Guild Wars 2

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

Lol. My partner and I will be entering the expansion together at launch.
She is entering first on a character where she doesn’t even plan to play the elite spec… And I on one I am not in a hurry to unlock.
So yeah. We will be doing all of the things we come across. Perhaps don’t assume every player is you.

That’s kittening fantastic. You know what’s even more kittening fantastic though? The fact that you and everyone else could do this very same thing even if elite specs were available to people immediately.

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

That same argument could be made for any system where you have to play to unlock parts at a time. Like the entire levelling up process. And the same counter arguments are just as valid here.

Remember the part where I explained why this is not the same as leveling up from 1 to 80? No? You didn’t read that? Okay, I’ll put it here so that it’s easier for you:

Black Box.9312:

Because my characters are already at level 80, which is still the maximum level, and I would kinda rather not have the efforts that I made completing the overworld challenges for the base game go almost entirely to waste. It would be one thing if unlocking the elite spec was simply a natural progression that happened just through playing the game, but instead we have to specifically rush through hero challenges in the jungle to get what we want. This makes it absolutely nothing like what players go through by simply leveling their character from 1 to 80.

This is the exact reason why people were in such outcry when Anet made their original proposal that hero challenges would be required to max out a character, which they then changed because hey, maybe it actually makes more sense to not do that.

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

Random.4691:

Once again, just because Anet slapped the word Elite onto it doesn’t make it Elite. They themselves have stated multiple times that it is not meant to over shadow the core specs it is simply an optional addition.

They have, however, also stated that the elite spec system is a part of their horizontal progression mechanics set moving forward. One of the primary goals of which is to give people something to work towards over time.
I’m not saying it’s set up as well as it could be, but I think expecting it to take a while to master the spec is pretty reasonable.

Mastering a build comes by playing with it, not by unlocking it. You don’t magically acquire the skills to excel with a new character in a fighting game just by unlocking him. You have to fight with him, learn how his moves and combos work, and figure out what works best in a given situation.

Nobody is going to master an elite spec as soon as they have access to all of the skills and traits. It makes no difference whether this point is reached instantaneously, or with a grind through specific content that some people might not be so inclined to do. Either way, they’re going to have to put time and effort into playing THE WHOLE THING in order to become skilled with THE WHOLE THING.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Agemnon.4608:

Farming, time, and effort aren’t the problem, ludicrous amounts of it are.

I see this phrase popping up over and over. Could someone define for me very specifically what constitutes ludicrous? Cause I’ve been reading the same things you have and I have not seen anything that I could define as ludicrous. Some of this will take a fair amount of time, which is GOOD, because more time spent unlocking things means more time with the content, and not burning through it all in a week and then wondering why there isn’t more to do.

Even with that, I’m pretty certain some people will accomplish 100% Elites on day one. They may not accomplish anything else, but they’ll have that.

The only people this seems to hurt are the people with way too many characters, of which they need all to have elites, for some reason. I’ve got 13 characters, about, one doesn’t exist yet, but will in a couple days. Of those, though, I only plan on getting elites for 4, one of which can definitely wait until much later to go through the process.

If for some reason I absolutely needed all 13 characters to be elites, that would be a problem, but that would still only be a problem for me for having such an unruly number of characters. It’s not ANet’s fault nor problem. If it takes x amount of time to get the thing, then it should absolutely take x times the number of characters you want to up to elites in order to do that. That’s completely reasonable.

WRONG. Veteran GW2 players who have spent most of their time on a main who played the game 3-6 months after lunch, left and came back in the past six months are also getting burned on this. Many of us used our hero points for crafting purposes back in 2012-2013. While we were gone ArenaNet changed a lot of things. We came back to find we have few hero points (still) but not only that some of our core specializations that we unlocked are now locked again and have to be re-opened with hero points. With hero challenges tapped out our only option is to take our character into HoT and work though 1/2 the game of HoT to be able to obtain the level of mastery needed to even get to those first 20 hero challenges and unlock the full trait line.

The answer is to roll a Revenant and enjoy it’s new play mechanics or to just stick with the PvP side of the game and pretend the new PvE maps don’t exist. Earn the hero points in WvW over time and once you have them all continue on with the HoT story from the beginning so you can experience it as your Elite Spec. This is how you compensate for their incredibly poor, unforgivable design which shows no respect to vertran players or to the casual players who have been using the gem store as a way to compensate for not being able to play as much as some of the hardcore crowd, but still enjoy the game on the same level. It’s very sad that they are doing away with that aspect of the game. There is no way to advance your hero points through gem store purchase so they are forcing all of us to grind content. This is a huge paradigm shift as given enough gold even the casual player committing only 8 hours a week could still buy a legendary (if they were going to force grind for anything they should have done it for legendariles not something that is a core play mechanic, see how kitten backwards this is?). The difference is someone who can only commit maybe 8 hours a week to play will end up spending months to be able to enjoy their Elite Spec in PvE. Whoever at ArenaNet made this decision made a very, very poor decisions.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Random.4691:

There is more then enough content (if they get their crap together and release it .. cough raids cough) to keep everyone busy without time gating the Elites. We have Raids, Guild Halls, New Maps (for all modes), Fractals, Legendaries, Adventures, Events, Masteries, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I don’t see how time gating the Elites is productive, how does it affect anyone if you do it as a Necro or a Reaper for example. If they wanted to do something for elites they should have done a quest line of some sort.

The bottom line is, it hurts nothing to have elites playable, the rest of the content is still the same regardless of which class/spec you are using. There is simply no need and all this has done is divide the community and ticked off a lot of players. This is suppose to be an exciting time for GW2 and instead they have managed to turn it into a witch hunt.

Elites aren’t time gated. If you can do the content in one day then you can have elites in one day. Time gating means that you cannot physically complete the content in less than a predefined period because you can only earn specific amounts toward it ever x period of time.

The need is, that’s how they wanted to do it. I would have preferred a different system too. Not the one everyone else seems to want, but still different than we got. But this is what we got, and there isn’t actually anything wrong with it, it’s just one way to do it. It isn’t wrong, it’s just one way.

This should be an exciting time, and for most of us it is. But ANet didn’t start a witch hunt. That “privilege” lays soully on the player base who deluded themselves into thinking they could just have anything without putting any effort into it. That has never been ANet’s style.

Actually that is your definition of time gating, imo time gating is anything that requires you to put in an excessive/lengthy amount of time. If you would have read my full post or any of my other posts for that matter you would have noted I’m not asking it to be handed to us with no strings attached. I would be ok with a small story line quest to unlock it, I would be ok with a realistic amount of HP, I’m not ok with either being forced into the jungle for the quickest method which still won’t be quick, I’m not ok with that slap in the face of an option for WvW players that is completely unrealistic.

Once again, just because Anet slapped the word Elite onto it doesn’t make it Elite. They themselves have stated multiple times that it is not meant to over shadow the core specs it is simply an optional addition.

For me, this isn’t about the requirement, but how you’ll have to achieve it.

Some folks are saying ‘but you had to level in the base game, so what’s the difference?’ Those people are 100% right about the first part, but there is a difference in the second part.

In the base game, you could take a level 79 to Queensdale and ding 80 by doing the events there. The elite specs force players into the jungle as it’s the only efficient way to max them.

The core game isn’t like WoW (despite the comparisons, and thankfully) in that you can take a max level toon and still enjoy early content. The jungle in this expac seems like not an addition to a huge and varied world, but a funnel. And yes, I know other MMOs do it like this.

Now the jungle might be great, but unless it’s absolutely huge and varied, like the base game’s world is, I’m going to view leveling elites on my alts as a chore. A real chore.

The real question is for those saying it’s no big deal, is it going to be fun? That remains to be seen.

Mikeskies.1536:

Random.4691:

There is more then enough content (if they get their crap together and release it .. cough raids cough) to keep everyone busy without time gating the Elites. We have Raids, Guild Halls, New Maps (for all modes), Fractals, Legendaries, Adventures, Events, Masteries, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I don’t see how time gating the Elites is productive, how does it affect anyone if you do it as a Necro or a Reaper for example. If they wanted to do something for elites they should have done a quest line of some sort.

The bottom line is, it hurts nothing to have elites playable, the rest of the content is still the same regardless of which class/spec you are using. There is simply no need and all this has done is divide the community and ticked off a lot of players. This is suppose to be an exciting time for GW2 and instead they have managed to turn it into a witch hunt.

Your character is alive. In GW2, leveling up and completing hero challenges unlocked progression for your character. For elite specialization, it should be self-evident that gaining access to them requires your character to complete challenges to achieve that. Your character will become elite through character growth, i.e. playing the game. How elite specializations are unlocked should be looked at as exciting to complete challenges to unlock the elite inside your character, not an inconvenience.

I could see your perspective if they had worked the Elite Specs into the lore of the instanced story. By that I mean 2-3 instanced story missions into HoT you begin unlocking the Elite Specialization because doing so is part of the story. But they didn’t go there with it. At this point Elite Specs are just a functional mechanic that helps distinguish HoT from the core GW2 game. They are part of what make HoT unique from a play mechanic stand point. The developer already has masteries a player works towards unlocking to alter play mechanic. The way it stands they give existing players not creating a new Rev nothing new functionally when they take an existing character into HoT. In expanshion game design theory you balance “new and shinny” that’s free to players that make the content feel distinguished from what must be worked to achieve. Their stance is that the new maps alone are all the novelty a player needs for the content to feel new and exciting. I find that very pretentious on their part. I made a few BWE#3 characters and spec’d them just like my current main and alts without the elite specs. The new maps were boring and really lacking without having access to the new mechanics. I enjoyed working towards mysteries to unlock new secondary play mechanics but strongly felt and still feel the Elite Specs are something every player who paid for HoT should be entitled to with reasonable existing investment (FYI anyone who values their free time is not likely to have map competition on all their alts nor should they GRIND to go obtain map competition for every alt just to get the foundation 218 hero points from the base game needed.)

This is the most kitten ridiculous, poorly thought out design decision ArenaNet has ever made regarding GW2. It undermines the casual gamer with a day job or full time student who loves the game but doesn’t have 24/7 to repeat the same content over and over again (world exploration on your alts is a type of grind. If you disagree you simply don’t value your free time as much as some of us). It’s a slap to the face of every gamer who bought into their philosophy of making an MMO for everyone.

Elite Spec should have been treated similar to weapon skill unlocks. The 60 hero points should not be required just to unlock the Elite Spec chain. That should be something you are given as part of your HoT purchase. From there 60 hero points should be all that’s required to take the Elite Spec chain from 0-max. The other 340 hero points required should be all about unique elite spec skins, weapon mods, etc… I am 100% ok with them requiring a player to have to work on unlocking the skins, etc… but the core play mechanics of the Elite spec should be available from the moment your level 80 enters HoT and all you should need is 60 hero points to max out the elite trait chain, the skins, etc.. optional and something you work for.

There is plenty of achievement based content to make players work towards in HoT without locking players who don’t want to grind out of being able to play with their Elite Specs. The new vertical maps, adventures, etc.. alone are not enough to give it much value. Having to work my way though 1/2 of the HoT game content just to get to the point where I have my Elite Spec trait line maxed and can actually begin using it is kitten ridiculous. Unacceptable and against the vision and philosophy behind the GW2 core game.

Random.4691:

There is more then enough content (if they get their crap together and release it .. cough raids cough) to keep everyone busy without time gating the Elites. We have Raids, Guild Halls, New Maps (for all modes), Fractals, Legendaries, Adventures, Events, Masteries, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I don’t see how time gating the Elites is productive, how does it affect anyone if you do it as a Necro or a Reaper for example. If they wanted to do something for elites they should have done a quest line of some sort.

The bottom line is, it hurts nothing to have elites playable, the rest of the content is still the same regardless of which class/spec you are using. There is simply no need and all this has done is divide the community and ticked off a lot of players. This is suppose to be an exciting time for GW2 and instead they have managed to turn it into a witch hunt.

+1

PopeUrban.2578:

Black Box.9312:

PopeUrban.2578:

The people complaining about this are literally complaining that character progression systems scale linearly relative to the number of characters you want to progress.

Next you’ll be asking for waypoints to be account unlocks.

Even with your assumption that everyone is only worried about having to grind alts aside (Protip: That’s not the only reason people are unhappy about this), many people have already progressed their characters. Not everyone enjoys being told that the work that they did amounts to nothing.

People who want more “progression” can feel free to make a new character and start over. The rest of us would just like to be able to complete the new content with the elite spec of our choice fully fleshed out from the start. I’m not very satisfied with the thought of finally fully unlocking the Herald, only to realize that after rushing through the content and not having any fun that there’s none of it left to complete with my fancy new e-spec.

Elite specs were, from the very first reveal always advertised as anet’s new method of ongoing character progression

Not a thing they hand you as soon as it hits live, but progression That is used as the way to add new character build options.

The breakup of skill points and miyani currency was done specifically for this reason, just like the specialization system was done specifically for this reason. making hero points a limited commodity and converting all excess skill points from the old system was also done specifically for this reason. The whole game was redesigned around this progression system months ago, alongside very detailed blog posts as to why.

They said this a whole lot during the trait update, the reveal of elite specs as a system, and continually during all the “hoT is really about designing expandable systems we will continue to use in the future.”

Again, they specifically stated progression is a thing they want to be ongoing but that they want to do it without a vertical gear treadmill

What part of any of the information we’ve had over the past year gave you the idea that elite specs weren’t designed from the ground up as a progression system?

It’s literally the GW2 version of adding new skill trainers and secondary class options. They’re major feature updates, intended to give characters additional horizontal avenues of progression beyond the previous limitations.

I really, for the life of me, don’t understand what people are so up in arms about.

It’s almost as if you expected to be at the end of expansion character progression the day the expansion released. That was never advertised or even implied. How everyone got it in their heads in the first place that they’d be running around in full on elite specs outside of sPvP is beyond me. It’s not how the game has ever worked, or has even ever been advertised as an intent

They intend that you complete new content to access new character build options

And when the next elite spec is released, you can bet it will come alongside new PvE maps and new WvW angry letters corresponding to those maps. It is literally half of the content of all open world maps moving forward by design because it was the only part of world completion that was meaningful aside from getting achievements in the first place

The other half of the system is masteries, and masteries are the account end of that progression system. This is the character end. The game is full of complimentary systems like these, generally limiting things useful across all characters as account systems (bank tabs, crafting, etc.) so that you don’t end up doing the same unlocks on wildly different characters, and things useful only on a given character (bag space, profession skill unlocks, gear) as character systems. In general the account unlocks help facilitate faster progress through character systems. The relationship of masteries to elite specs is no different.

Source? As far as I’ve read into, masteries were the only source of “progression” that we’d be getting in HoT. If they had said anything about elite specs requiring a grind that far exceeds anything possible in the base game, then people would have voiced their outcry much sooner and would not have bothered themselves to rigorously complete the map on as many characters as they possibly can for the exact reason of avoiding the extra grind now so that they can enjoy the new content the way that they want to.

Someone else in this thread brought up a great point regarding the artificial inflation of hero points as well: What happens when the next expansion and round of elite specs is released? Will each elite spec cost 4,000 hero points, with each challenge in the new zones being worth 100 points each? That’s a great way to ensure that nobody will ever be ahead of the curve, but it’s also a great way to ensure that nobody will care about any previous content once new stuff is released. It really ends up with an effect no different than if straight-up vertical progression were implemented in this game. The only difference is that instead of inferior skills with lower damage numbers, we have inferior content with devalued progression points that nobody will ever want to touch again because the new stuff has literally 10 times more of a reward for what will likely amount to roughly the same amount of effort.

Anet is setting a horrendous precedent with this. People who wanted to grind their way through HoT for the new elite specs could have freely done so by their own will. With the way they’re going about it now, however, we’re basically being told that any of our previous work amounts to nothing, and that there’s no reason to ever touch the base game content beyond the bare minimum. Why would you ever want to do map completion anymore, when you can achieve better results with 10% of the time and effort required in the jungle?

This is a horrendous design choice, and is a textbook example of exactly what not to do when designing an expansion for a game. People are going to rush through the new challenges while avoiding anything else, leaving any sort of extra group content to languish. Launch is now going to be an absolute mess, because they’ve literally devalued anything that isn’t a jungle challenge by a factor of 10.

Nausicca.6038:

When Colin put his gun on my head to force me buying the xpac, he never said I had to play the game to unlock stuff.
I just want instant gratification. I don’t want to work in a videogame. Give meh the new legendaries now. Yes, before the launch. And I want an “instawin” skill.
And oh I want to use all the masteries at the same time, with all the stats in the game. When I’ll raid, I want to be able to click 1 and oneshot the last boss, who will drop me a full set of legendary armor, not the BS precursor.
Colin, plz, do it. Or I’ll quit ( but still play but ya know I’m a forum warrior, I have my pride).
No $$$ for you ever ANet. Nah.

Brb, diaper is full.

Yes, because thats exactly what everyone’s saying… Here, lets do you:

“I don’t like other people’s opinions! I make wuv wuv to Colin’s picture evwy night, before bed. How dare anyone say anything bad to Anet! These people, and their idea of whats “fun”. Fun is what my lord and master Colin, tells me is fun! Fun is grinding tokens 4 dayz, only to need MOAR tokens after that! Hahahahaa, I’m so happy! HAAHAHAHAHA……"

…

arkealia.2713:

So you want elite spec unlocked right away? With all skins unlocked as well including all new legendaries? billions of each mats in the bank? All maps unlocked with an instant teleport to wherever you want option? Dev Menu? OHKO button? Cheat mode?

I don’t even remember anyone crying at GW2 release because they didn’t have all their skills and weapons unlocked right away.

Are you sure you really want to play and enjoy the game?

Edit: I can understand the frustration for wvw players

No. With game design there is a balance between what aspects of a game you give to the player at the beginning or though tutorial levels. Things that are core utility to making the game new, fun and overall novel that are a functional part of the game you give to the player very early on. The ability to unlock all weapon skills for your class is a good example of this. A player in the core game does have to work to unlock weapon skills on a new character but it takes very little effort because this is a core mechanic of the game. it’s not content or a reward they are trying to achieve.

The new Elite Specializations are a core aspect of HoT that give it value. It’s a modification to the functional aspect of the game that make it feel new and exciting. To force a player to make it though 50%+ of the HoT content in order to be able to have enough traits unlocked to create an effective build devalues the game. We already have masteries, adventures and legendaries that give us grind-hungry MMO PvE players enough to feed on. They should not have made it so a player has to work that kittenly to get to a functional aspect of the game. It should feel completely new right away and Elite Specs were the pathway to accomplishing that. The Elite Spec unique skins, mods etc.. could be a progression that takes a player a long time, but as it stands we are looking at 200 her points being required just to get the trait paths unlocked to make a competitive build. For a player starting with 0 hero points that means grinding though the hero challenges in core game on alt or waiting until your 50% though Heart of Torns to have them. That’s horrible design.

Hey Dulfy, if you’re reading this , I’ll gladly give you 100g if you have a guide up by Sunday on the quickest way to collect the HP’s in HoT.
It’d be great to get over this bs as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
I’ll probably be playing pvp meanwhile.

Swagger.1459:

One question to keep in mind folks… “Is it fun?”

First time through: definitely one hell of a blast !

Second time through: maybe try some alternate tactics…

3rd-9th time thtough: err…. dunno if the new challenges will be so extremely super fun that repeating each 8 times in short duration is the most desirable activity in the game.

But well, if you would earn those (WvW-)dropped HP-Random-Unlock Tomes in PvE too, whenever you play on a toon that already has his ESpec maxed out, then why not.
It would then just be like feeding regular PvE level up tomes to your lowbie alts when they were still leveling core tyria,
so that could work just ok.

Or:
Just add Maguuma-HP-Unlockers to the daily login reward.
That would make 28-31 × 10 = 280-310 HP for free each month, enough to get most of one ESpec. Helpful but not too much either.

Unlocking elite specs by playing wouldn’t be half as bad if some specs like Druid wouldn’t have nothing in common with the base line profession.
I might be wrong, but what does a Ranger bring to be considered as base line healer?

So if I want to play the new healer, do I really have to start a boring Ranger first and push myself through stuff I don’t really want to do at all?

Same with Necromancer, I would try out the Reaper, but Necro was always way to unappealing to me.

I have nearly all professions leveled up to 80. And some of them didn’t seem to be as much fun as others, with the new elite specs I would try them again, but using their boring gameplay first to unlock something that maybe will be fun, seems to be quite off.

Testing the elite spec. in PvP would show me what about playing that style in group content // open world?

I mean I don’t care about the “fluff” like unlocking runes, skins and what not. Make that a million hero points! But let everyone be able to unlock the base spec fast enough.

And for all those guys that are claiming “elite spec is the natural progression for my profession”, maybe you are all playing Warriors and don’t care at all? But really tell me my Druid example, that the base profession has nothing in common with the elite one and that this is an issue doesn’t apply! I have seen Guardian and Elementalist healers, even Warrior ones, but a Ranger healer? Does that really exist?

400 points to unlock what exactly? sounds like i got to get them all to really use the elite-spec, as its not better, just different from the normal specs and having a half-finished traitline shouldnt be better than a completet one… so completing 2 maps atleast to get there… and when the next elite comes i need another 400 points? sounds like anet wants to depopulate the core game… maybe so everyone has to get the xpac to have fun? sounds like a great idea…

it would be far more reasonable to need 120 points for the elite spec and maybe another 80 for the skills, that way, you can get the elite in the old maps aswell, and if you give 5 points per challange in the jungle, you can still progess there pretty fast. and the bling, runes and inscriptions should be in reward tracks. having them in the spec feels strange… especially if you do it a 2nd time… why would you want to unlock the runes, skins, etc again?

edit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3iz5oo/data_mining_hero_points_and_specialization_tracks/
this is what was datamined with the 170 points to unlock the elite… and it looks ridiculous… now there were 250 points needed originally… and now there are 400… looks like they just increased the points needed to unlock the stages…

Mechanics are not content.

Places to see, adventures to have, that is content.

We are not asking for any freebies.

We are asking that, if we’ve done the world completion effort, that we be able to play the expansion content with expansion skills and traits.

No freebies, just recognition of our efforts. Don’t devalue the main game into nothing more than newbies and level grinding.

Morfedel.4165:

I am trying to recall a single MMORPG where an expansion handed out everything you expected to get with it up front, rather than making you earn it. I can’t think of a single one, and this sense of entitlement just truly baffles me.

Entitlement?

We were told what to expect. People planned for that and did the work asked of them. Whether you liked it or not we knew the upper boundary.

Then they changed it. Not us.

Few more random thoughts:

1) I don’t like hard gated content. This is the reason why I do not like certain masteries, which are required to experience HoT content. But I can mostly live with that.
2) People don’t seem to realize that some of the HPs in HoT might easily be gated by masteries – it has already been stated that parts of the maps are not accessible without high tiers of gliding mastery, so you will end up having to grind masteries before you can get HPs that you’ll need to unlock especs.
3) Having to redo this on multiple characters is simply not fun. I have world completion on all of my 80s (10+1 that got deleted), so I like exploring. But I DON’T LIKE BEING FORCED TO EXPLORE to play my class to it’s fullest.

Proposed solution:

1) Make HPs an account wide currency similar to WvW rank – it can be gained by any character, but all characters benefit.
2) Increment the said currency when a new HP is explored, regardless by which character.
3) Exploring HP that has already been used by one of your character gives you nothing (or some experience) other than progress toward world completion.

This will preserve the current costs and exploration requirements, but will make it much alt-friendlier.

You save up to buy your dream car. You buy it primarily because it has features that are much better than your current car. Three days before you receive your spanking new joy ride the manufacturer contacts you by email (well after the refund date has expired) and tells you that several of its best features (the most desirable ones) will only become available once you have driven it for 20K miles. I would totally understand why those customers were not happy with the manufacturer, or indeed the car.

Over 4k hours in the game 10 characters up to 80 full unlocked here, I do play WvW and PvP mostly.

The new hero point system is THRASH.

400 hp for a single character? Easy. For each of my 10 (soon 11) characters? INSANE. They even destroyed my main source of character progression (PvP tomes, due they replaced the skill points for hero points without enabling any sort of getting them in PvP).

I’ll must be forced to abandon most of my toons and to play only my main.

I also think now that the Anet promises of “no level progression” are bs. Yeah, you don’t need to rise from 80 to 85 as in other games; literaly they said the truth. But in the spirit, they broke their promises: HoT really demands you to level your character up to 160, because you need ~ the same amount of points to fully unlock your spec as your whole vanilla traits and skills. And for each toon.

The same with forcing players to abandon dungeons and doing fractals/raids instead: fractals requiere ascended gear and insfusions; ascended gear is expensive, and is a mandatory gear checking. This will not longer be a “affordable game for newbies”.

I’ll be okay with this if I can unlock the trait line before having to put points in the fluff like skins and runes. It’s okay to cost 400 points to unlock all the skins and runes and crap, but if the first 60 points go into unlocking the traits, vertical progression, before the rest goes into horizontal progression.

I will add my voice to how this is a bad design. Bad design. I understand the desire to eek out the elite spec, but you turn HoT from a place to progress and wonder at the sighs to rushing through without any attention to the scenario, the quests, the NPCs, in order to unlock the elite spec, and then go back to the start and progress normally, do the events, see the sights. But now spoiled for the initial rush.

Especially for Revenants and Glint being so good there is rarely any build which does not have it (lets not go into how it has Swiftness simply to explore the land).

The one to Rule.2593:

Just because they expected they were going to use them day one does not ever mean that they were. The title of " Elite" should have betrayed the fact that it was going to take some work.

Right. They seemed about the same balance (at least for a first try) as any other character. Most people just assumed they would cost the same as any other trait and skill line. The topic of unlocking has come up constantly as we waited for release. The name ‘elite’ we all took to mean ‘level 80s with a lot of hero challenges done’ and nobody from anet told us we were wrong. How many threads have there been with people talking about whether they liked a set of specs or not?

I bought hot for the new mechanics. I could give a toss about the new areas. Sure, I want to see them, but not be essentially forced to run through it, I wanted to explore at my own pace and appreciate things. Thanks, I can not do that now. I am now dreading HOT more than looking forward to it.

Oh well, Halloween content Friday. I do not know what I will do after the king leaves for the year though.

Vieteriukko.6075:

In any other mmo expansion you would need to level up 10 times before you could begin grinding for raid level gear. That progression would take 1-2 years for casual raider.

In GW2 you can begin the content right away as the content is character development. I have to say that anet failed in one area on this: Communication. Other than that I am OK.

Isn’t in any other MMO expansion the progression vertical instead of horizontal? So they are not depowered when used while not fully unlocked? In HoT running with a semi-unlocked elite spec is actually playing with a handicap.

Inverse.2967:

I super like the solution presented!

While it gives a slight head start to elite spec training if you happen to have amassed excess hero points in the open world until now, it still preserves the fun of a gradual further progression when searching out and completing the challenges in Maguuma.

If with progression you mean, tying one hand behind your back on your own volition and then gradually loosen the bonds with every hero point then yes, you do get progression. Because that’s what it is, the elite spec is meant to be a side grade not an upgrade so it should be around the same strength (though the strength of the elite spec may suit the content more). So equiping an unfinished elite spec in content based on full trait lines is purposely limiting yourself and the worst thing is that you don’t have to weaken yourself.

The 10x is also good, as it keeps the amount new challenges to do in Maguuma down to a reasonable amount yet makes them much more important than just bringing pre-farmed points from the base game world.

And why should base hero points be less then hot hero point? You did content either way.
As it is the 10x is just a means to lure people into the jungle and farm specific masteries just to get their elite spec.

I understand the outcry because it is different than people may have expected, but this does not make the presented system any less than a very sound and wise decision.

Thumbs Up

The outcry is because the system will make HoT maps madatory to be explored and will turn the HoT maps into a trainfests where people will just run from hero challenge to hero challenge and zerg it down. I am expecting to see lfg posts in the form off “looking for hero train” for each map.

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s 400 points total to unlock everything in an elite spec training line – I just can’t remember off hand how many points folks have currently if they have done all the existing ones, but it’s right around 200. The rest you’ll need to earn in jungle to unlock the deeper skills/traits/etc. in the training line.

You only need 60 hero points to begin using your elite spec, the points you spend after that continue to unlock more skills, traits, skins, etc.

Again, hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. So no you don’t need to go do 200-400 jungle challenges.

While I am 100% on board with having to earn, train and unlock our elite specs, I think that 400 hero points is horribly excessive. Especially for WvW only players. (Note: I love PvX and have done world completion 3 times, but play mostly in WvW).

Many WvW purists hate PvE. They hate running around Tyria doing something that does not contribute to the weekly matchup. Which means, they are likely to have NO excess hero points because they have no map completion. So they will need to drum up the 400 points using the new WvW system.

Assuming the Notarized Scrolls of Maguuma Heroics give 10 hero points (which still needs to be confirmed) they would need 40 of these scrolls. At 5 ranks per scroll, that’s 200 ranks in WvW.

(Note: there still remains the unanswered question of being retroactively rewarded proofs in WvW based on current rank — something that Anet should seriously consider since that would be the new WvW hero point system equivalent and having finished world completion!!)

Now, 200 ranks is no small feat. Heck it took me nearly 2 months to go from 1100 to 1320, because I am on a lower tier server, mostly roam with my guild havoc squad and very rarely get in large scale zerg fights or take keeps, which generate the most WxP.

200 ranks will take a heck of a lot longer than finding 40 hero challenges in the jungle. I bet many PvE/PvX players will find their full 20-40 either on launch day or by the end of the 1st weekend.

I highly doubt anyone in this entire game has earned 100 ranks in one weekend of WvW. Even with a birthday booster one. If they have, they spent every waking moment doing it, hard core via EotM or zerg-festing.

And with the new borderlands map being so much bigger and taking longer to get across, we’re possibly looking at earning less WxP than the smaller alpine map has provided, because it takes longer to get somewhere to cap something to earn the WxP.

And what if you’re on a server where your role is to scout and defend? You’re getting even less WxP because defending rewards less than attacking. Which draws the time line out even further.

Then throw in the fact that MANY WvW players hate leveling and will use Tomes to level their Revenants. Meaning that WvW players who want to be a herald on launch day won’t be able to because they’ll have to wait to earn 30 ranks to unlock the elite line, which can easily take a week or more for some players, depending on play styles and amount of play time.

Suddenly WvW players are looking at several weeks to a month just to fully train their elite spec, when PvE purists will have it done in a matter of days. Simply because of their preferences for certain content types.

To make matters worse, if my assumption about scrolls is incorrect — if they give less than 10 hero points — then this timeline is extended even further.

I predict that if this is not remedied immediately, we’ll find WvW players are going to forget about their 1st week’s matchups and storm EotM armed with boosters to karma/rank train just to fully train their elite specs as fast as possible. That is NOT supportive of the new borderlands map or any of the great WvW changes coming. And I doubt this is what Anet is intending.

TL;DR: It takes much more effort and time to get 5 ranks in WvW than it does to find one Maguuma Jungle Hero Challenge. PvX friendly players will have their elite specs fully trained by Sunday. Meanwhile WvW only players will still be working on it for days, if not weeks to come and, will once again, feel pressured to play content they have no interest in, just to get their elite spec. This disparity is way out of balance and horribly unfair.

Thanks for listening!

ChavaStark.9147:

ColinJohanson.2394:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Unless I am mistaken just to unlock half of the training line, we need 212 hero points?

It’s 400 points total to unlock everything in an elite spec training line – I just can’t remember off hand how many points folks have currently if they have done all the existing ones, but it’s right around 200. The rest you’ll need to earn in jungle to unlock the deeper skills/traits/etc. in the training line.

You only need 60 hero points to begin using your elite spec, the points you spend after that continue to unlock more skills, traits, skins, etc.

Again, hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. So no you don’t need to go do 200-400 jungle challenges.

Okay Collin literally said hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. so we need to do 10 challenges per 100 and that means 40 challenges for the 400. So stop freaking out this is not as bad as it seems. If we do not have a lot of challenges in the jungle and I highly doubt it then it is something to freak over. But right at the moment I do not find this to be a grind and it is not even that bad.

It is bad when people first stepping into the Jungle feel like they need to skip events and content and chase down hero points, or use a guide to find them all, so they can start HoT off with a full Elite spec traitline. That’s horrible. Especially when they go to play an alt and think “aww man I’ve gotta go running through the forest ignoring everything around me, collecting hero points, if I want to play with my Elite spec.”

Or worst of all “I really want to take my Engi to this daily fractal as a Scrapper but I’d have to go bouncing through the jungle grinding hero points just to unlock all the options. Why bother?”

This is how alts get shelved and stay shelved.

Let me introduce myself, I am :
_a WVW player( rank 3400 +), who like roaming and small scale fights and who used to zerg and gvg long time ago.
_i do some time some pvp to improve my skills and find players
_I have played GW2 for 3 years and i have bought some characters slot in gemstore to have all professions, and even same professions from others race sometimes:
A total of 10 characters lvl 80 with no or just a little map completion.

I know that i’m not the only one in this situation.
For us who have been waiting and buying HOT mostly for the new elite specs, the guild hall to fight in a sandbox arena, or the new WVW map how much disapointing this announce should be?
In fact players who will play WVW in a bit competitive way (it may be PPT, GVG , roaming) won’t have a choice with the current system of getting hero points.
These players will have to go in Maguuma Jungle PVE with each of their characters ( even if they got the same class with different races) because they won’t really have any other choice. The fact is, getting hero point will be much longer with the WVW system in my opinion. To fully unlock their elite spec for each of their characters in WVW must be a joke, if im not mistaking:
_ about 200 WVW rank and 6k badges?
The worst thing is that our actual WVW rank won’t be of any use once again even for those who spent a very long time in this game mode. Anet told they will change WVW EXP potions into a % bonus for a short period not to advantage players who wil gathered it before HOT. But don’t you think that its unfair to let the pve players who like doing map completion have an advantage of 210 points in that case?(I have nothing against PVE players, i think its too boring for them too if they have multiple characters)
The other thing is that i find the amount of badges ridiculous and not adapted to that. It will encourage people zerging to kill the more people per minute and not to care at all about roaming or real WVW strategy. Edge of the mist stupid zerg would be one of the most effective way to unlock your elite spec.
Doing the 400 HP one time on one character, why not? But doing it each time with each character is not human. Its not funny at all for a player like me having to do that 10 times.
Even PVE players will be bored not to play and explore the jungle with the spec they were waiting for if it takes too much long time on each of their characters.
To conclude, in my opinion you should reconsider some things about:
_how to find a way to make an easier grinding for players who already play multiclass
_how WVW actual rank of the player should have an impact in this
_how to obtain badges in WVW and not only earning them while killing people zerging , or opening chests in edge of the Mist zergs karmatrain
_how to win HP in the PVP mode. People who like PVP may also love doing some fights in WVW like in roaming,GVG, fighting in guilds arenas with Elite spec…
For them if it stays like that they won’t be able to grind at ll for what they like in WVW and guild arenas, and they are not the kind of players that will enjoy zerging or doing PVE to grind…
So I’m really scared you forgot a way for them to do that in PVP.
I aslo got 2 questions:
_how many HP you have to use just to unlock all the elite spec and not the skins/sigils/ runes?
_do you plan to give pvp players a way to win HP?
Thanks for reading, and please forgive me for my bad english(I hope you understood).

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Halvorn.9831:

Tasao.4623:

Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind.

What are you even talking about? In the core game, don’t you have to level to 80 in order to go to cursed shores? So cursed shores is gated behind a grind as well, isn’kitten

There’s plenty of other content other than Cursed Shore to do when you’re not at 80.
But that’s to be expected while leveling. But if you want to dive into the jungle, or do world bosses, or do halloween content, or anything else out in the world on an alt, being faced with a big grind just to unlock your elite spec’s base functionality is absurd. The CONTENT is what should occupy you. Not the unlocking of the abilities and traits you want to use on that content.

Do you require your elite specs to go to the jungle? No.

You want to do it. Like someone who just starts the game and wants to go to Arah.

What the heck did you all expect the content to be? Of course there has to be some sort of time drain. No company on this planet can provide you with thousands of hours of non-repetitive endgame content.

GRINDING HERO POINTS IS NOT “CONTENT”. Especially if you have to do the same grind 9 times to cover every class in the game.
And reducing or removing that grind still leaves 99% of the HoT intact.
Your character is your avatar. Your tool. Your bridge between yourself and the content. Blocking off a chunk of that bridge for literally no reason does NOTHING to enhance the content you’re playing, and reducing or removing those blocks does nothing to cheapen all of the content they’re adding.

Elite Specs are a TOOL via which you experience content. They are hardly content themselves and any grind to unlock them is automatically unwarranted as a direct result. People just want to play HoT, or do Halloween, or run dungeons, or fractals, or WvW. But this decision to gate off elite specs behind an arbitrarily huge hero point hurdle directly inhibits a player’s ability to do that content as they choose to do it.

This is bad design. Period. You don’t like my comment, don’t read em, don’t respond to them, don’t use this forum at all if you disagree with literally anyone at all. THAT is the logic you’re telling us to use when we criticize this design decision.

I main 4 classes in WvW… I’m highly proficient in them all. Guardian, Necro, Warrior, Ranger. Only my Guard and my war have done ANYTHING in PVE they are both at 100%. The two I want elite on? Of course my Necro and Ranger, the two that were literally born and bred in WvW ONLY. So no I get to grind out 800HP for the two of them bc my chosen game mode on them has been WvW? Seriously?

Also, here is another point why this is ridiculous. You realize this system actually forces 1 class to not be able to unlock it’s elite at all at launch? Revenant. Even if you tome one to 80 you will need to grind out 60 to unlock it’s Elite. EVERY other class can stockpile 60 to have elite at least unlocked launch day. Revenant bc it doesn’t exist yet is just “kittened”

There are MYRIAD of reasons why this system SHOULD NOT be implemented and so far the only real reason I’ve heard for it is bc you need something to work towards…

Ummm tell you what, how about I work towards the time gated masteries, or the progression raiding for legendary armor, or the level 100 fractals, or scribing, or helping my guild build the guild hall, or the new legendaires? All of these things locked behind time… Why include core class mechanics to that list? That makes absolutely zero sense to me. We have ENOUGH to work towards already, not having our new elites to experience the content with first day is a travesty.

You know what you are doing as a company? You are turning your shiny new xpac maps into a silverwaste for HP the first month… All you will see is LFG for HP trains. Which is sad. You now have forced players into a no win situation. 1) Do I take my time with the content and explore it as I should absorbing all and thus be a detriment to my guild on the battlefield for bringing a non elite OR 2) do I ruin my xpac experience and just HPtrain the map like so many others will be doing…

Every day I see these announcements and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, this is appalling…

and to those of you that will throw out the obligatory if you don’t like it go elsewhere… I LOVE this game. I’ve done almost everything there is to do. I’ve almost completed my set of legendaries. I’ve map completed. I’ve AP chased. I’ve maxed fractals. I’ve given time and effort and boatloads of money (Id consider myself to be what most here would call a whale) to support this game and community I love and sadly every day leading up to this expansion has been a total disappointment…

This 400HP wall is poorly designed and poorly executed. You want to lock elites behind something? Do it behind personal story. Make going from a regular necro to becoming a REAPER an EXPERIENCE to remember. BUILD the elite specializations into the story!!! Then they would truly mean something instead of locking them behind time just for the sake of it. All you are doing is a disservice to those that have been most loyal to you… your fans, your players, your gaming family. I know it’s probably to little to late to implement fixes to this, I just hope you all at HQ realize what you’ve done and how deeply we as a community are disappointed.

In 3 years of gaming you have never made me question a single dime of the exorbitant amount I have spent… until now. Give us back the GW2 we know and love…

I’m hoping that rewards for all kinds of WvW events are getting a look at. It was always annoying that you needed badges to get the Supply Traps, Siege Disablers, (and even Stealth Traps) for defense… but defense events don’t give the badges you need…

Note to self: Shoulda just been karma-training and let all those keeps flip.

So 400 hero points, per character, across all 12 of my characters? Plus possible mastery grinding on the very first character? Now that I sit and really think about that…Even with 213 Hero Points already on my main: