Elite Specs and Masteries Too Easy To Acquire In PoF?

[Mil.3562]

> @Lyger.5429 said:

> I understand that this is a game often called casual wars 2 but perhaps PoF made it a little too easy to max everything out, especially for veteran players. The two main culprits are mount masteries and elite specializations.

>

> **Elite Specializations**

> I know that there was a massive outcry when the amount of hero points required to fully unlock the elite specs were almost double what they are now, during the HoT era. This reaction was perhaps justified as people wanted to use their elite specs while they played through the story and the new maps. So Anet responded by decreasing the required hero points. Fast forward to PoF, the required amount of hero points remained the same. The main issue with this is that elite specs have been reduced to just clicking the UI and fully mastering the spec upon seconds of logging in. With the new elite spec lore and npcs they added with Path of Fire they should have gone one step further by making a quest chain or something of that sort, perhaps involving the npcs to make the player actually feel like they are learning new techniques and mastering new weapon sets.

>

> **Masteries**

> While my main concerns are with the elite specializations I felt that I should mention masteries as well. I was done with all the masteries in more or less a week. Compared to HoT which took me months to max everything out and my playtime has not changed very much. Perhaps requiring more experience to max out the masteries might be the best route forward in order to add more longevity to the PoF maps. This might be an unpopular opinion but feel free to share your thoughts on this.

>

> PoF has done a lot of things right so did HoT, here's hoping that Anet will take the best of both expansions and use it to make even better content in the future.

>

>

 

Does everything in this game has to be challenging for you? If you need a challenge, go solo a legendary. Or better still, stripped yourself of all armors and weapons, and run around naked doing your HPs and Masteries hunts. Really.

[Airwolf.7382]

I am SO grateful that the current masteries are not like the old rate of access. It felt absolutely awful trailing further and further behind my guild mates, not being able to follow them into the poison in dragons stand and when they went to places requiring lay line gliding. It made me just stop with the game entirely for MONTHS until just after the release of the last part of S3 when I got asked to maybe try out the changes that were made to the game since the HoT release.

 

The specializations may be a tad TOO easy all in all, but its great tbh as its not tedious to do a lot of unlocks.

[Airwolf.7382]

> @undouble.1472 said:

> To me--------------getting and maxing the mounts AND "hitting" all of the mastery points took over this release------minimizing the storyline entirely!!! That and the fact that too often in this map the character is turned into little more than a "chew toy" to be played with until "all of the fun is gone" is a quick turnoff. Balthazar is one example----I just spent 30 minutes AWK while Balthazar "played" with my character-------and tried his best to "kill himself" before basically saying "April Fool"!! and sending me to the "Eater of Souls" (that I have yet to figure out) so that I then can play "reset from a checkpoint"

 

Not sure If you still need help for this one (or want to) but when the eater of souls does a dash towards you (with a target circle on the floor) there is a small period where you can oneshot his breakbar. this will stop him from doing the health drain ability right after.

 

(well others seem to say it got nerfed. So guess thats a thing)

[Lyger.5429]

> @Mil.3562 said:

> > @Lyger.5429 said:

> > I understand that this is a game often called casual wars 2 but perhaps PoF made it a little too easy to max everything out, especially for veteran players. The two main culprits are mount masteries and elite specializations.

> >

> > **Elite Specializations**

> > I know that there was a massive outcry when the amount of hero points required to fully unlock the elite specs were almost double what they are now, during the HoT era. This reaction was perhaps justified as people wanted to use their elite specs while they played through the story and the new maps. So Anet responded by decreasing the required hero points. Fast forward to PoF, the required amount of hero points remained the same. The main issue with this is that elite specs have been reduced to just clicking the UI and fully mastering the spec upon seconds of logging in. With the new elite spec lore and npcs they added with Path of Fire they should have gone one step further by making a quest chain or something of that sort, perhaps involving the npcs to make the player actually feel like they are learning new techniques and mastering new weapon sets.

> >

> > **Masteries**

> > While my main concerns are with the elite specializations I felt that I should mention masteries as well. I was done with all the masteries in more or less a week. Compared to HoT which took me months to max everything out and my playtime has not changed very much. Perhaps requiring more experience to max out the masteries might be the best route forward in order to add more longevity to the PoF maps. This might be an unpopular opinion but feel free to share your thoughts on this.

> >

> > PoF has done a lot of things right so did HoT, here's hoping that Anet will take the best of both expansions and use it to make even better content in the future.

> >

> >

>

> Does everything in this game has to be challenging for you? If you need a challenge, go solo a legendary. Or better still, stripped yourself of all armors and weapons, and run around naked doing your HPs and Masteries hunts. Really.

 

Again, not necessarily asking for a challenge, just more depth and progression. People have made pretty logical counter arguments so far, this is just my opinion.

[Khisanth.2948]

> @Ahlen.7591 said:

> On Warrior I had enough points to just flat unlock Spellbreaker without even entering PoF maps.

 

Had that on all 12 characters :)> @Mil.3562 said:

 

> > @Lyger.5429 said:

> > I understand that this is a game often called casual wars 2 but perhaps PoF made it a little too easy to max everything out, especially for veteran players. The two main culprits are mount masteries and elite specializations.

> >

> > **Elite Specializations**

> > I know that there was a massive outcry when the amount of hero points required to fully unlock the elite specs were almost double what they are now, during the HoT era. This reaction was perhaps justified as people wanted to use their elite specs while they played through the story and the new maps. So Anet responded by decreasing the required hero points. Fast forward to PoF, the required amount of hero points remained the same. The main issue with this is that elite specs have been reduced to just clicking the UI and fully mastering the spec upon seconds of logging in. With the new elite spec lore and npcs they added with Path of Fire they should have gone one step further by making a quest chain or something of that sort, perhaps involving the npcs to make the player actually feel like they are learning new techniques and mastering new weapon sets.

> >

> > **Masteries**

> > While my main concerns are with the elite specializations I felt that I should mention masteries as well. I was done with all the masteries in more or less a week. Compared to HoT which took me months to max everything out and my playtime has not changed very much. Perhaps requiring more experience to max out the masteries might be the best route forward in order to add more longevity to the PoF maps. This might be an unpopular opinion but feel free to share your thoughts on this.

> >

> > PoF has done a lot of things right so did HoT, here's hoping that Anet will take the best of both expansions and use it to make even better content in the future.

> >

> >

>

> Does everything in this game has to be challenging for you? If you need a challenge, go solo a legendary. Or better still, stripped yourself of all armors and weapons, and run around naked doing your HPs and Masteries hunts. Really.

 

or accidentally cast Dark Pact IRL and end up having to play one handed >_>

[Swagg.9236]

Masteries and Elite Specializations are baseline content. Making them easy to acquire should be a priority since they directly affect how you actually move around within the real content (since the terrain and enemies were more or less designed with their existence in mind). Truth be told, they shouldn't be behind any sort of time-gate or grind-wall at all.

[Djinn.9245]

> @Lyger.5429 said:

> I think people are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not asking for elite specs to be long term goals but for Anet to add more depth to the existing system. With masteries, since it's account bound, I think they can afford to make it take a little longer than a week to max. Believe me I did not rush to max anything out I just progressed through the maps as the story lead me.

 

Not everyone has done it as quickly as you have. I have been playing nearly every day and have still not maxed out the Masteries. I think they are fine the way they are.

[Djinn.9245]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > @Shirlias.8104 said:

> > > @Thelgar.7214 said:

> > > I still haven't unlocked griffon and my masteries are at 3,4,0,1 on the other mounts. Adding a tedious XP grind to suit people that have a kitten ton of free time while penalizing those that don't isn't an improvement.

> >

> > Agree.

> > Tip: if you want to unlock em fast, hp run is the best way once you unlocked all maps ( it also gives you let's say nice rewards ).

>

> There is a SUPER fast way to XP grind masteries that I haven't heard too many people talking about, the Treat Quests. Every Map has a Treat Quest, to give you Treats specific to each mount. You need to do them in order, so you can't complete the Springer one until the Raptor one is done, or the Skimmer until the Springer is done, but you get five Treats for each mount in total, and then can buy new ones from the ranch vendor if you want.

>

> You can only get an XP benefit once each day per pet, and can only use the right treat on the right pet, but these seem to stack. I started taking these quests seriously once I got my Griffon, but was able to fully master my Griffon skills in only a few days, in part by feeding the right pets the right treats each day. Even the free ones you get should be plenty, and the quests are pretty fun to do sometimes.

 

I am also using these and yes you can gain XP once per day for each of the different mount treats.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

Musings.

 

MMO customers can be viewed as being on a continuum. . On one end, there are players who want the game to give them things to do over time. Essentially, they want the MMO to be a marathon. More often than not, this is due to a desire to play the game a lot, not only in a given play session, but across weeks, months or years. On the other end of the continuum are the people who also want to play the game, but who do not, for a variety of reasons, want to put as much time into it. These people also want to accomplish things.

 

Meanwhile, it is in the developer's interest to keep as many customers as possible happy, and playing. As a result, it is in their interests to put things to do into their MMO that will keep people occupied. You'd think this would mean that development would favor those on the time-intensive end of the continuum. In theory, it does. In practical application, though, the more the game caters to those at the time-intensive end of the continuum, the more players at the time-light end will drop off, finding they are not having fun because it takes far too long to get anything done. As a consequence, developers are better served to aim more for the middle, perhaps leaning toward one end or the other depending on what they can tell about their slice of the MMO customer pie.

 

What some seem to be forgetting is that there were claims that HoT offered not enough to do, and they started coming not that much longer after release than was true with PoF. People who play long enough over a short time are going to get everything done, and then look for a "more" that is just not there. Perhaps in HoT, that time came a bit sooner than for HoT, but it was not orders of magnitude longer, except as you slide more to middle of the continuum. Meanwhile, there are people at the time-light end who have still not done a lot of what HoT offers.

 

ANet seems to realize the issues inherent in this situation. That's why, I believe, they've opted for the 2-3 month release cadence. If they can stick to that, PoF need only keep the attention of players for about 3 months.

 

Sure, some people are already "done" with PoF. However, just as ANet cannot make the game exclusively for the people who play seldom but want to do everything quickly anyway, they cannot make the game exclusively for the people who want to play intensively. So, they're going to tinker. This thread, as a microcosm of the player continuum, seems about evenly divided between those who like the time needed for HoT Masteries/HC and those who think it's too short. As a result, I expect more tinkering by ANet with the way they deal with the varying needs of the player-base.

[OtakuModeEngage.8679]

Sure if you finished all of HoT and Central Tryian HPs, PoF elites will be extremely easy, youll unlock them without having to do anything. But for a new player who doesnt have HoTs or hasnt had a chance to do all HoT HPs yet, or a player who chose to forgo collecting all HPs there will still be the challenge of having to collect all HPs. Honestly, i would have hated if PoF didnt use central Tryian and HoTs HPs, because i would have felt that all the effort i put into collecting them all would have gone to wast. Whats the point of having 300 extra HPs you can never use??? If you wanted to have PoF elites remain a challenge, you should have stopped collexting hero points once you mastered core and HoT elite specializations.

[OtakuModeEngage.8679]

Aslo, at launch of HoT many players complained that it took forever to get the new elites, you had to basically complete the expansion before you could play expansion elites, and many players wanted to be able to enjoy the expansion elite WHILE playing the expansion, so Devs did a revamp on elites to make it so. And now players complain about that too, cant please everyone.

[Sylv.5324]

I never mastered most of them in HoT because I was going through chemo when the xpac dropped, and when I came back, was behind everyone and thus stuck soloing.

 

I'm usually an exploration and story fiend, but never completed either because of the gating. With PoF, I was able to do it all at my pace. It was really nice! And not therefore a waste of my money like HoT was.

[Irreverent.3594]

> @DebraKadabra.5278 said:

> Well, there is such a thing as not depending on the story to hold your hand. You're also not prevented from exploring past Crystal Oasis, too. I think that's where a bunch of people are getting confused, that they can ONLY go to the next map if the story allows them to. I took it upon myself to go wandering and I'm now 3 mastery points away from fully maxing out the jackal masteries (with all other core mounts fully maxed) and I'm currently on the Crystalline Memories story step. I've actually seen LESS gating this time around, which in my opinion was a necessary change.

Exactly. First thing i did i acquired all four mounts. Went into the unknown maps on adventure to find those hearts where you can buy them. And only then i continued story / map completion etc.

 

[TwilightSoul.9048]

One of the reason I (and many others) hate HoT so much where the masteries. You basically couldn't play HoT until you've unlocked certain masteries.

The start into HoT was: Here, a bunch of new maps! You can't play them though, get gliding first, then come back!

Masteries in HoT felt more like a hurdle then a way of character progression, in PoF it feels more like something that runs alongside the story which I liked a lot.

So to me it was perfect in PoF

[lordmitz.2047]

as someone who only gets to play about 1 hour a day due to having to wait until the baby's gone to bed - i love PoF's setup. more of this please in future.

[Feanor.2358]

> @Lyger.5429 said:

> I understand that this is a game often called casual wars 2 but perhaps PoF made it a little too easy to max everything out, especially for veteran players. The two main culprits are mount masteries and elite specializations.

>

> **Elite Specializations**

> I know that there was a massive outcry when the amount of hero points required to fully unlock the elite specs were almost double what they are now, during the HoT era. This reaction was perhaps justified as people wanted to use their elite specs while they played through the story and the new maps. So Anet responded by decreasing the required hero points. Fast forward to PoF, the required amount of hero points remained the same. The main issue with this is that elite specs have been reduced to just clicking the UI and fully mastering the spec upon seconds of logging in. With the new elite spec lore and npcs they added with Path of Fire they should have gone one step further by making a quest chain or something of that sort, perhaps involving the npcs to make the player actually feel like they are learning new techniques and mastering new weapon sets.

>

> **Masteries**

> While my main concerns are with the elite specializations I felt that I should mention masteries as well. I was done with all the masteries in more or less a week. Compared to HoT which took me months to max everything out and my playtime has not changed very much. Perhaps requiring more experience to max out the masteries might be the best route forward in order to add more longevity to the PoF maps. This might be an unpopular opinion but feel free to share your thoughts on this.

>

> PoF has done a lot of things right so did HoT, here's hoping that Anet will take the best of both expansions and use it to make even better content in the future.

>

>

 

Meh. Think beyond "my playthrough on my main would be more immersive". Think about players with dozens of alts. Doing a quest chain for each alt for his new spec? That's not even remotely fun. It's a chore, and it's tedious. I think the way it's handled is fine. It's fast enough so the people who just want a new char won't get reluctant in anticipation of all the work they'll need to put in it. It also has the lore for the lore-enthusiasts. Go there, speak with the NPC, immerse yourself. Win-win.

[Lyger.5429]

@"Draknar.5748" @"starlinvf.1358" @"IndigoSundown.5419"

You all make very good points. To Indigo's point it would probably make more sense to balance around the less casual side of the spectrum allowing for more progression and long term goals, fractals is a very good example of this done well. However based on the responses in this thread the more "hardcore" players seem to be in the minority. However Anet can't afford to lose either audience, because just as the casual player will drop the game if they can't accomplish goals in a short time, the hardcore player will also drop it if all their goals are accomplished too quickly or they feel like there isn't enough to do. To be honest though the spectrum isn't so black and white, you have the very casual and very hardcore, then everyone else in between.

[sorudo.9054]

HoT is a hell to get any skill point, it's about time i can finally get skill points without playing mario on steroids.

[Rikkagin.9472]

Please convert time-to-mastery-unlock into hours, it would be much more informative than simply stating days.

[ananda.5946]

I like the way elites and mastery points are this time. I never finished the hot ones because I hated adventures and there was no way I was getting gold on most of them. The pof method is great.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @Lyger.5429 said:

> @"Draknar.5748" @"starlinvf.1358" @"IndigoSundown.5419"

> You all make very good points. To Indigo's point it would probably make more sense to balance around the less casual side of the spectrum allowing for more progression and long term goals, fractals is a very good example of this done well. However based on the responses in this thread the more "hardcore" players seem to be in the minority. However Anet can't afford to lose either audience, because just as the casual player will drop the game if they can't accomplish goals in a short time, the hardcore player will also drop it if all their goals are accomplished too quickly or they feel like there isn't enough to do. To be honest though the spectrum isn't so black and white, you have the very casual and very hardcore, then everyone else in between.

 

Yeah, that's why I used continuum, as there are people whose preferences range from one end to the other. Some MMO's tend to aim for the middle, shading one way or the other, with longer-term PvE goals primarily found in instanced play. Wildstar developers intended that game to cater to the long-term-goals demographic, with an almost total emphasis on instanced-content endgame. They found, to their dismay, that ignoring the time-light crowd meant revenues low enough to force a revamp and free-to-play conversion. There's a reason that the traditional MMO's tend to put hardcore content in instances and a preponderance of solo stuff in their open world.

 

To my mind, GW2 was an experiment which put some longer-term goals in the persistent world. Players on the time-intensive side of the continuum did the same thing in core and HoT they did in PoF. They lined up at the starting line (figuratively speaking) and raced through the zones. This tended to result in zergs. The same thing happened during map exploration in Orr in the first month or so after launch as happened in HoT and PoF. Those closer to the time-light end found fewer zergs, or maybe none, meaning that things that were trivial for the first wave might not be so trivial for them.

[castlemanic.3198]

Absolutely despised the design of getting hot masteries and absolutely despised all the champion hero points in hot. It was completely unnecessary and i quit the game for those reasons and more (essentially how hot was completely unfun for anyone who wasn't with an army at all times). returned with the much more reasonably scaled season 3 stuff, mastery points and xp wise.

 

PoF is definitely the much preferable route. Locking masteries behind the xp gate is absolutely unnecessary and an absolute pain to play with, but the amount of xp needed in PoF was definitely much better. I do agree in that masteries should not be xp locked but purely mastery point locked, because it rewards the exploration more than it does anything else, and it feels punishing to have all the mastery points but still have to grind for the experience to unlock it.

 

I do wish elite specs had more of a traditional quest thing happening, especially because of the potential ability to teach people about their elite spec as they're unlocking it, but i like how it is currently.

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

It was only "easy" for my Necro and Thief because when PoF was announced I made it my duty to get 250 hero points.

Then heard the stupid rumour of maybe it being 500 (and me thinking it was stupid if they did that), but was glad my Thief never took Daredevil and got Deadeye on the 1st day and when I found out it was 250 and not 500, my Necro got Scourge on the 1st day as well.

 

Stuck with Deadeye but quickly ran back to Vanilla Necro, but that's not on topic so...

[finkle.9513]

Personally I think its not really comparable to HOT, as the content in POF seems to have less repeatable content... so once you have your masteries what is there to do, you can do all the bounties in a few days then all the content is basically done. Where as HOT i was going back there constantly for all the meta events. So yes POF feels to fast but only because now im left with nothing to do in POF, so I am left thinking what could have been better.

[Lyger.5429]

There's one more thing I will mention though about playtime in the context of an MMO. Colin mentioned this in a fairly recent interview, that it's all about people's perceptions concerning the genre. In the case of a moba or even mobile gaming (my thoughts) people will sink just as many hours if not more into it because they don't have the stigma that you need a ridiculous amount of time for progression to happen. In the case of mobile gaming it might be because it's more accessible. However GW2 breaks this convention anyway, but it's still interesting to note.