Xpac3: Dragon's Watch Mastery?

People have been brainstorming how the next expansion's Mastery tracks could fit with the ones already in. Would they just be more mounts? That seems unlikely to me, because the existing ones cover most methods of movement pretty well. Sure, some would be fun for flavor purposes, like a Spider, but you could largely reach the same locations with the existing ones in most cases. Another option would be very situational abilities, like mushrooms and wallows, but the problem with those is that they would only be on the new maps, and that's no fun for exploring previous maps like gliding and mounts bring. I think that one possible option for them though would be to give you permanent access to Dragon's Watch as support AIs.

We can already play along side them in specific story instances, but this would become a permanently available element. Each character would get their own mastery track, and like with the mounts, it would unlock passive and active control options, as well as options shared to other characters. I'm picturing it as being a bit like Heroes in GW1 (which I did not play, so I know of them mostly through reputation), in that they could follow you, distract enemies, help rez you, etc. They would likely be weaker than their story mode versions, you could only have one active at a time and not trade them during combat, but they could be fun to have along your trips.

As for the masteries, they could each have at least one "traversal" ability, some trick they can pick up that will help you to reach new locations, like Kasmeer could open portals, Taimi could unlock certain gates, Canach could blow up rock walls, etc. This would be a special ability binding, and could be used in combat for some useful combat effect as well, but otherwise they would just attack passively. Then their 4th abilities, like with the mounts, could be a shared option, like maybe Marjory's would be that it makes all of them rez you faster, Canach's could buff everyone's defense, etc.

I think this would be a cool Mastery system, since not only would it open up new options within the new content, but it would also be fun to play with in previous content, and could just work anywhere in the open world without heavy reworks to any maps.

Edit: I forgot to mention, they could also open up various customization options, some free, perhaps some paid, in that you could basically swap between their previous appearances, dye their outfits, things like that. Build your own version of the team!

That sounds cool. I'd love to have that. However if the next expansion is in the ocean, I want PROPULSIONS!!!!!! as our masteries.

I kinda like this idea. On The other Hand its mess enough If there are lot of players in one place Even without every1 with their personal npc

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:I kinda like this idea. On The other Hand its mess enough If there are lot of players in one place Even without every1 with their personal npc

True, although maybe there could be like mini-pet hiding going on, so instead of seeing like dozens of Kasmeer's and Jorys, if more than X number of players are in the same space, you'd only see your own NPCs, not other players'. Maybe they could even do a fancy trick where even in small groups it would cull out any other people's NPCs if they match yours. So like if you had Jory out, and were around three other people who had Taimi, Jory, and Kasmeer respectively, you'd see Taimi and Kas, but not the other person's Jory.

Really there would be no need to see other people's characters most of the time, they'd just be doing their thing.

Dunno how you'd reconcile the mastery with not being power creep for XP3 players. Sure, mount engages are a thing, but that's not an excuse for piling on more power.

@Sarrs.4831 said:Dunno how you'd reconcile the mastery with not being power creep for XP3 players. Sure, mount engages are a thing, but that's not an excuse for piling on more power.

I guess it would add power creep. Maybe if they absolutely wanted to ensure that everyone could get the most basic benefits of it, they could make one of them a Core Tyria unlock? Rytlock maybe?

The masteries depends 100% on the maps and how they are made. If we assume that the next maps are in the crystal desert and the nearby ocean, I'd assume we get masteries that are similar to the one in PoF.

! I'm still mad that Balthazar actually died. WTF? (GW1 lore fan).

Think it depends where we goegShiverpeaks - likely a lot of survival based masteriesDeep Sea Dragon - masteries related to underwater navigation, survival and perhaps a boating mastery

It'll be interesting to see if we get anymore movement masteries outside of anything sea based, given that the current selection and even more so the griffon, will cover most things anyway.

I'd like my skimmer to go underwater or a seahorse while searching for the deep sea dragon, oh let's not forget a water map the size of POF maps. B)

@Zoid.2568 said:The masteries depends 100% on the maps and how they are made. If we assume that the next maps are in the crystal desert and the nearby ocean, I'd assume we get masteries that are similar to the one in PoF.

That's more for LWs4 masteries, which I imagine we'll also get, and those will likely have more to do with the PoF Mount system, like maybe new options for them. I imagine that the third expansion, which is likely a ways away, will take over an entirely new corner of the map, Cantha, the Charr homelands, nowhere near the PoF content.

@Randulf.7614 said:Shiverpeaks - likely a lot of survival based masteries

Like things that help you not die during a blizzard? That kind of seems like a boring mastery, and while I wouldn't be surprised if it were a minor mastery, the Mastery system would need something much bigger and cooler than that. There needs to be some sort of "wow factor" to it.

Deep Sea Dragon - masteries related to underwater navigation, survival and perhaps a boating mastery

A lot of people are saying "under water," but I just don't see underwater as being a worthwhile expansion. I think they need to give up on the idea of some expansion that is mostly undersea, because the community would reject it. However they deal with the Deep Sea Dragon, it would likely involve mostly surface maps with a little bit of under-water stuff.

Perhaps we could make it like Soulbeast, then we could absorb the NPC and make them disappear no more Taimi yammering in my ear, no more Braham acting like an Edge Lord, just their powers in our hands.

@Ohoni.6057 said:

A lot of people are saying "under water," but I just don't see underwater as being a worthwhile expansion. I think they need to give up on the idea of some expansion that is mostly undersea, because the community would reject it. However they deal with the Deep Sea Dragon, it would likely involve mostly surface maps with a little bit of under-water stuff.

I really hope ANet says "tough love" to those people and does an underwater expansion anyway. That said, they will have to do serious passes over underwater skills for all professions.

Especially poor Revenant.

Could have 1 new member of Dragon Watch in the next xpac. Like Razah. You can use him/it as hero like in GW1, and they can learn new powers from beating bosses and completing masteries.

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Sarrs.4831 said:Dunno how you'd reconcile the mastery with

not

being power creep for XP3 players. Sure, mount engages are a thing, but that's not an excuse for piling on more power.

Easily solved by making your NPC's count as party members, just like when playing with real people. In that way you'll never have more people (whether real ones or AI) fighting in a group.

Of course, they would have to make the NPC's a lot more efficient than they are right now, because if not it would actually be the opposite of a power creep. You'd be doing yourself a disfavor with the state of NPC's as they are now.

@TheNecrosanct.4028 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Sarrs.4831 said:Dunno how you'd reconcile the mastery with

not

being power creep for XP3 players. Sure, mount engages are a thing, but that's not an excuse for piling on more power.

True, they would not be worth actual party members, and I don't think it would be a good idea for them to actually be at that level, I'm thinking Ranger pets or lower would be the target range. But on the other hand, if you could use them as party members, but without scaling the content any, then that might be ok. Like if you had a full party, they wouldn't be there, but whatever. But if you only had three people, you could have two NPCs, and they wouldn't result in a 5-man tier party, but it would be worth at least 3.5-4 people. It would also be important that they follow the same rules as pets, in that they wouldn't like mess up complicated boss mechanics involving specific targeting.

Honestly I highly doubt that would happen ever since the ending. And I honestly don't want to waste my time in masteries for npcs. I rather have it for me or for the party I'm in. Or some type of support. But for the AI? No. I find the that masteries can't be effected with power, or precision or condi or toughness, etc. Because then the free player who arenanet are trying to gravitate. Will be always. Even though I don't like it and wish free players should be more debunked so they can buy the game. But what can you do? It is what it is. I agree with you that so far masteries are usually some type of way to travel in new maps. The shrooms. The nahuchs. Gliding. The poison. However some are not but they don't effect the stats of a character. So whichever new story were headed to. The expansion is gonna be about that.

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

A lot of people are saying "under water," but I just don't see underwater as being a worthwhile expansion. I think they need to give up on the idea of some expansion that is mostly undersea, because the community would reject it. However they deal with the Deep Sea Dragon, it would likely involve mostly surface maps with a little bit of under-water stuff.

I would love underwater too. However I highly doubt it when I finished the expansion story and had new thoughts. If underwater happens. It's probably going to be expansion 4, or 5 if arenanet will allow it. However if they add water mounts in 3rd expansion, that would be more realistic then the full water expansion

@blambidy.3216 said:Honestly I highly doubt that would happen ever since the ending. And I honestly don't want to waste my time in masteries for npcs. I rather have it for me or for the party I'm in.

Well, I mean it would be for you, at least in the same since that mounts are. Since you would be able to use their power at your direction, they would be an extension of your character, and you would be improving yourself by improving them.

In my mind the next expansion may be having us going to cantha. The elites will have the characters using underwater weps on land. No mounts will be used as they are banned in cantha, until you beat the story then you get something saying, "hey this guy is cool let him ride." Underwater exploration will be a minimal thing. Maybe a hidden mount at the end like a dolphin or something. We fight kuunavang with the help of bubbles. New legendary underwater weps. And fishing will be introduced.

First of all: the next expansion cannot have mounts because expansions are standalone. Meaning, if they add mounts in the next one, it will have one that jumps high, one that jumps vertical, repeats of the current ones with some special expansion-based abilities like the jackal's sand portal.

Now that's out of the way, for the actual suggestion: I'm a bit confused here. Do you want each player to use npcs when in the open world? I'm not sure that's a very good idea, big events are already full of spam and players, imagine if everyone had one npc with them.

The suggestion is solid, as a way to make Dragon's Watch have more impact on the game, however it should only be used in instances. Maybe the next expansion will have many many more instances and require the special mastery abilities of the Dragon's Watch members to proceed in them.Alternatively, the player could get new abilities of Dragon's Watch members, for example unlocking a mastery with Marjory that allows the commander to spawn a Bone Bridge at certain places, or unlocking a mastery with Canach allows you to place mines to stun certain enemies (perhaps enemies that are burrowed and the only way to force them up is with a mine) and many more

@"Magnus Godrik.5841" said:No mounts will be used as they are banned in cantha, until you beat the story then you get something saying, "hey this guy is cool let him ride."

This would be a cheap gimmick, to my mind, especially if they use it as an excuse to bar content that you could have reached using a mount, and require you to earn the new Xpac3 masteries to reach those locations. This means that once you can use your mounts again, those masteries would become worthless, so they'd be building an entire set of masteries for people to use for like a week and then never bother with again! Better to design them from the ground up to always be useful in all content (if perhaps most useful in this specific content).

@maddoctor.2738 said:First of all: the next expansion cannot have mounts because expansions are standalone. Meaning, if they add mounts in the next one, it will have one that jumps high, one that jumps vertical, repeats of the current ones with some special expansion-based abilities like the jackal's sand portal.

True, which is kind of a pity of the current strategy, but I don't think they'll need to add mounts in each new expansion, after all, we got through five years without mounts, they can just make new maps that don't need mounts. Adding new mounts that just duplicate the basic functions would be lame, there are already issues with the existing mounts having some redundancies.

And just like how you could use gliding in PoF to shortcut various locations before earning the intended mount upgrades, you might be able to use some mounts to shortcut some objectives in Xpac3, but they can have plenty that aren't based on general traversal, but rather on skills specific to the Dragon's Watch member's skills, so you couldn't shortcut those by hopping over something.

It is a tricky map balance though to design new maps that 1. don't have a ton of invisible walls, 2. present fun opportunities for people who have mounts, but also 3. are still 100% navigable top to bottom without mounts OR gliding, and not a chore to traverse. I imagine they'll have plenty of unique new options, like maybe a pull back from PoF's sparse WP placement, or a system similar to Siren's Landing's shrines where you can unlock "semi-WPs" across the map through gameplay and masteries, that sort of thing.

Now that's out of the way, for the actual suggestion: I'm a bit confused here. Do you want each player to use npcs when in the open world? I'm not sure that's a very good idea, big events are already full of spam and players, imagine if everyone had one npc with them.

There was a post on this up thread, and I hadn't considered that when I first came up with the idea, but it's not hard to fix. You just use existing culling parameters so that as more players are around with their NPCs, more and more of them get hidden from other players. You'd always see your own, but in a massive zerg you wouldn't see anyone else's. There would be no real need in a chaotic situation to see anyone else's NPCs, since you wouldn't really directly interact with them.

The suggestion is solid, as a way to make Dragon's Watch have more impact on the game, however it should only be used in instances.

If it only worked in instances then it would be useless to most players, most of the time. This is an open world game, for masteries to matter, they need to be relevant to the open world.

Maybe the next expansion will have many many more instances and require the special mastery abilities of the Dragon's Watch members to proceed in them.

Hopefully not, PoF had plenty of instanced content.

Alternatively, the player could get new abilities of Dragon's Watch members, for example unlocking a mastery with Marjory that allows the commander to spawn a Bone Bridge at certain places, or unlocking a mastery with Canach allows you to place mines to stun certain enemies (perhaps enemies that are burrowed and the only way to force them up is with a mine) and many more

Right, that was part of the original proposal, that one aspect of the new masteries (which would mostly only be useful on the new maps) would be that they would each have some sort of manually activated function (like Mount Ability 1 and 2) that would be needed to unlock areas of the map to progress the story, and also have some sort of combat function (like Canach's mines can both damage foes, AND blow open certain caves like in Zelda). Ideally they would be designed to not simply duplicate an existing effect, like the ability to build a bone bridge would be a bit redundant when you can use a Raptor/Jackal/Griffon to jump it, and "mounts disabled" would be a cheap excuse to force the player's hand, but maybe the new content could have some sort of "necromantic hazard condition" that would prevent you moving through it, similar to the Brand, and Jory would gain the ability to nullify it.

Hero's will never be a thing in this game as players can be self supporting gw2 is a totally different game gw1 concepts like hero's and henchmen have no place in it

@dusanyu.4057 said:Hero's will never be a thing in this game as players can be self supporting gw2 is a totally different game gw1 concepts like hero's and henchmen have no place in it

While I think it's true that players can be self-supporting, there's no harm in having a buddy along for the ride. The way that NPCs have worked in recent story content has made it clear how handy it is to have someone around capable of rezzing you, especially if you have a hopeless downed state. Having someone capable of tanking for you can also be quite helpful.

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:Perhaps we could make it like Soulbeast, then we could absorb the NPC and make them disappear no more Taimi yammering in my ear, no more Braham acting like an Edge Lord, just their powers in our hands.

....and their voices in your head. Taimi's voice.. in your head. All. The. Time. O_O

@Zoltar MacRoth.7146 said:

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:Perhaps we could make it like Soulbeast, then we could absorb the NPC and make them disappear no more Taimi yammering in my ear, no more Braham acting like an Edge Lord, just their powers in our hands.

Lol, yeah, if they do have this, and they have pop-up dialog similar to what the player character does randomly, then there should probably be an audio toggle for it just in case. ;)