Guild Wars 2

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/06/gamescom-2015-guild-wars-2s-mastery-system-takes-you-from-canopies-to-crafting?utm_source=IGN%20hub%20page&utm_medium=PC&utm_content=5&utm_campaign=Blogroll&abthid=55c3653f214340346f000007

dont know if it was posted anywhere else, dont see it on the main page so im just putting it here

Auto-loot should be great to have.

I like the sound of the Pact Commander Mastery, although I hope some players don’t use the suggested “special icon” to troll newer players rather than help.

Also, I hope that collecting all of the masteries will actually take a little longer than originally leveling from 1 – 80, unless they are able to introduce new masteries a lot faster than when they expect players to be completing the original 7 masteries.

Oh my… 3 new legendaries are being added with the expansion. It really feels like this expansion is being super rushed. Most days I’m reminded that the $50 price tag isn’t justified.

Fernling.1729:

Oh my… 3 new legendaries are being added with the expansion. It really feels like this expansion is being super rushed. Most days I’m reminded that the $50 price tag isn’t justified.

They will be releasing more new legendaries as the story progresses; it is likely to prevent players from rushing through the mastery line and getting the entire set of new legendaries within a couple of weeks (or however long) and having no other “end-game cosmetic” to work towards.

Zalladi.4652:

Fernling.1729:

Oh my… 3 new legendaries are being added with the expansion. It really feels like this expansion is being super rushed. Most days I’m reminded that the $50 price tag isn’t justified.

They will be releasing more new legendaries as the story progresses; it is likely to prevent players from rushing through the mastery line and getting the entire set of new legendaries within a couple of weeks (or however long) and having no other “end-game cosmetic” to work towards.

I probably should have read the entire thing. I skimmed through it quickly(watching expansion announcement).

ColinJohanson.2394:

Not sure where this info came from on it taking the same amount of time as getting from levels 1-80 -> but simply put it’s incorrect as it is not an official source.

A) We haven’t decided how long it’ll take to earn them all, and are doing beta weekends to help decide a good time length.

B) Currently as timed in game today, it would take a good deal longer than that in total game hours to earn all the mastery lines.

Ultimately – check it out this weekend and let us know what you think!

Well that’s great to know! And that information was from the IGN post linked from the OP, so I had some small thought that it would not be entirely accurate.

I think Colin meant he wasn’t sure where IGN got the info for that statement.

Thanks for clarifying, Colin. I’m not sure one weekend will be enough to test all the cool stuff! Which is why you have more than one tester

Will every mastery be available to play in the beta.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zalladi.4652:

Also, I hope that collecting all of the masteries will actually take a little longer than originally leveling from 1 – 80, unless they are able to introduce new masteries a lot faster than when they expect players to be completing the original 7 masteries.

Not sure where this info came from on it taking the same amount of time as getting from levels 1-80 -> but simply put it’s incorrect.

A) We haven’t decided how long it’ll take to earn them all, and are doing beta weekends to help decide a good time length.

B) Currently as timed in game today, it would take a good deal longer than that in total game hours to earn all the mastery lines.

Ultimately – check it out this weekend and let us know what you think!

Good to hear this. It definetly should take at least 10 times longer then level up one character. Actualy imo every single mastery line should take at least same time as level up one char.

Even though I’m sure the time/amount for leveling Masteries hasn’t been set in stone yet, I read the article to mean that it would take the amount of time for each track in a Mastery line. They did speak about 35, so 5x the time to level to L80 for each Mastery.

They would still likely be mistaken, if Mastery leveling works anything like it did previously, as each level in a track did not take the same amount of XP to complete.

Zalladi.4652:

I like the sound of the Pact Commander Mastery, although I hope some players don’t use the suggested “special icon” to troll newer players rather than help.

You need more faith in our community! Guild Wars 2 players are the most helpful players in any online game I’ve ever played.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Zalladi.4652:

I like the sound of the Pact Commander Mastery, although I hope some players don’t use the suggested “special icon” to troll newer players rather than help.

You need more faith in our community! Guild Wars 2 players are the most helpful players in any online game I’ve ever played.

In game yes they are lovely on the forums and reddit well lets just be grateful the pact commander mastery is an ingame feature.

I hope it won’t be too long, otherwise it will be quite unfair for people that have already played a lot in this game before HoT.

So 3 Legendaries is a “handful”? https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-legendary-journey/

From the March 26th blogpost: “I know you’re all dying for more information on new legendary weapons, but we’d like to delve into them more with a dedicated blog post in the future. For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working kitten new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.”

So a fourth greatsword, a staff, and a longbow?

No you don’t see ? 3 Legendaries. Which weapon type goes in a pack of three?

That’s right, underwater weapons! It’ll be a spear, a trident and an harpoon gun of course.

Iason Evan.3806:

So 3 Legendaries is a “handful”? https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-legendary-journey/

From the March 26th blogpost: “I know you’re all dying for more information on new legendary weapons, but we’d like to delve into them more with a dedicated blog post in the future. For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working kitten new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.”

So a fourth greatsword, a staff, and a longbow?

It’ll likely be one of the “for fun” legendaries that get a new one first such as pistol and shortbow.

Might be reading too much into that statement but maybe they are actually making legionaries have lore this time around, which is why they are waiting for the story to introduce them first.

Iason Evan.3806:

From the March 26th blogpost: “I know you’re all dying for more information on new legendary weapons, but we’d like to delve into them more with a dedicated blog post in the future. For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working kitten new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.”

Real interesting place to have “kitten”….

ColinJohanson.2394:

Not sure where this info came from on it taking the same amount of time as getting from levels 1-80 -> but simply put it’s incorrect.

Also creating a lot of different mastery tracks, more than just 39, would be nice. Make enough so that there is a good amount of variety and too many for one player to get them all.

There’s a lot of different associations masteries can have: skills, npcs, monsters, zones, areas, weapons, story lines, events, etc., etc.

And I called this way back in March as well in this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/New-precursors-still-be-obtained-using-RNG/first#post4924322

“This sounds to me like we aren’t getting a new legendary for every weapon in the game at HoT launch either. A “handful” doesn’t scream “full set” of new legendaries to me. It’s also quietly tucked into the text as well.” ~Me in March

Honestly, there should be a “not so hidden” mechanic tied to weekly progression for mastery lines so that initial progression is extremely slow in the beginning and as weeks pass, the ease to progress the current mastery lines should kick in to a maximum discount amount (like 50% discount max).

My thought is much like experience +% chest rewards for all xp, there should just be a specific awarded upgrade for “xp” to mastery lines. This will comfort the hardcores to have it first and ease the casual players into getting everything over time.

This also encourages player logins longer term and allows players to do the content they want in the manner that they want to do it in (i.e. I want to focus solely on HoT content and then get into the other stuff later on). In theory, this can be replicated across game modes to WvW, Fractals and PvP tracks as well to an extent to encourage cross-pollination.

This is good to hear, i dont want to be able to master everything in a week.

Idk why did i ever expect to get 20 new legendaries, making new ones as the story goes will prolong that for next 3 years and at this point 3 months looks like it will never going to happen.

I’m looking forward to the auto loot

theres a problem here tho…. if you are setting the masteries to take a loooong time to acquire, then we will likely not be able to use many in the BWE’s… on the other hand if you make them easy to acquire during this time, gauging the necessary amount of xp needed to acquire them cant really be determined.

so which is it going to be for us? Are we going to get to play a full line of masteries, or be limited to the possible 1 maybe 2 boxes in a line we might acquire during the whole event?

Silveress.5197:

Iason Evan.3806:

From the March 26th blogpost: “I know you’re all dying for more information on new legendary weapons, but we’d like to delve into them more with a dedicated blog post in the future. For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working kitten new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.”

Real interesting place to have “kitten”

hehehe yea… probly forgot the space between “hard” and “on” lol …. gonna test it kitten?

yup… thats what it is!!

The space is irrelevant, you get felined if you use that term.

On legendaries, I’ve yet to make even one because I can’t fathom getting that many T6 mats and I’ve never had a precursor drop. I’d most want Bifrost of the current set, because I love the rainbow effect and because I have more staff users than any other weapon. Since they announced there would be new ones I’ve been holding off even more since perhaps I’d want one of those enough to put in the effort.

I’ve waited close to three years, I can wait a bit longer to see if anything becomes a driving must have or else sort of thing.

IGN… the Fox News of the games industry, let’s not put too much confidence into the article, mh?

Auto-loot should be standard and not tied to a mastery.

phokus.8934:

Auto-loot should be standard and not tied to a mastery.

Why? It’s a QoL upgrade that you earn.

I’m not liking how this is looking tbh.

“Three new legendary weapons are confirmed to be ingame once Heart of Thorns launches, with more following as the story develops.’”
Does this mean we’re not getting a ‘full’ story with HoT? are we gonna have to wait for biweekly Living story-like patches to get the the whole thing? I don’t think people are going to be happy if they feel like they bought a set of patches, and not an expansion. That’s not even to mention that some people will have to wait for the legendary of their weapon type to release. I don’t know about you, but I’d be upset if I had to wait a couple months after the initial release to start making a legendary, that I had to buy an expansion to get, because it hasn’t been released yet.
I appreciate that they’re trying to make them feel more important, but I don’t think this should be something that should be slowly gated. Legendary weapons are not something the average player tries to obtain all of, so you have to gate them to space out the play time. For a lot of people, they pick 1 or 2 and slowly try to get it. Adding more time to something they bought just to start doing it doesn’t seem like a good choice.

“Pact Commander Mastery focuses on mentoring new players and allow you to have a special icon over your head or in chat to indicate you are happy to help others. This mastery also grant you auto loot, speed boost in cities, and faster revival speed based on how many levels lower a player is from you.”
Please tell me these can be separately selected! I like the idea that you can help people out, but these must be Separate. If they are not, we will see every single person with the icon on because they just want auto loot and speed boosts and not for the ‘helping’ purposes.

Autoloot as part of a mastery? Something that should be a gameplay option, that is pathetic.

morrolan.9608:

Autoloot as part of a mastery? Something that should be a gameplay option, that is pathetic.

Why should it be?

Ayrilana.1396:

phokus.8934:

Auto-loot should be standard and not tied to a mastery.

Why? It’s a QoL upgrade that you earn.

It’s a QoL upgrade locked behind a pay wall AND grinding. In fact, it sounds as if that whole mastery line is QoL stuff. Some for the player, some for those they interact with.

Is this what we call content now? Locking QoL improvements behind pay walls and grinding? Is that how they intend to sell new people on trying the game?

“You don’t like missing loot? Well, all you have to do is get a character to 80, then use them to gain a bunch of mastery points, and THEN grind out a bunch of extra levels in order to level this mastery, and you can finally have a looting system like any decent MMO has!”

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

phokus.8934:

Auto-loot should be standard and not tied to a mastery.

Why? It’s a QoL upgrade that you earn.

It’s a QoL upgrade locked behind a pay wall AND grinding. In fact, it sounds as if that whole mastery line is QoL stuff. Some for the player, some for those they interact with.

Is this what we call content now? Locking QoL improvements behind pay walls and grinding? Is that how they intend to sell new people on trying the game?

“You don’t like missing loot? Well, all you have to do is get a character to 80, then use them to gain a bunch of mastery points, and THEN grind out a bunch of extra levels in order to level this mastery, and you can finally have a looting system like any decent MMO has!”

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I am expecting that at some point in the future a consume all button will be gated behind a “Consumer” mastery.

By auto-loot, do they mean a feature where you no longer have to ‘AOE Loot’? Because right now, despite having my auto-loot feature in the options ticked, you still have to interact where said loot is, to pick it up (which, to me, isn’t really automatically-looting).

And don’t even get me started on the inability to pick up any loot surrounding your dead characters (see pic attached).

I’m hoping this auto-loot mastery feature will mean that any loot that comes from said enemy is automatically placed in your inventory and you no longer even have to interact with an area or enemy to pick up your loot.

Zaoda.1653:

By auto-loot, do they mean a feature where you no longer have to ‘AOE Loot’? Because right now, despite having my auto-loot feature in the options ticked, you still have to interact where said loot is, to pick it up (which, to me, isn’t really automatically-looting).

And don’t even get me started on the inability to pick up any loot surrounding your dead characters (see pic attached).

I’m hoping this auto-loot mastery feature will mean that any loot that comes from said enemy is automatically placed in your inventory and you no longer even have to interact with an area or enemy to pick up your loot.

That’s my take on it too. Loot is automatically placed in your inventory unless full.

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Rozbuska.5263:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zalladi.4652:

Also, I hope that collecting all of the masteries will actually take a little longer than originally leveling from 1 – 80, unless they are able to introduce new masteries a lot faster than when they expect players to be completing the original 7 masteries.

Not sure where this info came from on it taking the same amount of time as getting from levels 1-80 -> but simply put it’s incorrect.

A) We haven’t decided how long it’ll take to earn them all, and are doing beta weekends to help decide a good time length.

B) Currently as timed in game today, it would take a good deal longer than that in total game hours to earn all the mastery lines.

Ultimately – check it out this weekend and let us know what you think!

Good to hear this. It definetly should take at least 10 times longer then level up one character. Actualy imo every single mastery line should take at least same time as level up one char.

Not good at all in my opinion.

If there will be enough content to provide experience points without the need to repeat the same tasks over and over I could be ok with it, but I strongly doubt this will be the case (there is RNG Cox behind the creation of this system).

Also they want to tweak the peace based on the BWE where basically all players are the “most dedicated guys” in the game?

Everyone should know by now that most of them are people that rush like there is no tomorrow to complain there is nothing to do right after.

I’m astonished by how this community once formed by players who hated the mindless grind of standard mmorpgs turned over time into a blob of fellas asking for more time-gated stuff to feel they achieved something.

Probably I’m one of the few who still remember when they said they wanted Guild Wars 2 to be a game like Halo or COD: you turn it on, look at a list of games, then you get in and you play.

Still thinking about what will happen when my friends will be on that platform asking me to fly over there, but I will not able to reach them because they grinded 24/7 their masteries.

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Sarcasm aside, it has nothing to do with lowering expansions. Expansions are not strictly content only and can include other things such as QoL updates.

Ayrilana.1396:

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Sarcasm aside, it has nothing to do with lowering expansions. Expansions are not strictly content only and can include other things such as QoL updates.

They aren’t normally locked behind an ingame progression grind though.

Ayrilana.1396:

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Sarcasm aside, it has nothing to do with lowering expansions. Expansions are not strictly content only and can include other things such as QoL updates.

In a normal game, they’d put the QoL updates for the whole game out at the same time as the expansion, but for the whole game. Not just for those that buy the expansion.

However, I’ve forgotten something important. The goal of putting the QoL stuff out for the whole game is to make the base game more appealing, so you can get more people trying it and hopefully buying the expansions as they get into the game. ANet’s not going that route, they’re making it so all new players will have the expansion anyway. So, I guess they don’t see the difference. There’s a flawed but understandable logic to that.

It still locks the QoL improvements away from veteran players that do not buy the expansion. And telling new players that they have to get to max level and THEN grind to unlock the improvements really defeats the idea of the journey to 80 being important and enjoyable.

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Sarcasm aside, it has nothing to do with lowering expansions. Expansions are not strictly content only and can include other things such as QoL updates.

In a normal game, they’d put the QoL updates for the whole game out at the same time as the expansion, but for the whole game. Not just for those that buy the expansion.

However, I’ve forgotten something important. The goal of putting the QoL stuff out for the whole game is to make the base game more appealing, so you can get more people trying it and hopefully buying the expansions as they get into the game. ANet’s not going that route, they’re making it so all new players will have the expansion anyway. So, I guess they don’t see the difference. There’s a flawed but understandable logic to that.

It still locks the QoL improvements away from veteran players that do not buy the expansion. And telling new players that they have to get to max level and THEN grind to unlock the improvements really defeats the idea of the journey to 80 being important and enjoyable.

It’s just auto-loot though. Hardly a big deal. Veterans players who do not buy the expansion miss out on a lot of other things and there’s absolutely no reason why QoL cannot be part of an expansion.

morrolan.9608:

They aren’t normally locked behind an ingame progression grind though.

It’s not a grind. The auto-loot that he’s so focused on is part of a single mastery track that is unlocked on your account forever.

Will it be grind hell for those who have multiple characters?

HaxTester.9816:

Will it be grind hell for those who have multiple characters?

My impression was masteries are account-level. And if they aren’t there will be complaining until they are. Sort of like dyes.

HaxTester.9816:

Will it be grind hell for those who have multiple characters?

Masteries are account wide progression so no, that is precisely the reason they can be tuned to take longer in my opinion at least.

@Nike and Crise, I hope so too. I understand you can’t just give away things in a game, it will get boring fast, but too much stress in a game without the feeling of enjoyment will burn you out just the same.