Guild Wars 2

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

Why do masteries require both XP and mastery points to unlock.

To cover up the lack of content. It drags out progression.

WORKING AS INTENDED. Gotta get that $50 worth /sarcasm

logan.5846:

Agreed. The new zones are such a chore to navigate I don’t feel like playing anymore. I can appreciate how much work went into creating them, but locking everything behind masteries that will take millions of xp was about the worst decision they could possibly make.

They’ll realize this when 50% of players leave in a few weeks.

Gathslan.1870:

Playing the game is not a grind, you are not repeating a process again and again, there is thought put into the content.

What do you want, to just afk in lions arch or what?

I can’t actually play any of the new game though – elite specs and the story are gated behind masteries. I have to go grind for a billion hours to advance.

nosleepdemon.1368:

chaosdurza.3291:

I have to respectfully 100% disagree. The elite specs are not more powerful, better suited, or designed more effectively than the normal specs. Someone with an elite spec does not have an advantage over any player without it. Anet has said this numerous times, elite specs are simply a new way to play your class. By that logic, they should not cost more than a normal trait tree.

I’m not going to necessarily argue that they should only cost 65 points to unlock entirely, but 400? That doesn’t seem absurd? Let’s say it takes about 20 hours to unlock the entire elite spec. I have 11 characters. I’m expected to play each character for 20 hours, just to play the way I want to? For 220 hours total, I am expected to grind? Explain to me how that seems right, in a game that is marketed as ‘grind free’.

I imagine Arena Net’s justification is that they want players to play the game, instead of getting all the toys right at the very beginning. It seems to me that the Elite specializations are the equivalent of a traditional MMO’s leveling requirement to the new cap, with the caveat that you can also spend your experience on other aspects of the game should you so choose. As for the 220 hours of grind, that’s eleven characters you’ve got there, you’ve more or less generated the grind for yourself by setting the requirement that all of those characters need their specializations unlocked. For example, for me the grind would be 40 hours, since I have two main characters and the rest are just mules.

It’s basicvally raising the level cap, without having to raise the level cap.

It’s grinding to 80 in disguise – but I don’t even have the story to alleviate the boredom. I don’t have the masteries to even get that far.

chaosdurza.3291:

I think the undeniable fact of this xpac SO FAR is that it is not alt friendly, not solo friendly, and VERY grindy.

Pretty much sums it up.

I can’t play it though. I have to grind for a million hours to then finally be able to play it.

Menadena.7482:

Devildoc.6721:

At first I thought.. well, I’ll do the Mad King’s Labyrinth, at least that only comes around once a year so it’s not TOO stale

None of the xp counted towards my core mastery.

That is what I thought too and I only HOPE it is a bug. There is no use doing any open world events in the next few weeks. Things all over are failing rather spectacularly because everyone is either doing Halloween stuff or HOT. Fine, I would have been in the labyrinth anyway so will advance that way …. nope.

It is a bug – and they are not fixing it. They are worried it’ll break the game LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Too late for that.

rogerwilko.6895:

yep, times have changed.

Changed? What do you mean? GW2 has NO grind! /sarcasm

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Elegant Avenger.8042:

After playing a healing druid build in sPvP for a few hours, I think it is safe to say that most of the posts on the forums were an overreaction. I’m having just as much fun if not MORE with Druid than BWE3. (I can’t say anything for people trying hybrid builds though, because I’ve only used staff/gs.)

Astral Force is NOT as bad as people are saying. I almost always have it charged when I need it. No, you don’t get to open up fights with it, but it is very easy to build, and it feels way less spammy now. I actually like what they have done with it.

The only thing I wish Anet had done is put a permanent stun break on one of the sigils (by that i mean stun breaks regardless of if you’re in CAF or not.) I would love to be able to make use of the CC given by the glyphs, but giving up some of the other skills is too much of a downgrade. I’m a firm believer that druid needs two stun breaks because for healing druid, you’re always in the thick of the battle.

Bottom line is, Druid is VERY much viable in sPvP, and I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If anything, I think the skill cap is higher now which is a good thing. CAF feels way less like a permanent upgrade that you can go in and out of whenever you want. You have to use it way more situationally and wisely.

Without using the staff, you never get to use it. Ever. I don’t want to be forced to use a weak weapon just to have access to my profession mechanic, thanks.

^^^^^ This.

mexay.3902:

It’s not about gating the story. By ensuring you 100% have certain masteries it means ANet can give more fun and meaningful missions. They can rely on you have a particular skill-set, or in the early stages ensure you’re actually progressing.

Think of the first few missions as a tutorial, they’re teaching you what masteries you’ll probably need, after or in between those, go nuts.

So in order to have a few hours of fun, I have to first grind for 50 hours or whatever of no fun? What a great idea!

Andred.1087:

Gewd.8125:

The pacing is way too slow for me. It takes hours just to get 1 mastery doing the same events over and over again.

It is a hassle to get anywhere, and you have to spend quite a bit of time just to figure out if it requires a mastery you don’t have yet.

What the hell do you want then? To finish all of it in a couple of weeks? So you can come on here and whine about being bored?

It isn’t even fun though – just a tedious grindfest.

Gewd.8125:

I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to get somewhere than actually having fun.

75% of the time the path is blocked by a mastery I don’t have yet.

I’ve already spent several hours doing events and I am only level 2. Anyone feel this is way too slow?

Yep.

Andred.1087:

What on Earth are you on about? You haven’t even presented any form of argument.

Are you suggesting the expansion is a failure because you have to play it for more than a couple weeks to get something you want from it? How dare ANet give you a reason to keep coming back!

They’re not joking around when they say “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” If you can’t appreciate that philosophy, then you’re on a completely different page than ANet is. Think about it… why are you even playing the game? The stuff you get doesn’t matter at all. The entire objective is diversion, and that’s what you have been given.

People don’t care about that – they just want to play the new specs now. What don’t you understand about this?

Rangers getting shafted. Again.

Working as intended.

They will never fix this. How many years have we been waiting now?

They need to hold us up somehow while they figure out how to dream up a real expansion in 2 years time.

Druid is a complete joke. Whoever is responsible for it should be ashamed. Rangers were already not that great, and this is the final insult.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Safari Tank.6238:

Just to clarify, you mention minions, spirits, and turrets, but this does NOT include Ranger pets, correct?

Ranger pets are included.

This is great.

…..it would be the biggest, most predictable piece of cheese writing ever.

Nah, you have to restart it manually.

Firestar The Archer.2406:

I consumed my item…Does that I mean I did it too soon and I should have waited?

I did that too. I assume it will show once the game goes live. Hope so anyway.

We can dream! It would be nice.

WOAH WOAH WOAH – stop the clock! We need to get to DX10 first LOL.

Sariel V.7024:

sighs I hate this crap

Hopefully once Halloween opens, we’ll all have access to that lovely instance again so those corn-obsessed twits can go seal themselves off from the rest of the world and leave us the hell alone.

I maxed my focus there last year and hopefully I can be done with the other offhands this year.

They’ve nerfed that.

Sharen Graves.1276:

Congrats, [Att] and [DnT]!

Try not to leak anything this time?

It appears they already have been. Was watching teatime and the chap on there (with the beard – I forget his name sorry) said they had already told him previously. Unless he was lying? He’s also not in their guild, so how did he know?

Canakun.8031:

MidnightStar.2960:

I don’t like the lack of confidence that Anet is presenting from both not being able to release raids during the release date and having to do closed beta tests with a week left from release.

It was a purposeful decision to stagger the raids til after launch.

Raids need to be tested by players before they’re released. Doing it too early would have been a pretty big risk.

Don’t be such a pessimist.

They should have a ptr/pts and get into the 21st century. But then the game does use dx9, so……. rolls eyes

Prefectus.7408:

I purchased the ultimate edition of HoT and am missing my Heart of Thorns Glider. Is this unlocked account wide? Or do I need to submit a support ticket?

It comes via an in game mail. Did you consume it?

Distaste.4801:

TheFamster.7806:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Without the input of top PvE players, there’s little chance the raids will turn out well.

Just look at how fast and easily the boss was downed in the beta. I doubt they intended for that to happen as they were supposedly showcasing their new hard/challenging content. In fact they’re probably in panic mode, hence the invitations.

Losing the idea of “world first” is definitely worth it when the alternative are raids that will be easily completed a couple hours after they launch.

Umm i just want to tell you that they made the boss down easy. In fact Team A theorycrafted over 5 hours and had many practices, and not only that but individually they are excellent players. Also it took them 10+ tries not including the figuring out mechanic part, many being leaving the boss at 0.1% health before wiping. Team B spent much less time to kill the Vale Guardian nonetheless, but it took us a good solid 6 hours+ before we were able to kill him.
And 1 mechanic of the Vale Guardian is missing, so you have to take that into consideration as well. Also out of many, many raid teams, how many actually have killed the Vale Guardian? I’m sure EU could have done it too without the unfortunate schedule, but I am sure the percentage is very small compared to the entire active GW2 population.

I hope they make more designs like this, and I don’t mind the rise in difficulty after DnT/Att’s feedback, but it saddens me to see when people think the Vale Guardian was easy to kill when it fact it took us all the weekends to theorycraft, practice, and execute the mechanic. And I can’t stress this enough, that all of our members in our guild, are all tested and tried veterans who were very adept at their class.

If you think that 5 hours and 10+ tries is considered hard then you might want to try another game. FFXIV mechanics absolutely destroy this stuff and the savage stuff is insane. The last 2 bosses in Alexanders savage the top guilds spent 8+ hour days for WEEKS trying to get the bosses down. Heck I remember WoW vanilla MC the first boss taking more than 5 hours and more than 10+ attempts…

nods Until we actually see this content, all we’ve got to go on is three years of incredibly mediocre garbage fights / combat.

Sorry if we are all very cynical, but you can hardly blame us.

Gaile Gray.6029:

spoj.9672:

No eu testing? :P

This round of testing is taking place during office hours with NA guilds.

Iris Ng.9845:

Congrats, [Att] and [DnT]!

I assume the testers are free to discuss the content, like in the case of the new WvW borderland testing?

No, this is private testing and all participants are bound by NDA.

Sharen Graves.1276:

Congrats, [Att] and [DnT]!

Try not to leak anything this time?

If you’re referring to an accusation that one of these guilds was involved in a “leak,” you should be aware that our team investigated the matter in depth and neither of these guilds was guilty of doing that.

Not involved? Really? Seems pretty involved to me.

http://i.imgur.com/JaBnmi4.jpg

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

MashMash.1645:

Naru.4521:

Feel bad for some other speed clearing guilds who wanted to go for first world kill/s for raids.

World firsts are completely and utterly meaningless now, if one group of players has early access to content. This gives them a massive advantage.

Or you, idk, just exclude them from being eligible for world firsts and as long as they don’t publish videos, tactics or similar (which they won’t) everyone else can still go for it.
Not like it’s rocket science.

I’d want a list of the players and accounts that had early access then, so it could be confirmed none at all were involved in claimed World Firsts then. It’s too easy for them to pass info on.

Even so, you can’t remove that info from thier brains, so what’s to stop them telling otehr the info, starting another guild, etc. etc.

They’ve ruined it.

Pukc.6328:

The problem with the people you picked is that you will get very biased opinions from a small portion everyone who will do the raid. Also they don’t have alot exp raiding or they don’t have exp raiding together.

Either give alot more people the chance to test them or invite people who have alot of exp raiding together to test it.

They did this in Wildstar as well. That turned out well.

Naru.4521:

Feel bad for some other speed clearing guilds who wanted to go for first world kill/s for raids.

World firsts are completely and utterly meaningless now, if one group of players has early access to content. This gives them a massive advantage.

It’ll probably be like the Living Story season 2 collections – you do an event and you get a thing. Or interact with a thing and it converts it to the collection item. Making it RNG would be a disaster.

So, with the new Map Rewards system being implemented, is the old way of getting mats being removed then? i.e. No mats from bags, chests, etc.

Or is this new system on top of the existing way?

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to reset the Legendary Journey track after completing it, plenty of other achievements can be reset. So long as the Precursor you get is account bound, there would be no harm in letting someone accumulate dozens of them if they really felt like it. Pointless, but not unbalancing.

So, really it doesn’t unlock crafting in the normal sense of being able to keep making items, but rather a one time craft that can’t be repeated.

So you can only craft 1 precursor, one time?

If so, then yes, Twice Told Legend can never be with 2nd (or later) Gen Legendaries. In fact no one will ever have multiples of future Legendaries. The pre’s don’t drop, but can only be crafted, and you can only ever make one. And everything is account bound.

It does keep the rarity of the title I guess. Or does skinning circumvent this?

Narrrz.7532:

has it been said that the new legendaries themselves will be bound on acquisition, or only the new precursors?

They would have to be bound wouldn’t they? Otherwise you could sell them – which ANet have stated they don’t want happening.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I figure old precursor prices will go down rather significantly since everyone will be saving their mats for the new upcoming legendaries and will largely no longer buy old precursors.

Depends entirely on how “cool” the new ones are I guess. If they look awful, the old ones will still be favored. Some of the new ones are still neat looking regardless of what new ones come in.

Acewings.6872:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Here’s a passage from the News Blog:

…the Gift of Glory, purchased with the new tradable material Shards of Glory that only comes from Player vs. Player reward tracks; and the Gift of War, purchased with a new tradeable material, Memories of Battle, that only comes from playing World vs. World.

Gotcha. It’s still going to be harder to obtain legendary items now though. The old system is still superior to this new one.

That’s why they are Legendary. It’s supposed to be hard.

Seth Chadwick.5317:

You can get into the Guild Hall map if you do not have Heart of Thorns and hang out with people, but most of the HoT guild features in there will be disabled for you. For example you will not be able to enter the Arena. I’m not going to go into detail on which specific things will be accessible and which are not because I’ll probably get it wrong

Oh wow. That’s cool. At least they can see some stuff.

ItsAOcean.5943:

Should I just wait to open them all until after HoTs is released?

Their may be new items in the loot table. Or even new materials for crafting, etc.

Or maybe not. Maybe it’ll be what it is now, and who knows where the economy will go?

Half now, half after? shrug

lagrangewei.8516:

when some ppl actually PAY gold to fill up the 4 men needed for arah p1 just to complete the boss and leave, if they think gold is the problem, they don’t understand the player economy. buying and selling path is way too profitable and would become only more profitable if they remove the legit players that is reducing those demands by allowing weaker player to play and learn from the better players.

This could happen. But, at least it’s using gold that was generated via some other way. As opposed to the “manufacturing it out of thin air” way that running dungeons creates it – which is what they want to stop. That gold being paid over won’t have been magicked into existence from nothing. It will have been made from selling sw bag contents, or whatever.

Don’t stress. Go and play Halloween. Start HoT a week later when all the bugs have been flattened. That’s what I’m doing.

Also, save a few to open after HoT drops. Just sayin……

Keep everything.

Prices will come down. Eventually. And then they’ll stabilize. People are freaking out way too much over this. And we’ll actually be able to get mats – reliably – without leaving it to RNG or paying a fortune.

You need HoT to access the Guild thing in the new map area’s.

If they don’t have HoT they can still access guild functions via the new building in LA.

I assume guild banks and such will still be in main cities though.

I suspect we’ve been downloading bits and pieces of it already. Just look at your current, live game map. Their are icons in the new area already.

Also, some of the story will take place in the current map.

Malediktus.9250:

John Smith.4610:

Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
Yes

Why would you want people to to play a kind of content less? Dungeons are a core piece of each MMO.

They want to direct them to alternative content they are investing resources in.

shion.2084:

I feel sorta bad for those whom did not buy the expansion… they used to have dungeons to make money… if those rewards are now to be redistributed to raids, and they can’t do them… well that’s a bit nasty. We’ll have to see how it turns out, but I could see folks who’d paid for the original game and chosen not to update being even more sour.

That’s the point. They don’t want f2p to be able to get lots of gold. They want them to upgrade to HoT – or whatever the latest xpac might be. Then they can access the ways to make gold.

Sigfodr.9576:

Averath.6283:

First I will start with a disclaimer. I am not a PvPer. I do not enjoy PvP, and I am not interested in PvP. I don’t like the idea of being forced to PvP, so I’m going to ignore this method.

To bad, PvP is already the by far fastest way of getting tokens/dungeon-skins. I have a guildy that wanted the HotW skins and got them all in 1 day from PvP. It took alot of 1)run in
2) press 1
3) jump down and die
4) start over from 1)

:/

All the skins? Armour too – All three weights? You only get one piece per track fill though. Gee that’s quick. I get all my skins and tokens this way (I am not really interested in dungeons), and can manage 3-4 track fills a day – that’s usually on a weekend with some buffs as well. Don’t have much time during the week, with work etc. But all skins? In one day?! woah