Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Svifnymr]

That's bizarre, I ran around Hoelbrak a lot on my Revanant on Saturday and none of that was going on at all. It was just normal Hoelbrak convos.

Not that I go to Hoelbrek, but with as often as GW2 patches after a release, it could have been added/subtracted/fixed/broken at any time.

[Arlee]

Not that I go to Hoelbrek, but with as often as GW2 patches after a release, it could have been added/subtracted/fixed/broken at any time.

True! Let's hope it was a bug and it was fixed ><

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I might have asked this before: is there a MMO-C guild?

[Edge-]

This is probably mostly me being bad but...I really dislike how unfriendly the first zone seems for solo play. I mean like, between events constantly shitting up choke points that make it all but impossible to get past without a group and many of the personal story quests being in/around area's that wreck me, I'm not really digging this.

Blah blah it's a MMO, but this is not the case with the rest of the game. It's been remarkably solo friendly, so this is just pissing me off. I'm enjoying the expansion a bit more now than I did on Friday/Saturday, but I'm still not enjoying it all that much as a whole.

[Kelimbror]

Blah blah it's a MMO, but this is not the case with the rest of the game. It's been remarkably solo friendly, so this is just pissing me off. I'm enjoying the expansion a bit more now than I did on Friday/Saturday, but I'm still not enjoying it all that much as a whole.

That's pretty much my feeling as well. It's beautiful, but otherwise seems to be a clusterfuck of weird for the sake of being weird. They didn't need to take the design to this extreme. Even when I have everything unlocked, I'm going to likely feel the same way. That's sorta how I know this is failing for me. I love that they tried to make this really layered, complex experience...but I think they took it too far once they put content in it.

As a standalone world building example, it's great. Not so great once you put things in it.

[Arlee]

This is probably mostly me being bad but...I really dislike how unfriendly the first zone seems for solo play. I mean like, between events constantly shitting up choke points that make it all but impossible to get past without a group and many of the personal story quests being in/around area's that wreck me, I'm not really digging this.

Blah blah it's a MMO, but this is not the case with the rest of the game. It's been remarkably solo friendly, so this is just pissing me off. I'm enjoying the expansion a bit more now than I did on Friday/Saturday, but I'm still not enjoying it all that much as a whole.

What are you playing on currently? I had to change up my Ele's build a bit to add in more defensive abilities because she was just too squishy. Still can be hard in parts but I mostly can get around fine now. My Ranger, despite being a 'Zerker build, has only had issues when I'm being gooberish and aggroing too many things. That and those damn archer frogs -_-

[Edge-]

What are you playing on currently? I had to change up my Ele's build a bit to add in more defensive abilities because she was just too squishy. Still can be hard in parts but I mostly can get around fine now. My Ranger, despite being a 'Zerker build, has only had issues when I'm being gooberish and aggroing too many things. That and those damn archer frogs -_-

Guardian. I haven't looked up whatever the current build is in terms of talents and shit but rolling around with my old shout-y build with longbow/greatsword and mostly zerker gear.

It's shit like the little mushroom dudes that if you aggro 2 will spawn a bajillion little ones that all constantly jump on you so there's no way to strafe/avoid/dodge them all.

And I still have gripes about needing to level up old masteries the way you do. I feel like I'm in for far more of a grind (specifically with the older Tyria ones, which still confuse me) to not "level up" all those things than I would if I just needed to simply gain 5-10 more levels. Don't like that you apparently need to complete specific achievements to earn a lot of the points in addition to going back and doing a ton of events to unlock the ability to spend them. Feels very contrary to the original, "Hey, just explore and you'll naturally level up and progress!" feel of the game.

[Kelimbror]

Feels very contrary to the original, "Hey, just explore and you'll naturally level up and progress!" feel of the game.

Yep. It's really the degree they took it too as well. It's ok having places you can't access without accomplishing something, but when you encounter it every time you breath and have no clear way how to overcome it...it gets exhausting. Turns 'just play the game and things happen into....we're not going to tell you how to play the game now, but good luck doing anything!'.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I love and hate it at the same time.

I love the zones, I love the ambience, I love the fact that levels are now masteries, which gives a lot of freedom in term of gameplay to the dev. The whole Zelda-esque system is really great.

What I hate, however, is the grind with the said masteries. I wish it would be something that could be unlocked at the end of each story missions, like a reward, instead of a brainless grind. I love the dynamic events, but the 10th time I'm doing them is boring and remove a lot of my motivation to play the game.

[Edge-]

Yep. It's really the degree they took it too as well. It's ok having places you can't access without accomplishing something, but when you encounter it every time you breath and have no clear way how to overcome it...it gets exhausting. Turns 'just play the game and things happen into....we're not going to tell you how to play the game now, but good luck doing anything!'.

Yeah, I think the volume of stuff that's locked in the first zone is a big issue for me. Like, I see tons of stuff that the game constantly reminds me, "Hey, you need to unlock masteries to use this thing!" literally right out of the gate.

If they worked to slowly introduce the stuff to you rather than constantly bashing the fact that you haven't progressed far enough into your head I'd be less annoyed. Presentation seems radically different than at launch.

And yes, before people start complaining that people are calling masteries a grind, they are. But so is leveling normally, and so is any other activity that requires a time investment of repeated activities. What matters is the presentation of said grind, as that impacts the player experience on it. There were fewer complaints of grind from launch because, well, the leveling process was presented in a manner that tried to keep things fresh between mixing up activities, providing a ton of avenues for experience gain, and frequently changing the atmosphere/scene.

Now, you're returning for an extended time to Tyria to repeat the same activities you've been doing for years (not briefly), but for an extended period of time, have to go through to earn many achievements, some of which are going to be entirely dependent on if you are able to log on during a given event and that event succeeds, that you may never have wanted to earn (contrary to being able to simply avoid certain types of content you don't enjoy but being able to progress through other content you do enjoy), and have a greatly compacted progression experience through its presentation in the new zone.

I've never once felt like I was grinding while playing up until now. Even when I'd go and farm some events, I always felt like I was moving somewhere, doing something different that I hadn't just done. I'm not even very far into the new zone yet and I'm feeling a sense of dread at what lies ahead. The biggest sense being what on earth is going to happen when I level alts through the zone down the road and it's dramatically less populated. Will I be completely blocked from progression due to events that aren't capable of being solo'd remaining active with the lower zone population?

[Valeron]

http://i.imgur.com/t86s65P.jpg

111 mastery...

I'm on level 4 mastery

[Edge-]

http://i.imgur.com/t86s65P.jpg

111 mastery...

Some people have a ton from Tyria that they got due to being achievement hunters. I have 18 myself and I know folks who have 50+

I do enjoy how despite proudly trumpeting that there wouldn't be new levels and it would be horizontal progression, the mastery "totally not level" is proudly displayed where the character level once was : 3

[Valeron]

Well they did say Mastery was taking place of new levels. I appreciate it since there is no gear reset. Better this, IMO, then having added traditional levels with a treadmill gear system.

Some people have a ton from Tyria that they got due to being achievement hunters.

right, you can only get 50 from Tyria. So that means that guy got 61 from Magumma...insane IMO

[Deleted]

I do enjoy how despite proudly trumpeting that there wouldn't be new levels and it would be horizontal progression, the mastery "totally not level" is proudly displayed where the character level once was : 3

I think they said there wouldn't be a raised level cap (even though they instead added something like that) because people would instantly think they'd mean the main level cap which then would be assumed to go hand in hand with raised gear treadmils etc.

they just said 'no level cap' to avoid the shitstorm that would have risen otherwise

[nevermore]

Showing mastery level where character level used to be is annoying.
Also I feel like the elite spec icons are not as straightforward as the normal profession icons.
With the normal prof icons I never had a problem understanding who's what from the beginning, because they're extremely obvious. The new icons however don't really make sense sometimes. Boot with wings? Is that the daredevil? Why?

[zito]

http://i.imgur.com/t86s65P.jpg

111 mastery...

I'm on level 4 mastery

tyria mastery and maguma mastery are seperate so personally I think that while in tyria it should only show your tyria mastery and in the jungle show your maguuma. Because if the mastery system continues in the future we will start seeing people with 1000s mastery

[Rudol Von Stroheim]

So I finally got the expansion.

I still do not like my Thief, unfortunately. The elite specialization actually makes her feel even more goofy and floaty. So My 3 year old 80 won't be going anywhere.

I am however enjoying going through the game against as a Revenant. Surprisingly fun class to play with a lot of options.

[Kazgrel]

tyria mastery and maguma mastery are seperate so personally I think that while in tyria it should only show your tyria mastery and in the jungle show your maguuma. Because if the mastery system continues in the future we will start seeing people with 1000s mastery

LF2M, zerk, mlvl 50+

Mastery levels, the GW2 equivalent of D3 paragon levels. Not a 100% accurate description (since plvl in D3 is power creep).

As for me, I'm at a whopping 13 mastery level, with only one of them being from Tyria. I'm thinking I'll go a long ways towards finishing the Tyrian ones out by doing world completion on alts. Worst case, unless it does get nerfed (based on what I've read, though, that isn't slated to happen), I'll just CoF farm the rest of it.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've said this before, and I'm gonna say it again. At this point, considering the game pretty much scales the player down to the content anyways, Anet mind as well just remove leveling altogether. Literally the ONLY thing levels in GW2 does is gate content, which is somewhat contrary to Anet's design of letting everybody play together and so and so. It only exists to needlessly delay players from accessing all the content. Masteries only exemplifies the problem; you have to grind out 80 levels to begin the real grind. I'd prefer if you were just able to start grinding masteries from the start.

[Kazgrel]

Character levels serve the purpose of leading players along a path to max level. This game tends to do that reasonably well, since I've not had a single character which I leveled via the exact same order of zones tackled. WoW did this as well, to an extent...then you hit level 58 and "oh boy, Hellfire Peninsula again".

Were it not for that, yeah. They could've simply nixed levels altogether. I suspect it would've resulted in more "omg nothing to do" responses on the forums and such, though.

I'm not feeling the "grind", as of yet. So far as I've come upon any story quests that required a certain mastery, I just set off and start exploring. I've had at least 2-3 instances where I wouldn't notice the bar was full so I would have a mastery done. :P