JackassTheX.6351

The complaint is that acquiring enough MPs to max out the level is relegated to highly repetitive content in this release. In previous releases, there were enough MPs outside such content that you could do other things and still achieve the same goal. That's one of the main reasons I like GW2 - it really doubled down on the "many roads to the same path" approach. Want to have Ascended Gear? You can buy it, craft it, get it from map currencies, hell you can even get it from playing PvP. Want to have money? Farm metas, play the TP game, git gud and Raid, so many options. Want to max out Mastery level? In LWS4 you had a ton of options from start to finish and here it seems like the closer to the end you get the more you're forced into a grind for... something. The Icebrood Saga MPs are it's own entity and a lot of people had PoF and HoT MPs left over from the expansions. The IBS wasn't tied to an expansion, so it's understandable it has less MPs. That said, in IBS, there are 75 MPs total and 63 needed to max out. 14 of those points are tied to repetitive actions that can't be done at any time (like the dodging ones in Dragonstorm and, well, Dragonstorm itself), 3 of them are collector achievements. I don't mind using MPs as a B-incentive for really tough or expensive things like collections, but when your options are slowly reduced from "hey here's a bunch of stuff you can do to advance your character's level" to "well, you've done everything else, now please do this meta or this mini Raid 10 times", I don't find that a healthy direction. Just to be clear, I just sucked it up and got to the end since it's been a slow week and I had extra time, but I really don't like this way of playing the game and I hope, like the person above said, that it's not a trend.

You chose to grind a meta for a different purpose (the wiki states that to max out the otter achievement you need to do at least 27 metas) and I assume eventually you got enough Charr Commendations to max out one or more legions, hence getting enough MPs. I only wanted to get max mastery level and I hit a point where the only options for that last point were various forms of mindless grinding away at one thing or another. My thought process for maxing out masteries was "ok let's check out what's there to do for MPs" and usually I was like "alright, an interesting quest" or "oh, ok, that requires some skill" or "I'm going to need help with this from my guild/pugs" (which is the point of MMOs if you ask me) but this time I was like "ok I'm one point short, what is there to do... grind Charr Comms, ok... grind meta completions, ok... grind Strike Missions or DRMs... ok... what...". Thankfully I found the Quaestor sells daily batches of 125 or 250 comms for common mats so I just bought those a few days in a row and I got the last Mastery Point. So at least there's sort of a way around it.

To me, grinding a meta over and over again is the opposite of the "feeling of progression". We got goals, choices, I'm not so sure (as far as the MPs are concerned). I do agree that S3 and S4 masteries were a case of insta-maxing and I'm guilty of doing it. But this is not the solution. That said, the reason I had so much mastery points leftover from HoT and PoF was that I enjoyed getting the mastery points by doing the things that were tied to them. Here I'm forced to sit at my PC every other hour (no, I can't solo a meta meant for 35 people in private) or loop around Drizzlewood for hours on end to get to max. I managed to get a Charr Commendation mastery (I didn't know you can buy a couple of HUNDRED commendations daily) and Skritt Hot and tbh it's easier than Cooler than Cool because Jormag's attack shows up a total of around 5 times during the meta and sometimes you get 4-5 dodges, sometimes 1. I wouldn't be surprised if I get "complete the Dragonstorm meta 10 times" before I manage to get Cooler than Cool. Again, tedious, tedious, tedious. My "working towards a goal" is waiting around for something to spawn or activate. I agree. Some more points tied to experiencing various aspects of the game and not tied to mindless repetition would be nice.

Mastery leveling is one reason I keep coming back to this game - there is such a multitude of ways to get XP that I can do literally anything in a given Living World map and I'm slowly working towards something. In previous LW releases, getting the masteries seemed fairly straightforward and the quests were a lot more interesting. I have 11 unspent Central Tyria points, 9 unspent HoT points and 10 unspent PoF points and I don't remember grinding hours and hours away for any of them. What I'm trying to say is, I'm really burning out on grinding for the last 3 Mastery Points that I need to max out the Icebrood mastery track. All the other Living World episodes had a LOT more MPs that were obtainable through quests, exploration or some kind of skill/coop based activities. Looking at the wiki page and using my API key, the only two I have left that are sort of skill-based are the "Dodge the things in Dragonstorm meta" ones and even those are tedious as hell since I actually have to go out of my way to ACTIVELY IGNORE THE FIGHT to work on them. The other options are all total slogs. 5000 Charr Commendations for a legion. Defeat the CW boss 10 times. Do the Dragonstorm Meta 10 times. Do the Citadel meta 10 times. Do the Bjora Marches East meta 15 (!!!) times. Do 30 Dragon Response missions. Complete 17 No Quarter achievements, I have 10, 6 are story instance skill-based, the final is more grind. Either that or I just throw money at the problem and get Volcanic Stormcaller armaments. I know this is an MMO and a timesink almost by definition, but hours and hours of work for one mastery point just to get to max level... the effect and reward in relation to time spent is abysmal, and the fun wears off very, very quickly. Anyone else feel this way?

When the end boss starts her storm attack that you need to disrupt by picking up 3 air buffs and jumping into the air, sometimes the storm attack doesn't end and the boss doesn't phase further, even though all storms (and their ground indicators) are cleared. Had this happen in two separate runs. Happens consistently after it happens once in the same instance.

Stores had them maybe the first few months where I'm at (Slovenia), it made for a nice gift option for my GW2 buddies. So sad it's no longer available. I know you can send gold in-game and say it's for gems but there's a 500g cap per week (which is not that many gems) and since I know these people in real-life, it's just nicer to give them something physical (and a beer or something to go with it).

Same, got it after playing for like 20 minutes. BTW, before, you said that this was the last "doable" MP on the list - the light puzzles, while they do take some time, are actually really easy if you have the skyscale, and even if you don't, they shouldn't be much hassle. The "Lair" one (where the MP is) even lets you use mounts. Yea I have done a few of the light puzzles, but I wanted to do them and explore rather then use a spoiler and grind through them just for the ap and MP.I only used the guides to find the start of some of them, otherwise they're pretty easy to spot. The whole thing reminded me of Prince of Persia a bit. The "Lighting Bjora Marches" one is really, REALLY long and goes from one end of the map to the other, it's amazing.

Happened to me too, so I guess you're right. Sometimes these groups are the only ones on LFG. When I have a choice between waiting for 30 mins to find 10 people or joining a 7/10 party with "100li" and them telling me to eff off even though I know the mechanics and have beaten harder stuff than a 10 minute golem bossfight... I don't know, I just feel we could do without it. Though as the guy above said, they're mostly lols and we went in without anyone pinging anything anyway.

I'm against KP in general because I find it elitist, but... look, I get it. Some people take the game seriously, especially the raiders and fractal folks. If you're doing Fractal CM speedclears or Raids, I get that you want some kind of proof that someone knows the mechanics so that your run has less chance of failing. I've done CMs maybe once or twice but I do T4s daily and I know how frustrating it is to wipe because one person isn't carrying their weight. But seriously, people asking for KP in Strike Missions is absoultely ridiculous. I completed Shiverpeaks Pass and Whisper of Jormag twice today with PUGs that had 2 healers, some decent condi dps folks and a few randos just doing their thing. These things aren't hard. They don't give insanely high rewards and they're not really "super prestigious hi-end content". The mechanics are fairly easy to pick up, or explain in one or two sentences. I've done the missions so this is not me spilling salt over being kicked from a party for not having KP or whatever. I just think it's stupid and discouraging to a lot of players that want to give it a shot.

Same, got it after playing for like 20 minutes. BTW, before, you said that this was the last "doable" MP on the list - the light puzzles, while they do take some time, are actually really easy if you have the skyscale, and even if you don't, they shouldn't be much hassle. The "Lair" one (where the MP is) even lets you use mounts.

What they should've done is set a time limit and disassociate the primer success trigger from the state of the mobs. In other words, filling the bar in the time limit should count, and killing the mobs shouldn't affect it counting or not. The point of the primer is to fill the bar by releasing the essences and "plant the banners" within the time limit, if we do that, and we get a MESSAGE FROM THE GAME SAYING THE TRIAL IS PREPARED, regardless of whether or not there is one mob left standing (which is the trigger for the success of the EVENT itself), we should get credit.

When you stomp the corpses and the concentric circles go outwards, for a very, VERY brief time, a banner flies down and sticks into the ground where the corpse was. Kind of like a WvW/PvP finisher. It disappears almost completely. I've stopped trying to chase this mastery point. I only need 1 more to max out my mastery lvl and I'd rather do the light puzzles. It will take time, but I'd rather be doing puzzles than standing around doing nothing for 2 hours waiting for a finicky event to spawn.

This, I can never tell where this thing is going to land. It should just hit where you are, like all the other mounts.

I've successfully done the Aberrant Forest and Bear Shrine variant (so Aberrant and Fallen patrols) twice now, still no credit. By "successfully", I mean that the triangle icon appeared on the map, we press F on the corpses with at least 1 mob alive, filled out the bar and there was a text at the top of the screen saying "The trial is now prepared". We also killed both champions. Does ONLY the Svanir variant near Gate of Svanir of this event give credit for this achievement? That's the only one I haven't successfully completed yet. The achievement description does say "Plant Banners to Challenge the SVANIR", but for the other Kodan trials, like the fishing one or the scouts one, either one counts. If so, then this is really unfair, badly designed and infuriating. The event itself is rare to start with. I've been playing Bjora Marches for at least 6 hours straight for three days and I've only had this event spawn six times, the other ones, I've done three times over.

Whoa. Bummer. That said, PoF theme is probably my favourite piece of all. Whoever made that, is a master! And how would someone do that?I want to change mine as well +1!