Guild Wars 2

So first and foremost, love the new WvW. The gameplay is good, I have a lot of learning new tricks to go with the new maps. I’m psyched. The only hiccup I’ve found is in the notarized scrolls. Here’s why:

When playing WvW I need a character running as strong as I can possibly make them. If I have a character without their elite specialization filled out I’m not running my strongest character.

But if I am running a character with all the hero points filled I don’t need the notarized scrolls.

The crux of the problem is that the proofs and scrolls are soul bound. So I can’t empower another character from a more powerful. Moreover, it means that right before each WvW rank I have to log out and switch characters so the right one gets the hero points. Not very conducive when knocking off a half dozen opponents with your team.

It worked in the old Skill Point days. The rank was account wide and the scrolls were account bound which made sense. The rewards for an account wide rank were account wide. We now have an account wide rank tied to something soul bound and that is where the frustration is rooted.

I’m hoping that with the points required being knocked back to 250, they’ll just bring back liquid WXP.

mzeb.9601:

. We now have an account wide rank tied to something soul bound and that is where the frustration is rooted.

+1 on this!

scrolls and proof of heroics should be account bound…

The proofs of heroics are soulbound, but last I heard, the chests they come from are not. So just don’t open the chests and then transfer them to whichever character you like. Still inconvenient, but not as much as what you’re doing.

Put the boxes in your bank and open them on the character that needs the hero points. The boxes ought to stack, that was another glaring oversight by Arenanet (besides the soulbound proof of heroics ,waypoint bug, 5 proofs per maguuma scroll turning into 10).

How do I transfer a rank up chest?

Notsoperky.2348:

How do I transfer a rank up chest?

Not the rank up chest, there is another chest inside, that one has the proofs inside.

Since the chest is acc bound, you can transfer those and have the proofs on the character you like.

Yea, I agree, your main should be able to acquire points that your alts can use.

kitten , game designer… No one who want to answer on all other post ?

Kitten… bypass existing character progression… kitten. Am I in the wrong thread? I thought this was WvW? Am I wrong saying that in WvW, until you’re level 80, you’re nothing but a loot bag…?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

This makes makes me a sad panda. ;-(

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time.

No offence but that is a theoretical design principle that simply does not translate to desired practice. And I hope you don’t fix the ‘bug’. What does it matter that we transfer chests between characters on a practical level?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

So basically, you think it’s good game design to force players to play on a toon in order to get the elite unlocked for the odd occasion when they need to log in that character, rather than be able to use their favoured toon and pass across HP’s to their less favoured wvw toon.

Have you thought of what this does to organised parties? fights? oh sorry, we’ve got no eles as everyone is levelling wvw points on their rangers this month?

And what use are spare points? Great, I can now play my main toon to my hearts content and never pass across spare points to a little used wvw alt, so i end up with a main (in theory) with a pile of useless spare points whilst my other main doesn’t have them.

What about swapping toons – logged out of wvw to swap from one class to another when it’s needed, rejoin end of queue, just so I can attempt to game the system and get the chest on the toon I need points for?

Earning MASTERIES is character progression, being able to use skills (without some stupid gated grind) isn’t , it’s just frustrating to wvw players, who are already quite a rare breed.

Please get a wvw player or two (not one of the fanboy/streamers) on your team so you can understand the players point of view and stop making elementary mistakes and bad design decisions.

Thanks.

Notsoperky.2348:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

So basically, you think it’s good game design to force players to play on a toon in order to get the elite unlocked for the odd occasion when they need to log in that character, rather than be able to use their favoured toon and pass across HP’s to their less favoured wvw toon.

Have you thought of what this does to organised parties? fights? oh sorry, we’ve got no eles as everyone is levelling wvw points on their rangers this month?

And what use are spare points? Great, I can now play my main toon to my hearts content and never pass across spare points to a little used wvw alt, so i end up with a main (in theory) with a pile of useless spare points whilst my other main doesn’t have them.

What about swapping toons – logged out of wvw to swap from one class to another when it’s needed, rejoin end of queue, just so I can attempt to game the system and get the chest on the toon I need points for?

Good post, you said in more detail what I was getting at. Just on the above paragraph this is exactly what will happen. To Tyler it is not good practice to pair soul bound rewards with an account progression system

Thanks for the fix on the hero point scrolls. Also, appreciate the lowered point requirement.

morrolan.9608:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time.

No offence but that is a theoretical design principle that simply does not translate to desired practice. And I hope you don’t fix the ‘bug’. What does it matter that we transfer chests between characters on a practical level?

Ouch. Yea, longtime players in WvW know meta, and won’t generally follow commanders playing on a class other than guardian or warrior. ‘Real commanders’ drive on guardian. I miss my engi main sometimes…

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Holy crap, you are really out of touch with your player base.

People that WvW don’t give a crap about PvE progression for the most part. I want to log in, have a stable game to play, and players to kill. You took $50 from people, that should be enough for you without sadistically forcing a grind on people that don’t kittening want it.

Elite specs are not character progression. Don’t kid yourselves. You realize up until elite specs characters have been able to zip to 80 and they were just fine right? Your game is not that complicated that you need to this stuff in WvW. Sounds like you are all kittened you put in Tomes of Knowledge that were so incredibly easy to get. Why not just remove Tomes of Knowledge all together? Force everyone to level every single character to 80, then force them to grind it all again for their elite spec?

This is terrible, terrible mockery of developer/player relations. You’ve purposely added a tedious grind for no real reason other than to give the illusion of content. I spend half my time in sPvP, the other half in WvW.

To tell me I need Character progression by gating access to my Elite Spec because some how I need that extra time is insulting.

morrolan.9608:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time.

No offence but that is a theoretical design principle that simply does not translate to desired practice. And I hope you don’t fix the ‘bug’. What does it matter that we transfer chests between characters on a practical level?

It does not translate well into practice in WvW at all. The importance of character progression has always been very highly regarded by ANET in GW2. This has been a long standing design philosophy at ANET that should come as no surprise to anyone here since the WvW playerbase constantly has to fight with them over every little thing, from WXP to commander tags to get account progression any consideration.

Maybe it is time to give up being lumped in with PvE toons for WvW to allow for this design philosophy to break its bad habit of trying to apply itself to places that make less sense. PvP players are the only group that don’t experience these locks into character progression that everyone else has to deal with. I would love my WvW toons to have the same ease of gearing and rewards of PvP ones but would miss my attachment to their personalities developed over time and mix/match stats so it would not be an easy trade off to make.

Might help simplify a lot of ANET’s misunderstanding about why WvWers balk at some of their choices for forcing character progression upon those who are less interested in that layer of development and more just want battle it out with minimum barriers to entry.

We could take Anet seriously when it came to “character progression” if it wasn’t for the fact if you don’t want your elite, you could just use 80 tomes and get everything else unlocked. Really Anet… Really.

Great to Anet still doesn’t care about their player base because we need more PvE progression in WvW in order to even play our characters correctly.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Just to add to the discussion since your post. WvW masteries were originally soul bound until you came around to the player POV that WvW is more about player/account progression than character. Now you’re talking about taking that account progression system and bolting another character progression system on to it. They are in opposition to one another. The same decision that was eventually made to make WvW masteries account bound applies to the proofs of heroics.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Hi Tyler,
Thanks for the reply. You’ve got a tough call here. You are weighing the character progression vs. the mantra of “players should play the game how they want to play it.” So you are balancing the character progression “rules” against how many of us feel we want to play it.
I bounce between PvE and WvW. So I will in time get enough hero points to obtain the elite spec. But the truth is, the ranger I built as a WvW roamer (alone a longbow/greatsword ranger is pretty solid), will have to play PvE to become a Druid. I’m really bad at PvE ranger. Squishy is an understatement. Tough PvE critters just eat me alive whereas human players will act with caution.
It’s a totally different beast than WvW ranger, at which I do OK. I’m much better as a Guardian, which is the character I’d like to use to beef up the Ranger to a Druid.
So I’ll pose an interesting couple of thoughts to you. The first is those that should probably be held to the character progression by hero points “rules” are those who probably stay in PvE. They don’t leave to come to WvW. So the character progression holds.
But there will be a few that go looking for “the easy way” to progress and risk WvW. The second thought is a business case. Those who go to WvW looking to get those “easy” hero points will discover a very different game play. One I suspect they’ll enjoy. The satisfaction of taking a tower with a couple of strangers (who’s names you’ll remember afterward) is not something that can be replaced by anything in PvE.
WvW is what keeps me around but it took me a while to get into it after playing lots of PvE. I found a new life to the game. And I suspect I’m not alone.
So I’d say reward these adventurous types who brave the battle of the mists by allowing them (and me :-) the flexible hero points. And I’d always welcome a few new targets…err worthy adversaries.

I am an exclusive wvw player and to have it soul bound is a problem for me
I roam on my engineer and zvz on my ele since my guild needs me on ele and nothing else. I also play my mesmer/necro pug zerging once in a while it would take so long for me to get the elites on it if i couldnt transfer from another character.
Just make it a currency and be done with it anet!

It was just a bad decision overall to gate elite specs, do it for masteries on pve content, that’s absolutely fine, many other games have done that, it’s called reputation grinds.

Elite specs are already gated behind $50, having to be level 80, and having to learn every other vanilla trait and skills, really no need to gate it beyond that.

I think you would find that most players would have been happily enjoying your game (no matter the form pve wvw spvp), if they were given the chance to enjoy their chosen class sooner rather than later.

They really need to start treating WvW like they treat playing Spvp.

So, a WvW player has to play WvW to get his elite specialization unlocked but can’t play WvW because he doesn’t have his elite specialization unlocked.

“Hello, yes, we’re looking for 20 years old young people with 30 years of experience to hire”

I had a couple of the Proof tokens left over in my inventory, and I left them in the bank, because before seeing this thread, it never even occurred to me that they might possibly be soulbound, because that would be silly.

Here is what an intelligent, thoughtful, and experienced game designer would do at a bare minimum:

1. Make the chest stack like every other bag/chest in the game.

2. Keep the chests account bound.

3. Make the scrolls account bound.

With that said, I absolutely do not expect this to happen.

cillard.3986:

Here is what an intelligent, thoughtful, and experienced game designer would do at a bare minimum:

1. Make the chest stack like every other bag/chest in the game.

2. Keep the chests account bound.

3. Make the scrolls account bound.

Excellent ideas!

cillard.3986:

Here is what an intelligent, thoughtful, and experienced game designer would do at a bare minimum:

1. Make the chest stack like every other bag/chest in the game.

2. Keep the chests account bound.

3. Make the scrolls account bound.

With that said, I absolutely do not expect this to happen.

I like these ideas.

I’d probably make the proof of heroics to a wallet currency if they’re accountbound.

As far as “character progression” , 250 hero points on a Revenant without elite spec is rather brutal if it’s WvW.

Firstly, thank you for answering the question. Over the last three years it has been very rare for WVW threads to receive any answers at all.

Secondly, The concept of soul bound tokens for Hero points is IMHO, one of the worst things to ever be implemented for WvW. While I am available to discuss many reasons, I will list just one example;

Guild commanders/groups often specify the profession makeup they require that night.

Please if you do not understand why this is a very bad idea, please ask someone outside of the Anet echo chamber.

Good luck.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

But can’t we already skip like 90% of character ‘progression’ in the sense that you describe it with tomes of knowledge? Personally i fail to see the issue in making the tokens account bound, because there are some people who don’t want to play a class until we have it’s elite spec for one reason or another.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Make it all account bound. Character progression in WvW is overrated. We need to stop thinking about WvW as an extension of PvE and start thinking of it as an extension of sPvP. If it was treated more like sPvP then that would mean instant unlock for build related changes.

morrolan.9608:

Just to add to the discussion since your post. WvW masteries were originally soul bound until you came around to the player POV that WvW is more about player/account progression than character. Now you’re talking about taking that account progression system and bolting another character progression system on to it. They are in opposition to one another. The same decision that was eventually made to make WvW masteries account bound applies to the proofs of heroics.

This is such a good point I’m quoting it so everyone can read it twice.

morrolan.9608:

Just to add to the discussion since your post. WvW masteries were originally soul bound until you came around to the player POV that WvW is more about player/account progression than character. Now you’re talking about taking that account progression system and bolting another character progression system on to it. They are in opposition to one another. The same decision that was eventually made to make WvW masteries account bound applies to the proofs of heroics.

and a third time, maybe u understand it by repeating…

I feel like Proof of Heroics/Notarized scrolls should be account bound. What am I supposed to do with the huge quantities of excess proof of heroics once I have unlocked my elite spec? WvW isn’t about character progression, it’s about account progression and this system is forcing me to only play 1 character or tediously switch between characters each time I am about to get a WvW rank to bind the Proofs to the right character.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We are looking at adding a way for players to earn Quickloot in WvW as well. We wanted to keep PvE progression (Masteries) separate from WvW progression (Ability Lines). However this means when a new Mastery ability is created, that might also be useful in another gamemode, it doesn’t automatically crossover.

Dubya Tee Eff ….

Are you the one making these decisions? If so, it might be time to bring in a consultant with actual gaming / wvw experience.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

…
This makes it even worse……

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

…….
I hope you, or whoever sent you out to deliver the bad news understands that we (most of us at least) don’t actually care about “character profession”, I play the character I play because my guild leader at some point said " we probably need more eles". That’s why my ele was my first toon with specialization, however until he says “we need more rangers” chances are even though that’s my only char with map completion she won’t get specialization. Especially since what you’re telling us is that my hours of playtime on ele will be useless for helping my ranger, even though you introduced a currency with relatively little use other than helping those under utilized chars.

funny WvW ranks are account bound

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Making Proof of Heroic/Notarized Scroll soul bound was the worst idea ever and whoever came up with that idea simply didn’t give it much thought. As you yourself said that Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass character progression, then what is the issue with players using the Proof of Heroic earned through an alternate character? If you really want to make such a change then do it to all character progression items and force your players to play the content on a particular character they do not really wish to play that content with.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug.

Pretty ridiculous. I wish it wasn’t a bug …
Somehow, you guys (Anet) keep screwing up the WvW’ers intentionally or otherwise.

Lack of thought whenever wvw is concerned.

Notsoperky.2348:

Lack of thought whenever wvw is concerned.

More like lack of experience causing a disconnect between how WvW players (who are PvPers at heart) view their toons.

Chaba.5410:

Notsoperky.2348:

Lack of thought whenever wvw is concerned.

More like lack of experience causing a disconnect between how WvW players (who are PvPers at heart) view their toons.

Because Anet doesn’t wvw, at least not in the same way as the rest of us.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Except we did play our warrior, thief, ranger, engi, necro, etc for “some amount of time”. You guys gave us skill points that are shared across characters, and then do this. Said skill points which are now essentially worthless as many WvWers have an abundance of skill points just sitting there collecting dust.

My biggest beef, is that 1 WvW Rank doesn’t give you 10 Proofs of Heroic. Considering it actually takes more effort to do a Rank than it does to do a Heroic Challenge.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

My biggest beef, is that 1 WvW Rank doesn’t give you 10 Proofs of Heroic. Considering it actually takes more effort to do a Rank than it does to do a Heroic Challenge.

It’s currently 2-4 , which is very low unless you’re pumping a ton of WvW exp buffs.

It ought to be 5 , 10 or something fixed in number that is greater than 3 on average.

I’ve gotten over 250 proofs this week so far under the current system but most of that was ktraining in EBG with the buffs.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time.

If earning specializations is supposed to be character progression and require playing that class for some amount of time then please remove account bound mastery systems that provide easy access to elite specializations across multiple characters to PvE players only.

I played one class through the new content just long enough to unlock enough HP to have access to my elite specialization. Redoing it on subsequent characters takes an “investment” of approximately 20-40 minutes, depending on who’s around to help kill Champs. If that’s what you consider “some amount of time” then just give us a 40 minute gating period before we can actually access the specialization on a different class in WvW.

Comparatively this has failed to provide equal access, or even access that makes sense in terms of the future state of game. Are we supposed to sit on stacks of these Heroics so we can auto level future specializations, or are we supposed to just waste space saving the extras that will be made useless at some future point so we don’t have unfair access to the next specialization?

What was the thought process about the future use of these Proofs? What point is there to earning (or keeping them) once we have everything unlocked on a character?

This is not a good mechanic as implemented. It’s not awful, and if it wasn’t character bound it would be somewhat on par with the PvE friendliness of the account bound mastery system, but it just seems so poorly thought out.