Guild Wars 2

Some very good suggestions here.

I hate the raid blockage.
This will never make me playing raids but prevents some of my GW2 fun.

A really ‘smart’ concept

tl;dr there’s some important principles involved; I agree that these are worth addressing. However, spirit shards are such a minor reward that I don’t think ANet should spend time worrying about fixing this until they are also making other big changes to masteries (e.g. adding new specializations or new masteries, such as we expect with Expac #2).

There are several distinct concerns raised in the thread. There’s also a missing context.

Context first: ANet removed rewards for XP past L80 when Specializations were added. The community complained about it. Ages later — with masteries now in the game, ANet added in spirit shards as a reward after maxing masteries. It was a kludge, a sop to end the complaints (although: little did they guess how well we can complain ). But it was clearly the least valuable reward ANet could have offered.

As it turns out, by doing it so quickly, they locked themselves into two issues: max masteries in core Tyria include things that don’t interest some folks (legendaries and/or fractals) and HoT Masteries were originally setup to include Raid masteries.

Neither of those things is quick or ‘cheap’ to change.

Current day:
For a variety of reasons, we are at a point today were some people have decided they don’t want to Fractal/Legendary masteries and some (not necessarily the same) people aren’t willing to find a way to unlock raid masteries to max them out.

As a consequence, there’s a sizeable fraction of players who have max level characters, play a lot, but don’t earn anything for post-80 experience. That’s definitely an interesting conundrum for ANet.

Importance of issue
How big a deal is it that this happens? Are spirit shards valuable enough to worry about? How important is it for ANet to allow all HoT players to share rewards rather than locking any behind raids?

Personal opinion
My take on it is: of course ANet should adjust things. The principle is important; raiding shouldn’t gate standard rewards. However, this particular reward is so tiny that I don’t think ANet should prioritize changing stuff.

When they next update masteries, they can make adjustments, including what’s in the HoT mastery tree. They can reconsider what rewards should be available for post-80 XP.

Until then, none of us are going to suffer much because we get somewhat fewer spirit shards.

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

They don’t need to “create” anything, just unlock the raid mastery track without having to deal with entitled salts who want to dictate others’ play experiences.
Flip one switch, and boom, this entire argument dissipates (instead of coming up every week).

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

Casual has nothing to do with this. There are several raid encounters that can be done successfully with a random group of players with two of them being the very first encounter. The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

Ayrilana.1396:

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

They don’t need to “create” anything, just unlock the raid mastery track without having to deal with entitled salts who want to dictate others’ play experiences.
Flip one switch, and boom, this entire argument dissipates (instead of coming up every week).

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

Casual has nothing to do with this. There are several raid encounters that can be done successfully with a random group of players with two of them being the very first encounter. The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

Vale Guardian is not possible for a random group of players who haven’t raided before.

It requires team composition, knowledge of the mechanics, and voice communication.

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

They don’t need to “create” anything, just unlock the raid mastery track without having to deal with entitled salts who want to dictate others’ play experiences.
Flip one switch, and boom, this entire argument dissipates (instead of coming up every week).

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

Casual has nothing to do with this. There are several raid encounters that can be done successfully with a random group of players with two of them being the very first encounter. The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

Vale Guardian is not possible for a random group of players who haven’t raided before.

It requires team composition, knowledge of the mechanics, and voice communication.

But escort, prison camp, and cairn are. Note that I did not say VG in my post.

Ayrilana.1396:

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

They don’t need to “create” anything, just unlock the raid mastery track without having to deal with entitled salts who want to dictate others’ play experiences.
Flip one switch, and boom, this entire argument dissipates (instead of coming up every week).

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

Casual has nothing to do with this. There are several raid encounters that can be done successfully with a random group of players with two of them being the very first encounter. The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

This has everything to do with being a casual player. I will never do a raid in this game. They can add a legendary reward and it still won’t happen. I hate raids and always will. I bought this game because it didn’t have them. If they become required I will find another game without them.

Did it never occur to you that It has nothing to do with being able to win. It’s a shame so many can’t see that.

Tumult.2578:

Ayrilana.1396:

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

They don’t need to “create” anything, just unlock the raid mastery track without having to deal with entitled salts who want to dictate others’ play experiences.
Flip one switch, and boom, this entire argument dissipates (instead of coming up every week).

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

Casual has nothing to do with this. There are several raid encounters that can be done successfully with a random group of players with two of them being the very first encounter. The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

This has everything to do with being a casual player. I will never do a raid in this game. They can add a legendary reward and it still won’t happen. I hate raids and always will. I bought this game because it didn’t have them. If they become required I will find another game without them.

Did it never occur to you that It has nothing to do with being able to win. It’s a shame so many can’t see that.

Then that’s your choice to not do them. This however doesn’t mean they can’t be done by casual players. Gaining a spirit shard from leveling is a reward that expands across all PvE.

Edit: Fixed typo. Thanks for pointing it out.

Ayrilana.1396:

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

I have no doubt that Anet would like more players to try raiding. However, the design of raids and the means by which one can join to do them favor players who are dedicated to raiding. I have no problem with that per se, however if ANet really wanted as many as possible to try raiding, they would have used systems aimed at broader swaths of players.

Ayrilana.1396:

The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

Which is why gaining access to it should be available in any form of PvE. The way it is now rewards only the completionist.

Ayrilana.1396:

Then that’s your choice to not do them. This however doesn’t mean they can be done by casual players. Gaining a spirit shard from leveling is a reward that expands across all PvE.

I find your typo to be especially ironic. While there are easier raid encounters and harder ones, do you really think the people that get downed by the Dwayna statue in Malchor’s Leap are going to beat a raid boss, or be carried along by others? I see this happen any time I do that event, unless someone glitches the statue.

It doesn’t mean they can’t be done by casual players either.
Players choose not to do it.
A lot of players choose not to do it.
Most players choose not to do it.
Still they setup garbage like this and penalize us for not doing it. It’s like it’s a race to the fewest players possible.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

I have no doubt that Anet would like more players to try raiding. However, the design of raids and the means by which one can join to do them favor players who are dedicated to raiding. I have no problem with that per se, however if ANet really wanted as many as possible to try raiding, they would have used systems aimed at broader swaths of players.

Ayrilana.1396:

The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

Which is why gaining access to it should be available in any form of PvE. The way it is now rewards only the completionist.

Ayrilana.1396:

Then that’s your choice to not do them. This however doesn’t mean they can be done by casual players. Gaining a spirit shard from leveling is a reward that expands across all PvE.

I find your typo to be especially ironic. While there are easier raid encounters and harder ones, do you really think the people that get downed by the Dwayna statue in Malchor’s Leap are going to beat a raid boss, or be carried along by others? I see this happen any time I do that event, unless someone glitches the statue.

They could nerf raids to attract more players. They have set expectations of what they wish raids to be. They’ve made small concessions to that with having the first encounters be a little easier. Yes, doing all of the raids are for those dedicated enough to learn them. Raids were designed for those people. This doesn’t mean that other players cannot learn them over time.

Thanks for pointing out the typo. Players that get downed likely are not paying attention or know what to look for above it’s head to know when to dodge. The three encounters I mentioned are simple enough to learn and do in a short amount of time.

My main issue is about the Central Tyria mastery points: you can’t obtain enough by only playing adventerous PvE. So yes, it would be great if experience could be used to unlock missing mastery points

A repeatable mastery line that gives mastery points would be great. I was just thinking of this earlier. As much fun as it sounds to go and do every out of the way achievement just to finish some of them sounds, I’d much rather just play the way I want and then unlock them that way. There’s no specific related requirement for each mastery (like glide 500 times to get a mastery point to unlock more gliding masteries or something), so why does it matter how I unlock them. I’d rather just play with my friends, level up (sort of), and get mastery points like skill/hero points and allocate them how I want.

mtpelion.4562:

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

This. So much this.

I’m not a raider but I’ve tried to raid just to unlock that track. Most groups just kicked me. One very patient group tried and tried and tried and then I left in embarrassment. And, yes. It was the “easy” escort thing. All of the HOT meta rewards award a “large amount of XP immediately” and it just goes to waste for most of us. It’s just daft.

Locking a general reward behind anything specific is bad design, in this case more than in others bcause the goal of the reward is specifically to allow XP to reward something when you are not completing masteries anymore. So your reward for doing stuff aside from masteries depends on you completing ALL masteries… thats… weird.

It is only more illuminating that the mastery line that more seems to obstruct the game experience is that raid one. I wonder why.

Solvar.7953:

My second part of this would be to add a repeatable mastery track like the above, with some high (5 million?) total that gives you a Central Tyria Mastery point. Thus, players could grind out those points over time instead of doing content they don’t really want to do.

This please, I really don’t want to waste 500 gold getting some collection I don’t care about

I had originally thought of having different mastery tracks with different rewards instead of spirit shards, but this could make things more complicated (having 6 different tracks for rewards to choose from could start getting messy). Perhaps simpler would be a reward track that gives a chest, and that chest then has a choice of rewards, like is done for many of the storylines (and it could be roughly balanced out, eg, 1 foo or 3 bar, or 8 whatever).

I find the loss of experience annoying in central tyria, simply because events have a reward of a few silver, a few hundred karma, and 20K experience or so. Once exp is capped, effectively a third of the already paltry event reward just goes away.

HoT did a better job with this, as events reward a chest, those chest generally have at least something sort of decent plus usually keys to open more chests on the map.

I think one problem with the entire Central Tyria points is that they were added in as part of an update. If they had been put in with original design, like those in HoM, there wouldn’t be much an issue, as they’d be more scattered about the maps and in more varied content. As such, a good amount are locked up in the Silverwastes, and I don’t really feel like just constantly work on that area.

mtpelion.4562:

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

I totally agree with that.

By the way, is the central tyrian fractal mastery locked behind a gate like this? Sort of “complete a fractal to unlock it”? I don’t remember exactly, but I think it could be compared to the raid mastery line.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Linken.6345:

So serious raiders would be unhappy to complete thier normal run and a easier run a week for another subset of loot? This aint the 12 ap aday dailies that they have to keep up with mate.

Experience from WoW says, yes, they will absolutely complain about that. Sufficiently so, in fact, that Blizzard changed their approach and made the various difficulties lock each other out, which also provoked a storm of complaint.

We already have a solution for that, which is implemented for daily tiered fractal rewards. It works great there, so no reason not to use it.

GuybrushMarley.6728:

mtpelion.4562:

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

I totally agree with that.

By the way, is the central tyrian fractal mastery locked behind a gate like this? Sort of “complete a fractal to unlock it”? I don’t remember exactly, but I think it could be compared to the raid mastery line.

I don’t think it is, but then again I had already done some fractals well before they introduced masteries to the game. It may be that it was just automatically unlocked for me. I never had to do anything to unlock it though, and I haven’t done any fractals since masteries were introduced.

GuybrushMarley.6728:

mtpelion.4562:

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

I totally agree with that.

By the way, is the central tyrian fractal mastery locked behind a gate like this? Sort of “complete a fractal to unlock it”? I don’t remember exactly, but I think it could be compared to the raid mastery line.

While the Central Tyria masteries have the same “must complete all of them” requirement as the HoT masteries before soul shards are earned, none of the trees are locked so you can apply XP and mastery points at will until they are all completed.

The solution to the raid thing is easy: excise the raid masteries from the rest of the HoT mastery tracks and put them in their own little section. It keeps people who don’t raid from being penalized for it, and gives Anet a place to put masteries for future raids.

Also they really do need to give some alternatives to that spirit shard, maybe a chest with a couple additional options (nothing too valuable, like the sort of options you get from the ley-line converter maybe). I’ve got 6600 spirit shards, i don’t need more.

Solvar.7953:

There has been various discussions about how experience becomes wasted if you are not able to unlock all the masteries and there is nothing for them to go into. There is also discussions about the Central Tyria Mastery points and the pain it can be for those. So my thought for a solution:

Add a repeatable mastery track that does not take any mastery points, takes 254,000 experience to complete, and gives you a spirit shard.

Thus, players can get back to the pre HoT behavior if they want. If a character does not have any masteries they can advance, experience would funnel here. Or if a player just decides there are some masteries they just don’t care about, they could choose this mastery instead.

My second part of this would be to add a repeatable mastery track like the above, with some high (5 million?) total that gives you a Central Tyria Mastery point. Thus, players could grind out those points over time instead of doing content they don’t really want to do.

With a high total, it would almost certainly be faster to do the achievements. But this just provides an avenue for those players to get the CtM points.

Thus same thing could be done for HoM points also – at least so far, to me, those seem easier, but at some point, experience will get locked behind completing a raid (there have been different discussions on that).

This would require some development work, but would seem to be using logic that is already mostly in the game, so maybe no so hard.

5million is too low. Make it 10million so that people that don’t play the game everyday are not at a disadvantage…….. too much……..

With how easy large amounts of XP are to obtain, and the likely reasons Anet put mastery points behind a lot of achievements, they should not be obtained from XP.

Ayrilana.1396:

With how easy large amounts of XP are to obtain, and the likely reasons Anet put mastery points behind a lot of achievements, they should not be obtained from XP.

I certainly didn’t have a problem with the XP part. Alts, so many alts. o_O

If they hadn’t set mastery points behind some rather garbage “achievements”, maybe I’d agree with the statement entirely. I pushed through and did what I could, so I’m currently at max, sans raids, anyway.
Side note: for anyone lacking those mastery points, if you haven’t done it yet, sneak into Dragon Stand for the meta. So many points hide there, and taking each once can net a significant boost. It’s also far less buggy than “adventures.”

Maybe it’s my own tunnel vision, but I generally see the ‘wasted xp’ come up in relation to the raid lock.

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

Holdouts?

I have done fractals only twice. Neither time was it my idea but someone in my party kept pestering the rest of us to do them.

I am coming up on my third year and have yet to make a single legendary. The only difference between them and ascended is the skin and the fact I can swap stats out of combat. Now I can even do the stat swapping on some trinkets for unbound magic anyway if I can not just swap with another alt.

Please explain to me why I am a holdout if I do not max out those two mastery lines. Go on, I can wait.

I don’t think anything as important as mastery points will ever be infinitely available behind anything as trivial to get as experience points.

Menadena.7482:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

Holdouts?

I have done fractals only twice. Neither time was it my idea but someone in my party kept pestering the rest of us to do them.

I am coming up on my third year and have yet to make a single legendary. The only difference between them and ascended is the skin and the fact I can swap stats out of combat. Now I can even do the stat swapping on some trinkets for unbound magic anyway if I can not just swap with another alt.

Please explain to me why I am a holdout if I do not max out those two mastery lines. Go on, I can wait.

Only if you want the spirit shards. If you don’t then it doesn’t matter if you max out all mastery lines.

Solvar.7953:

There has been various discussions about how experience becomes wasted if you are not able to unlock all the masteries and there is nothing for them to go into. There is also discussions about the Central Tyria Mastery points and the pain it can be for those. So my thought for a solution:

Add a repeatable mastery track that does not take any mastery points, takes 254,000 experience to complete, and gives you a spirit shard.

Thus, players can get back to the pre HoT behavior if they want. If a character does not have any masteries they can advance, experience would funnel here. Or if a player just decides there are some masteries they just don’t care about, they could choose this mastery instead.

My second part of this would be to add a repeatable mastery track like the above, with some high (5 million?) total that gives you a Central Tyria Mastery point. Thus, players could grind out those points over time instead of doing content they don’t really want to do.

With a high total, it would almost certainly be faster to do the achievements. But this just provides an avenue for those players to get the CtM points.

Thus same thing could be done for HoM points also – at least so far, to me, those seem easier, but at some point, experience will get locked behind completing a raid (there have been different discussions on that).

This would require some development work, but would seem to be using logic that is already mostly in the game, so maybe no so hard.

This. I couldn’t agree more, great idea and should be no problem to implement. Well done sir.

While giving out mastery points after earning lots of experience may trivialize them some, right now, gaining some number of them is also a trivial exercise, but may be in content one doesn’t want to play. And some are quite hard/time consuming – for the Central Tyria ones, there really isn’t any consistency.

The problem I have is that some are behind content I really don’t find that interesting – 8 or 9 are the second points for doing the story. Repeating the story multiple times to pick those up is anything but fun to me. An improvement there would just be make those achievements available on first play through – thus, I might actually pick them up if I play the story through on my other characters, but that doesn’t work right now. I noticed that they did make this change for LS3.

Forcing players into content they don’t want to play never really seems to work out. When the game first came out, one had to do the WvW maps for world completion, and people constantly complained that they really didn’t want to be forced to the WvW for what is mostly a PvE task. Arenanet did eventually change that.

The achievements are there to get you to go out and do things you may not normally do. Not all of them will interest everyone. How can you really master something if you only do a few things in the expansion?

Ayrilana.1396:

How can you really master something if you only do a few things in the expansion?

Good point, how about an option to opt out of the mastery system entirely (or at least tuck it away somewhere so it’s not visible) for those who have no desire to “master” anything. Fair is fair, right?

SmirkDog.3160:

Ayrilana.1396:

How can you really master something if you only do a few things in the expansion?

Good point, how about an option to opt out of the mastery system entirely (or at least tuck it away somewhere so it’s not visible) for those who have no desire to “master” anything. Fair is fair, right?

That option is already there. You just simply ignore it and keep playing the game the way you want.

If don’t want to do the content… for whatever reason… you don’t get the rewards for it.

Why? Do other MMOs reward XP past level cap? None that I’ve played.

Sure, GW2 use to reward skill points, then spirit shards and then nothing unless you maxed out mastery tracks.

But the notion that without this there is no reason to play your level 80 without a cookie is ridiculous.

Ayrilana.1396:

How can you really master something if you only do a few things in the expansion?

Sorry, but this line is bull-gravy. Clicking on something and many other so-called Mastery Points are not evidence of any kind of “mastery,” just as most “achievements” are not really achievements. These things are just names used by the developer to ID different systems.

The point behind Masteries is the same as the point behind anything developers put into MMO’s. That is, it gives players something to do. This is important to the developer because MMO business models are based on players playing over time, whether they spend money on a sub or in a virtual store. A better progression system would have included everyone because in the end that is what is best for the developer.

ANet seems to believe that locking things behind specific content will encourage people to try that content. This only works in some cases, not in all. People who came to GW2 because they wanted a game that did not have raids are not going to try raids no matter how much lipstick Anet puts on the pig.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

How can you really master something if you only do a few things in the expansion?

Sorry, but this line is bull-gravy. Clicking on something and many other so-called Mastery Points are not evidence of any kind of “mastery,” just as most “achievements” are not really achievements. These things are just names used by the developer to ID different systems.

The point behind Masteries is the same as the point behind anything developers put into MMO’s. That is, it gives players something to do. This is important to the developer because MMO business models are based on players playing over time, whether they spend money on a sub or in a virtual store. A better progression system would have included everyone because in the end that is what is best for the developer.

ANet seems to believe that locking things behind specific content will encourage people to try that content. This only works in some cases, not in all. People who came to GW2 because they wanted a game that did not have raids are not going to try raids no matter how much lipstick Anet puts on the pig.

Why do you assume that mastery = skill level? By doing all of the achievements for the mastery points, you’ve completed quite a lot of the expansion content. They are spread out enough to encourage just that.

If players don’t want to raid then they do not have to. They should just not think they are entitled to the same rewards that have done them if only just once.

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

mtpelion.4562:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Masteries are not repeatable and I don’t want them wasting resources to create a system that allows that just so the holdouts that don’t feel like maxing their masteries don’t waste their XP.

They don’t need to “create” anything, just unlock the raid mastery track without having to deal with entitled salts who want to dictate others’ play experiences.
Flip one switch, and boom, this entire argument dissipates (instead of coming up every week).

Did it ever occur that they actually want players to complete at least one raid which is why the mastery line is locked behind it?

Requiring casual players to complete a raid in order to obtain non-raid related rewards for playing non-raid content is bad design. Raids, in most games, are participated in by less than 5% of the population. Nothing non-raid related should ever be locked behind content that such a small minority of players enjoy.

Casual has nothing to do with this. There are several raid encounters that can be done successfully with a random group of players with two of them being the very first encounter. The gain of a spirit shard from leveling is a game mode wide reward. It’s not just an open world reward system. It’s not just a dungeon reward system. It’s a PvE system.

Vale Guardian is not possible for a random group of players who haven’t raided before.

It requires team composition, knowledge of the mechanics, and voice communication.

Which is a kitten shame – the first raid boss should have been the easiest. I wonder if they underestimated its difficulty in creating it?

Ayrilana.1396:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

How can you really master something if you only do a few things in the expansion?

Sorry, but this line is bull-gravy. Clicking on something and many other so-called Mastery Points are not evidence of any kind of “mastery,” just as most “achievements” are not really achievements. These things are just names used by the developer to ID different systems.

The point behind Masteries is the same as the point behind anything developers put into MMO’s. That is, it gives players something to do. This is important to the developer because MMO business models are based on players playing over time, whether they spend money on a sub or in a virtual store. A better progression system would have included everyone because in the end that is what is best for the developer.

ANet seems to believe that locking things behind specific content will encourage people to try that content. This only works in some cases, not in all. People who came to GW2 because they wanted a game that did not have raids are not going to try raids no matter how much lipstick Anet puts on the pig.

Why do you assume that mastery = skill level? By doing all of the achievements for the mastery points, you’ve completed quite a lot of the expansion content. They are spread out enough to encourage just that.

Mastery:

1. comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment:
2. control or superiority over someone or something:

If we’re going by your definition, they’d be called Completion Points.

Ayrilana.1396:

If players don’t want to raid then they do not have to. They should just not think they are entitled to the same rewards that have done them if only just once.

Gating a level ding reward behind niche content is stupid design for an MMO. Raids have plenty of other rewards. If they need a spirit shard drop on ding (or whatever other minor reward might replace shards eventually or never), they are in trouble. It would be better design to have some rewards be inclusive. ANet is going more and more towards exclusive, and it’s likely costing them, in good will if nothing else — despite your ardent opposition to anyone who dares question the status quo.

Solvar.7953:

While giving out mastery points after earning lots of experience may trivialize them some, right now, gaining some number of them is also a trivial exercise, but may be in content one doesn’t want to play. And some are quite hard/time consuming – for the Central Tyria ones, there really isn’t any consistency.

The problem I have is that some are behind content I really don’t find that interesting – 8 or 9 are the second points for doing the story. Repeating the story multiple times to pick those up is anything but fun to me. An improvement there would just be make those achievements available on first play through – thus, I might actually pick them up if I play the story through on my other characters, but that doesn’t work right now. I noticed that they did make this change for LS3.

Forcing players into content they don’t want to play never really seems to work out. When the game first came out, one had to do the WvW maps for world completion, and people constantly complained that they really didn’t want to be forced to the WvW for what is mostly a PvE task. Arenanet did eventually change that.

I noticed last night while playing a second character through LS2 that there seems to be a way to get those additional achievement on the first pass, I managed to do it on a few chapters but not others. In the cases where I did get the additional ones, I noticed that I had ended up leaving the instance at some point and restarted it. Not that this addresses your issue, but there may be a workaround in there somewhere.

They should let us convert all those XP Buffs into gold or gems. I dont mind 50 gems for a booster. Better than them clogging up the inventories

Djinn.9245:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Djinn.9245:

If raids are so easy and people are completing with 4 people, why are some raid leaders charging 100g for a boss so people can open this Mastery? If its so easy why not let anyone in your raid?

It’s a free market, and they will charge what the market will pay. Are they filling these raids? Also, are they expecting the people who pay to contribute absolutely nothing, or are they expecting them to participate, understand mechanics, etc?

I suspect you will find that this is paying to be carried through a boss kill as dead weight, no expectations at all on you, for the mastery.

If you want to not pay gold for it, try instead finding a training raid, or a guild that raids, and working with them instead.

And why is “the market” willing to pay 100g? If raiding was so easy, anyone who wanted to raid should be able to do it without paying. People only pay for a completion because they can’t get one any other way or it takes so long that they’re willing to pay for convenience. I don’t think many people are paying 100g for convenience.

Why do you need to find a training guild if raiding is so easy?

As someone part of Flax (the biggest, most active and most experienced raid selling guild on the EU servers. Absolutly no one buys escort, with the exceptions of them buying entire wings. It has no timer on it, the last boss has 721k hp instead of the usual 34 mil. It has zero wipe mechanics apart from pulling Glenna into mines / letting wargs kill her. People generally pay 180 gold per raid boss with the exception of Matthias, Xera and Deimos being more expensive while Gorseval and Bandit Trio being cheaper.

If people are playing on the EU servers, just /w me and I will help you get the raid kills as we are doing lowmans anyway just for the fun of it.
As of forcing people into specific gamemodes. I think open worlders are the most lucky bunch. Reason being, look at the HoT specific legendaries. Journys, map currency farming, world exploration.

Unlock Raid Mastery for all player.

I’d agree this is a problem if there were any decent Spirit Shard sinks. It’s so time consuming to slowly use them up in MF recipes that I don’t see the point haha

Then again, maybe it’s better there isn’t a huge SS sink so that there’s less priority on addressing this? /shrug

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Again, I’m gonna add to this by reminding y’all that other games cough WoW cough BDO cough StarWars MMO cough just discard XP at max level, more or less, and they didn’t die of it.

(Yes, I know that BDO doesn’t technically discard it, it just hits the diminishing returns curve so hard that nobody is past 68 to 69 or whatever, and the next step will be exponentially longer than that. No rewards exist for grinding toward it though.)

So claiming that GW2 is unique in all the world, and here but only here, will players quit because they don’t get rewarded for their XP, is a hard sell and requires some convincing proof about why it’s different…

The problem is that once you start doing X and then you take X away, people are usually more upset than if you never put X in, in the first place.

And this is a real problem with online games because they get changed and it’s not always in ways that people like.

Which brings me to…
(this other quote is from ProtoGunner… not showing his name for funky forum structure reasons)

Probably, but I tell you something about human behaviour: Our nature is to overcome challenges even though we don’t like it.

1. You either do the escort and you don’t have to worry about this issue anymore
2. You live with the fact, that Anet decided to make things how they are
3. You wait until they change it

I have to admit that it may be not fair for those who don’t want to raid. But if you have such big issues with it you probably have to learn that life and even life in a game may force you to do something that isn’t all a pleasure. I’d understand the constant moaning if you had to complete the whole raid or a harder boss. But it isn’t. It’s really not hard. People have to learn that they are not eligible for everything in life but if they want it they have to work for it. Yes, even in a game. Maybe I think this way be cause I play games since the good old Nintendo difficulty times; it was quite normal to not finish a game at all. In fact, I haven’t finished about half of all the games I had and it was okay. I always kept thinking that I was bad I had to be better. Not the other way around.

The ‘good old’ Nintendo games were not online games. What you got was what you got, no ifs, ands, or buts, and you knew that going in. With online games, what you get may be something else next Thursday. It’s a whole different mindset. Some people can have quite a lot of patience when it comes to waiting for changes and continuing to ask for them because they know it’s a possibility. Others will ask and forget, or ask and leave when the wish is not fulfilled.

But the mindset with regards to asking for change is rooted in a reasonable belief that sometimes requests will be fulfilled because sometimes they are.

Mal.1670:

I’d agree this is a problem if there were any decent Spirit Shard sinks.

That’s kinda what I’m facing right now. 3000+ and not much to do with them.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Eggbutt.6213:

Pre-HoT you could get spirit shards for leveling up past 80. When half of the reward for doing events i s the XP, it feels like it’s going to waste. At least with the spirit shards it’s something.

You could never get Spirit Shards for leveling past L80 before. For approximately 6 months before the release of Heart of Thorns, one got nothing whatsoever for leveling past L80, and previous to that, one received Skill Points. Never Spirit Shards.

Gaining Spirit Shards for leveling (post-L80) was only added in July of 2016, nine months after the release of Heart of Thorns.

Prior to the rework of skill points into hero points, excess skill points performed the function of spirit shards, so it amounts to the same thing.

Rauderi.8706:

Mal.1670:

I’d agree this is a problem if there were any decent Spirit Shard sinks.

That’s kinda what I’m facing right now. 3000+ and not much to do with them.

With enough willingness to click things, https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/spirit-shards helps guide you to at least somewhat profitable conversions. (around 3 shards per gold earned, so that would be around 900 gold or so sitting there….)

It’s a bit annoying when you’ve maxed out your HoT masteries and you need to do central Tyria ones but when you’re in LW it doesn’t allow you to pump the XP you earn into the central Tyria mastery’s. Needs a fix me thinks.

Unlock raid mastery for all.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Again, I’m gonna add to this by reminding y’all that other games cough WoW cough BDO cough StarWars MMO cough just discard XP at max level, more or less, and they didn’t die of it.

(Yes, I know that BDO doesn’t technically discard it, it just hits the diminishing returns curve so hard that nobody is past 68 to 69 or whatever, and the next step will be exponentially longer than that. No rewards exist for grinding toward it though.)

So claiming that GW2 is unique in all the world, and here but only here, will players quit because they don’t get rewarded for their XP, is a hard sell and requires some convincing proof about why it’s different…

Apples to oranges. SOME players in the same game here are getting a benefit that other players are not. In those other games everyone is treated the same when it comes to an xp cap.