Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to test the skills in peace, like IDK the raid training golem?

Quite disappointed, as well. I’m not a PVP/WvW player at all and the PVP/WvW builds don’t necessarily work for PVE content as well.

I was really hoping for a PVE test, like there was for HoT. It was interesting to go to cursed shore and kick around some champ giants to see how effective classes were with makeshift builds and to hype myself up more for unlocking them in the expansion

I haven’t played the game too much recently for, well, reasons I won’t go into here. Was really hoping the elite spec beta would get me excited about the game all over again. I love the game, I really do. And I want to get back into it, but dang.

I think making it a blast finished outweighs the 2 sec CD increase. Also I can’t understand why they buffed its healing for pvp but not for wvw… thier “reasoning” is valid in wvw even more than pvp.

On the other hand.. nerfing static again is just stupid. And whats worse is they try to make it sound like a buff “against people trapped inside” I mean come on….

Also air3 change seems good (though I haven’t seen how it works yet) but why was this change made air3 but not to earth5 ???? They basically the same skill but one is a knockback and the other is an immob…

I run a staff support ele in WvW and the overall changes make me happy in the long run. Ice Spike having a blast finisher is fantastic! There is a lot more heal/support potential with that change. I would love to see the Geyser change make it into PvE/WvW.

I don’t think it’s right to say this is “unfair”. It isn’t. People with the toy didn’t have a glider a few days ago, they don’t have one now. They aren’t obliged to give one to them.

I do, however, think it would have been nice for ANet to offer a discount. It was done before with the wings, and it would have been a nice and easy way to reward customer loyalty (and in particular, customer loyalty for those who’ve bought gem store items).

ANet is under no obligation to do nice things for their customers. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea.

ArenaNet, PLEASE, let those of us who already have the toy at the very least get a discount on the glider. People who had the wing backpacks before the glider combos were introduced could simply go to an NPC to get the glider version for free. That’s really not fair…

Palador.2170:

You seem to be dismissing any fun you had with it during those years that you had it. That has value too.

And if you didn’t have any fun with it, then why would you even want a glider version of it?

For that to be true, when HoT came out and old version of the game became free (still needed to buy to unlock everything), Anet shouldn’t have given away free slots when players complained, but they did. why. Because it was a way for them to show thanks and respect for those old players who supported the game.
I’m not arguing about the item’s cost, how much fun one may had or anything like that, its about fairness and equity. IF they thought it was okay to bring back old items, they should have thought about those who bought the items and not neglect them.
What part of this argument is so difficult to understand?

Furthermore, because glider doesn’t require opening up inventory finding the item and click, OR transfer it to different toons, whereas glider you can just set it once and use it anytime you jump down. its just easier

Don’t matter, this is my point of view, and that’s yours.
Whether I choose to buy or complain, it ’s up to me not you.

Palador.2170:

Code.2834:

It’s not about how much it costs and how long it takes for us to farm, its about if they care about us at all. If they respect for those who supported them and can be fair for them. Paying 500 gems to get ANOTHER carpet toy is just unnecessary or paying 400 just for glider + 250 gems you spent before = 650 gems which is sold for 500 isn’t exactly FAIR you know? It’s about perspective. I’m saying, old users with toys previously should be able to buy the glider for 250 on sale.

You seem to be dismissing any fun you had with it during those years that you had it. That has value too.

And if you didn’t have any fun with it, then why would you even want a glider version of it?

I can’t exactly “SHOW YOU THE WORLD” while I’m on the ground!!!

hell no. I’m not buying the glider version unless there’s a sale for those with toy carpet. Selling both glider and carpet for 500 gem right now (price will change back to normal later I know) and 400 for the glider alone when I clearly bought the toy for 250 gems years back, just seems like neglecting and deceiving old players.

To the argument against a full defense team cheese moding everything without a timer: so what? Its going to take them an incredibly longer time, and I cant imagine anyone doing it that way would be having much fun. In which way would it impact people on a large scale? Do you think it would replace the zerk meta in its “zerk or kick” mentality? Do you really think there would be enough players willing to take that much more time in a raid for that to happen?

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

There are two primary gates on scribing.

Pigment, which is needed in large amounts to make anything and have an extremely low drop rate, and shards, which are only avaliable from guild missions.

The shards are a great example of a good gate. You’re guaranteed to get 1-5 shards per member, per guild mission. Guilds that want to benefit from scribes can effortlessly provide the scribe with 50+ shards per week. it isn’t enough to spam levels, but its enough to make roughly the same number of banners/consumables as you did in the old system with some left over for a few decorations. Just like the old system, large and more active guilds will generate more shards, but will likely consume the things they make with them at a faster rate. Shards reard scribe mats needed for guild items be doing guild content. It’s a good system. The fact you can trade them if you want to is icing on the cake. It gives guilds that don’t care about scribe stuff a way to profit off of guilds that don’t generate enough shards themselves. However, the market having stabilized on most other things, the shards are still valued higher than one would expect for a common time gated item with no other crafting ingredients.

The second gate is pigments, and this is the spot where we have a fundamental rarity problem. For each rank of a scribing recipie, you need 10 pigments, AND you need pigments of a specific color, AND certain recipies require additional pigments on top of those used to make inks. The problem here is that pigemtns are extremely rare items from plant harvesting or quite low yield salvages from dye. The system is designed in increments of ten, while the actual drop and salvage rates for pigments seem to be balances around increments of one.

All other material requirements have varying degrees of sanity. I’ve got not problem with some of the furniture being particularly expensive/rare, or the base materials cost of most of the banners, but I agree that the WvW stuff needs a serious cost overhaul (and wvw needs a serious rewards overhaul) to even be worth crafting at all.

Guild missions should pay out 3x the shards as they do currently, and all pigment costs in recipies should be divided by ten. This would fix the two primary hard gates in the system. Furthermore, WvW cost/benefit is seriously out of whack, and the costs and rewards of WvW need a total overhaul if you expect anyone to actually bother with the war room.

Yeah, I wish they’d made Scribe in line with all the other crafting professions – something you can get and level solo but that specializes in making guild hall items.

I don’t see why that wouldn’t have worked.

I have been leveling my scribing up to help my guild, and have spent WELL over 1500g to get to level 200.

So I reached level 200 and was excited to see I could finally make guild arrow carts for my guild. This is what the recipe will require:

1 guild arrow cart will require – 5 badges of tribute, 3 arrow cart blueprints, 15 steel ingots and 125 flax fibers.

125!!!??? That means that each guild arrow cart is worth well over 10g just to make.

Now, this is just the arrow cart. Let me tell you about Ink… Oh please, let me tell you about ink.

Fine ink set requires – 1 crystalline bottle, 1 basic ink set, and 10 yellow pigment. No big deal, right? Wrong, because 1 basic ink set requires 1 crystalline bottle, 1 simple ink set, 10 red dye. Again, no biggy. But see, the simple ink set requires 1 cystalline bottle, 1 1 jug of water and 10 brown dye.

Everything requires 10 brown dye! Why are you making it so expensive and so complicated to make anything in this?! I have 1 recipe at level 200 that goes 8 levels deep. This is so much worse than even making ascended gear!!

I know you think this is a guild profession, and it would be if it was like this:

You have a scribing station that everyone comes and works at. It works for the guild. Anyone in the guild can do it, anyone in the guild can utilize it, anyone can pool their supplies together into it – but the only thing that can use the stuff from it is the guild. It stays in the guild and with the guild. That is the only way this makes sense. As it stands now, the person working on scribing is suffering, the recipes are way too complicated and too steep. Infact, I am not sure there are enough potatoes in the entire game to support this much brown dye!!!!

Please, lower these recipes, simplify them. This is beyond ridiculous.

The change is a step in the right direction and will probably work out. But the way Hero Points work in general is still concerning as a design choice. Let me explain:

400 Hero Points took a long time to gather, but that’s not the main issue IMHO. The main issue was it was a long time, spent doing exactly ONE THING. There is only one way to get Hero Points, which is go to set points on the map and do their thing.

Compare this to leveling a class and unlocking the non-elite lines. Hero Points can accelerate the process, but in general playing the game, going where the player wants and taking in content along their own path all nets XP and all contributes to unlocking more skills and traits. This makes unlocking these things enjoyable, as I can do it a number of different ways and I’m never locked into one particular thing.

Same thing with Masteries which have been much better received. I run around the maps doing my thing, gather XP, train up the Masteries then quickly gather some points to unlock them. It’s fun and open.

10 hours of playing is pretty much 10 hours of gaining XP or Mastery training. I may not be 100% efficient if I wander aimlessly, but I can just enjoy the content and know I’m still making progress towards my end goal.

In contrast, getting Hero Points require single minded farming of a single thing. If I really want to make progress towards Chronomancer, 10 hours of this play feels like 10 hours of checking boxes off on a list, it isn’t particularly fun or engaging and it becomes an outright chore, not a game. Which is a shame, because some of the challenges are themselves fun to overcome.

So my sincere feedback and challenge to the designers is this – don’t just tinker with numbers to get the amount of grind right. Give us a system that isn’t just checkboxing/ farming one thing with our imagination turned off. Let us unlock our specializations as we play and explore the game – that’s how you get people to engage with and explore the world instead of flocking to specific points in a mindless train.

Nephar.3746:

i dont get your point rly..
i just play like 2 hours each day in the evening and i fully unlocked the daredevil spec yesterday (4 days after release), with 210 Hp already stored.
i am unlocking the druid spec with just 40 HP stored and i began using the druid spec even with only the first trait.. just for using the staff.
i dont see this as an issue unless u want it ALL and NOW when the game just release…
take your time and relax… u can even play the spec without being fully unlocked u know?

Congrats on not bothering to read and understand the crux of the complaints. No one wants everything instant…..

63 pages……this needs fixed prettt badly.

Again anet, simply adding the option to a vendor to trade spirit shards for HP would work

sigh I don’t know how to feel about this. I am a super-causal player having only 78 hero points with 44% map complete (this is not a whine just a bit of perspective).

On the positive hand I am enjoying the HoT content a 100% percent. I love the events, the masteries, the story is magnificent. I still need to do fractals whom look promising with the new changes. All of this “distracts me” from getting my elite spec.

On the negative hand I wish I could be doing all these events, masteries and story as a Scrapper. But I can’t. I will have to do all the hero points in the jungle which impossible to do solo. I’m sure A-net will “fix this” so I will wait…..or more accurate I will keep raising my masteries.

Actually the simplest solution would be to make elite traitlines and utilities cost the same as normal traitlines and utilities. After all, there is nothing elite about these specs as they are on par with the normal professions.

I have played Heart of Thorns for a good 30 hours since launch and I think that has been long enough for me to come up with an opinion on many aspects of the expansion pack.

I’m going to begin by mentioning that I almost exclusively only play WvW and occasionally some PvP. I have always found PvE to be repetitive and somewhat dull and I prefer the competitive aspects That PvP/WvW have to offer. I mention this as I expect my views on the new PvE content will be manipulated by the type of player I am.

That being said, I must admit that I have (for the most part) really been enjoying the new content HoT has brought with it, both in PvE and WvW. The new Desert Borderlands are a welcome change to the old maps and I look forward to seeing more and more of them in the future. The removal of guard stacks has made roaming in WvW fairer and I think that the change, although not necessary, was a good thing to do.

The new PvE zones are where I have spent most of my time since Friday, and they have really surprised me. I think the vertical design is very well done (but can be slightly annoying) and the different ways of getting from place to place (Gliding, Jump-y Mushrooms etc. etc.) make for an enjoyable experience when navigating the new zones. There are also various events in the new zones and I believe they all have a different meta-event. Playing these events wasn’t too dissimilar from doing events in the normal zones so I found them to quickly become slightly dull and repetitive, but by no means were they bad. The story missions were challenging enough for them to be fun, but there wasn’t as many as I expected. Each chapter of the story has it’s own set of achievements so they have some sort of re-playability and some additional targets to aim for. So in terms of content, I think Anet did a very good job all around with HoT, aside from Stronghold, which I don’t like. But that’s just personal preference, nothing particularly bad about it.

The new mastery system added with HoT allows players to have additional goals after they’ve reached level 80 which I think is nice. Although the mastery ranks are very slow to obtain, they are account wide so you’ll only have to get them once.

Now, this is the BIG problem I have with HoT, and I expect most of you saw this coming, but I really don’t like the Hero-Points-for-elite-specialisation system. The elite specialisations are largely what made me buy Heart of Thorns, and in my time playing since the launch, I’ve managed to obtain ~160 Hero Points. That’s 30 hours for 160 Hero Points. And I’m fully aware that people have managed to get far more than that, but I’ve been playing the game to have fun, not to grind these points. The fastest way (and only viable way as far as I know) to get Hero Points is to complete Hero Challenges in the new zones. Each challenge gives 10 points, there are 40 challenges, 400 Points. Hearing this had slightly salvaged the system for me, but then I tried to do some of these Hero Challenges. I managed to do quite a few of the challenges before I began to see more and more of them were restricted by specific masteries or required additional players to complete them. Requiring max/high level masteries to do the challenges really put me off since the only way to get these is to grind events for hours on end. To some people, doing these events doesn’t feel like a grind to all, but to me it sure does. Needing extra players isn’t too much of a problem right now since the maps are highly active, but give it a few weeks and less and less people will be helping with the challenges on map chat.

Let’s say you’ve done the grind and have all the necessary masteries, which is already going to have taken you an absurd amount of time, you still have to go through all your alts, run them to the new zones (assuming they don’t have map completion) and do all 40 hero challenges several times. This is not an enjoyable experience and it’s not what I paid £35 for. As someone mentioned previously in this thread, needing to grind endlessly for Hero Points to get elite specialisations has nothing to do with character development. It’s essentially a new class. I think that restricting this content was the wrong thing to do and it needs to be re-evaluated.

tl;dr: Heart of Thorns = good. Hero Points = bad.

to be fair, new maps are beautiful, events are great and challenge, masteries are fine (may be need to reduce exp)
the only thing I dont like is HP to unlock elite spec, too much and locked by masteries. If anet reduce 1/2 or create a new story for each elite spec to unlock, it will be awsome, people can enjoy exploring HOT maps with full elite spc

I consider myself a higher end casual player. Maybe 10 – 15 hours per week on GW2. Have been playing on and off since the game was released. Took a long break after Southsun because I was so disappointed with the content of that release. Came back about 6 months ago. I do WvW for about 3 hours a week to get dailies. Fractals rarely and PVP never. 80% of the time I’m in PvE.

Like many others I really like the expansion. Mastery was really well done and having it account wide works very well. The new maps are great. Gliding is a lot of fun. Yes the new maps are challenging, but I don’t have a problem with that. There is lots of other content that is less so and a game should have areas that are challenging.

However there is one aspect that like a lot of people has me disappointed. That is the Elite Specializations. For someone who is not a total GW addict the requirement of 400 HP per character plus the structure of the new HP is totally outrageous.

I have a character for each profession. One has world completion, three others are level 80, and the rest are mostly just crafters or bagholders. I would like to have all my level 80s get Elite specializations so I can play all of their aspects which is after all what I paid for when I bought the expansion. I don’t NOT see how that is going to happen in any reasonable period of time. Even the character with world completion is a good way short from completing his Elite Specialization. Furthermore do so is quite difficult because the hero points in Maguuma are either gated or impossible to solo. Getting together a group to take on a HP is utterly impractical.

Seriously I think a character with World Completion should NOT have to grind for HP in the new maps. For WC you already have had to grind in a major way.

Taking multiple characters through the grind to get Elite Specialization the way it is structured now is totally unreasonable for someone who has to work for a living. I view it as a barrier high enough that if it isn’t changed it is an incentive for me to look at other games.

Something needs to be changed with HP requirements for Elite Specializations. Nerfing the Champs behind HP in the new maps. Some other prolific source of HP. Reducing the requirements so that old fashioned World Completion is enough.

Come on Anet. Use your imagination. This process should be fun and draw players in, like masteries does. A Long March repeating content many times across multiple characters is not fun. It becomes a chore that drives people away.

I don’t want rush new maps for HP to be able to be able play how I want , I want to slowly explore new maps and story, fractals , mastery, www with new specs, but with needed numbers of HP, elite specs (that were the first “point of interest” in addon) is become closed for me for veeery long time with my play style, and I’m not even talk about that I have 9 tunes, so it become even more pain…

I guess since this is a Feedback thread and I don’t really have much time to write an extensive review of the expansion I’ll leave my overall feedback here.

First off I’d like to say the expansion did surpass my expectatives however I still think it is not enough content to justify the price tag.

The good:
• Maps are great, a ton of stuff can be done I like the way they’re set up, and some WP’s near big events are sorely needed, still I think that 2 or 3 extra WPS per map wouldn’t hurt
• Gliding is quite responsive, so far gliding and bouncing mushrooms have been really helpful
• Mobs have slightly better UI
• Bosses are not as easy as they were before
• Meta events are everywhere in the open world PvE
• Borderlands seem interesting
• Stronghold is something I really liked because it reminds me of GW GvG/FA/JQ maps
• While I really don’t enjoy scavenger hunt the collections seem nice
• Changes to Fractals were nice
• Personal Story Missions are neat
The bad:
• Masteries take longer than I expected to unlock, especially because you’re depend and on meta events (to unlock adventures, challenges)
• The 400 Hero points on Elite Specialization IMO is an overkill, especially for Revenant since Glint is the most useful out of all the trait lines, and let’s not go into the alts.
• The Dungeon reward nerf IMO was unnecessary
• Anet says they don’t want deserted maps: so far the better source for meta events and adventures seems to be Auric Basin.
• New stats are rather unnecessary, we already had 26 different stat combinations in armor, at most 6 of those are actually viable and 2 are extensively used (Sinister and Zerker), why add more when there’s room to change existing ones?
• Meta event activation time is slow, experience is kind of low and maps seem empty.
• The PvP Hero unlocks and amulets are quite expensive, especially for people who just do PvP
• The mobs in the jungle DO NOT need nerfs, people need to get better in personal skill and coordination, however after even 3 years the playerbase hasn’t got the idea that the game is action based, not passive stat based and that’s why the predominant meta is in damage gear with the current changes to conditions… you have enough defenses with coordination, animation tellatels, boss effects/phases AND boons – conditions – control YOU REALLY NEED TO MAKE THIS SHOW AND LEARNT IN BATTLES IN A MUCH CLEARER WAY. And a dev’sclaim on gutting the berserker meta didn’t help a tiny bit on this, the proof is that fractals 100 was cleared with DPS gear, the Vale Guardian was cleared with 8/10 full DPS gear 1 Support role with support stat gear and 1 dps with defense combos.
• Fractal instabilities from 60-100 feel rather disappointing and annoying and unnecesary, you have like 20 leves with removing boons on dodge and everything blowing up.
• Ascended armor crafting got harder because of materials needed, and it’s price has risen between 60-100g.
• The Legendary precursor crafting still is a raw total of 600-800 gold per precursor so it’s not changed that much really excepting that you now don’t rely on RNG
• The 2 blues 1 green is still annoying, Magic find still feels like a god kitten ed placebo and RNG is still bad. The rewards vs. time spent on activities still feels absurdly low (see dungeon reward nerf and Maguuma metaevent rewards).
The personal opinions
• I find map completion, scavenger hunts and exploring rather boring and I know people that share this thought will do so too, which will broaden the number of people that support this kind of format
• I find the whole do whatever you want philosophy stronger here and it reminds me of GW and was a huge aspect I liked about the game, props for keeping it this way it at least makes people think for themselves
• I find the utterly large number of stat variations unnecessary, I’d rather have the Anet team work in 12 solid stat combos varying into the 3 roles (4 solid stat choices per role) quality>quantity
• People do not want a trinity yet they ask for roles, make encounters show said roles in a decent way. The kitten started by someone against the current/previous? Meta is actually just not helping, I’ve seen people say that the content is hard and that they need defensive gear, while I using a balls out DPS build still can farer more than well in the jungle, excepting in some big meta events.
• The whole e-spec thing is the thing that bothers me most, if I want to play in say 3-4 alts I NEED to complete the whole mag map and Dragon’s stand isn’t that easy with pugs, LFG and map zergs, it seems like an unnecessary chore and I’d rather sit on a main than spend ridiculous ammounts of time trying to grind just for an e-spec, more so when gold will be more scarce and its overall value will rise.
• A ton of players like the difficulty of the content, however they do not like the time investment vs. reward and that’s been a problem from Anets side, since GW-
• Anet constantly tries to be innovative and that’s good, however you try too hard to innovate that it forces things that will eventually get dropped out because of your decisions: think of the next expansions, will this masteries be useful? Can this masteries be trained in the new maps? What will happen if they’re not? Will the new players be able to complete HoT content if the maps do not have some parties running around? It’s not that you’re not in touch with the player base I think that you try to overdo stuff without thinking on the long term impact for the playerbase, you follow the gut instinct that “oh this is cool and awesome” and then boom 6 months later that’s just not working.
• Raids still missing and some stuff still missing but I really feel the expansion is solid as is, great work with the content so far
Suggestions for changes:
• Make e-specs account wide unlocks, so that if someone wants a new alt with the same profession it’s not investing all that time for just those traits once again. Or just Cut the E-spec cost from 400 to 200, or just make the core tyria HP give 3 points instead of 1, what will we do when the maps get emptier (they will) and there’s not enough people so we can unlock all that with alts?.
• Remove all the unused gear stats by using some of your metrics ® I’d rather have more focused roles than stats all over the place, the only armors I ever used were the ones I could chose stats from IMO, all the other stuff I used to lv I had to buy since most drops weren’t even stats I was using and that dates back to 2 years ago.
• Either make masteries take 3/4ths time to lv per mastery or make the rewards give more xp per tier
• Meta events need to trigger faster and end faster, the difficulty is GREAT as it is, please do not change this, I hate the mindless run and bash 1 and F while following a tag and that’s one of the reasons I do not like open world PvE
• Make rewards feel rewarding, it really bothers me how I can drop my time in a game that even after 2-3 hours of grinding will give me 99% trash, and that’s a common complaint for everyone that doesn’t spend 6-8 hours on SW or that could (RIP) at least 6-8 dungeon paths per day plus some random stuff.
• Try to keep Maguuma live for the players that join later, maps currently are full due to people wanting to unlock the masteries, but what will happen to the players that join let’s say in 1 year from now?
• PvP needs still more gold and rewards than it has available now, it’s around 100g to unlock the new amulets, runes, sigils, etc.

While I’m one that doesn’t mind a grind (as long as I can earn it with effort rather than the stupid old RNG of Legendaries), there is the question if it should be applied to specializations. Historically character development was not part of the grind. You got your character capped with everything and at that point it was playing what content you wanted and grinding achievements/Fashion Wars. This is a bit of a two-edge sword as it allows people to play at the full potential they want the character which many can find more fun, but it also takes out the most obvious reason to grind: character progression. For those that played for that reason saw the game as having very short legs and would get bored fast – people can play through content much more quickly than it can be created. Personally, I think they should keep to their roots of the game. There are plenty of treadmill games out there already, so they don’t need to make this game one. With Masteries and tons of new collections and Legendary paths, there are grinds to be done, and I would like to do them on my full characters. This means I think the 400 cost is too much as it means that I have to grind out Masteries on my
‘incomplete’ character.

So then comes the question of the line between “just given to you” and “earn it” it should be. This will vary greatly on people’s opinions. Ranging from the same baseline (80 points – 40 traits, 40 skills) as the other lines, to the full 400. My personal opinion is in either one of two camps:

1) 200 points. This allows the specialization to be completed either through standard world completion or through the Heart of Maguuma and it’s current Mastery gates.

2) Split up the Specialization into trait and skill lines for the standard 80 points, and have it available without having all other trees completed. Are specializations a different track of a class, or class +? Being that you have to give up a trait line and skill slots for those of the specialization, I’d say it’s just a different track to bring your character. Doing this would allow new players to play as the specialization as they level.

Unfortunately it’s too late to have Specializations unlocked the way I wanted them to be – a story mission that would create a fun and logical transition to your new specialization. If it were somehow able to be implemented, I’d much prefer that to be the way to unlock vs the current bland grind gate of spending all your HP to complete the standard lines first.

Of course, any “nerf” to the grind for the specialization comes the question of what about the unspent Hero Points that are now useless? Having them as prep for future specializations would make the most sense, and would prevent the requirement of needing enough HP on new maps to support the new specializations… though we’d be sitting on a lot of them. The amount of HP available on the new maps can be shaved – 10 per point is a lot. Or we could just not care – people can simply go for the extra HP for map completion, or cut out once they have enough to unlock everything and do other things. Their choice on how to play.

Taarak.7562:

Everything about this expansion has been done very well. Every difficulty and gate seems tastefully done in good context.

I’m very disappointed with the criticism. I’m sorry, but to be brutally honest, it sounds like a bunch of millennial whining. They’re not getting their trophy after playing a whole weekend…

I’ve mostly played map events and the story. I’ve really enjoyed the story, except for the final which I haven’t completed. I don’t know whether it’s buggy or I’m just not understanding mechanics.

The density of explorable space is fantastic. I’ve never seen anything like it.

In short, I can see myself enjoying this content for a long time. Please, please, please don’t make drastic changes to the gates or difficulty. I can see that you’re already adapting some parts of the game to accommodate short-term, almost arcade style MOBA play. I don’t want instant gratification.

If the short attention span crowd kicks and whines and gets their way with GW2, I’ll need to find a different game. And I want to stick with GW2 for a long time.

Thank you for all you do. Your work is greatly appreciated.

I’m trying not to take sides, here, as I don’t really care about the elite specs, personally.

However, GW2 is supposed to be a casual MMO.

It’s not supposed to be grindy, or feel like a second job.

Also, accusing other people of being “whining”, “millennial” and of having a “short attention span”, just because they don’t happen to think like you, about a game, is very prejudiced and rude.

It serves no real purpose, here, apart from allowing you to vent, at the cost of upsetting everyone else further.

FinalPatriot.8034:

I took a look at Metacritic a few moments ago and the expansion is only scoring at 6.9 right now. That’s pretty darn sad as GW2 was the best MMO on the market for years. I hate seeing the HP issue tearing down such a good game.

I wish Anet would fix this and turn the expansion back to the core game of no grinding/casual friendly.

It was much lower last night because some people have been asking others to leave bad reviews to force Anet to answer this thread.

To make a point, if people want to leave bad reviews it’s their right, but make sure they’re well written and you try to justify the score. Also, counter to that, if you leave a good review, mention what you liked and justify your score.

“1/10, grindy as hell” and “10/10 because people are whiny” don’t help anyone decide if a game/expansion is any good by looking at the reviews and it makes it harder for Anet to look for feedback.

FinalPatriot.8034:

I took a look at Metacritic a few moments ago and the expansion is only scoring at 6.9 right now. That’s pretty darn sad as GW2 was the best MMO on the market for years. I hate seeing the HP issue tearing down such a good game.

I wish Anet would fix this and turn the expansion back to the core game of no grinding/casual friendly.

It is pretty silly because the HP issue is probably the only thing holding back that rating from being through the roof right now.

Taarak.7562:

I’m very disappointed with the criticism. I’m sorry, but to be brutally honest, it sounds like a bunch of millennial whining. They’re not getting their trophy after playing a whole weekend…

Nah, if anything, we’re Generation X whiners, who are too old and too time-committed to do non-sensical grinds. Yeah this is an MMO, but this is an MMO that promised to remove the grind.

Tell me, what’s the point of locking elite specializations under 400 points? Are they more powerful than other specs? After playing them for three weekends, I can safely say no. Is it to make it a trophy? Perhaps, but why take something many people expected to be more readily available, and at the last minute lock it behind a big grind-wall?

Is it to space content out? You’re never going to stop the devoted from burning through content it took two years to design and make. Even now, there are people who already maxed and elite spec, and there are people who got to Mordremoth. In three days!

The point is, there are people who did it, and they’re the ones who like to talk trash to the other people who help fund the game. However, I guarantee you the people with less time spend just as much money or more on the game, and there’s a lot more of us. I got no problem with a climbing a small mountain, just let me know it before I buy into it.

Like I said, it’s a matter of degree – 400 HP is to keep the relatively small amount of guys who already had 200 HP in the bank, from their 100% map reveals, from being fully loaded before the weekend was out. For the rest of us who play casually, that is a kitten big number, especially when you have an alt for every class.

If HP were like Masteries, I’d have no problem with that. 400×1 is way better than 400×9. I mean what’s the problem? If I played one as as Ele, and got another as a Druid, does it really matter? Far less I think, than running with the Zerg train all weekend long, and then laughing at the people who had real lives.