Guild Wars 2

I would. I would like EotM to become the sandbox portion of the game. It should be an almost “anything goes” area of the game.

Astralporing.1957:

The question is, will it be possible to “lock out” yourself from mastery points by spending them the “wrong” way. So, for example, getting to the situation where we’ve already spent all our available mastery points, and the only ones left are in areas we would need new mastery unlocks to access.

That was part of my concern as well. Do we know if masteries are a flat progression or do they take more and more time to earn like levels in other MMOs?

My other concern is playing with other people. If they want to spend their mastery points in a totally different way, do our paths have to diverge because I may be spending more points on gliding while my friend is spending them on combat and another in our group was spending them on something else? Even if we get an “All masteries lead to the same destination but there are multiple paths” that is definitely something that could split parties up.

My other hope is that both masteries for the new legendaries and old ones are in the “Original Tyria” mastery track. Content is gated in the x-pac. It isn’t in the base game. IDK, maybe I am wrong and new content int he base game will be gated. Maybe we aren’t getting new content in the base game outside masteries though.

John Ryan(writer extraordinaire) just announced he got a gig at Bungie! We are all gonna miss you around here, but I for one am stoked for you(In a bittersweet sort of way). Best wishes and congratulations on the new jobby job!

A toggle-able option would be cool for people that wanted to progress exactly the same way every time and have to earn the masteries over and over and over again.

If not, I have to say I agree though with the naysayers. Account bound is the only way to go if only a single way can be implemented. I don’t want to have to grind through the maps every time. I want to get to events that are profitable after I have earned the mastery points once.

Templar.3418:

I certainly hope there are such options. I’d rather fight through the hordes than fly over them honestly.

There will probably be areas that we can’t access without certain items though. They did say something about their progression being similar to Zelda or Metroid with the mastery system.

Like how you need the hookshot from OOT to enter the forest temple? Maybe? If you’ve played that…

Yeah I get that. I don’t mind a few points here and there being required. It makes sense. I am just hoping that it is not a linear thing throughout the entirety of the experience. My hope is that once we reach a place where it looks like you need to spend a mastery point to progress, there are multiple paths you can take to spend your points toward progressing through the map. With Zelda and Metroid etc. The path was exactly that: a single path. A single path would mean all subsequent playthroughs ended up being the same experience. IF that’s the case, I would rather of had more maps with as much to do in them as in the original game.

Platforming is great in the base game when it’s optional. One of the things I truly love about the base game is that you can level up in a ton of different ways and that type of variety is what lends itself to replayability. I hope this new mastery system and the new map(s) lend themselves to the same myriad options in the base game.

Let me start with a disclaimer: This thread will be entirely focused on mastery discussion for the Maguuma Wastes. With that out of the way, I have a few questions about masteries.

Let’s start with what we know first though. We know the mastery system will be required to progress through the new map. See that ledge and that mushroom there? You need to spend a mastery point to use that mushroom as a springboard to get up there. See that cliff over there with the thing that resembles a skill point? That’s a mastery point. You commune at it, but first you need to spend a mastery point on gliding so that you can glide far enough to reach it.

Those things are where my questions come in. Do we have real choice in how we progress through these new map(s)? For instance, can I choose to fight my way through everything with my Warrior instead of platforming through it? With my Mesmer, could I then choose to platform my way through it to have a different “map experience” than the one I just had with my Warrior? Is the progression linear or are those choices viable?

Is real choice about how we want to progress through the maps part of the replayability that was talked about at the PAX announcement?

I would be loathe to see mastery points have to be spent on specific things throughout the entirety of the expansion. For example: I could see my character be up really high on a ledge with a mastery point and a cliff off in the distance. I can tell it’s just out of the reach of the distance my glider can go. The game is basically telling me, “The only agency you have right now is spending that mastery point on your glider and hitting the accept button.”

Is it like that or am I way off base? For example, would there never be a place that was like that. Instead there would be the option of jumping on a mushroom, getting in a fight, and a ledge to glide off of? If it’s more decision based than I am thinking it is, then please clarify!

Thanks.

Luck drops are treated as some sort of reward with this last update and Halloween and Wintersday but it’s just clicking.

I wish they would allow the implementation of use all etc. especially after doing rewards the way they have. It wasn’t enough that my inventory got filled with useless sweaters and sock, they then had to introduce nice sweaters that you had to salvage for useless sweaters…………………………

At some point, my hope is someone looks at this stuff through the eyes of a player and say, “We aren’t going to do this stuff this way anymore. It isn’t fun.”

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Electro.4173:

They told you in advance exactly what this POI was going to be about. Straight from the news post…

~ “We’ll get an overview of how the system works and what it does, and we’ll take a look at some of the Masteries in action"

And that’s exactly what they didn’t do. So complaints are valid. They only showed gliding, not the mastery system itself and how it works. I was expecting to see the Mastery UI.

yeah I was hoping for a quality look at the UI since that is the meat and potatoes of the system.

Rashy.4165:

Iason Evan.3806:

If you are going to gate game play at least let us choose which gate we want to enter by.

I think that’s how it will work, to an extent. They mentioned one example of being able to take down a boss by learning a special ability from a specific race, which would require lore mastery to discover/communicate with that race. Perhaps they could introduce other races which gives alternative abilities for taking down the same boss.

The system could grow to the point where unlocking one mastery allows you to unlock many more masteries, or unlocking a set of masteries is needed to unlock one mastery. It could be a massive web of interconnected masteries and abilities. Or maybe even choosing a way to unlock a specific mastery by unlocking one of five possible masteries.

If you could keep up with that, highfives. XD

I do very much like the idea of integrated and interweaved masteries and abilities.

I do follow you(high five)and I hope you are correct. There is nothing worse than walking into a fight with a bunch of baddies in a game and having only one way to clear them all out or having one way be the far superior way of doing it.

My hope is that the mastery system for Maguuma Wastes isn’t linear. I would hate to earn 1 mastery point, spend it on gliding, jump to another mastery point unlock on a ledge with a only a mushroom and then be forced to unlock that mastery in order to jump up higher and repeat the process. I really hope there are multiple ways to progress through the map.

If there is a choice between combat or flying around and I spent the bulk of my points in gliding, I would hope that the next ledge wouldn’t be designed too far away for me to avoid the combat encounter. That’s the kind of freedom with this system that should be in the game.

If you are going to gate game play at least let us choose which gate we want to enter by.

Thanks for the stream today! It was great. Those enemies look amazing. I really like the gliding too. I would suggest giving the players the ability to move the UI gliding timer-bar though. It gets in the way of flying and taking in the sights when it’s in the middle of the screen. It would be nice as a bar above the endurance bar. It would be a lot cleaner for sure.

The devs did a way better job of playing and showing off the game this time around. Nice work all!

I feel the same way. I would like this arena a lot more if I could bring a group into it. I was bummed about that Tixx’s tower defense thing not allowing us to bring a group in as well. Hopefully it can be addressed in the future.

JustTrogdor.7892:

aShotOfDaniels.8574:

JustTrogdor.7892:

aShotOfDaniels.8574:

JustTrogdor.7892:

RNG

I always grab scraps when new skins come out, and I’ve never been this horrifically unlucky with scraps. Ever.

RNG

Whelp, if RNG is going to be such a bad joke on what’s supposed to be a fairly common drop, guess I’m buying no more keys.

Good idea. I support that. BLKs is nothing but in game gambling. If you are not prepared to lose don’t buy them.

Best idea ever. Gambling is dumb.

From the scant details we’ve gotten coupled with the inability to discern hype from fact, I am optimistic that it will be a cool mode.

It’d be cooler with skill splits though. They need to have 8/10/12 man versions of this for unranked. They even said it themselves in that PC Gamer article. Conquest is just the same fights in different places on circles around the map. Every game mode is balanced around that and it’s not good for the game.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt though. I came back to Pvp to play after a few months off and quickly left again when they merged solo and team queues. If you don’t have the playerbase to keep both queues, then stop designing all the skills around Conquest and split em. Or design them around the game mode that gets the most play.

I’d love to see some new maps for Conquest as well. For as long as they say they’ve been working on this, I am a little disheartened that we aren’t getting more maps. The PvP in this game isn’t DOTA 2. It deserves more variety than just a single map.

An unranked lobby of this should be available in 8/10/12 man formats.

We still get skills balanced around 3 control points. For all modes of the game. It’s terrible.

With the release of the festival came exotic and rare foods. Would make sense it’s a test to see how stat increases like that will affect the game.

It’ll be one of two dates: April for the 10th anniversary of the franchise or August for the 3 year anniversary of GW2.

I am wondering if you guys think ArenaNet is using the rare and exotic food they introduced with “The Happy Lucky Ram Dragon Bash New Year Festival of the Seven Happinesses” as a partial test for 500 Cooking which I affectionately refer to as “Cuisine”.

What do you think?

I say it totally is. This doesn’t feel as much like a festival as much as it does a testing ground and metrics hotbed for 500 cooking and magic find en masse working on opening bags across the whole game.

Have these holiday items been dropping in the open world? If not, they should. It would help it to feel a little more festive.

Jaken.6801:

Simply said, last chinese new year equivalent (aka dragon bash) was much more rewarding and entertaining.

What is it with GW2 and the festivals? Why can`t they be consistent?

^This is all that needs to be said.

I’d like new, 5-person, instanced content instead. Short of that, I’d at least like them to revisit rewards of old dungeons and Fractals to give us a reason to keep doing them.

Playing a control spec has never really been viable in PvE. Hopefully the change will open up the possibility of playing a control spec. They sold us the game that “Control” was one of the three ways to play and left out “..but not in PvE.”

Bring it back for sure! It was the best bow ever. I used to love farming Frostmaw’s Burrows for that thing.

I really wish they would do that more where there were special weapons you could only get out of end chests. They do it with the Fractals and it would add so much more replayability to dungeons to have special skins added to them.

When you don’t have a dungeon dev anymore, the least you could do is spruce up the ones you have with cool loot!

I know “everything is working as intended” but how it’s intended to work isn’t a very attractive system to the players.

Magic Find is supposed to be a boon to the players for RNG and what did you guys do? You added bags that weren’t affected by Magic Find. Not only that but instead of just having our MF go up automatically when we salvaged items, we had to salvage an item and get “luck” in the form of an item that we had to double-click.

Instead of streamlining the system and making it more attractive to the playerbase you opted to set up the illusion of a better Magic Find system and in fact made the odds favor the house more by adding loot that was unaffected by Magic Find.

In a word: Yuck.

Belzebu.3912:

I think that guild hall will be quite easily obtainable by any guild, but probably some upgrades will be only available by guild merits and that is what will make a guild stand out from other.

But there is no need to have one guild hall stand out over another guild’s guild hall because the guild halls are instanced. There is no contest to be had in who’s is prettier. It’s instanced so it should be for enjoyment of the members purely. If we had open-world guild halls, I could see that as a way to attract members, but I also feel like guild upgrades were so much easier for larger guilds to acquire and it was based on guild size alone which goes against the whole ethos of GW2. Smaller guilds were punished and are still punished by longer time gates in order to earn upgrades for their guilds. It’s never even been addressed.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

They better give mesmers a mh weapon too.

Two new weapon skills after three years? At least treat every profession equal, like rangers get five new weapon skills.

So I’d clearly like a second melee option for mh, like axe maybe. Would fit better to the shield.

The funny part is I don’t even think the Ranger is sacrificing it’s core mechanic of having to have a pet at all times with the Druid Specialization, but I have a strong feeling that the Elementalist(if they are getting a main-hand sword for their specialization) won’t have access to attunements for their specialization as it would mean 12 new skills for them and I just don’t see that happening.

It looks like we will be seeing hammer and 5 new skills for the engie, but will we see a new kit and optional hobo sacks? If I have my hobo sack equipped when I decide to use my glider, will the hobo sack still be showing?

I am super excited for the class changes, but with change that is good, there is also change that makes one shake the head in disbelief sometimes.

In the guild hall CDI some months ago there was a general consensus that guild halls should be easy to acquire and upgrade basic features. I will be totally disappointed if the progression system doesn’t scale to guild size. Just because you prefer a smaller, more tight knit community for your guild shouldn’t mean you miss out on amenities for longer because you are smaller. I hope ArenaNet takes this into consideration.

Guild halls shouldn’t be a “mine’s bigger than yours” kittening contest. They are instanced and should be for each guild to enjoy. There should game play involved to earn them, but bigger guilds shouldn’t have an advantage. Events scale, why shouldn’t guild hall acquisition scale to guild size as well?

No thanks. If you want to have fractal skins you have to do fractals. It’s nice to have skins we have to play for. The whole reason Fractal skins have the allure they have is because you can’t buy them and they are cool skins. Take one of those things away and you ruin the whole point of them.

Why outfits don’t come in “pieces” like armor baffles me from a consumer standpoint.

Gem Shop armors and weapons should be free to transmute as many times as you want after purchasing. I understand them wanting to make more money, but I would be more apt to buy more gem shop skins if they were a one time purchase as opposed to one time purchase + trans stones.

I decided to re-roll my thief last night. My hulking, Norn, dude thief was too big. I haven’t created a new character in over a year and a half.

Wowsers is the Trait system bad. I am glad to see they are fixing it from what they say. I’d suggest nothing too adventurous though. That hasn’t really been working as of late. If it isn’t better than the original system, don’t do it. Just leave the rewards system in place from when the NPE was implemented, get rid of the terrible gating and call it a day.

Gating seems to be the new theme at ArenaNet. Since I hadn’t seen the way it worked it didn’t affect me really and I ignored it. I bought all my traits instead of slog through that mess.

A fix-Read: Rollback- should have been implemented prior to the x-pac coming out. In fact, it should have come out about 4 months ago.

I tire of not getting straight talk. I’d appreciate stowing the market speak. Just list the real reasons why things are going in the direction they are going in. If those reasons don’t sound very consumer friendly when you practice saying them out loud before delivering them to the customers, then maybe don’t implement it?

Just a thought.

Make them rare and let someone corner the market? no thanks. Also, ArenaNet uses those to make money. BLTC Chests are the advertisement drop in game that lets the players know, “Hey! Check me out! I’m a chest and you can buy keys with gems to open me! Isn’t that fun? you bet it is! Go buy some gems now and open me up!”

Photonman.6241:

One set per spec, with a cultural armor kinda feel. Love this idea!

I think if it’s done this way it’s totally doable. When you have 9 professions, 5 races, and male and female, it makes it too much work to be worth it to do. 1 set for each profession would work though and it would be pretty great.

I think doing it for the specializations would be a better idea than for the professions though.

Gliding should have been a cool thing to be able to do from vistas and in towns. They could have had it without an “endurance meter” if you unlocked it once you got to the top of the new maps in HoT and had the top of the map been the end of the line for the maps. Then you could glide around to your heart’s content because you beat all of the gating sans gliding.

Rytlock uses a pistol in CoE Story Mode. Rytlock does whatever he wants.

I will try and one up you(in a good way) by saying that luck shouldn’t even be an item. We should just salvage items per usual and when we salvage our luck goes up. Get rid of the item altogether and just up our luck per salvage. It gets rid of inventory clutter, gets rid of extra clicks and lets it all happen during the salvaging process.

Streamline this already.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Even the oldest of MMOs have realised arbitrary gating is a bad thing, and Anet’s planning to move forwards by reintroducing it? Oh boy.

I dunno, is it arbitrary gating? Or is it very specific gating of some few extra goodies like jumping puzzles? (Considering how often I hear they shouldn’t be in this game, gating them seems like . . . well, nobody would care.)

“As you keep progressing in the lore with the Itzel they’ll start giving you access to special combat abilities that will help you overcome obstacles that you absolutely could not defeat before.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ign.com%2Farticles%2F2015%2F02%2F03%2Fhow-guild-wars-2s-mastery-system-could-change-mmos-forever

That’s arbitrary gating in that quote.

My suggestion to the team that makes PoI is to have one dev play while the other talks. The people making this show for our enjoyment are the highest quality game makers, not high quality game video preview people. It’s so hard to play and talk at the same time when you know upwards of a thousand people are watching. That’s why I think it would have been great to have one dev describe the action while the other guy who is playing just plays.

I’d almost suggest having Grouch play when you do this stuff since he is a really skilled player and could talk over it while he plays. Or just have him play while Rubi and whoever else is there can describe the action.

It was disappointing to hear them say things about the x-pac that have been said a dozen times already. There should have been something fresh other than the warrior having 2 “F” skills and seeing the Revenant icon by accident.

They could have picked a better activity to show as well. The sniper rifle had 1 skill and the flamethrower had two skills and the activity they were doing was the very first thing to do in the expansion. Nice as an introduction, not really as a presentation.

I hope the feedback helps.

Vayne.8563:

Iason Evan.3806:

Vayne.8563:

Fractals was designed to be the one place in the game for people who like that progression to play. That was the function of Fractals. It was always meant to be a progression and it was always meant to be a grind.

The thing that they did was, the left the rewards pretty much the same after level 10 or so, so you could get fractal rewards, just at a lower percentage chance. You could experience every fractal.

Saying that the fractals are going to become a grind is rich. They are already a grind. They were made to be a grind.

People say that this game was created to give people of all “walks of gaming life” something to do. Some people want to grind. Anet gave them fractals.

Can I do fractals without grinding. Absolutely.

Maguuma in the expansion says, “Hello”.

Wanna kill that boss over there? You only need 10 more mastery points. Wanna get to that ledge with the chest on it? 2 mastery points. It isn’t just fractals anymore with a grind. It’s “gear grind” being replaced with “mastery grind”.

Will the Fractal progression be more pronounced? Of course. But them saying we dont have a level cap increase is true in word but not action. Some of the enemies in the expansion may as well be level 100 because you aren’t killing them until you get a certain number of mastery points.

The amount of assumptions in your post is pretty staggering…and not just by a little. I’ll wait and see before I make those assumptions.

In a sense this game always had some gated content. I couldn’t do Arah at level 20.

There’s gated and there’s GATED. Until we see what’s what, it’s a bit premature to say anything.

The difference Vayne is that we are all level 80 going into Maguuma. You and I could both have all ascended gear and I could beat a boss with the right masteries and you can’t if you haven’t met the mastery rank. You could be a more skillful player than me and there would be nothing you could do about it. Leveling is akin to progression. I am not talking about progression. I am talking about characters on equal footing level-wise and 1 person could do the content and the other could not due to not having met a gated requirement. See the difference?

maddoctor.2738:

Iason Evan.3806:

Vayne.8563:

Fractals was designed to be the one place in the game for people who like that progression to play. That was the function of Fractals. It was always meant to be a progression and it was always meant to be a grind.

The thing that they did was, the left the rewards pretty much the same after level 10 or so, so you could get fractal rewards, just at a lower percentage chance. You could experience every fractal.

Saying that the fractals are going to become a grind is rich. They are already a grind. They were made to be a grind.

People say that this game was created to give people of all “walks of gaming life” something to do. Some people want to grind. Anet gave them fractals.

Can I do fractals without grinding. Absolutely.

Maguuma in the expansion says, “Hello”.

Wanna kill that boss over there? You only need 10 more mastery points. Wanna get to that ledge with the chest on it? 2 mastery points. It isn’t just fractals anymore with a grind. It’s “gear grind” being replaced with “mastery grind”.

How is that similar to gear grind?

Because they have said that there will be things you can’t do in Maguuma without certain mastery requirements being met. In other MMOs you have to have certain gear to do certain things. I am not talking about leveling. I am talking about 2 max-level characters having identical gear and 1 person will be able to kill something because they have met a mastery requirement while the other won’t be able to kill it because they don’t have the mastery points. It’s a gear gate with a different name.

My preference would have been to have the masteries there to make the content easier. If someone was really skillful they could overcome a fight without the mastery.

My ideal would be that masteries would be purely cosmetic. Earn an exclusive weapon for overcoming a difficult challenge. Overcome this challenge over here and get a piece of armor. Get the full set by doing these things and earning these masteries here.

They have a cosmetic mastery in the precursor/legendary mastery set. That is ideal. Hiding game play content behind a gate is terrible in my opinion. It’s not called a gear gate, but if they took away the masteries and instead we had to earn an upgrade that had to be slotted in order to beat certain enemies, how would that be any different? It’s just a gate with a different name.

darkace.8925:

BilboBaggins.5620:

And they said that once you’ve started masteries your nameplate will show your mastery score, sounds like WoW gear score to me.

That bit definitely caught my eye. I really don’t see how displaying a player’s mastery score is going to bring anything but trouble.

“Arah P2 250MP and 15k AP ONLY or don’t join”.

Nah, that will never happen. Gw2 has the best MMO community in the world.

Vayne.8563:

Fractals was designed to be the one place in the game for people who like that progression to play. That was the function of Fractals. It was always meant to be a progression and it was always meant to be a grind.

The thing that they did was, the left the rewards pretty much the same after level 10 or so, so you could get fractal rewards, just at a lower percentage chance. You could experience every fractal.

Saying that the fractals are going to become a grind is rich. They are already a grind. They were made to be a grind.

People say that this game was created to give people of all “walks of gaming life” something to do. Some people want to grind. Anet gave them fractals.

Can I do fractals without grinding. Absolutely.

Maguuma in the expansion says, “Hello”.

Wanna kill that boss over there? You only need 10 more mastery points. Wanna get to that ledge with the chest on it? 2 mastery points. It isn’t just fractals anymore with a grind. It’s “gear grind” being replaced with “mastery grind”.

Will the Fractal progression be more pronounced? Of course. But them saying we dont have a level cap increase is true in word but not action. Some of the enemies in the expansion may as well be level 100 because you aren’t killing them until you get a certain number of mastery points.

Overheard in LA map chat in 10 months when HoT gets released: “Guild recruiting. Heavy WvW guild. HoT owners only*”.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t mind hard fights. In fact, I love hard content like Liadri. I can’t stand stuff that tells me no matter how good you are at this game you can not fight this creature that you are at because we put an arbitrary mechanic in place.

Why not though? Why is this a problem? You can’t fight the boss of a dungeon until you crawl through the dungeon, right? You can’t fight a Fractal final boss until you clear the other three fractals, right? This is the same thing, you can’t defeat a so-and-so or perhaps even get to the place to fight him, until you have the required mastery. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s not like if you have the mastery it will become a cakewalk, I expect the actual fight to be quite difficult regardless, all the mastery does is require you to clear Content A before you’re allowed to do Content B.

I would rather have content that a portion of the people in the game can’t get past if they are not good enough skill-wise to do so.

While personally I strongly disagree and do not like significant skill-gates at all, I can understand this philosophy, and I imagine that there will be some difficult content in this patch from what we’ve heard, but you’re conflating two separate issues. Don’t think of it as “they made some hard content, and then a mastery that trivializes it,” think of is as “they made some hard content, but you have to earn your right to challenge it.”

I mean, I don’t expect the Mastery thing to be like a Liadri fight where the mastery makes you immune to the death rain. I instead expect it to be like you can do zero damage to the boss at all until you learn to infuse your attacks with nature magic, or like the enemy has an unavoidable toxic buildup that you need a mastery to breathe in. I don’t expect these fights to be difficult without the required masteries, I expect them to be literally impossible without cheating in some way.

“I would rather have content that a portion of the people in the game can’t get past if they are not good enough skill-wise to do so. They will have to practice it and practice it again until they are good enough.”

Don’t quote me out of context next time. You left out the last sentence which changes what I said dramatically. All I have stated is my opinion on the matter. We disagree. We may even both have valid points. It doesn’t change the fact that they called out not having gear grind and instead are gating content not behind gear like most MMOs but behind another gate that doesn’t involve gear.

Palador.2170:

Iason Evan.3806:

I don’t mind hard fights. In fact, I love hard content like Liadri. I can’t stand stuff that tells me no matter how good you are at this game you can not fight this creature that you are at because we put an arbitrary mechanic in place. I am not talking about leveling. I am talking about making me gain something by grinding in order to be able to fight it. Call it gear grind, call it mastery points.

Can we call it a “Queen’s Gauntlet Entrance Ticket”? As I recall, you needed those to get into the fight.

They were fairly easy to get, as I recall, but you still had to have them to do the fights. And if you ran out, you had to go get more.

As far as that goes, Liadri was fight 4 of Tier 3, right? She was effectively gated by everything before her. It didn’t matter how good you were, you had to earn the chance to fight her.

The problem isn’t stuff being gated. It’s stuff being gated badly. Wouldn’t you agree?

If it’s as easy as getting gauntlet tickets, sure. You 100% have a point. We both know it’s not though. They even cited in the blog today that it isn’t gear grind. They are right. Instead they put lipstick on a pig named “gear grind” and called it “masteries”.

Palador.2170:

Ohoni.6057:

But yeah, if it’s “get the rockets, and then kill 500 enemies before you can unlock the doors with them,” then that would be annoying more than fun.

I hope ANet paid close attention to using missiles to unlock doors in the first Metroid, actually. There’s a method to how they did it that I’m hoping they learned from.

When you first get the missiles, you get 5. That’s it, that’s all you can hold. That’s also enough to unlock a red door, the barrier they’re supposed to get you through. But, it’s only just enough, so if you’ve been using them, sometimes you have to stop and fight a bit to restock before you can open a door.

Then, as you play, you start finding more missile boosters. Soon you can carry 10, then 15, and so on. You can use them more freely, and rarely have to stop to restock before you can open a door. In other words, you get better at using missiles just by playing, once you’ve unlocked them the first time.

That’s the lesson I hope ANet learned for this. The starting ability you get from a basic Mastery should be enough to get you further, and no more. Then, leveling up that Mastery should make it easier and more convenient to use, so you can make better use of the ability as you play, until it finally becomes a standard part of how you go about things.

And that is the issue I think the OP and I have with it. They have said repeatedly that we will not have the ability to fight certain monsters. Period. Without certain masteries unlocked, it’s undo-able. I will use Liadri as an example. She is that super hard boss in the Pavilion. You could beat her your first try if you were really good. Most people needed to practice fighting her.

I don’t mind hard fights. In fact, I love hard content like Liadri. I can’t stand stuff that tells me no matter how good you are at this game you can not fight this creature that you are at because we put an arbitrary mechanic in place. I am not talking about leveling. I am talking about making me gain something by grinding in order to be able to fight it. Call it gear grind, call it mastery points. If I am at the appropriate level for content I want access to it so I can test my mettle against it. Instead, we get gated content instead of challenging content.

I would rather have content that a portion of the people in the game can’t get past if they are not good enough skill-wise to do so. They will have to practice it and practice it again until they are good enough. We won’t get that though. Instead, we will get gated areas and if something is deemed too hard it will get toned down even though those with enough skill to tackle it day 1 enjoy it because it’s such a rare thing in this game to get extremely difficult content.

I was doing the Melandru/Dwayna/Centaur Shaman Events the other day for the first time in ages and it occurred to me that the daily limit on the guaranteed gold chest and reward chests should be removed due to how lucrative other parts in the game have become.

ArenaNet has said repeatedly that with the new content coming out they want the old content to stay relevant. Doesn’t relevancy include reward structure?

Very few areas of the game are on equal footing with the most rewarding content. I really hope that the rewards structure is being looked at across the board for the base game. I appreciate that I can farm 100 champ bags in SW in an hour, but it renders wanting to play old content irrelevant to an extent due to the rewards not being as good.

Being able to get the end chest after doing Melandru or any event that has a chest like that as many times per day as I want would be great. I would be compelled to play that content more again. Thanks for your time.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Beast Sos.1457:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Iason Evan.3806:

I am not against gating. I would just rather the gating be about cosmetics. Gated glider skins that we earn through the mastery system versus the gem shop because the gliders are a system of the x-pac which we already paid for. Gating armor skins, weapons skins that we earn and for the very same reasons I just mentioned.

Gating certain enemies is not my cup of tea. I want my enemies to be based on my skill as a player, not based on my gear or in GW2’s case how many mastery points I have earned and which places I have placed them. Same goes for exploring.

did you complain at launch that you didn’t have a fully geared character with all skills unlocked because you already paid for arah and those utilities?

We are tlaking end game here not the levelling experience. When I hit lvl 80 I wasnt gated behind anything. I was able to do all exp dungeons and all content available in the game.

except you couldn’t feasibly do any dungeons until you had strong enough gear.

and then you couldn’t do fractals past level 9 without agony resistance.

and then you couldn’t do the tower of nightmares without using the anti-toxin heal.

and so on and so forth.

and it doesn’t change the fact that leveling is gating. “oh it doesn’t count because reasons” isn’t an argument. you couldn’t do it before, you did a thing, you can do it now. it’s the exact same thing.

Bruno, if we are both on level 80s and we are in the exact same gear, and you can kill a boss because you have the mastery points to do so and I can’t because I haven’t yet earned those points that is exactly the same thing as gear gating and calling it a mastery system. It’s gated content. Period.

Nothing was gated before for max level characters. Even fractals. You could do the Fractal at level one and progress your way to high level fractals. Progression and gating are two totally different things.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Iason Evan.3806:

I am not against gating. I would just rather the gating be about cosmetics. Gated glider skins that we earn through the mastery system versus the gem shop because the gliders are a system of the x-pac which we already paid for. Gating armor skins, weapons skins that we earn and for the very same reasons I just mentioned.

Gating certain enemies is not my cup of tea. I want my enemies to be based on my skill as a player, not based on my gear or in GW2’s case how many mastery points I have earned and which places I have placed them. Same goes for exploring.

did you complain at launch that you didn’t have a fully geared character with all skills unlocked because you already paid for arah and those utilities?

Nah, but you are missing my point. Leveling is one thing. Gating is quite another. Two level 80’s all in equal gear go to fight a boss. One can fight him because he has earned masteries is the same as two max level characters in WoW going into a raid and only one of them can do the raid because they have the proper gear. That’s gating content.

At that point, it isn’t based on skill, but what they have gated behind masteries. Understand my point now?

ImTasty.2163:

My question is why complain about gated content now? It’s not like the Mastery system is the first to do this in game. What about agony preventing you from doing high level fractals without getting the infusions? What about World Ability Points that improve what you do in WvW? I guess I just don’t understand why people are getting defensive about Mastery when the truth is Anet is not introducing something that’s a foreign concept.

In regards to your fractal statement, you could still play the fractal. That is the beauty of gw2’s system. In other games you couldn’t even play the content til you had the gear.

I am a fan of gated content to be an optional thing like cosmetics.

I am not against gating. I would just rather the gating be about cosmetics. Gated glider skins that we earn through the mastery system versus the gem shop because the gliders are a system of the x-pac which we already paid for. Gating armor skins, weapons skins that we earn and for the very same reasons I just mentioned.

Gating certain enemies is not my cup of tea. I want my enemies to be based on my skill as a player, not based on my gear or in GW2’s case how many mastery points I have earned and which places I have placed them. Same goes for exploring.

lordkrall.7241:

It does seem like there will be special things hidden behind mastery progress, not story stuff and such.

I also don’t really see the connection to gear grind, considering that you would (after you have unlocked a Mastery) increase its level by simply playing. And getting the points to unlock the Mastery doesn’t seem all that hard either (such as map completion, story instances and so on).

I think the connection is in other MMOs you need certain gear to do a certain thing. With this game you need a certain mastery to do a certain thing. gear grind in other games=mastery grind in this game.

Now, I am in no way insinuating that the actual grind time in GW2 will be anywhere near as long or frustrating as in other games. I am totally not. THis game is a blast, but it’s for sure there. If you want to get to certain things you will have to get mastery points to access them.

Instead of gear gating we have map gating.

As an explorer, I don’t like it, but whatever. It is what it is. Like I said in another post. I wish they had kept the gated content contained to optional stuff like cosmetics.