Guild Wars 2

I can’t imagine many people will even bother grinding out all the HP to max the new weapon set.
It just doesn’t seem worth the grind.

It’s not required, it’s not like an ultima weapon that blows all the other weapon sets out of the water, it required learning new moves and skills, and they want us to grind a ton of hp to unlock it?

I mean part of me things, 4-6 months down the road, they will nerf how much you need hard, but right now, even on one toon let alone any amount of alts, it’s too much for many.

Maybe that’s why they call it an “elite” specialization. Only the most dedicated can get it, even if it’s not really worth it. lol

Palador.2170:

While I do intend to wait and see what the reaction is, I feel those putting bad scores to the expansion already are entirely justified.

Absolutely.

The product has been shipped. Customers have paid for it. Reviews, positive or negative, are justified.

psizone.8437:

I think that’s a little extreme to do before the devs have replied with their plans on whether they’ll change things or not, especially 3 days after the expansions release. The devs need a little time to discuss things and do some tweaking after looking at the feedback in the forums.

You know, I’d actually agree with you… if this was the first time they’ve done something like this. But it’s not, is it?

They keep doing this, and never learn. Yes, they might change things “soon”. But they might not. It doesn’t matter, though. They charged ahead, even with their past history of messing up the game.

While I do intend to wait and see what the reaction is, I feel those putting bad scores to the expansion already are entirely justified.

For now, I’m scheduling group hero point-getting rallies with my guild to pound these out. Stupid problems require stupid solutions. Throw bodies at it!

I just wanted to add my voice to this. I was hesitant about HoT because I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting. Long story short, I’ve been positively blown away by it. It’s absolutely fantastic and has got me actually really enjoying the PvE again. Something I haven’t since a few months after launch. I used to hide mainly in WvW and sPvP, but this is just tremendous fun. And it looks stunning.

My one and only substantial criticism at this point is what seems to be a very common one: 400 hero points for my elite specs on every single character? Really? It is extremely excessive, and it tarnishes an otherwise excellent expansion so far. I love everything about it, except for the specialization cost. It’s absurd.

For the record, I don’t consider the content to be especially hard, per se – group-based, sure, but not that “hard”.

What I am severely annoyed with is the hero point grind. Having played all betas, I cannot even imagine what would be so wrong with playing this content with the elite specs. I really put in what is for me a great deal of time this weekend, and while I unlocked the elites for the three classes I care about most at this time – Revenant, Necro, and Engi – I don’t have more than one or two skills unlocked in each, so I am obviously not playing those specs right now – nor will I be, it seems, for quite a bit of time.

I also absolutely cannot imagine doing this for all 10 of my 80’s. The personal story is great, and I like the zones. It’s fun to discover for a while and explore everything, but in an MMO, you’ll know everything sooner rather than later. If I was doing it for one character, I’d be pretty happy right now. Having said that, while the content is cool, the hero point grind to access what should have been a basic feature of the expansion is awful, and definitely was the low point of the launch.

At least as far as I have gotten, which admittedly isn’t all the way yet, the content has been excellent the first time through, cool the second time through, and getting a little “automatic” by the third. You cannot possibly expect people to do that for 6, 8 or 10+ characters.

So it’s a little bittersweet for me. Just because I cannot understand what would have been so horrible about giving us access to our elites straight-off – perhaps a small quest chain or something that would have been an account-wide unlock, then you buy the skills (within reason – 400 to max any single one tree is insane). From what I have seen and experienced, they in no way, shape or form would have imbalanced the game – was it not balance that was discussed during the BWE’s? Honestly, every other MMO I’ve played introduced new classes this way. This is because it energizes people to buy expansion packs (see the gold standard thus far for this sort of thing IMO – WotLK Death Knight in WoW) and has the effect of freshening the game for multi-year players.

I think you’ve gone a step better than anyone else to date with the elites – this freshens every single class. Remarkable idea, really. But it’s at least somewhat ruined by the exorbitant “cost” of entry into this for a game that always said it valued game play and not grinds. I’ll be done with the new content before I even get to experience any of the builds I came up with in BWE, and quite frankly, nobody is unreasonable to have expected to be able to do the new content with the new elites. I’m happy enough to grind out my Masteries, story line, raid progression, etc.. I likely never will get them all now as I’d once planned doing. And it was so simple to deliver – I, like many, would have been much happier doing it across my whole toon army with the new abilities promised. And until someone explains to me how giving us this at launch with a simple unlock quest/proceedure/etc. would have broken the entire game somehow, and invalidated all the work that went into the zones, stories, and a million other things, I expect I shall continue to have somewhat of a bitter aftertaste to the whole thing.

But for the handling of the Elites, this would have been a nearly perfect expansion launch. So easy to get right, and yet it seems, so hard as well.

I do hope people from ANet read this. I’m not religious about this game, nor am I what you’d call casual. I’ve been playing video games of all shapes and sizes for the better part of 35 years now. I’ve seen it done right, and I have seen it done wrong. It’s difficult to believe the devs could have so badly miscalculated what shall now forever be known as the “Hero Point Effect”, but it seems that’s just what’s happened. It exists presently as a serious blight on an otherwise fantastic MMO expansion.

kuscheldrow.6415:

If I had known that I’d get Silverwastes x4³ in the end, only even more demotivating I’d have saved my money…
Every Charakter needs to do the same boring stuff if he wants his elite. —> 400pts
You have to grind events for your masteries, which you can only do IN Maguuma, to even advance though the maps if you want 100 percent. Every map ha its own currency you’ll have to grind for stuff just like SW… I don’t like the way GW2 is going. Whoever loved SW – I didn’t even complete the achievements there. I found it boring, like Drytop.
There were days where a JP that you can’t complete only were 10 missing AP… now it may be THE mastery point you’re missing to advance. (at least for Maguuma). Now you’ll HAVE to do content you don’t like while you had the choice to do it or leave it before. The whole system is something I never wanted to see in GW2…
Not to mention the dungeon nerfs.

If that’s the policy for future content, then I’m sorry but I’ll be gone by then.

I can see how the next expansion with new specs will be, in order to force you to play the new content it will require a 1000 HPs and the new HPs in that area will give 50 HPs!

This has soured all of HOT for me. Sure, there are other things in it but as long as they are associated with this kittied up cat they will never be as enjoyable as they could be.

As many have said, we were sold on “buy this and you get to play the professions ….. whenever we actually release”. Well, we trusted you anet and gave you our money. Then you basically took that trust and said ‘kitten you kittens, thanks for the dough’.

Guess what? Most people in a game came there from another game …

sine.9310:

Glad I found this thread. Avoided pre-purchasing incase of a scenario like this. Only interested in playing with new specs, not interested in grinding out for 4-5 months just to play a different build lmao. Will buy once this is fixed.

Glad at least one got away unscathed and has been saved. Good luck on your life’s path, brother/sister!

so fazit after the first weekend, i pretty much blocked it for HoT cause i was excited about the expansion. i played around 20 hours and planned to unlock the tempest for my main and maybe start working on either scrapper or chronomancer.

boy was i wrong. I am now at mastery lvl 5 with gliding I,II, shroom jumping and exalted I. I cant continue the story until i grind out another mastery but was only able to get about 1/3 lvl in 2 hours in the new maps cause i was not able to find any populated events.

For heropoints i managed to unlock only the first 4-5 skills of tempest even though i focused mainly on the hero challenges and sought out any one i could find on the first 3 maps.

Well, tbh this sucks this week i will maybe have ~8 hours of time i can play this game, but i dont really feel like it because this will get me nowwhere.
On top of that i am enjoying wvw the most and that is a ghosttown with everyone grinding pve for the specs.

The new wvw map is a fail too because its just too big and twisted. it might be fun with with 150+ people from every side on it but thats just not gonna happen with the current population.

Elites were the aspect of HoT that I was most excited for. I like taking my time with mapping and doing story stuff, especially with Halloween here for a short time and my preferences towards Fractals. I play all nine of my classes and I’ve really been enjoying Revenant. For the most part I’ve enjoyed the new stuff. But having to do each Hero Point in HoT at least 20 times (depending on how much I’ve mapped on each character) on NINE characters has cast a dark shadow of frustration on my ability to swallow the nerf to dungeon running and cost to buy the expansion. For the last 3 days I’ve just been doing the first steps for Finite Result, some Halloween stuff, and I used a Teleport to Friend to unlock Gilded Hollow with my guild. Why? Because I feel utterly terrified of getting into a grind for specializations. I hate feeling like I’m built incomplete so I’m likely not even to use specializations until they’re fully unlocked. Outside of PvP, the specializations don’t even exists yet besides a few I’ve seen doing Fractals and a handful I’ve noticed in the labyrinth.

Change it. Please change it.

The thing is Anet, players will always find a way. When you create something that a large chunk of your playerbase find distasteful, they’ll always find the optimal way to grind it out even if it isn’t what devs imagined how players would play their content.

Right now due to the elite spec grind, WvW players are coming together, all 3 servers agreeing to do nothing but ktrain for the next week just so people could unlock their elite specs. WvW players have voiced strongly against grinding PvE, and hundreds of WvW ranks aren’t exactly easy to achieve without full on ktraining. So instead of playing the new beautifully designed desert borderlands, people are forced to ktrain just so they have a chance at unlocking and playing their elite specs.

Due to the Masteries grind, people are grinding CoF1 to gain exceptional Central Tyria mastery points. The exp is so crazy that it renders exping elsewhere pointless for central tyria masteries.

Now my question to you Anet devs, is this how you imagined your players would play the new expansion content? Did you want people in WvW to avoid the new borderlands and do nothing but ktrain for a solid week? What exactly does that accomplish? Why can’t WvW players get to play the elite specs they paid for, why do they have to grind for it while sPvP gets them right away? Did you want people to grind CoF repeatedly for masteries?

Nobody I’ve talked to wanted to do either of the above. They’re boring activities. But people do them because it’ll allow them to enjoy the game better. The sooner WvW players get to unlock elite specs for all their characters, the sooner they can get back to fighting and doing massive world vs world combat. For PvE players, the Masteries grind probably wouldn’t be as bad if the exp rewards from doing bosses & events scale better to the amount of exp required to level up Masteries.

I am so frustrated by this kitten expansion!!!! All I want to do is play my effing elite spec that was hyped for MONTHS!! Since the initial announcement of the stupid expansion they’ve been hyping it, remember they announced the Druid at PAX South? I do, because I WAS THERE! I won tickets from ArenaNet, even.

Like the hero points are not only gated by masteries, they’re also gated by world events i.e. Dragon Stand.

This isn’t even fun.

Sonrangeri.7645:

Avlaen.7241:

400 points is insane, especialy when alot of them are locked behind stupid mastery grind walls to even be able to navigate the map and claim the SP

Well, and then when you finally manage to get into Challenge point itself, you cannot solo it, due it being guarded or activating challenge gives you a champion mob to deal with. (ofc, that champion will one-shot you, and summon adds etc. who will weaken/cripple/bleed/torment etc.) you.

Yup…. i once found my way to a rather obscure point and it summoned a champion and 2 veterans…. so i waited there for 15 mins annnnd no one else arrived. it took me ages to get to the point, so do i jsut abandon it because no one else is able to find it? awful really.

It just does not feels like progression, it just immense grind for hero points, perfectly kills all fun for me and all nice and pretty maps does not fix it, i’m sorry for being bitter, but i better go play something else so far and just ignore expansion for awhile.

Loony.3714:

Substance E.4852:

Loony.3714:

I’m not asking to be handed the spec on the alts that I havent played much, just that all of hero points I collected with map completion actually meant something instead of being devalued by the 10x inflation in the jungle.

lol, I logged on with 182 hero points on my Ranger all psyched to play on the BL with the Druid only to me met with massive disappointment.

Now I’m faced with either not being able to play a decent role on the class I love in WvW for the next week or so, or having to blast through HoT to get all the hero points.

Neither is appealing and both together just make me want to play something else.

This is exactly how I feel. And don’t get me wrong, I was going to explore and 100% the hell out of the new maps, just in a month or two when I can really sit down and do it thoroughly. Now if I want access to chrono I really have to just power through it asap

I did this in GW1 in Factions and Nightfall to blast to the end and grab the Elite armor but they made up for it by having so much extra stuff to do such as quests or largely superfluous, exploration areas.

I could go back and be all “Okay, time to be a hero and look super fly at the same time…” and not feel burned out or like there was nothing left to play around in.

With the HP’s I basically have to go everywhere and do everything to get them. There won’t be any roses to go back and smell because I already ran them over with my ATV.

Substance E.4852:

Loony.3714:

I’m not asking to be handed the spec on the alts that I havent played much, just that all of hero points I collected with map completion actually meant something instead of being devalued by the 10x inflation in the jungle.

lol, I logged on with 182 hero points on my Ranger all psyched to play on the BL with the Druid only to me met with massive disappointment.

Now I’m faced with either not being able to play a decent role on the class I love in WvW for the next week or so, or having to blast through HoT to get all the hero points.

Neither is appealing and both together just make me want to play something else.

This is exactly how I feel. And don’t get me wrong, I was going to explore and 100% the hell out of the new maps, just in a month or two when I can really sit down and do it thoroughly. Now if I want access to chrono I really have to just power through it asap

It is very disappointing. I really wish they change this ridiculously high HP for elite spec. Make elite spec the 4th trait and I will be fine grinding 400HP.

The fact of the matter is by having the points so high you tried to avoid diminishing the value of the content but this worked completely opposite as everyone who wants to play in their elite spec will now blow through it all to get there. You’ll be seeing outcries of boredom one heck of a lot faster because of this and had you allowed everyone to get their specialization properly from the onset most everyone would likely have taken their time to work their way through the content, not blast through out of shear frustration and anger.
I actually feel sorry for the devs that put time into this now watching that work get ignored by many as their sole focus is grinding out these points.

My max level chars have barely enough skill points to unlock the specialization… Been running around the new area for a few hours and got no skill points either, guess I’m only supposed to unlock them fully once I’m done with the expansion? Cause that’s dumb, I want to play through the new content with new abilities.

Oh I enjoyed the new zones a lot but unfortunately playing that way brought me no closer to getting my “elite” specialization. This is what I resent about the 400 hero point cost. I have to stop enjoying the spontaneity of the new content to solely focus on these idiotic hero challenges. The really maddening think is these are just specializations to the professions there is nothing “elite” about them. They just used the word elite to justify running through all these hoops.

It seems – looking at hot with 2 new armors – anet is really focusing on releasing outfits rather than armors…

I think this is super annoying – i can understand them trying to make money and i dont have an issue with releasing cosmetics in the gem store – but PLEASE make more modular armor sets and less of these stupid outfits.

Outfits take imo any fun or individuality out of armors and that is certainly not what gw2 is about. I cant understand why they simply bring the same stuff out as armors instead of outfits?

Are they afreaid they will sell less? Cause I very much doubt thats true – at least i personally will never buy an outfit for this exact reason: I cant alter it in any way and make it my own so i have zero interestg even if they are looking good (what they are mostly not)…

so please anet – more armors – paid or unpaid – and less outfits

misterman.1530:

Brimstar.9036:

You expected it to be all handed out to you? My mind is blown.

Always has to be one that just doesn’t get it. Always.

Yep. There are always going to be close minded simpletons that can’t see another perspective because something is “fine” to them. You’re asking people who don’t think to think. Unfortunately for those of us with legitimate complaints, it makes it harder to actually get that feedback to the developer. That’s the funny part to me. All of these simpletons actually hurt the game they love by blindly following it. But hey, whatever, this cash cow still keeps investors happy.

Don’t worry. There is no level grind guys! And the mastery system is totally not a new level system. Totally not.
I mean I understand it can be confusing because your mastery level… err rank, takes over on your character info rather than your level… But it’s totally not new levels.

Even though the storyline makes you grind out some leve….ranks before you can progress.

Not levels!

Brimstar.9036:

Things are not too grindy at all. Im already 70% done with my elite spec being unlocked and I’ve played for 5 hours between 2 days, I don’t understand how people are having problems with this. The mastery system is great, THIS isn’t a grind, its progression through maps that you will eventually get by just progressing through the maps naturally. It blows me away what people mistake as grind, there is no grind, just play the game and do the content, you will get there eventually and its ACCOUNT bound so once is good enough.

And you had zone completion in the old world, right?

I had 100 spare hero points, and after playing for 7 hours I finally finished getting skilly I-III, and then realized its 25 for my first actual, non-healing skill. At which point I quit. I need 3 kitten hero points. I’m at 5-11 on the first map, and they are all pretty much gated past that. (Do I play follow the commander tag for 3 more hours for the story, or to try to grab more HP so I can play the story like I want?).

I think I’m going to quit (or just play my lowbie Rev, without using my tomes because the sooner you hit 80 the sooner I’m forced to quit playing) until there is a 100% HP walkthrough. I refuse to play the story, until I can play it Reaper.

HoT doesn’t have enough content. That’s why they padded it with grind. What’s surprising is how many people are eating it up.

Brimstar.9036:

You expected it to be all handed out to you? My mind is blown.

You do realize theres a middleground between “too grindy” and “i want everything right now”, right?

good lord. dense.

I sure as hell didn’t expect to play the same thing over and over again just to get so little in return. That was not the case with the core game

So let me get this straight, we paid for an expansion in which you need to grind your heart out to achieve something.
Soloing is pointless since most of the events are group events and even with some people you still can’t do much of a thing.
Story is locked behind masteries and you need to do a ton of mindless running around and doing the same events until you finally master something, then you do a little story just so you could grind again for the next mastery. Rinse – Repeat! Hours upon hours of mindless and frustrating grinding. For what? For 30 minutes of story instance? An “evolved” version of the crystals from silverwastes that allowed you to jump higher and stuff? Is this your expansion Anet? Is this what you had in mind for the loyal fanbase? An effing grindfest for a kittenty and mostly pointless masteries? If this is the end strategy for the lvl 80 characters then wow, just wow. Consider my mind blown.

I don’t think HoT is that grindy but the gates that gate other gates that gate what you really want are a real kittening deterrent. I was hoping to be able to play and discover HoT with one of the elites I was so looking forward to playing but as it is now I will have played the entire xpac before I get to fully enjoy the reason I bought it in the first place. Real kittening bad design there.

Given that I only have 1 character with map completion I might eventually get to play 1 elite spec but the mere though of having to go hunt down every single hero challenge for every alt makes me gag. I guess I could mindlessly follow a pin on EOTM but for some reason that though doesn’t seem much more appealing.