expect that same player to notice the wallows marked on the map or be able to reach them? The map is useless. Or so I’ve heard from plenty of “experts” who hate TD.

It’s an exploration challenge. Wallows help, but they’re a lot more useful to players who know their way around TD than they are to players who don’t. They are not in any way required to navigate this map.

I see a fair bit on the forums of people going “hate hot, refuse to go in it”. And you know what, good. That means a lot less map friction, chats full of complaints. Keep it on the forums.
On the other hand.. if you actually make the effort to check the HoT maps out and are genuinely stuck – which can happen sooner or later depending on the map – just ask in map chat and people will help you out. Join a guild that loves HoT, improve your chances or a shared fun experience. Add me (and there are others who offer in every thread) and I’ll show you around.

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

All you solved was not being able to get around in the new zone.

Which might be just what he wanted. Maybe he doesn’t care about the story.

The new zone isn’t just about story though. It’s also about getting ascended accessories that you can set the stats too just by farming the zone. Pretty much the cheapest ascended back piece in the game now, for example.

The new zone is partly about story but it’s also partly about rewards and experience. Saying I don’t need any masteries because I watched it means not playing any new PvE content going forward, if they require those masteries.

Youtube doesn’t solve that problem at all, unless you’re not going going to forgo the story but the rewards for the new zones and the experience for playing those zones.

You talk a lot about what you want but I am more interested in what he wants. It’s very clear why you want these things but you don’t stop and think that maybe he’s not.

I like the masteries as vehicles for exploring the zones and just generally bumming around. Not everybody needs to have ascended gear. It depends on what you want to get out of the game.

Can you at least get that there are people that may have very different goals in this game?

I mean if the masteries are required for future content, we can rest easy because Anet are adding more places to get them than you need to complete it, so you have a choice. What else do you need ascended gear for except doing fractals and bragging rights? I wouldn’t know but then I haven’t played this game that much. What I do know is that doing fractals is not my interest and bragging rights are not that big of an issue either. There is a lot to do in this game out, so I just pick what I want.

So maybe I’m a bit more like the other guy than you are.

SolarDragon.7063:

While HoT is theoretically possible to easily do without adventure HPs (I need to make some rageposts on that subject, however), if you don’t do the “ideal” progression of mastery points (and look up guides for strongboxes) you can easily find yourself in a position where traversing maps to get further mastery points becomes a nightmare. Tangled depths is the best example of this-if someone takes gliding heavily to help them with VB, then works on anything that isn’t Nuhoch, they can hit TD with no mastery points and no reliable way of getting round the map.

Perhaps allowing respec of mastery points should be allowed?

Pretty much this.

I ended up leveling up exalted all the way first, I figured mastery points would be something easy in the long run. Nope. Gated behind travel masteries and multilevel map labyrinths.

So maybe enough of that, and one day I decided to go play the story for once instead of dredging through someone’s idea of an escherian stairwell. And then just when I think I can do something fun, the game design puts me right back to the map play hunting for masteries just so I can get back to the story. Betrayal.

Put an option to respec of masteries /agree

I guess it didn’t occur to me that anyone would try to navigate VB and the other maps before trying the storyline or, well, just looking around at the terrain. Really? You fully mastered exalted lore before you realized that you needed updrafts or bounce mushrooms? It just seems…unlikely, given the way bounce mushrooms and updrafts are literally everywhere you go in every single map of HoT and not having them unlocked heavily impedes your progress in a very obvious way.

In any event, I don’t think a mastery point “do-over” is unreasonable, even if I’m not clear on how you ended up in the position to require one. The only problem I’d have with it is that it needs to have some cost or restriction (one-time use?) or it essentially lets you have access to multiple mastery lines by only unlocking one.

AliamRationem.5172:

I guess it didn’t occur to me that anyone would try to navigate VB and the other maps before trying the storyline or, well, just looking around at the terrain. Really? You fully mastered exalted lore before you realized that you needed updrafts or bounce mushrooms? It just seems…unlikely, given the way bounce mushrooms and updrafts are literally everywhere you go in every single map of HoT and not having them unlocked heavily impedes your progress in a very obvious way.

In any event, I don’t think a mastery point “do-over” is unreasonable, even if I’m not clear on how you ended up in the position to require one. The only problem I’d have with it is that it needs to have some cost or restriction (one-time use?) or it essentially lets you have access to multiple mastery lines by only unlocking one.

Well, you get the bounce mushrooms from the start but you need gliding first. Also you need to get your elite specialization done and for that you need HP points especially if you have an instant level 80 character that still needs a lot of them. That is currently my issues with my Mesmer. I have to go to other maps to get the HP and I need to grind a lot of events to get enough xp for the masteries. I have over 20 points of masteries currently waiting but I have to do a lot of repeat events to get the xp so I can actually spend the mastery points.

And I like exploring so when I run into a portal to another area I go through it. Call it curiosity, but I have to do a lot of xp grinding before I can do ley flight and I still have to get other stuff for the story continuation. I am not a natural grinder and I am not in a guild so just with a basic xp boost doing some events and exploring it still takes me two nights of gameplay to get enough xp for the next mastery unlock.

This might also surprise you but not everybody likes to redo the same events 20 times in one evening. I try to enjoy the game as I go along and sometimes I just spend 20 minutes trying to get somewhere on the map that I have to figure out how to get there because the map has multiple levels. I find that interesting but it takes time, so I am not just focused on my xp bar. It does get me into trouble though because it takes me longer to get the xp needed but to be honest, if I would play the game the way some of you do I’d get burnt out on it in no time. That doesn’t help me.

So yeh, people can be very different. I suppose it’s good that you realise that, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise.

Gehenna.3625:

Well, you get the bounce mushrooms from the start but you need gliding first. Also you need to get your elite specialization done and for that you need HP points especially if you have an instant level 80 character that still needs a lot of them. That is currently my issues with my Mesmer. I have to go to other maps to get the HP and I need to grind a lot of events to get enough xp for the masteries. I have over 20 points of masteries currently waiting but I have to do a lot of repeat events to get the xp so I can actually spend the mastery points.

And I like exploring so when I run into a portal to another area I go through it. Call it curiosity, but I have to do a lot of xp grinding before I can do ley flight and I still have to get other stuff for the story continuation. I am not a natural grinder and I am not in a guild so just with a basic xp boost doing some events and exploring it still takes me two nights of gameplay to get enough xp for the next mastery unlock.

This might also surprise you but not everybody likes to redo the same events 20 times in one evening. I try to enjoy the game as I go along and sometimes I just spend 20 minutes trying to get somewhere on the map that I have to figure out how to get there because the map has multiple levels. I find that interesting but it takes time, so I am not just focused on my xp bar. It does get me into trouble though because it takes me longer to get the xp needed but to be honest, if I would play the game the way some of you do I’d get burnt out on it in no time. That doesn’t help me.

So yeh, people can be very different. I suppose it’s good that you realise that, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise.

The question is whether or not 3 mastery points represent an unreasonable barrier to exploration in HoT. Did they need to paint the guy a sign to tell him that he probably wants to get up to those impossible-to-reach places by using those updrafts and bounce mushrooms?

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

All you solved was not being able to get around in the new zone.

Which might be just what he wanted. Maybe he doesn’t care about the story.

The new zone isn’t just about story though. It’s also about getting ascended accessories that you can set the stats too just by farming the zone. Pretty much the cheapest ascended back piece in the game now, for example.

The new zone is partly about story but it’s also partly about rewards and experience. Saying I don’t need any masteries because I watched it means not playing any new PvE content going forward, if they require those masteries.

Youtube doesn’t solve that problem at all, unless you’re not going going to forgo the story but the rewards for the new zones and the experience for playing those zones.

You talk a lot about what you want but I am more interested in what he wants. It’s very clear why you want these things but you don’t stop and think that maybe he’s not.

I like the masteries as vehicles for exploring the zones and just generally bumming around. Not everybody needs to have ascended gear. It depends on what you want to get out of the game.

Can you at least get that there are people that may have very different goals in this game?

I mean if the masteries are required for future content, we can rest easy because Anet are adding more places to get them than you need to complete it, so you have a choice. What else do you need ascended gear for except doing fractals and bragging rights? I wouldn’t know but then I haven’t played this game that much. What I do know is that doing fractals is not my interest and bragging rights are not that big of an issue either. There is a lot to do in this game out, so I just pick what I want.

So maybe I’m a bit more like the other guy than you are.

No, because zones are content and I can’t see being cut off from content being a good thing. What you’re essentially saying is I’m not interested in new zones at all. Maybe you’re not but then the whole mastery question is irrelevant, since masteries only affect PvE.

And if you’re not interested in new zones or raids, what are you interested in? Just dungeons and Fractals? Even Fractals benefit from masteries.

You miss my point enitrely.

If you’re talking about PvE, the only place masteries matter, and you’re saying I don’t care if I can get to new zones or do anything at all in them, I’d say this is a bigger problem for you then just watching story videos on youtube.

It means you can’t continue playing the game in PvE as it moves forward. What’s the point really?

You’re talking story, I’m talking zones. Between zones and story, this IS PvE.

Nethod.7068:

SolarDragon.7063:

While HoT is theoretically possible to easily do without adventure HPs (I need to make some rageposts on that subject, however), if you don’t do the “ideal” progression of mastery points (and look up guides for strongboxes) you can easily find yourself in a position where traversing maps to get further mastery points becomes a nightmare. Tangled depths is the best example of this-if someone takes gliding heavily to help them with VB, then works on anything that isn’t Nuhoch, they can hit TD with no mastery points and no reliable way of getting round the map.

Perhaps allowing respec of mastery points should be allowed?

Pretty much this.

I ended up leveling up exalted all the way first, I figured mastery points would be something easy in the long run. Nope. Gated behind travel masteries and multilevel map labyrinths.

So maybe enough of that, and one day I decided to go play the story for once instead of dredging through someone’s idea of an escherian stairwell. And then just when I think I can do something fun, the game design puts me right back to the map play hunting for masteries just so I can get back to the story. Betrayal.

Put an option to respec of masteries /agree

You can’t even unlock Exalted materies utnil you enter the second zone, which means at least running through the first zone.

Gliding is automatically selected for you when you do the first two stories which unlocks masteries.

So you’re saying you did the first two stories, unlocked masteries, ran throught he first zones without looking at or doing anything, entered the second zone and leveled that mastery you unlocked, even though gliding was given to you by default.

You ran past numerous jumping mushrooms that all said you need a mastery to use them if you interacted with them.

Because you can’t even start exalted mastery until you leave VB. I’m not even sure how it happened to be honest.

The only thing I can think of is you teleported to a friend or walked out of the guild hall in AB.

But yeah, this is something that isn’t the fault of the game. The game gives plenty of indication that you need gliding and jumping mushrooms at least, even if you completely ignore the story.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I’m fine with the mastery system, but I hate how mastery points are distributed. Putting a lot of them behind gimmicky, optional and challenging mini-games is a nightmare to a player who wants to enjoy GW2 as an RPG and not as a platformer. This forces you to hunt for other “optional”, extremely hidden or time-gated points, which require you to be at the right place in the right time, and such a thing can take hours if you miss a single event. And that’s for 1 point, when yo’ll need as many as 24+ to complete the remaining masteries.

One of the best things bloodstone fen had, was requiring only 1 new mastery point but offering 5-6(?) easy ones. Thank god for that.

Completely agree – Anet doesn’t want to keep working on Super Adventure Box because it isn’t what GW2 is about (which is fine with me) but then they go and create all these OTHER mini-games within the game. Makes no sense. I play GW2 for the story, not for all this other mini-game (including JP) and PvP or “Esports” garbage.

You’re all acting like levelling masteries in the wrong order is easy to avoid. For gliding and mushrooms, sure. But for the later mastery gates (like investing in Wallows for TD), you can already be in a position of being low on MP’s, especially if you don’t use dulfy for the achievements. THIS IS NOT MY PERSONAL POSITION. But I have seen it happen to guildies and pubs.

SolarDragon.7063:

You’re all acting like levelling masteries in the wrong order is easy to avoid. For gliding and mushrooms, sure. But for the later mastery gates (like investing in Wallows for TD), you can already be in a position of being low on MP’s, especially if you don’t use dulfy for the achievements. THIS IS NOT MY PERSONAL POSITION. But I have seen it happen to guildies and pubs.

Actually I don’t believe this is a widely spread problem. Even with minimal logic, people can see that lower level masteries take only 1 or 2 points where as higher level masteries take 8 or 12 points.

So beginners to the zone would likely get 1 point ones done first, particularly if they’re having trouble getting mastery points.

If they manage to get like unlimited gliding unlocked, without learning anything at all about the zones, I’d say they’re probably a below average player because by then they should have some idea of what’s needed.

It’s like anything else in this game. You either do research, and watch videos and go to Dulfy, or your talk to guildies who have done so, or you ask questions on forums or reddit….or you go it alone and you figure stuff out.

In this case, figuring the stuff out is pretty easy. Of course, there are people who just don’t want to care or think at all.

Somehow I’m glad the game isn’t made for those people however.

There’s plenty of indication that the lower level ones are more useful generally than the higher level ones and there’s plenty of easy to get mastery points to get them.

Anything else is just not paying attention.

Vayne.8563:

No, because zones are content and I can’t see being cut off from content being a good thing. What you’re essentially saying is I’m not interested in new zones at all. Maybe you’re not but then the whole mastery question is irrelevant, since masteries only affect PvE.

And if you’re not interested in new zones or raids, what are you interested in? Just dungeons and Fractals? Even Fractals benefit from masteries.

You miss my point enitrely.

If you’re talking about PvE, the only place masteries matter, and you’re saying I don’t care if I can get to new zones or do anything at all in them, I’d say this is a bigger problem for you then just watching story videos on youtube.

It means you can’t continue playing the game in PvE as it moves forward. What’s the point really?

You’re talking story, I’m talking zones. Between zones and story, this IS PvE.

I see your reading skills haven’t improved. I haven’t said what you say here and your conclusions therefore are all pointless. I said I like exploring zones and I will complete the story, though I’m not in a rush to do so. How you turn that into me saying the opposite of that, is just your reading comprehension. Please learn the difference between understanding and agreeing. I understand the other guys’ point of view, but that doesn’t mean I am exactly like him. As I said, again, I am probably closer to his ideas than you are, but I never said I am exactly the same. That is, again, your own false interpretation.

I am currently not interested in dungeons, fractals and raids. I have enough to play around with masteries, exploration and leveling alts. After masteries I will start looking at crafting. Trust me, I will not finish all of that in the next week or two.

You are just able to see your own point of view and nothing else and this inability to stand in another’s shoes, blinds you to the fact that a lot of people have different goals or needs from a game and they may be nowhere near. You seem to think that because something is logical to you that it must be the truth for everyone. If that is not the case, then perhaps you should stop acting like it because that is the message you are sending.

This whole point revolves around you not understanding that people don’t have the same goals and therefore don’t have the same needs. As soon as you understand that, you will see that your points don’t matter to others unless they have the same or at least similar goals.

AliamRationem.5172:

Gehenna.3625:

Well, you get the bounce mushrooms from the start but you need gliding first. Also you need to get your elite specialization done and for that you need HP points especially if you have an instant level 80 character that still needs a lot of them. That is currently my issues with my Mesmer. I have to go to other maps to get the HP and I need to grind a lot of events to get enough xp for the masteries. I have over 20 points of masteries currently waiting but I have to do a lot of repeat events to get the xp so I can actually spend the mastery points.

And I like exploring so when I run into a portal to another area I go through it. Call it curiosity, but I have to do a lot of xp grinding before I can do ley flight and I still have to get other stuff for the story continuation. I am not a natural grinder and I am not in a guild so just with a basic xp boost doing some events and exploring it still takes me two nights of gameplay to get enough xp for the next mastery unlock.

This might also surprise you but not everybody likes to redo the same events 20 times in one evening. I try to enjoy the game as I go along and sometimes I just spend 20 minutes trying to get somewhere on the map that I have to figure out how to get there because the map has multiple levels. I find that interesting but it takes time, so I am not just focused on my xp bar. It does get me into trouble though because it takes me longer to get the xp needed but to be honest, if I would play the game the way some of you do I’d get burnt out on it in no time. That doesn’t help me.

So yeh, people can be very different. I suppose it’s good that you realise that, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise.

The question is whether or not 3 mastery points represent an unreasonable barrier to exploration in HoT. Did they need to paint the guy a sign to tell him that he probably wants to get up to those impossible-to-reach places by using those updrafts and bounce mushrooms?

The problem for me was not the mastery points to be honest. It’s the xp that you need to spend in between to spend them that causes it. You see, I can go through a zone, exploring and do the story and get mastery points and repeat some events and then go to the next zone as the story guides me. By that time I didn’t gain enough xp to spend to those 3 mastery points.

And in the mean time I’m looking for hero points to unlock the elite spec which requires a fair number of hero points. So I went to the next zone to unlock those. And hey, I saw the gliding stuff and went for that instead of the mushrooms. The horror! I went for something I liked instead of what someone else decided I needed.

But you also run into those tunneling zones quite early that take a while before you can unlock them so for me the point seems that you run into quite a few things that you cannot unlock right away. To me that’s a bit annoying but I’ll get there, I’m not so worried but I can see that people can get annoyed over that.

SolarDragon.7063:

You’re all acting like levelling masteries in the wrong order is easy to avoid. For gliding and mushrooms, sure. But for the later mastery gates (like investing in Wallows for TD), you can already be in a position of being low on MP’s, especially if you don’t use dulfy for the achievements. THIS IS NOT MY PERSONAL POSITION. But I have seen it happen to guildies and pubs.

It is easy to avoid because only basic gliding, updrafts, and bounce mushrooms are critical for simply getting around in HoT. Not training wallows before you go to TD might slow you down, but it wouldn’t prevent you from reaching nearly every objective on the map.

I don’t doubt that some people have the impression that they must have wallows to explore TD. That doesn’t mean they’re correct in that assumption.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

No, because zones are content and I can’t see being cut off from content being a good thing. What you’re essentially saying is I’m not interested in new zones at all. Maybe you’re not but then the whole mastery question is irrelevant, since masteries only affect PvE.

And if you’re not interested in new zones or raids, what are you interested in? Just dungeons and Fractals? Even Fractals benefit from masteries.

You miss my point enitrely.

If you’re talking about PvE, the only place masteries matter, and you’re saying I don’t care if I can get to new zones or do anything at all in them, I’d say this is a bigger problem for you then just watching story videos on youtube.

It means you can’t continue playing the game in PvE as it moves forward. What’s the point really?

You’re talking story, I’m talking zones. Between zones and story, this IS PvE.

I see your reading skills haven’t improved. I haven’t said what you say here and your conclusions therefore are all pointless. I said I like exploring zones and I will complete the story, though I’m not in a rush to do so. How you turn that into me saying the opposite of that, is just your reading comprehension. Please learn the difference between understanding and agreeing. I understand the other guys’ point of view, but that doesn’t mean I am exactly like him. As I said, again, I am probably closer to his ideas than you are, but I never said I am exactly the same. That is, again, your own false interpretation.

I am currently not interested in dungeons, fractals and raids. I have enough to play around with masteries, exploration and leveling alts. After masteries I will start looking at crafting. Trust me, I will not finish all of that in the next week or two.

You are just able to see your own point of view and nothing else and this inability to stand in another’s shoes, blinds you to the fact that a lot of people have different goals or needs from a game and they may be nowhere near. You seem to think that because something is logical to you that it must be the truth for everyone. If that is not the case, then perhaps you should stop acting like it because that is the message you are sending.

This whole point revolves around you not understanding that people don’t have the same goals and therefore don’t have the same needs. As soon as you understand that, you will see that your points don’t matter to others unless they have the same or at least similar goals.

Actually one of my strengths is seeing other’ points of view. They’re not always reasonable however. And the lack of comprehension here is two way.

I was replying to the first guy when you replied to me. You’re attempting to say that I can’t see his point of view. But his point of view directly prevents him from going into the new zone and getting anything done.

That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what you like or what you like, because we’re actually having a conversation about the first poster, who says he can just watch the videos of the story on youtube and thus he can avoid leveling masteries. That’s only true if he doesn’t want to play the new zone also.

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

No, because zones are content and I can’t see being cut off from content being a good thing. What you’re essentially saying is I’m not interested in new zones at all. Maybe you’re not but then the whole mastery question is irrelevant, since masteries only affect PvE.

And if you’re not interested in new zones or raids, what are you interested in? Just dungeons and Fractals? Even Fractals benefit from masteries.

You miss my point enitrely.

If you’re talking about PvE, the only place masteries matter, and you’re saying I don’t care if I can get to new zones or do anything at all in them, I’d say this is a bigger problem for you then just watching story videos on youtube.

It means you can’t continue playing the game in PvE as it moves forward. What’s the point really?

You’re talking story, I’m talking zones. Between zones and story, this IS PvE.

I see your reading skills haven’t improved. I haven’t said what you say here and your conclusions therefore are all pointless. I said I like exploring zones and I will complete the story, though I’m not in a rush to do so. How you turn that into me saying the opposite of that, is just your reading comprehension. Please learn the difference between understanding and agreeing. I understand the other guys’ point of view, but that doesn’t mean I am exactly like him. As I said, again, I am probably closer to his ideas than you are, but I never said I am exactly the same. That is, again, your own false interpretation.

I am currently not interested in dungeons, fractals and raids. I have enough to play around with masteries, exploration and leveling alts. After masteries I will start looking at crafting. Trust me, I will not finish all of that in the next week or two.

You are just able to see your own point of view and nothing else and this inability to stand in another’s shoes, blinds you to the fact that a lot of people have different goals or needs from a game and they may be nowhere near. You seem to think that because something is logical to you that it must be the truth for everyone. If that is not the case, then perhaps you should stop acting like it because that is the message you are sending.

This whole point revolves around you not understanding that people don’t have the same goals and therefore don’t have the same needs. As soon as you understand that, you will see that your points don’t matter to others unless they have the same or at least similar goals.

Actually one of my strengths is seeing other’ points of view. They’re not always reasonable however. And the lack of comprehension here is two way.

I was replying to the first guy when you replied to me. You’re attempting to say that I can’t see his point of view. But his point of view directly prevents him from going into the new zone and getting anything done.

That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what you like or what you like, because we’re actually having a conversation about the first poster, who says he can just watch the videos of the story on youtube and thus he can avoid leveling masteries. That’s only true if he doesn’t want to play the new zone also.

If its me your talking about, I recently finished season 3. It took a lot of alcohol to stand the map design. Only up to mastering stealth gliding, bouncy mushrooms, but not sure if any other travel masteries were needed, it didn’t appear so. I still say masteries are as frustrating as texas, but mostly when they interrupt the main story.

Nethod.7068:

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

No, because zones are content and I can’t see being cut off from content being a good thing. What you’re essentially saying is I’m not interested in new zones at all. Maybe you’re not but then the whole mastery question is irrelevant, since masteries only affect PvE.

And if you’re not interested in new zones or raids, what are you interested in? Just dungeons and Fractals? Even Fractals benefit from masteries.

You miss my point enitrely.

If you’re talking about PvE, the only place masteries matter, and you’re saying I don’t care if I can get to new zones or do anything at all in them, I’d say this is a bigger problem for you then just watching story videos on youtube.

It means you can’t continue playing the game in PvE as it moves forward. What’s the point really?

You’re talking story, I’m talking zones. Between zones and story, this IS PvE.

I see your reading skills haven’t improved. I haven’t said what you say here and your conclusions therefore are all pointless. I said I like exploring zones and I will complete the story, though I’m not in a rush to do so. How you turn that into me saying the opposite of that, is just your reading comprehension. Please learn the difference between understanding and agreeing. I understand the other guys’ point of view, but that doesn’t mean I am exactly like him. As I said, again, I am probably closer to his ideas than you are, but I never said I am exactly the same. That is, again, your own false interpretation.

I am currently not interested in dungeons, fractals and raids. I have enough to play around with masteries, exploration and leveling alts. After masteries I will start looking at crafting. Trust me, I will not finish all of that in the next week or two.

You are just able to see your own point of view and nothing else and this inability to stand in another’s shoes, blinds you to the fact that a lot of people have different goals or needs from a game and they may be nowhere near. You seem to think that because something is logical to you that it must be the truth for everyone. If that is not the case, then perhaps you should stop acting like it because that is the message you are sending.

This whole point revolves around you not understanding that people don’t have the same goals and therefore don’t have the same needs. As soon as you understand that, you will see that your points don’t matter to others unless they have the same or at least similar goals.

Actually one of my strengths is seeing other’ points of view. They’re not always reasonable however. And the lack of comprehension here is two way.

I was replying to the first guy when you replied to me. You’re attempting to say that I can’t see his point of view. But his point of view directly prevents him from going into the new zone and getting anything done.

That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what you like or what you like, because we’re actually having a conversation about the first poster, who says he can just watch the videos of the story on youtube and thus he can avoid leveling masteries. That’s only true if he doesn’t want to play the new zone also.

If its me your talking about, I recently finished season 3. It took a lot of alcohol to stand the map design. Only up to mastering stealth gliding, bouncy mushrooms, but not sure if any other travel masteries were needed, it didn’t appear so. I still say masteries are as frustrating as texas, but mostly when they interrupt the main story.

The conversation is too fractured to understand what I was saying. Sorry you aren’t enjoying the mastery system. For some of us, it has improved the game by giving us some sort of progression.

Obviously not everyone needs it, but I’m willing to wager more people do than don’t.

I can only hope the next expansion expels the current mastery system. It is not fun at all..

slashlizardy.9167:

I can only hope the next expansion expels the current mastery system. It is not fun at all..

I doubt it will happen. There aren’t enough people who don’t like it for it to change. They may change how you get mastery points for it, but they won’t change the system.

Vayne.8563:

Actually one of my strengths is seeing other’ points of view. They’re not always reasonable however. And the lack of comprehension here is two way.

Well I may not share your view that this is one of your strengths but I’ll be happy to call it a misunderstanding just the same because I can see a couple of points that may have caused a misunderstanding also on my side.

Vayne.8563:

I was replying to the first guy when you replied to me. You’re attempting to say that I can’t see his point of view. But his point of view directly prevents him from going into the new zone and getting anything done.

Actually no, you were replying to someone else’s comment and not the op at that point. Perhaps that’s where the miscommunication started as you might’ve thought it was the op.

As for the op it’s true that his point of view might prevent him from going into the new zone but he is not required to want to do that. There is nothing wrong with him having that view nor is there anything wrong with him changing his mind at some point either.

I personally also like the masteries though I’m not entirely fond of the length of time that it takes me to get the xp for each individual mastery level. However, it hasn’t stopped me from working on it anyway as I am not afraid to put a bit of work in when I believe it’s not way out there and in this case I find it annoying at times but still reasonable.

I do understand though that if people just want to play the story through, this is just really annoying. I am just lucky I am in no hurry to complete the story.

I went into the expansion with a open mind, but unfortunately I dislike it more with every day I log on. It doesn’t have the Guild wars soul or warm fluffy feeling. It’s cold and grating, and the feeling of purpose is a lie.

When HoT first launched I thought the mastery system was a clever idea. After playing the expansion for a while, I was less than impressed with the system. It seems to me to be a cynical time waster and is really an illusion. It’s just a number by your name.

Vanilla gw2 you had access to maps as you explored. There was no mechanism to restrict you from exploration. Why did Anet waste all the time and effort on this system and not focus on more maps and encounters?

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Actually one of my strengths is seeing other’ points of view. They’re not always reasonable however. And the lack of comprehension here is two way.

Well I may not share your view that this is one of your strengths but I’ll be happy to call it a misunderstanding just the same because I can see a couple of points that may have caused a misunderstanding also on my side.

Vayne.8563:

I was replying to the first guy when you replied to me. You’re attempting to say that I can’t see his point of view. But his point of view directly prevents him from going into the new zone and getting anything done.

Actually no, you were replying to someone else’s comment and not the op at that point. Perhaps that’s where the miscommunication started as you might’ve thought it was the op.

As for the op it’s true that his point of view might prevent him from going into the new zone but he is not required to want to do that. There is nothing wrong with him having that view nor is there anything wrong with him changing his mind at some point either.

I personally also like the masteries though I’m not entirely fond of the length of time that it takes me to get the xp for each individual mastery level. However, it hasn’t stopped me from working on it anyway as I am not afraid to put a bit of work in when I believe it’s not way out there and in this case I find it annoying at times but still reasonable.

I do understand though that if people just want to play the story through, this is just really annoying. I am just lucky I am in no hurry to complete the story.

But the person I was replying to replied to me replying to the OP’s post. WHether I was replying to him or not, that was the conversation.

What I said is factually true, if you watch videos because you dont’ want to get mastery points and you don’t get mastery points you’ll have trouble moving forward in this game. That’s what I was saying, that’s what I maintain, and it’s pretty much factual.

Let’s say you get no masteries. Then you can’t do the new zone, no matter how many videos you watch. Nor can you now do the new raids as well.

My comment was never about liking the masteries or not liking them. My comment was that watching videos because you don’t want to level masteries, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to level masteries anyway.

Dashingsteel.3410:

When HoT first launched I thought the mastery system was a clever idea. After playing the expansion for a while, I was less than impressed with the system. It seems to me to be a cynical time waster and is really an illusion. It’s just a number by your name.

Vanilla gw2 you had access to maps as you explored. There was no mechanism to restrict you from exploration. Why did Anet waste all the time and effort on this system and not focus on more maps and encounters?

Because we didn’t want vertical progression and this is a form of horizontal progression. It’s a tried to true thing that has worked in other games, and though you may not like it, some people do. And some don’t know if they like it or not because they don’t really think about it deeply.

You take away progression from an MMO and you lose a percentage of the playerbase. But this fan base is dead set against vertical progression or at least a very verbal segment of it is (including me). This was the compromise.

Vayne.8563:

slashlizardy.9167:

I can only hope the next expansion expels the current mastery system. It is not fun at all..

I doubt it will happen. There aren’t enough people who don’t like it for it to change. They may change how you get mastery points for it, but they won’t change the system.

Yes, I would like to see gaining mastery points be more doable in some way. Like buying them or having them come with xp. I have no problem with the current xp requirements (although like others have said I would like them to be more logical if possible) but a lot of people (including me) are winding up not being able to progress in masteries simply because we ran into a brick wall with getting MPs. Platformer adventures are not why I play GW2. At one point I ran into an annoyance with the story, sure I could look up how to solve the problem but that would defeat the point of being surprised by it.

Vayne.8563:

But the person I was replying to replied to me replying to the OP’s post. WHether I was replying to him or not, that was the conversation.

Except the guy you were replying gave a very different slant to the topic, so for me, even though it related to the topic, wasn’t the same viewpoint as the op, so it’s really strange to me to treat it as if it’s the same. It simply wasn’t.

Vayne.8563:

What I said is factually true, if you watch videos because you dont’ want to get mastery points and you don’t get mastery points you’ll have trouble moving forward in this game. That’s what I was saying, that’s what I maintain, and it’s pretty much factual.

Let’s say you get no masteries. Then you can’t do the new zone, no matter how many videos you watch. Nor can you now do the new raids as well.

The guy basically said he just wanted to see the story and he could do that via youtube rather than doing things he didn’t want to do that were gating the story. Your facts don’t apply if that’s all he wanted and that’s what he said.

Vayne.8563:

My comment was never about liking the masteries or not liking them. My comment was that watching videos because you don’t want to level masteries, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to level masteries anyway.

Since the guy just mentioned wanting to do the story and found a way to bypass the zone by watching it on youtube, I don’t see why you felt the need to explain how it was important to do the zone to reach all kinds of other goals he didn’t show interest in.

But I guess that’s just me.