Guild Wars 2

I would also like to point out that a number of things have been made account bound (aka more alt friendly) such as WvW ranks, fractal levels, spirit shards (formerly skill points) and ascended/legendary gear so I think there is some value in recognizing repetition isn’t always the best thing.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Is that 400 points in total or 400 points just for the skills and traits?

The reason I ask is because I think someone said before that the weapon and armour skins were at the end of the track to be unlocked so all the functional stuff could be gotten first (I think it was a PoI, but not too sure), in which case it wouldn’t be 400 points to unlock the track, skills and traits.

400 with everything, but everything’s in the same line and we only know that the weapon skin is the final unlock. We don’t know where the other skin and non-trait/skill items are located or how many points those are worth.

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

Nope, you can take a low level into Cursed Shore. The boundary doesn’t require you to be level 80.

…and be one-hit by rabbits running around there. Come on, you understand, what I want to say.

Tasao.4623:

This is just flat out terrible. Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind. Some of us play 9+ characters. You want to shut cosmetics behind grinds? You want to shut toys and vanity items behind grinds? You want to shut proportionate rewards behind grinds? Sure. Cool.
But it’s just plain bad design to shut core gameplay for the expansion specs out behind a long grind.

If you can unlock all the traits and skills in short order, that’s fine. It’s ok for the special skins to then take another 200+ points to unlock. But people are going to despise running around for the first week with a half-finished traitline and missing abilities.

Feeling forced to dash off into the jungle and skip content and rush hero points so I can fill out my trait line is going to directly reduce my desire to play GW2. When I think “I feel like playing my Mesmer now that Chronomancer is available” and then remember I need 100+ more points to unlock Chronomancer abilities and traits and the only way to get those points is to grind WvW or to skip jungle content in favor of focusing on hero challenges, I may well just not bother. Because this issue won’t just come up for Chronomancer. It’ll come up for Reaper, and Daredevil, and Berserker, and Tempest. It’ll come up for every single spec.

This is an incredibly alt-unfriendly design decision.

Yeah, like adding new classes, new skills in GW1, new levels in insert your favorite level cap increase MMO here and generally any system that adds character advancement.

This is the most alt friendly game in existence by a large margin. I’d rather have systems that are compelling for people that want something that feels like an accomplishment for one character, than a system that is watered down to an insignificant amount of content or effort just to be “alt friendly”

It is a character advancement system and the last one left in the game since the introduction of scrolls/tomes from dailies.

Why is it such a bad thing to have to, y’know, play characters to advance them a bit?

Wait, so we HAVE to blow all our existing points maxing out the existing lines before we can even start on the Elite spec?

Booooooooooooooooooo.

I had been saving my left over hero points in anticipation of HoT ankitten ow hugely disappointed that most of the characters that I thought would be fine for launch are now way behind the curve. Way to spring this on us guys, you got me good.

Why not have the elite specs unlocked either right away or with very minimal effort, but have all the extras like the skins and sigils take hero points to unlock? This way people that just want the new abilities can use them right away, and if people want to unlock everything, they have the option of using their Elite spec to do so, instead of having to explore everything on the base class and not getting your elite until after having explored everything.

I’ll pay gold to unlock these instead

Halvorn.9831:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

Nope, you can take a low level into Cursed Shore. The boundary doesn’t require you to be level 80.

…and be one-hit by rabbits running around there. Come on, you understand, what I want to say.

There are tomes one can use to bypass leveling if you’re a vet and don’t want to grind out to level 80.

There isn’t going to be anything like that for hero points.

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

Nope, you can take a low level into Cursed Shore. The boundary doesn’t require you to be level 80.

…and be one-hit by rabbits running around there. Come on, you understand, what I want to say.

There are tomes one can use to bypass leveling if you’re a vet and don’t want to grind out to level 80.

There isn’t going to be anything like that for hero points.

Actually there is. It’s in WvW.

Fizz.8763:

Why not have the elite specs unlocked either right away or with very minimal effort, but have all the extras like the skins and sigils take hero points to unlock? This way people that just want the new abilities can use them right away, and if people want to unlock everything, they have the option of using their Elite spec to do so, instead of having to explore everything on the base class and not getting your elite until after having explored everything.

No thank you, I want to have a sense of progression on my characters and don’t want to be handed traits and skills.

How about 400 gold to unlock the whole thing Colin?

Perfect gold sink btw and sure to increase gem sales!

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

There’s plenty of other content other than Cursed Shore to do when you’re not at 80.
But that’s to be expected while leveling. But if you want to dive into the jungle, or do world bosses, or do halloween content, or anything else out in the world on an alt, being faced with a big grind just to unlock your elite spec’s base functionality is absurd. The CONTENT is what should occupy you. Not the unlocking of the abilities and traits you want to use on that content.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

Nope, you can take a low level into Cursed Shore. The boundary doesn’t require you to be level 80.

…and be one-hit by rabbits running around there. Come on, you understand, what I want to say.

There are tomes one can use to bypass leveling if you’re a vet and don’t want to grind out to level 80.

There isn’t going to be anything like that for hero points.

Actually there is. It’s in WvW.

Which I’ve heard is going to be a grind to get so you can’t really bypass the grind that way.

PopeUrban.2578:

cygnus.8913:

Sytherek.7689:

radioAspen.6829:

Can we stop calling people who went out and did entire world completion on their alts just to prepare for this “casual/lazy/want everything handed to them/whatever.”

I think the disparity here is what’s really awkward and shocking. It’s like, what’s the point of doing normal hero challenges now when one challenge in the jungle gives you more points than entire non-Orr maps in central Tyria

Anet is deliberately making the real world into a free-to-play realm, minimizng it’s value to veterans.

Which is a silly thing to do with 90% of available content.

Their goal is to make the old world unattractive so veterans buy the expansion. Levelling alts, however, can only be done in the old world. Perhaps they dislike altitis?

The jungle does look awesome. But it does seem really odd to give ten times the HPs in the jungle. It introduces a vertical progression typically reserved for trinity MMOs to GW2, which was all about horizontal progression – the HPs are just levels, essentially. Pre expac, I could go nuts in Queensdale for days grinding out events if I wanted (Queensdale is still one of my favourite areas of the game).

What if I don’t like the jungle? What if I like it for a while and then prefer the mustiness of the old world to the endless greenery? Why can’t I get the same progression in the old world at even an approximate pace? It’s jungle overdose time.

(The jungle could be awesome, but as Fawlty Towers put it):

BBasil Fawlty: So, uh, this is your new menu.
Colonel Hall: [reading] Duck with orange; duck with cherries; duck surprise.
Mrs. Hall: What’s duck surprise?
Basil Fawlty: Er… that’s duck without orange or cherries.
Colonel Hall: I mean, is this all there is – duck?
Basil Fawlty: Umm… yes… done, of course, in three extremely different ways.
Colonel Hall: And what do you do if you don’t like duck?
Basil Fawlty: Ah, well, if you don’t like duck, uhhh, you’re rather stuck.

The basic argument is that the jungle is harder content, and many of these may require masteries to reach. In addition they may be just plain harder to obtain in a mechanical sense compared to core tyria. Fights or jumping sections could be harder, etc.

The theme of HoT is “PvE that doesn’t suck” compared to core tyria where literally everything in the open world can be accomplished by hitting 1 and rolling your face across the keyboard. It’s basic risk/reward mechanics at work.

How well anet balances challenge with the HP payout remains to be seen, but that’s the general idea at work.

Also keep in mind that hero points are a finite resource, but elite specs are not. Elite specs are an ongoing system, and that necessitates a relationships between the specs and offering more hero points. This means that hero challenges are considered, like mastry points, an ongoing advancement system to make sure new maps, expansions, etc. have content in them that players need to do for the sake of horizontal progression so that there’s a compelling sense of ongoing character progression throughout new content.

Lol @ “PvE that doesn’t suck.” I think GW2 did the best it could without a trinity, and I didn’t see any indications in the last BWE that anything had changed significantly (the wyvern was cool, but the content didn’t seem harder, just longer – my very initial impressions).

As a comparison, FFXIV recently had a new expansion called Heavensward. Parts of it were great, fabulous – other parts were ‘oh gawd, I have to do this again.’ They had one zone in the expac which was practically designed for flying – lots of verticality and places hard to reach that weren’t easily visible from the ground. I viewed it as a chore to play through that zone on my characters.

GW2 is great in the base game because there are some zones I really like (Queensdale, Gendarran Fields, etc) and other maps that I personally don’t rush to do (Orr is one of them, though I do some champ farms there). I can get progression in the base game by doing events anywhere I want. Now I have to get progression in the expansion by doing events in the expansion only unless I am prepared to work ten times as hard/ten times as long for it. Remember ‘the entire game is end-game?’ That’s one of the best draws of GW2. Now the entire endgame is endgame. It’s not innovation.

Colin has cleared up what it will cost to unlock the Elite Spec. You’ll need 400 hero points, but as a prerequisite to beginning to unlock it you’ll have to have all the trait lines already maxed. So for example if you play an Elementalist, you’ll have to have all existing trait lines/specializations (Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Arcane) completely maxxed before you can begin to put hero points towards the Elite Spec (which again will cost 400 hero points on its own).

This will encourage players to grind hero points over everything else and for me I know it will dappen the overall new feel of the expansion at launch. I am 100% ok with the 400 points to unlock the full Elite Spec trait line, but absolutely hate the prereq to unlock all other traitlines. That’s ridiculously because I just don’t use all of them. Since I see this as creating grind to get to the new class play mechanics and since those mechanics were such an important part of my BWE experiences I have to say I don’t understand this decision. As much as any MMO aspires to be anti-grind the eventually descend there, don’t they. What the kitten happened to casual friendly? The hero point acquisition is a time sink. How about sticking to your original manifesto and giving those of us who have jobs and don’t play 24/7 some way to obtain these through the gem store? I’d have no problem if you took that path with it either, but as stated to be implemented once again we have very bad design decision IMO.

Oh well, at least we have them unlocked in PvP. I suppose that will continue to be the only aspect of the game I care about. Love this game, strongly dislike the game design leadership decisions like this because they go against the original vision and manifesto of taking most of the time sinks in an MMO and making those available to more mature players with lives and time commitments through the cash store.

We now know that we need 400 Hero Points to unlock an Elite Spec but do we have to unlock all the core specializations to start our Elite one?

yes

ColinJohanson.2394:

Unlocking your elite spec is a training line in your training panel that costs hero points. You do need to have trained all the existing training lines before you’re allowed to put hero points into your elite spec.

If you’ve got all the hero points in the existing game you’ll have enough to train about half the elite specialization training line on launch day. The rest you’ll need to earn in the jungle or via the new system Tyler outlined yesterday from WvW. The number of points to fully train your elite spec is higher than other training lines – but hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so it’s not actually as big as it appears.

PopeUrban.2578:

Tasao.4623:

This is just flat out terrible. Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind. Some of us play 9+ characters. You want to shut cosmetics behind grinds? You want to shut toys and vanity items behind grinds? You want to shut proportionate rewards behind grinds? Sure. Cool.
But it’s just plain bad design to shut core gameplay for the expansion specs out behind a long grind.

If you can unlock all the traits and skills in short order, that’s fine. It’s ok for the special skins to then take another 200+ points to unlock. But people are going to despise running around for the first week with a half-finished traitline and missing abilities.

Feeling forced to dash off into the jungle and skip content and rush hero points so I can fill out my trait line is going to directly reduce my desire to play GW2. When I think “I feel like playing my Mesmer now that Chronomancer is available” and then remember I need 100+ more points to unlock Chronomancer abilities and traits and the only way to get those points is to grind WvW or to skip jungle content in favor of focusing on hero challenges, I may well just not bother. Because this issue won’t just come up for Chronomancer. It’ll come up for Reaper, and Daredevil, and Berserker, and Tempest. It’ll come up for every single spec.

This is an incredibly alt-unfriendly design decision.

Yeah, like adding new classes, new skills in GW1, new levels in insert your favorite level cap increase MMO here and generally any system that adds character advancement.

This is the most alt friendly game in existence by a large margin. I’d rather have systems that are compelling for people that want something that feels like an accomplishment for one character, than a system that is watered down to an insignificant amount of content or effort just to be “alt friendly”

It is a character advancement system and the last one left in the game since the introduction of scrolls/tomes from dailies.

Why is it such a bad thing to have to, y’know, play characters to advance them a bit?

There’s a vast difference between “playing a character for a bit” and “you don’t get your full elite spec at all until you grind out hundreds of mastery points.”

What’s so hard to understand here? People want to play Reaper, Scrapper, Dragonhunter, etc. They DON’T want to play Necro, Engi, and Guardian in jungle content they’ve already done on other characters just to unlock Reaper, Scrapper, and Dragonhunter.

I’ve seen a couple of comments about having seen some not too hard points to get to in beta. Those were mastery points and had nothing to do with hero challenges.

Hopefully they just didn’t have the hero challenges showing for beta and there will be a couple in the first maps. But no, we did not see a single hero challenge in beta, which is why people were thinking Pact Tyria was the only source until Colin’s post today.

Donari.5237:

I’ve seen a couple of comments about having seen some not too hard points to get to in beta. Those were mastery points and had nothing to do with hero challenges.

Hopefully they just didn’t have the hero challenges showing for beta and there will be a couple in the first maps. But no, we did not see a single hero challenge in beta, which is why people were thinking Pact Tyria was the only source until Colin’s post today.

Except they give you an idea of what you can expect for hero challenges.

Aye.8392:

And now instead of the emphasis being on playing the content, enjoying the game, and loving the scenery the emphasis is on getting to that next hero challenge as fast as humanly possible to unlock new skills and traits. Sad.

That’s exactly why I hate that decision so much.

I was planning on completing the new zones nice and slowly enjoying every bit of it.
Now- since I’m hyped as hell about the elite-specs like everyone else- I’ll probably just rush from challange to challange to unlock my elite-spec as fast as possible.

what lots of people here don’t see is that this decision won’t make people “play” through the new content but rush through it and no, that’s not the same.

I’m pretty sure a great compromise, given the news bomb today, would be to allow players to unlock things with gold as an option on a 1g to 1 hp basis. That’s definitely more than fair. Am I right?

Donari.5237:

I’ve seen a couple of comments about having seen some not too hard points to get to in beta. Those were mastery points and had nothing to do with hero challenges.

Hopefully they just didn’t have the hero challenges showing for beta and there will be a couple in the first maps. But no, we did not see a single hero challenge in beta, which is why people were thinking Pact Tyria was the only source until Colin’s post today.

Oh good, so I wasn’t the only one who didn’t see the hero challenges in beta.

Seera.5916:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Is that 400 points in total or 400 points just for the skills and traits?

The reason I ask is because I think someone said before that the weapon and armour skins were at the end of the track to be unlocked so all the functional stuff could be gotten first (I think it was a PoI, but not too sure), in which case it wouldn’t be 400 points to unlock the track, skills and traits.

400 with everything, but everything’s in the same line and we only know that the weapon skin is the final unlock. We don’t know where the other skin and non-trait/skill items are located or how many points those are worth.

The traits and skills are in the first 60 Hero Points. “Such a grind”

People say 40HP in the jungle and you’re golden, I have a sneaky suspicion you won’t be able to access the majority of them till you grind out masteries.

Jim.4935:

Seera.5916:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Is that 400 points in total or 400 points just for the skills and traits?

The reason I ask is because I think someone said before that the weapon and armour skins were at the end of the track to be unlocked so all the functional stuff could be gotten first (I think it was a PoI, but not too sure), in which case it wouldn’t be 400 points to unlock the track, skills and traits.

400 with everything, but everything’s in the same line and we only know that the weapon skin is the final unlock. We don’t know where the other skin and non-trait/skill items are located or how many points those are worth.

The traits and skills are in the first 60 Hero Points. “Such a grind”

Source for that?

As I honestly doubt with jungle hero challenges being worth 10 hero points, that all the traits and skills are unlocked with just 6 challenges. But that’s just me.

Seera.5916:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

Nope, you can take a low level into Cursed Shore. The boundary doesn’t require you to be level 80.

…and be one-hit by rabbits running around there. Come on, you understand, what I want to say.

There are tomes one can use to bypass leveling if you’re a vet and don’t want to grind out to level 80.

There isn’t going to be anything like that for hero points.

Actually there is. It’s in WvW.

Which I’ve heard is going to be a grind to get so you can’t really bypass the grind that way.

I have no intention of doing it. I’m just saying that’s a thing. I’m just going to run HPs on the handful of characters I want to have elites.

It is by no means a grind. It is repetition, but each repetition is guaranteed to get the exact outcome I’m looking for.

This is what Colin said about unlocking the Elite Specs, Please read it before complaining about grind.

“It works just like any other training line – except all the skills, traits, skins, abilities, etc. are all inside one full training line that costs 400 points to get everything in the entire line. It costs 60 points to unlock and be able to play as the elite specialization itself.
Currently anyone who has done all the hero points in the world has about half of the entire elite spec line unlocked on day one. Hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so you’ll only need to do about 20 hero challenges in the jungle [or via the new WvW system] to have everything related to your elite spec trained.
There are enough hero challenges in the jungle to train your entire elite spec and not do the challenges in core world if you wish – they simply speed you up if you’ve already got them.”

displacedTitan.6897:

And you would have worked toward the unlocks differently than getting the HPs in the game now… how exactly????

The point is had I known, I would have spent time working to unlock those I don’t have so that come Friday I would have cleared them all on the current map. currently I’ve saved what I had not knowing I’ll need to fully train everything else before training a spec I actually want to use. Color this anyway you like it should have been mentioned a long time ago so people actually had a chance to work towards it KNOWING what they’ll need.

All I am reading is a few people upset about the change that keep posting every few post trying to say how bad this will be.

I understand this is a casual game, but logging on and getting everything for every character is just not going to happen. There is nothing wrong with having to play the game on each character to get the elite specs.

Gotchaz.7865:

People say 40HP in the jungle and you’re golden, I have a sneaky suspicion you won’t be able to access the majority of them till you grind out masteries.

40 hero Challenges at max, yes. As each is worth 10 points.

Those who have done all hero challenges in core Tyria have about 19 to do.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

displacedTitan.6897:

And you would have worked toward the unlocks differently than getting the HPs in the game now… how exactly????

The point is had I known, I would have spent time working to unlock those I don’t have so that come Friday I would have cleared them all on the current map. currently I’ve saved what I had not knowing I’ll need to fully train everything else before training a spec I actually want to use. Color this anyway you like it should have been mentioned a long time ago so people actually had a chance to work towards it KNOWING what they’ll need.

This. I think a huge part of the problem with this announcement is that it’s come 3 days until launch. If this had been revealed weeks ago, it likely would have just been a small little disappointment and blown over quickly. Now it’s likely to spill over into launch if ANet doesn’t give more details on it.

Jim.4935:

This is what Colin said about unlocking the Elite Specs, Please read it before complaining about grind.

“It works just like any other training line – except all the skills, traits, skins, abilities, etc. are all inside one full training line that costs 400 points to get everything in the entire line. It costs 60 points to unlock and be able to play as the elite specialization itself.
Currently anyone who has done all the hero points in the world has about half of the entire elite spec line unlocked on day one. Hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so you’ll only need to do about 20 hero challenges in the jungle [or via the new WvW system] to have everything related to your elite spec trained.
There are enough hero challenges in the jungle to train your entire elite spec and not do the challenges in core world if you wish – they simply speed you up if you’ve already got them.”

You can read that in 2 ways:

- You unlock all traits and skills with 60 heropoints and the skins with the remainder of heropoints.
- You unlock the very first minor thing in the training line, most likely a minor trait.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Seera.5916:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

Nope, you can take a low level into Cursed Shore. The boundary doesn’t require you to be level 80.

…and be one-hit by rabbits running around there. Come on, you understand, what I want to say.

There are tomes one can use to bypass leveling if you’re a vet and don’t want to grind out to level 80.

There isn’t going to be anything like that for hero points.

Actually there is. It’s in WvW.

Since they merged ranks I’ve gotten around over 200……..

Sounds like a bigger grind o.o

Seera.5916:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

displacedTitan.6897:

And you would have worked toward the unlocks differently than getting the HPs in the game now… how exactly????

The point is had I known, I would have spent time working to unlock those I don’t have so that come Friday I would have cleared them all on the current map. currently I’ve saved what I had not knowing I’ll need to fully train everything else before training a spec I actually want to use. Color this anyway you like it should have been mentioned a long time ago so people actually had a chance to work towards it KNOWING what they’ll need.

This. I think a huge part of the problem with this announcement is that it’s come 3 days until launch. If this had been revealed weeks ago, it likely would have just been a small little disappointment and blown over quickly. Now it’s likely to spill over into launch if ANet doesn’t give more details on it.

It seems like it’s very hard for people to do 6 Hero Challenges in the jungle to get their Elite Spec (skills and traits).

Can I hire one of these asian farmers to get the elite specialisations for all my characters?

Conner.5803:

Jim.4935:

This is what Colin said about unlocking the Elite Specs, Please read it before complaining about grind.

“It works just like any other training line – except all the skills, traits, skins, abilities, etc. are all inside one full training line that costs 400 points to get everything in the entire line. It costs 60 points to unlock and be able to play as the elite specialization itself.
Currently anyone who has done all the hero points in the world has about half of the entire elite spec line unlocked on day one. Hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so you’ll only need to do about 20 hero challenges in the jungle [or via the new WvW system] to have everything related to your elite spec trained.
There are enough hero challenges in the jungle to train your entire elite spec and not do the challenges in core world if you wish – they simply speed you up if you’ve already got them.”

You can read that in 2 ways:

- You unlock all traits and skills with 60 heropoints and the skins with the remainder of heropoints.
- You unlock the very first minor thing in the training line, most likely a minor trait.

It was data mined that we would need 270 Hero Points to unlock the Elite Specs and now that they give us the base of the Elite Spec (traits and skills) for only 60 Hero Points people are crying on the forums asking for refunds.

Tasao.4623:

This is just flat out terrible. Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind. Some of us play 9+ characters. You want to shut cosmetics behind grinds? You want to shut toys and vanity items behind grinds? You want to shut proportionate rewards behind grinds? Sure. Cool.
But it’s just plain bad design to shut core gameplay for the expansion specs out behind a long grind.

If you can unlock all the traits and skills in short order, that’s fine. It’s ok for the special skins to then take another 200+ points to unlock. But people are going to despise running around for the first week with a half-finished traitline and missing abilities.

Feeling forced to dash off into the jungle and skip content and rush hero points so I can fill out my trait line is going to directly reduce my desire to play GW2. When I think “I feel like playing my Mesmer now that Chronomancer is available” and then remember I need 100+ more points to unlock Chronomancer abilities and traits and the only way to get those points is to grind WvW or to skip jungle content in favor of focusing on hero challenges, I may well just not bother. Because this issue won’t just come up for Chronomancer. It’ll come up for Reaper, and Daredevil, and Berserker, and Tempest. It’ll come up for every single spec.

This is an incredibly alt-unfriendly design decision.

Considering the number of people who have told me I am a terrible forum specialist because I disagree with ANet’s choice to make elite specializations so expensive, I am just going to quote, +1, and emphasize this post here. This post perfectly reflects how I feel in the matter.

I bet if the player had a option to fully unlock elite spec for 200 or 400 hero pts, 98% of people who say they don’t see a problem with it or actually prefer it at 400pt would pick the 200 pt option. End of story.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

I’m expecting a big community backlash and hopefully this will be changed. To whomsoever came up with this idea, kitten you… and I don’t really mean “kitten”… you know what I mean…

Oh, there will be a HUGE outcry and backlash. Especially since a lot of people will find out Friday (either by not using forums or wanting to be surprised) when they go to unlock their elites.

I posted to another site about this in our GW2 thread since nobody else there seems to have noticed yet. My first sentence had about a dozen instances of ‘kitten’ as I knew some there would get the reference.

Jim.4935:

Seera.5916:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

displacedTitan.6897:

And you would have worked toward the unlocks differently than getting the HPs in the game now… how exactly????

The point is had I known, I would have spent time working to unlock those I don’t have so that come Friday I would have cleared them all on the current map. currently I’ve saved what I had not knowing I’ll need to fully train everything else before training a spec I actually want to use. Color this anyway you like it should have been mentioned a long time ago so people actually had a chance to work towards it KNOWING what they’ll need.

This. I think a huge part of the problem with this announcement is that it’s come 3 days until launch. If this had been revealed weeks ago, it likely would have just been a small little disappointment and blown over quickly. Now it’s likely to spill over into launch if ANet doesn’t give more details on it.

It seems like it’s very hard for people to do 6 Hero Challenges in the jungle to get their Elite Spec (skills and traits).

And like I said the last time you spouted off the 60 HP’s: Source?

Because I highly doubt they’ve got it so that you can get all traits and skills within 60 points. Especially with the picture posted earlier in this thread:

Here’s the link.

Clearly shows the elite skill very near the end of the line. With 400 points being from beginning to end, I highly doubt 60 points gets you to the elite skill.

So, please post a source that explicitly states that it’s only 60 points to get from 0 traits and skills for an elite to all of them.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Runiir.6425:

Doesn’t matter what the rate is when you take into account you need every single point in the old maps as well. That x9 is too much.

Except you don’t! There are enough hero challenges in the jungle you don’t need to do any in the core tyrian world – those simply speed you up on day one if you already got them.

10 to 1 pay off for doing the same sort of things on the new map with the prices inflated to devalue the holy heck out of existing content. …Have you hired people from Turbine lately? Because this is the kind of spite for players I’ve come to expect from that studio.

I get it that “play the way you want” is an advertising jingle that’s done nothing but haunt you guys, but this scheme comes dangerously close to “don’t play any way except how we intend you to”. You WILL play the jungle — heavily — to unlock your profession’s Espec. End. Of. Discussion.

Who knew we’d come to miss paying a gold to two for a book to unlock our new toys.

It’s ok it is all a ploy so they can sell them for gems now going forward so those of us that have a dozen characters who get fed up doing all this to get a specialization will just cough up some cash to get through the pain.
Also those who keep bringing up datamining need to drop that. Not everyone sits here day after day waiting to see what’s new and frankly it should have been released by Anet and not left up to someone to data mine out of the game.

Seera.5916:

Jim.4935:

Seera.5916:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

displacedTitan.6897:

And you would have worked toward the unlocks differently than getting the HPs in the game now… how exactly????

The point is had I known, I would have spent time working to unlock those I don’t have so that come Friday I would have cleared them all on the current map. currently I’ve saved what I had not knowing I’ll need to fully train everything else before training a spec I actually want to use. Color this anyway you like it should have been mentioned a long time ago so people actually had a chance to work towards it KNOWING what they’ll need.

This. I think a huge part of the problem with this announcement is that it’s come 3 days until launch. If this had been revealed weeks ago, it likely would have just been a small little disappointment and blown over quickly. Now it’s likely to spill over into launch if ANet doesn’t give more details on it.

It seems like it’s very hard for people to do 6 Hero Challenges in the jungle to get their Elite Spec (skills and traits).

And like I said the last time you spouted off the 60 HP’s: Source?

Because I highly doubt they’ve got it so that you can get all traits and skills within 60 points. Especially with the picture posted earlier in this thread:

Here’s the link.

Clearly shows the elite skill very near the end of the line. With 400 points being from beginning to end, I highly doubt 60 points gets you to the elite skill.

So, please post a source that explicitly states that it’s only 60 points to get from 0 traits and skills for an elite to all of them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ph2e1/today_we_will_be_looking_at_the_profession/cw6gt87

Jim.4935:

Conner.5803:

Jim.4935:

This is what Colin said about unlocking the Elite Specs, Please read it before complaining about grind.

“It works just like any other training line – except all the skills, traits, skins, abilities, etc. are all inside one full training line that costs 400 points to get everything in the entire line. It costs 60 points to unlock and be able to play as the elite specialization itself.
Currently anyone who has done all the hero points in the world has about half of the entire elite spec line unlocked on day one. Hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so you’ll only need to do about 20 hero challenges in the jungle [or via the new WvW system] to have everything related to your elite spec trained.
There are enough hero challenges in the jungle to train your entire elite spec and not do the challenges in core world if you wish – they simply speed you up if you’ve already got them.”

You can read that in 2 ways:

- You unlock all traits and skills with 60 heropoints and the skins with the remainder of heropoints.
- You unlock the very first minor thing in the training line, most likely a minor trait.

It was data mined that we would need 270 Hero Points to unlock the Elite Specs and now that they give us the base of the Elite Spec (traits and skills) for only 60 Hero Points people are crying on the forums asking for refunds.

You can keep claiming that you will unlock the traits and skills for 60 heropoints, but Colin didn’t confirm this at all. He said you need to have 60 heropoints to be able to play the elite spec. This could mean that it could only unlock the first minor trait which gives us the weapon and and the traitline. It makes us being able to play as the new elite spec, but it doesn’t mean we have all skills and traits unlocked.

Vague Memory.2817:

I bet if the player had a option to fully unlock elite spec for 200 or 400 hero pts, 98% of people who say they don’t see a problem with it or actually prefer it at 400pt would pick the 200 pt option. End of story.

And people who had an option to unlock it with 0 points or 200 points would choose zero. People typically will choose the option that requires the least amount of effort.

Can we at least make them unlock accountwide? Getting all specializations unlocked on the 8+ characters that I have is gonna take me a lifetime.

Hero points need to be account bound if this crap goes through.

No way in hell I am grinding 400 hero points to unlock all elite specializations for all the classes I have.

In fact, I was mulling going Tempest figuring that I only need 140 points, and I’m at 70 so I can get 70 quick before the xpac, but this flat out tells me I can’t play Tempest at all with only 70 hero points.

You people sure jumped into the F2P grind bandwagon real quick after sarcastically deriding WoW and its grinds/spreadsheet design/RNG. You removed tokens as currency for guaranteed rewards and replaced it with detestable RNG and large gold grinds.

And now you gate even gameplay aspects like elite specializations behind Heart of Thorns progression, as if grinding masteries wasn’t enough.

Jim.4935:

Seera.5916:

Jim.4935:

Seera.5916:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

displacedTitan.6897:

And you would have worked toward the unlocks differently than getting the HPs in the game now… how exactly????

The point is had I known, I would have spent time working to unlock those I don’t have so that come Friday I would have cleared them all on the current map. currently I’ve saved what I had not knowing I’ll need to fully train everything else before training a spec I actually want to use. Color this anyway you like it should have been mentioned a long time ago so people actually had a chance to work towards it KNOWING what they’ll need.

This. I think a huge part of the problem with this announcement is that it’s come 3 days until launch. If this had been revealed weeks ago, it likely would have just been a small little disappointment and blown over quickly. Now it’s likely to spill over into launch if ANet doesn’t give more details on it.

It seems like it’s very hard for people to do 6 Hero Challenges in the jungle to get their Elite Spec (skills and traits).

And like I said the last time you spouted off the 60 HP’s: Source?

Because I highly doubt they’ve got it so that you can get all traits and skills within 60 points. Especially with the picture posted earlier in this thread:

Here’s the link.

Clearly shows the elite skill very near the end of the line. With 400 points being from beginning to end, I highly doubt 60 points gets you to the elite skill.

So, please post a source that explicitly states that it’s only 60 points to get from 0 traits and skills for an elite to all of them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ph2e1/today_we_will_be_looking_at_the_profession/cw6gt87

That only says the ability to play as the elite, I can play the elite with just the minor adept trait unlocked. Not that the 60 points gets me all the traits and skills.

Any other source?

Conner.5803:

Jim.4935:

Conner.5803:

Jim.4935:

This is what Colin said about unlocking the Elite Specs, Please read it before complaining about grind.

“It works just like any other training line – except all the skills, traits, skins, abilities, etc. are all inside one full training line that costs 400 points to get everything in the entire line. It costs 60 points to unlock and be able to play as the elite specialization itself.
Currently anyone who has done all the hero points in the world has about half of the entire elite spec line unlocked on day one. Hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so you’ll only need to do about 20 hero challenges in the jungle [or via the new WvW system] to have everything related to your elite spec trained.
There are enough hero challenges in the jungle to train your entire elite spec and not do the challenges in core world if you wish – they simply speed you up if you’ve already got them.”

You can read that in 2 ways:

- You unlock all traits and skills with 60 heropoints and the skins with the remainder of heropoints.
- You unlock the very first minor thing in the training line, most likely a minor trait.

It was data mined that we would need 270 Hero Points to unlock the Elite Specs and now that they give us the base of the Elite Spec (traits and skills) for only 60 Hero Points people are crying on the forums asking for refunds.

You can keep claiming that you will unlock the traits and skills for 60 heropoints, but Colin didn’t confirm this at all. He said you need to have 60 heropoints to be able to play the elite spec. This could mean that it could only unlock the first minor trait which gives us the weapon and and the traitline. It makes us being able to play as the new elite spec, but it doesn’t mean we have all skills and traits unlocked.

So playing without your gyros is playing as an Elite Spec? I disagree with that.