Guild Wars 2

It is puzzling.

Firstly, COF isn’t nerfed and spider is nerfed. There isn’t any consistency in those actions.

Secondly, didn’t anet mentioned that if people want to grind for experience and level up quickly, it is their rights to do so?

Tsk tsk tsk.

PS: I used to do spider but no longer do it since I don’t need it. However, I think such nerf is unreasonable and not consistent.

Just go the the next farm shrug

I think the difference is that the spiders were dropping loot as well as xp. COF farm doesn’t drop the loot so they didn’t feel the need to nerf it yet.

The spider farm nerf really is pointless, it’s just 1 less thing to do in the new expansion, if nobody would’ve thought about farming them, they never would’ve been nerfed, it wasen’t any form of exploiting, it was just a smooth path of killing elites.

In my opnion I feel anet made the wrong decision when making them non elites, they should’ve just nerfed the drop rates of loot if anything, farming the spiders was pretty fun, especially with friends to talk to.

Why nerf spider farm? Well, a couple threads down from this one seem to imply that players wanted it nerfed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/plz-nerf-spider-farm

Because repeatedly killing the same mobs in the same area over and over isn’t content. It’s a grind.

Because GW2 isn’t a game in which repeatedly killing the same mobs over and over in a small area is the intended play pattern.

because it rewarded significantly better xp and money than actually playing the game in the intended manner.

Further, it’s a grind that takes up map spots from people that could be contributing to the zone meta. It’s the same problem that the GvG people caused in WvW before that situation was dealt with.

They should nerf the CoF mob XP while they’re at it.

It was nerfed so we can play how we want by being forced to do events.

PopeUrban.2578:

Because repeatedly killing the same mobs in the same area over and over isn’t content. It’s a grind.

Because GW2 isn’t a game in which repeatedly killing the same mobs over and over in a small area is the intended play pattern.

because it rewarded significantly better xp and money than actually playing the game in the intended manner.

Further, it’s a grind that takes up map spots from people that could be contributing to the zone meta. It’s the same problem that the GvG people caused in WvW before that situation was dealt with.

They should nerf the CoF mob XP while they’re at it.

Killing the same mobs over and over isn’t any different then doing the same events over and over. It’s the same grind, different style.

If killing non event related mobs wasen’t the " intended" way to paly the game, why even have them there? All mobs would spawn when an event started, or be apart of an event. There is no “intended” way to play the game.

Thirdly, 5 players killing spiders on a map isnt going to affect the event meta, there’s dozens of players running around exploring, doing mini games, gathering, nerfing spider farming isn’t going to maike a difference at all.

With spider farm nerfed for me, I’m either going to wait till someone discovers another fast farm spot before I bother trying to level my masteries and enjoy other things in the game, not doing 300 hours worth of mindless brain numbing events, lol.

Not to mention all the people that farmed spiders religiously and are already mastery level 161, while everyone else will have to put in 20x the effort to get there now.

What Anet needs to do isn’t just nerfing certain exp farms but more like balancing exp farms out.

Would be hard to do but eh…

Ninski.5680:

PopeUrban.2578:

Because repeatedly killing the same mobs in the same area over and over isn’t content. It’s a grind.

Because GW2 isn’t a game in which repeatedly killing the same mobs over and over in a small area is the intended play pattern.

because it rewarded significantly better xp and money than actually playing the game in the intended manner.

Further, it’s a grind that takes up map spots from people that could be contributing to the zone meta. It’s the same problem that the GvG people caused in WvW before that situation was dealt with.

They should nerf the CoF mob XP while they’re at it.

Killing the same mobs over and over isn’t any different then doing the same events over and over. It’s the same grind, different style.

If killing non event related mobs wasen’t the " intended" way to paly the game, why even have them there? All mobs would spawn when an event started, or be apart of an event. There is no “intended” way to play the game.

Thirdly, 5 players killing spiders on a map isnt going to affect the event meta, there’s dozens of players running around exploring, doing mini games, gathering, nerfing spider farming isn’t going to maike a difference at all.

It’s absolutely different.

The game was specifically designed to discourage people from standing in one place and killing the same mobs over and over. The entire game is designed around moving around maps, exploring, and doing exactly the opposite of standing in one place killing respawning mobs for hours.

It was specifically designed to reward participating in events, which have natural beginnings, endings, actual stories, and are actual content

I still haven’t seen probably a third of the events in HoT and I’m sitting at 40 hoT mastry points invested. It is most certainly not “the same grind” as as repeating the same 30 seconds of gameplay over and over and over for hours.

There are like a million games designed around farming a field full of mobs that do nothing but stand there for hours on end. The ambient enemies in this game are put there as obstacles so you have something to do while you move from place to place. In fact, they active award you better if you kill enemies that haven’t been killed recently to discourage you from farming the same mob over and over.

Or, you know, the obvious part. That there wasn’t anywhere else in the game where you could be ‘rewarded’ for sitting around farming mobs in once small space. That probably should have indicated to you that this was an abberation rather than the norm.

Furthermore, I don’t know what alternate universe you live in where “just five people” were farming spiders. Until today, if you visited that spot you’d commonly find 20-30 people in that spot. That’s easily enough people to throw off the meta.

I think it has more to do with farming competing with event. People who farm do so because it’s a better source of XP. The problem is, if too many think in that way it screw the meta-event for the rest of us. If they just give events more XP they shorten the time required to get mastery. So if they don’t want that, they have to nerf what compete the meta-event: the spiders being one thing.

They seem to be okay with people farming XP for Tyria but not for HoT.

It is puzzling.

Celtic Lady.3729:

They seem to be okay with people farming XP for Tyria but not for HoT.

It is puzzling.

It wouldn’t be as bad without the ridiculous diminishing returns on HoT events.

Daralii.8940:

It wouldn’t be as bad without the ridiculous diminishing returns on HoT events.

I’ve always thought that DR in any capacity in a game was stupid.

Celtic Lady.3729:

They seem to be okay with people farming XP for Tyria but not for HoT.

It is puzzling.

The ONLY reason I understood as to why they would not bother with COF exploit (yes, it is an exploit) is because it’s mostly giving access to old stuff (ppl already have legendaries ect.). The exact same in the new zone would be ban worthy like back in the Orr farming of one event in Lyssa cathedral. The no loot argument is not making it any less an exploit. They just don’t care about central Tyria exploit is all I understood.

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Aomine.5012:

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Why would you assume everyone is completing these collections?

which spider…………………………….

Celtic Lady.3729:

Aomine.5012:

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Why would you assume everyone is completing these collections?

Because I haven’t really spend any currency on Chak/Auric weapon skins and Bladed armor set yet and I’m level 137 already…

so if you complete the set you get a lot of mastery xp ?

Aomine.5012:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Aomine.5012:

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Why would you assume everyone is completing these collections?

Because I haven’t really spend any currency on Chak/Auric weapon skins and Bladed armor set yet and I’m level 137 already…

My point is, people that aren’t trying to get any of the weapon skins aren’t going to have this as something to gauge their progress by.

azizul.8469:

so if you complete the set you get a lot of mastery xp ?

My point is it doesn’t take lots of effort to reach lv161.
The effort is so low that even my currency is too low/ not doing enough events, I’m still at level 137 already.

Aomine.5012:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Aomine.5012:

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Why would you assume everyone is completing these collections?

Because I haven’t really spend any currency on Chak/Auric weapon skins and Bladed armor set yet and I’m level 137 already…

You have the strangest way of measuring things…

Axialbloom.8109:

Aomine.5012:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Aomine.5012:

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Why would you assume everyone is completing these collections?

Because I haven’t really spend any currency on Chak/Auric weapon skins and Bladed armor set yet and I’m level 137 already…

You have the strangest way of measuring things…

Because most of the events that grant xp gives you currency?
If my currency is too low to buy anything, it means that I still do not do enough events, yet I’m lv137 already?

Tbh, during your hunt for mastery points (which involves all activities), you already get more than enough xp to get what you need.

“The game was specifically designed to discourage people from standing in one place and killing the same mobs over and over. The entire game is designed around moving around maps, exploring, and doing exactly the opposite of standing in one place killing respawning mobs for hours.”

Then I could do all that stuff after achieving my gold/loot/experience/whatever goal. Isn’t the game supposed to be about fighting things anyway? Sometimes when mining or logging I don’t wanna fight because the accruing seconds from all that battles aren’t worth their accumulative EXP and loot, especially mobs with daze, cripple, and/or relatively heavy defense or could burrow.

“It was specifically designed to reward participating in events, which have natural beginnings, endings, actual stories, and are actual content”

Let’s see, 18,000 EXP for an event vs. 5 million EXP for a mastery? That’s a slap in the face “reward” you’d need to do that quest 100’s of times especially if mobs give no experience. Unfortunately, you actually need some of the masteries to progress either in adventures, map completion, or the story itself. It isn’t some cool bonus stuff you save for like extra damage or defense for QoL reasons or a 20% bonus damage buff vs. certain HoT mobs (which assume you don’t have the buff, but if you have the buff it means you could defeat them without it hence the mastery kind of a if you have it you don’t need it but it makes your experience much better kind of a deal.) Instead of that however, we get everything gated behind mushrooms and gliding, even vendors, mastery points, and certain champs are gated behind masteries.

“The no loot argument is not making it any less an exploit. They just don’t care about central Tyria exploit is all I understood.”

Right…because killing things is an “exploit”. Soon enough simply logging in will be an “exploit” too.

Agemnon.4608:

“The no loot argument is not making it any less an exploit. They just don’t care about central Tyria exploit is all I understood.”

Right…because killing things is an “exploit”. Soon enough simply logging in will be an “exploit” too.

You are trying way too hard to make that strawman. the exploit was never to kill anything. The exploit is to never fulfill the condition to end the donjon subquest despite the fact it obviously supposed to be done as fast as possible in order to get an unintended advantage out of it.

Agemnon.4608:

“The game was specifically designed to discourage people from standing in one place and killing the same mobs over and over. The entire game is designed around moving around maps, exploring, and doing exactly the opposite of standing in one place killing respawning mobs for hours.”

Then I could do all that stuff after achieving my gold/loot/experience/whatever goal. Isn’t the game supposed to be about fighting things anyway? Sometimes when mining or logging I don’t wanna fight because the accruing seconds from all that battles aren’t worth their accumulative EXP and loot, especially mobs with daze, cripple, and/or relatively heavy defense or could burrow.

“It was specifically designed to reward participating in events, which have natural beginnings, endings, actual stories, and are actual content”

Let’s see, 18,000 EXP for an event vs. 5 million EXP for a mastery? That’s a slap in the face “reward” you’d need to do that quest 100’s of times especially if mobs give no experience. Unfortunately, you actually need some of the masteries to progress either in adventures, map completion, or the story itself. It isn’t some cool bonus stuff you save for like extra damage or defense for QoL reasons or a 20% bonus damage buff vs. certain HoT mobs (which assume you don’t have the buff, but if you have the buff it means you could defeat them without it hence the mastery kind of a if you have it you don’t need it but it makes your experience much better kind of a deal.) Instead of that however, we get everything gated behind mushrooms and gliding, even vendors, mastery points, and certain champs are gated behind masteries.

“The no loot argument is not making it any less an exploit. They just don’t care about central Tyria exploit is all I understood.”

Right…because killing things is an “exploit”. Soon enough simply logging in will be an “exploit” too.

90% of mobs are giving experience.
The only ones with no xp is the one that have infinite spawn if you do not complete the objective. (To prevent exploit obviously.)

People who complained about this usually are ones who played the least and spend the least effort in doing these.

One more thing, DS meta gives 140k xp upon completion.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Agemnon.4608:

“The no loot argument is not making it any less an exploit. They just don’t care about central Tyria exploit is all I understood.”

Right…because killing things is an “exploit”. Soon enough simply logging in will be an “exploit” too.

You are trying way too hard to make that strawman. the exploit was never to kill anything. The exploit is to never fulfill the condition to end the donjon subquest despite the fact it obviously supposed to be done as fast as possible in order to get an unintended advantage out of it.

You’d still need hours of grinding just to get anything out of that method and still no loot however. I remember when fighting Orr giants was fun then they got nerfed, now they just give champ boxes with some green gear usually. Still an improvement over the first nerfed version but the original was better because more grubs equaled more loot tables, which means that theoretically you will eventually earn a precursor and some black lion keys if you do it long enough. Sure it’d take weeks in real world time assuming no MF (it’s only incremental so heck let’s assume MF anyway) and DR but chances of getting something improve with prolonged play. If someone has a million scratch tickets and the big prize is a million to one then his chances of winning are much better than the guy who only has one ticket.

well, honestly i wouldn’t worry much about the exp. i’m more concern about the mastery points available for me to spend. Exp would come from the normal gameplay, but mastery points you have to hunt. some of them are just too tricky, for me at least.

if only we can reset the mastery point spent, i would want to get back the 3 points I spent on Exalted Assistance. it doesn’t really help me in anything right now..

Agemnon.4608:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Agemnon.4608:

“The no loot argument is not making it any less an exploit. They just don’t care about central Tyria exploit is all I understood.”

Right…because killing things is an “exploit”. Soon enough simply logging in will be an “exploit” too.

You are trying way too hard to make that strawman. the exploit was never to kill anything. The exploit is to never fulfill the condition to end the donjon subquest despite the fact it obviously supposed to be done as fast as possible in order to get an unintended advantage out of it.

You’d still need hours of grinding just to get anything out of that method and still no loot however. I remember when fighting Orr giants was fun then they got nerfed, now they just give champ boxes with some green gear usually. Still an improvement over the first nerfed version but the original was better because more grubs equaled more loot tables, which means that theoretically you will eventually earn a precursor and some black lion keys if you do it long enough. Sure it’d take weeks in real world time assuming no MF (it’s only incremental so heck let’s assume MF anyway) and DR but chances of getting something improve with prolonged play. If someone has a million scratch tickets and the big prize is a million to one then his chances of winning are much better than the guy who only has one ticket.

That is beside the point. It’s still an exploit. However, ANET said that this particular exploit wasn’t getting any attention for previously mentioned reasons…

Why nerf spider farm? Well, a couple threads down from this one seem to imply that players wanted it nerfed.

Yes, but those players were trying to take away from other players, so who cares what they want?

The simple fact is that since they nerfed the Spider farm, they need to provide a viable alternative. The existing methods are either not an option for most players (raiding), or way too slow (anything else). I’m in a good enough position that I already have most of the masteries I actually care about (just need poison), but plenty did not invest the time they needed while the had the option, and will now be kittened.

Furthermore, I don’t know what alternate universe you live in where “just five people” were farming spiders. Until today, if you visited that spot you’d commonly find 20-30 people in that spot. That’s easily enough people to throw off the meta.

I don’t know what world you were living in, but I was farming off and on for the past couple weeks, and never even once saw more than ten people, usually 3-7. 20-30 people would have been completely unfeasible for that map, they wouldn’t be able to tag enemies fast enough even in parties. If I ever did come across a group that large I would try to change maps.

One more thing, DS meta gives 140k xp upon completion.

From what I’ve noticed so far, the DS meta does give solid XP, but it’s an hour and a half investment, basically a large dungeon or raid, and as the Fractal changes highlighted, lots of players don’t have time for that mess. Players want short and sweet scenarios, where you can just get in, achieve the maximum reward possible from that activity in less than a half hour, and then move on to something else. The existing map metas are pretty bad at this in most cases.

All I know is that I’ve spent probably 90% of my time since HoT in the HoT maps (the rest spent building my Rev, Halloween stuff, Dailies, or running guild missions), and of that time, I gained more mastery progression out of a few total hours Spider Farming than I did in the dozens of hours doing anything and everything else available.

Now keep in mind, it’s not like players can just spider farm and max everything. You need points as well, and if a fresh player just ran to the spider farm (assuming he’s portalled up) he’d be out of points within a half hour or so. even if someone dabbled in the other content they would quickly run out of points. By the time you’re halfway through the trees you’ll need to have done some combination of completing the basic story, finding several mastery points/strongboxes, completing map achievements, and clearly silver/gold on adventures, so you’re playing the game, it’s just that doing all of those things would only give you enough XP to unlock maybe 10-15 mastery levels (like an average of T2 or so).

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I think it has more to do with farming competing with event. People who farm do so because it’s a better source of XP. The problem is, if too many think in that way it screw the meta-event for the rest of us. If they just give events more XP they shorten the time required to get mastery. So if they don’t want that, they have to nerf what compete the meta-event: the spiders being one thing.

If A-Net wanted that, they should not put the raid-entrance in Verdant Brink, because now a lot of people are standing in front of it, waiting until their raid starts.

Zok.4956:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I think it has more to do with farming competing with event. People who farm do so because it’s a better source of XP. The problem is, if too many think in that way it screw the meta-event for the rest of us. If they just give events more XP they shorten the time required to get mastery. So if they don’t want that, they have to nerf what compete the meta-event: the spiders being one thing.

If A-Net wanted that, they should not put the raid-entrance in Verdant Brink, because now a lot of people are standing in front of it, waiting until their raid starts.

Well said.

SkyShroud.2865:

Secondly, didn’t anet mentioned that if people want to grind for experience and level up quickly, it is their rights to do so?

No. They said the Central Tyrian masteries were designed with old content in mind, and how fast we get them is up to us. These new ones in Maguuma they don’t want a farm like this. Which is why CoF is fine, but this is not according to ArenaNet

No. They said the Central Tyrian masteries were designed with old content in mind, and how fast we get them is up to us. These new ones in Maguuma they don’t want a farm like this. Which is why CoF is fine, but this is not according to ArenaNet

If they didn’t want to “farm them like this” then they designed their game wrong. The way they designed their game, you require numerous masteries in order to unlock various content and/or make it possible to succeed at that content, and in order to progress those masteries you need lots of XP, which the existing content delivers at an anemic pace.

If they didn’t want us to farm XP like this, then they needed some combination of:

• The Masteries not requiring XP to progress, and instead only be progressed as you find Mastery points in the world.

• The Masteries being arranged so that high end masteries were all totally optional to progressing most content and would not slow down your access to metas and other content.

• The basic content of Magus Falls would produce roughly 10x the XP per minute of engaged play than they currently do.

Since they failed to design the content that way, they designed it so that activities like the Spider Farm became the only reasonable path forward.

Celtic Lady.3729:

They seem to be okay with people farming XP for Tyria but not for HoT.

It is puzzling.

That’s because they don’t care about core anymore.

Aomine.5012:

Axialbloom.8109:

Aomine.5012:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Aomine.5012:

It is really not needed anyway.
By the time you finish the skin collections from earning LOTS of currencies from events, you’d be lv161 already.

Why would you assume everyone is completing these collections?

Because I haven’t really spend any currency on Chak/Auric weapon skins and Bladed armor set yet and I’m level 137 already…

You have the strangest way of measuring things…

Because most of the events that grant xp gives you currency?
If my currency is too low to buy anything, it means that I still do not do enough events, yet I’m lv137 already?

Tbh, during your hunt for mastery points (which involves all activities), you already get more than enough xp to get what you need.

I’m running out of mastery points and will just complete the gliding and have no more mastery points to get from the maps themselves.

I’m going to be forced to find a guide and find out how to do some gimmicky timed adventure mini game kitten in order to progress through some more mastery levels to get the masteries for H0T mastery lines.

It’s almost as bad in Tyria where most of the masteries are gated behind doing some garbage or gathering some poxy collection rather than linked to completion of zones or something remotely linked to the game.

PopeUrban.2578:

Because repeatedly killing the same mobs in the same area over and over isn’t content. It’s a grind.

Because GW2 isn’t a game in which repeatedly killing the same mobs over and over in a small area is the intended play pattern.

because it rewarded significantly better xp and money than actually playing the game in the intended manner.

Further, it’s a grind that takes up map spots from people that could be contributing to the zone meta. It’s the same problem that the GvG people caused in WvW before that situation was dealt with.

They should nerf the CoF mob XP while they’re at it.

GW2 is a grindy game killing things over and over in small area to get collection items for several PVE reward tracks.

One of the Dev’s twitted that CoF farm was legit and they didn’t care about how players grinded to level masteries.

GVG is far worse of an issues with taking up map slots plus with toxic chat than with spider farm ever was. The more people doing spider farm becomes counter productive as the spider would die too fast to get credit. 12 people farming spiders isn’t going to make a huge difference on a map doing meta events. What happened to play our way? And don’t give me that players taken “play your way” out of context speech also it has nothing to do with power level/progression that you’ve tried to pull before.

So with raids out now and on same map with players spamming looking for raid groups or groups forming up to do raids are taking up far more map spots thus taking away even more players away from doing meta events then the spider farm is.

Seriously do you really play the game at all? or spend all your time on the forums?

Zok.4956:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I think it has more to do with farming competing with event. People who farm do so because it’s a better source of XP. The problem is, if too many think in that way it screw the meta-event for the rest of us. If they just give events more XP they shorten the time required to get mastery. So if they don’t want that, they have to nerf what compete the meta-event: the spiders being one thing.

If A-Net wanted that, they should not put the raid-entrance in Verdant Brink, because now a lot of people are standing in front of it, waiting until their raid starts.

I also happen to think they should put the raid on a separate server for the exact same reason they did Obsidian sanctum initially within WvW. It was the same problem with people not participating to the war efforts that could get problematic when the numbers of people in the puzzle was high and the server had a queue.

SkyShroud.2865:

It is puzzling.

Firstly, COF isn’t nerfed and spider is nerfed. There isn’t any consistency in those actions.

Secondly, didn’t anet mentioned that if people want to grind for experience and level up quickly, it is their rights to do so?

Tsk tsk tsk.

PS: I used to do spider but no longer do it since I don’t need it. However, I think such nerf is unreasonable and not consistent.

Because casuals.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I think it has more to do with farming competing with event. People who farm do so because it’s a better source of XP. The problem is, if too many think in that way it screw the meta-event for the rest of us. If they just give events more XP they shorten the time required to get mastery. So if they don’t want that, they have to nerf what compete the meta-event: the spiders being one thing.

Yes. Think of the meta events guys. That’s why they made sure not to put the entrance to the raid in Verdant Brink.

…oh wait

Excludee.3850:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I think it has more to do with farming competing with event. People who farm do so because it’s a better source of XP. The problem is, if too many think in that way it screw the meta-event for the rest of us. If they just give events more XP they shorten the time required to get mastery. So if they don’t want that, they have to nerf what compete the meta-event: the spiders being one thing.

Yes. Think of the meta events guys. That’s why they made sure not to put the entrance to the raid in Verdant Brink.

…oh wait

Sight

Did you just, like, read 2 posts above you? The one where I said the entrance to the raid being in VB was a mistake?

Ohoni.6057:

No. They said the Central Tyrian masteries were designed with old content in mind, and how fast we get them is up to us. These new ones in Maguuma they don’t want a farm like this. Which is why CoF is fine, but this is not according to ArenaNet

If they didn’t want to “farm them like this” then they designed their game wrong. The way they designed their game, you require numerous masteries in order to unlock various content and/or make it possible to succeed at that content, and in order to progress those masteries you need lots of XP, which the existing content delivers at an anemic pace.

If they didn’t want us to farm XP like this, then they needed some combination of:

• The Masteries not requiring XP to progress, and instead only be progressed as you find Mastery points in the world.

• The Masteries being arranged so that high end masteries were all totally optional to progressing most content and would not slow down your access to metas and other content.

• The basic content of Magus Falls would produce roughly 10x the XP per minute of engaged play than they currently do.

Since they failed to design the content that way, they designed it so that activities like the Spider Farm became the only reasonable path forward.

You find taking longer to be able to get something (or get to something, as the case may be) unreasonable, then? Funny, because Masteries are stand-ins for MMO progression and “takes time” is a fundamental component of MMO progression systems.

This indicates to me that you and those who think as you do find the content one would complete to gain the needed experience currency is no more fun than standing in one spot killing the same mobs over and over again. That last is — to me — the most boring thing I can imagine, so the “other” content would have to be really bad for me to accept what the F2P grinder spider farm represents.

This is interesting feedback in one sense. However, it begs the question: what content will you do with the Mastery that you cannot do without it that would be more fun? If HoT events are that boring, will having the Mastery make them interesting? Are the things you say are gated more compelling than the rest of it?

Honest question.

What’s the new farm? is there any?

You find taking longer to be able to get something (or get to something, as the case may be) unreasonable, then? Funny, because Masteries are stand-ins for MMO progression and “takes time” is a fundamental component of MMO progression systems.

Ever hear “a rose by any other name, smells as sweet?” This is sort of the same thing, only the opposite. GW2 didn’t raise the level cap. Hooray. But they did something that was very similar to raising the level cap to level 160. That is not better

If I want to raise a character from 1-80, I have a pile of L30 scrolls and a stack of tomes to do it with. If I want to max masteries, those tools do nothing. Now on the bright side, Masteries are account bound, so accomplishing it on one character means accomplishing it on all, but on the down side, if I want to get a mastery on any character I have to spend perhaps ten level 79-80’s in XP to do so.

I understand MMO progression systems, but I also understand that GW2 benefited greatly by minimizing the sting of those systems, but HoT puts a lot of it right back. I honestly would have preferred them just raising the level cap to 90 and having the elite specs and masteries unlock along the way to that than for them to do things how they did them, but ideally they would have fully embraced the “Metroidvania” concept they pitched to us, in that masteries would just be unlocked by ONCE visiting various locations or achieving various tasks in the game, rather than having to grind to unlock them.

This indicates to me that you and those who think as you do find the content one would complete to gain the needed experience currency is no more fun than standing in one spot killing the same mobs over and over again. That last is — to me — the most boring thing I can imagine, so the “other” content would have to be really bad for me to accept what the F2P grinder spider farm represents.

Well, for one thing, the spider farm isn’t entirely devoid of fun, it’s just just standing in place and repeating the same mob, there is a route to it, and you can have fun gliding between certain points, so it’s more like running a race repeatedly, or doing an Adventure repeatedly than just standing in place and hitting a mob. That said, it’s not the most fun thing, but it’s better than the alternatives.

It’s like work. If you have a reasonably fun job, one that you enjoy doing, but it only pays minimum wage, and then there is another job, one that’s much more boring to you, but which pays 2-3 times that, the latter job might seem to be a better alternative, because you can work half as many hours, and then go about your business with the same amount of money in your pocket to spend.

This is interesting feedback in one sense. However, it begs the question: what content will you do with the Mastery that you cannot do without it that would be more fun?

I can glide leylines now. And anyone who hasn’t experienced Advanced Gliding is missing out massively. It’s impossible to reach plenty of mastery points or compete in many of the Adventures without one or both of these. I can talk to all the major races of shopping purposes now, and was able to unlock most of the Mistward armors. I can see Invisible enemies now, and use those speed mushrooms which are way handier than I thought. The only remaining masteries that I actually care about are the poison one, which would let me participate in several areas and events that would currently kill me, and the Adrenal one, which is only really necessary for one HP so far, but could be handy for other stuff too.

If HoT events are that boring, will having the Mastery make them interesting? Are the things you say are gated more compelling than the rest of it?

It’s more about “why NOT play with these masteries when I can?” I started up a Rev when HoT dropped. My plan was to build her slowly, I jumped her to 30 because I had way too many scrolls not to, but planned to level her from there to 80 naturally and just try everything out. Then I got halfway through the first couple story chapters, and realized that I was just gaining normal XP, which was doing nothing to advance my Tyria masteries, so I used some of my Tome stockpile to get her to 80, so all the XP coming in would advance the mastery tracks.

I was also thinking of getting all the Tyrian HPs before moving her into the Magus Fall area, but then I thought “why bother?” Each MF HP is worth ten times a Tyria one, I can have the Herald done in a fraction of the time that way. So that’s what I did, and now I have the Herald fully unlocked.

Look, I have ten level 80s at this point, and have had most of those characters at level 80 for over two years now. They don’t need “progression” ahead of me to keep me invested. I just want to play the game and have fun, and if I’m at a point where an ability could allow me to be better at a given activity that I’m doing or want to do, then I want that ability, and I resent when that ability is locked behind grind. Even if I had all the masteries unlocked, I would continue to play HoT content, it would just be better when I’m able to USE those abilities.

Dahkeus.8243:

Why nerf spider farm? Well, a couple threads down from this one seem to imply that players wanted it nerfed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/plz-nerf-spider-farm

as with any mmo players want nerfs to about everything and then find a way to complain when the dev team does what they want.

People complaining about this nerf:

I’m just really sad I can’t stand in one place and be bored out of my mind repeating the same completely non challenging mob kill over and over for hours. It was obviously the intended method of gaining mastry xp since it was faster, even though it was less fun than other methods. In fact, the whole game is an unfun grind so at least I could do something shorter. I don’t have the option of not playing a game I don’t enjoy. I’m stuck with this one.

I mean how dare they remove that tedium. It is a slap in the face. Why would they add such boring and repetitive content and then take it away when I felt obligated to play it for it superior rewards? They’ve never done anything like this before, and every easy and tedious farm I’ve used in the game for the past three years still works. Why not this one?

Maps are slowly dwindling, Meta’s are failing more often than succeeding, HP’s are neigh impossible now as less and less people bother with HoT maps.

Spider nerf……just another nail in HoT’s coffin.

yep… for the life of me I dont understand why someone would think nerfing something someone else was doing would force them to participate in their content is beyond me… Now what am I gonna do? definitely wont be the Meta your trying to force me to do, thats for sure… maybe ill run a bunch of adventures and HP trains thru your map now…Or I’ll just be hangin out over here waiting for my next raid group to invite me. BTW i wear all blue gear with runes of the earth and water sigils… on my necro…. well build…. non elite spec.