Icebrood mastery system is an example of how NOT to do it

[Astralporing.1957]

On 1/21/2022 at 7:34 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

That's the idea.  This is by design.  It is to keep population up on maps.

Of course, the issue is that those masteries are usable only on those maps. By the time you'd max out the mastery, you'd no  longer have any need of it.

[Firebeard.1746]

8 hours ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

In purely anecdotal manner - I have about 10 leftover mastery points for core Tyria (and that was something I actively chased back in the day). 15-20 for HoT and PoF, before I started raiding. And exactly 1 for IBS.

That 1 leftover included me grinding 25 Cold wars (kill me please), camping for RNG champ spawns in homelands, camping for RNG of Koda trials, doing some god-forsaken DRM achievements, doing trashy weapon collection, and grinding Dragonstorm way more than I did even with Tarir. Somehow. Most of those things, I'd rather not do. I could have gone for more Drizzlewood mastery ahievements I guess, but that would also be a grind. overall, that was an experience I could have expected from legendary achievement hunting - but not from kitten mastery track completion.

 

 

I guess the difference between us then is drizzlewood: admittedly, it's probably the IB content i did the least, but i did get most of the MPs for it, specifically the glory achievements. I was working on other things but i managed to force myself into drizzlewood enough that i got what i needed from it. 

 

I guess we're both freaks though. People spammed that map like crazy because loot. Also i was doing strikes fairly regularly so CW probably cut the grind down for me quite a bit.

[OriOri.8724]

On 1/21/2022 at 3:25 PM, Firebeard.1746 said:

I don't disagree with you OP in the sense that they are lackluster, my question is what should future mastery systems do?
They've added a lot of player functionality via Waystations, Mounts, gliding, and legendary unlocking. There's not much else for new systems to do. 

What should be the future where masteries probably won't be that impactful moving forward?

And even some of the core tyria masteries, like the legendary line, to me, feel entirely pointless because I felt that line in particular was no less grindy, and what was the purpse?  To unlock *drumroll* Another grind. 

I did like the Waystation and essence masteries. The waystation is cool because if you buy the war supplies HI node you basically can get an EMP whenever you want. I liked essence mastery because it was fun (for me) getting a random nuke (though i didn't like the essence collection aspect in OW, or that it was a buff that needed to be maintained, I feel that was interruptive to gamemplay). But I'm sure most players don't feel the same about the essence ones.

The dragon champion masteries just stink. They're supposed to be mostly, I think, help finishing DRMs easier + extra prismaticite, but DRMs aren't that profitable, so it doesn't really matter, nor were the buffs from it really that impactful: bosses still felt about the same with or without the dragon boon. Then the pismaticite value pretty much collapsed and it's probably in the same bucket with Eitrite where if everyone that gets it uses it, it automatically loses its value as the market collapses. I.e. the sinks for prismatium ingots aren't strong enough to justify good economic return on them. 

Another issue I had with IB was the overlapping SAKs between essence mastery and EMP. Like I'd start casting because I thought I had an essence attack but it swapped as I pressed it or during the cast and I lost and emp charge. 

To me, the issue with the IBS masteries is less about how unimpactful they are on gameplay, and all about how repetitive and highly specialized they are.

 

The 3 essence manipulation tracks are identical. Its the exact same mastery you are unlocking 3 times because each track only applies to one of the 3 essence types. That's 9 million exp and 1/3 of the entire masteries (by required mastery points) in all of IBS that are exactly identical. That's bad game design.

 

Then raven attunement mastery track is only useable on a single map in the entire game.

 

Dragon slayer only affects dragon response missions.

 

Out of 6 mastery tracks available in IBS, 3 of them are exact clones of each other for no reason other than to provide "more content", 1 of them is only usable on a single map, and 1 of them is only usable in DRM. If they would just have combined the 3 essence manipulation tracks into 1, I think that the entire IBS mastery tracks would be a lot better received overall.

 

They could also expand Dragon slayer to also impact strike missions imo (and for that matter, I still have no clue what the gameplay differences are between DRM and strike missions, and don't understand why they are separate at all)

[Raizel.8175]

On 1/22/2022 at 9:33 PM, Gorem.8104 said:

Considering how badly designed the entirety of IBS is, like every moment is the worst moment in gw2's history (seriously wow, that story, so bad), it makes sense it also has the worst Mastery designs. The entire "essence" masteries should all be removed. So we have three different tree's that we need to max out for ONE zone in the entire game all so we can open chests? The "ability" is hardly ever usable and the random buffs are un-noticeable. Remove them and we at least have masteries spent in useful area's such as unlocking mount stealth. If you removed DRM's from the game which would benefit the game to lose then that's another entire track removed. 
And of course Raven locks, which is also only for the same map with essences but still, that should have been the only mastery track there at least you could re-use it in other zones. However really though IBS added in one true mastery track, the waystation track. It is the only track that should exist. 
And that is not even to mention how few mastery points IBS give you for some reason. 

I actually think that Arena Net did a pretty good job with IBS. Both Bjora Marches and Drizzlewood Coast are awesome maps. What sucks are the entirety of Dragon Response Missions - those are just a stupid and very drawn out grind and boring content recycling - and the mastery system. To be honest, GW2 really suffers from feature and system clutter and thus could use some streamlining at this point. The IBS masteries are also pretty trashy to be honest. Needing masteries to be able to get event rewards is a really stupid concept. Dragon Slayer is stupid and the Waystation... Meh~ That one will probably do more harm that good in the long term since people are more than ever before unable to use their own CC skills properly.

[Sindust.7059]

On 1/21/2022 at 7:33 PM, Khisanth.2948 said:

Some of the HoT masteries are also like this

But in HoT there are enough mastery points to max-out all masteries without the grind. In HoT you can choose how you want to gain those points, and skip the rest, but in Icebrood you don't really have any options.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

But in HoT there are enough mastery points to max-out all masteries without the grind. In HoT you can choose how you want to gain those points, and skip the rest, but in Icebrood you don't really have any options.

If you don't think people complained about the mastery point grind in HoT, you either weren't around or weren't paying attention. I've done both and I found HoT far more work/effort/grind than I did IBS masteries.   Now that could be because I'm more efficient at leveling/training masteries now, but I didn't find it particularly more grueling to do IBS masteries.

And like HoT, a lot of the masteries were either useless or predominantly useful in HOT zones. There were three masteries just to talk to three different merchants, happens nowhere else in the game. There were masteries that show invisible foes, but not all invisible foes, masteries to resist poison but only poison in HoT zones, masteries to deal with the chak blue goop, but that's also quite limited as only one type of chak attacks with it, and chak aren't found in the vast majority of the game.

 

At the end of the day, people remember what they remember, but it doesn't always reflect reality objectively. My memory of HOT is quite different from yours.

[Rasimir.6239]

5 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

But in HoT there are enough mastery points to max-out all masteries without the grind

Things were different before Season 3 added an excess of HoT mastery points.

I vividly remember spending days trying to gain a silver medal in some of the HoT adventures since I didn't have enough mastery points to finish my masteries. If you're not good at adventures (or tend to get motion sickness from a lot of them, like I do), then mastery points were pretty hard to get pre Season 3.

To this day I still have 22 mastery points to earn in HoT, of which 16 are from adventures (the other 5 from raids, plus one from story act 4).

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I have 9 extra The Icebrood Saga Mastery Points, and have since before its conclusion.  I only got enough Heart of Thorns Master Points to fill out all tracks 2 days ago, so no  leftovers.  I think HoT was the most difficult. 

[Sindust.7059]

@Vayne.8563 @Rasimir.6239 You're right, I wasn't around. My account is old, but I only really started playing about 2 years ago, and after a few months went on an almost 2 year break. So I haven't really played much for a game of this age. But most of the the HoT masteries I got from just playing the game (doing story on 4 chars, ascended weapon collections etc.). Then I decided to max-out my HoT mastery points a week ago, and all I had to do is open some of those mastery chests in HoT zones and do a few adventures. I was done in one night. At no point was I forced to do the things that I couldn't do quickly solo.

 

But in IBS there aren't enough of those easy mastery points. There aren't enough mastery insights, and all the other points that can be done without actively organizing a group are locked behind things like "do the meta 15 times" achievements. I can't just go in and do 30-40 of them in one night, unlike in HoT.

[Rasimir.6239]

17 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

Then I decided to max-out my HoT mastery points a week ago, and all I had to do is open some of those mastery chests in HoT zones and do a few adventures. I was done in one night. At no point was I forced to do the things that I couldn't do quickly solo.

Like I said, Season 3 brought and excess of available mastery points, which made HoT masteries a lot more accessible. At HoT release (and for a long time afterwards), there were only 132 points available, 30 of which came from adventures. You needed 112 points to max out HoT masteries, so even if you gained every single non-adventure mastery point you still had to do more adventures than many players were able to (either from personal or technical restrictions).

 

I'd honestly be interested how many HoT core points you actually have, how many Season 3 points, and how many from raids. Both raids and season 3 do give a good many accessible points that weren't available at HoT launch or for a considerable time afterwards.

 

26 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

But in IBS there aren't enough of those easy mastery points.

I know that several of my friends had problems with those, too. I'm not quite sure what I did differently, but I didn't have problems finishing the IBS masteries, despite not playing those maps all that much (or DRMs at all). I know I only did the more grindy achievements (e.g. 15 meta events or 10 strikes) after I had already maxed out the IBS masteries, so I'm really not sure where the difference is from.

[Sindust.7059]

10 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

I'd honestly be interested how many HoT core points you actually have, how many Season 3 points, and how many from raids.

Is there any way to check it that doesn't involve me going through all of the achievements manually?

 

I can tell you though that I don't have a lot from raids. I think the only wing I ever completed was w1.

[OriOri.8724]

8 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

And like HoT, a lot of the masteries were either useless or predominantly useful in HOT zones. There were three masteries just to talk to three different merchants, happens nowhere else in the game. There were masteries that show invisible foes, but not all invisible foes, masteries to resist poison but only poison in HoT zones, masteries to deal with the chak blue goop, but that's also quite limited as only one type of chak attacks with it, and chak aren't found in the vast majority of the game.

The key difference between the HoT masteries you are talking about and the IBS mastery tracks are that the HoT ones are individual tiers on mastery tracks that are lackluster, whereas the IBS has entire tracks that are effectively just as useless.

 

The itzel lore track gives you access to bouncing mushrooms (which ANet has been really good about including in almost every map released since HoT), speed shrooms, adrenal shrooms, and a vendor used for a ton of collections.

 

Nuhoch lore track gives you a new travel option (which, I'll admit is not the most exciting thing when its limited to just HoT maps, but it at least is effective on all 4 maps), vendor for a ton of collections, ability to do treasure mushrooms, and makes some of the more annoying enemies in HoT easier to fight by giving you ways around some of their abilities.

 

Exalted lore track gives you a vendor for a ton of collections, ability to access more of the maps via exalted markings, summon exalted allies from the beacons/use the armor in events, and technically gives you more mats from mining, no matter how worthless auric slivers are.

 

Yes, the tracks have some problems and are not perfect, but they are at least useful. The IBS tracks largely are not. The raven lock track is only required to actually do the story, and to fight the map's boss. The essence manipulation tracks only affect fighting the enemies in those maps. They don't actually offer anything to the player, not even unlocking new collections.

[Rasimir.6239]

53 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

Is there any way to check it that doesn't involve me going through all of the achievements manually?

If you enter your API key into the wiki page about mastery points it'll show you which points you have/haven't earned. You still need to count them by hand, but since they're all on one page and sorted by achievement category, it's pretty easy to do.

[Sindust.7059]

4 hours ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

If you enter your API key into the wiki page about mastery points it'll show you which points you have/haven't earned. You still need to count them by hand, but since they're all on one page and sorted by achievement category, it's pretty easy to do.

Ok, so here it is, hope I didn't make a mistake while counting...

 

HoT

Auric Basin: 15

Dragon's Stand: 23

HoT Act 1: 6

HoT Act 2: 4

HoT Act 3:  4

HoT Act 4: 2

Mastery Insights: 22

Tangled Depths: 19

Verdant Brink: 14

Total: 109

 

LWS3

A Crack in the Ice: 4

Flashpoint: 7

One Path Ends: 11

Out of the Shadows: 5

Rising Flames: 6

The Head of the Snake: 8

Total: 41

 

Raids

Bastion of the Penitent: 2

Salvation Pass: 0

Spirit Vale: 3

Stronghold of the Faithful: 1

Total: 6

 

So if your numbers are correct, I'd be missing 3 points with HoT only. Right now, with Ancient Magics and Raids maxed out I have 12 to spare.

 

But I still think that it's unfair to exclude LWS3 in the consideration of HoT, because those points are there. But IBS will not be continued and masteries will not be made easier to gain via new content.

[EpicName.4523]

I think most people are missing the point.

 

Yes, most IBS masteries are kinda useless.

Yes, HoT also had difficult to get mastery points.

Yes, I suppose making the points to fill the masteries difficult to obtain leads to more replayability of the content.

 

Problem is, most masteries are useless AND the points to fill them are difficult to obtain. If the masteries were actually gamebreaking (like gliding) it would only make all of this even more frustrating.

Points are harder AND more time consuming to get than in HoT, because very few things in HoT required you to do things like collecting 5000 commendations x 4 for each point, doing 15 metas for Bjora or 10 for Drizzlewood with next to no alternatives.

And finally, once you finish the achievements to acquire said points, for masteries that are mostly useless, you are already done with that content and there is very little use for those masteries. United Legions line is the  exception.

 

Oh, and forgot to mention that instead of providing rewards that people would want to obtain in order to make the metas more replayable, they simply make them mandatory for the points. It is a stick without a carrot policy where you are punished for not grinding metas to death.

[Vayne.8563]

9 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

@Vayne.8563 @Rasimir.6239 You're right, I wasn't around. My account is old, but I only really started playing about 2 years ago, and after a few months went on an almost 2 year break. So I haven't really played much for a game of this age. But most of the the HoT masteries I got from just playing the game (doing story on 4 chars, ascended weapon collections etc.). Then I decided to max-out my HoT mastery points a week ago, and all I had to do is open some of those mastery chests in HoT zones and do a few adventures. I was done in one night. At no point was I forced to do the things that I couldn't do quickly solo.

 

But in IBS there aren't enough of those easy mastery points. There aren't enough mastery insights, and all the other points that can be done without actively organizing a group are locked behind things like "do the meta 15 times" achievements. I can't just go in and do 30-40 of them in one night, unlike in HoT.

So counterpoint a lot of people suck at adventures. They're not good at them. Great that you can do them solo but some of them are much harder if you're say in Australia like me.  Try getting gold or even silver on Sanctum Scramble from Australia with 300 ping.  Doing metas isn't much at all.

New content comes out, I'm doing the meta in that zone 10 times anyway.  It's just normal play for a lot of people. There's an achievement to do the meta in AB 100 times. True there's no mastery point attached to it, but I'd rather do the meta 10 times in Bjora Marches than try to get gold in shoot gallery.  

 

I'm not saying there couldn't be a couple of more easy hero points in IBS. I am say the complaints about hot and the mastery point grind were rampant, and the usefulness of most of them outside of HoT zones is non-existent.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I have zero Mastery Points in Heart of Thorns from Adventures.  Didn't even try most of them, and the one I did, I couldn't even figure out. 

[Sindust.7059]

4 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Try getting gold or even silver on Sanctum Scramble

No thanks. I barely managed bronze after like 20 tries and then decided "screw it" and went to do something else. But there are easier adventures, ones that are downright trivial, where I got gold on 1st attempt (Salvage Pit for example), and you don't need to do all of them. And if you prefer doing metas, I skipped most Tangled Depths meta routes, because I hate that zone. But if you prefer that, you can get a lot of points by doing the different routes. Your counter point is no counter point, because in IBS there are no adventures for me to even try to do, so there is no choice in how you earn your points. Maybe back before LWS3 HoT grind sucked, but as I said previously, we did get LWS3, but there won't be anything similar for IBS, so it's unfair to compare pre-LWS3 HoT masteries with IBS.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

No thanks. I barely managed bronze after like 20 tries and then decided "screw it" and went to do something else. But there are easier adventures, ones that are downright trivial, where I got gold on 1st attempt (Salvage Pit for example), and you don't need to do all of them. And if you prefer doing metas, I skipped most Tangled Depths meta routes, because I hate that zone. But if you prefer that, you can get a lot of points by doing the different routes. Your counter point is no counter point, because in IBS there are no adventures for me to even try to do, so there is no choice in how you earn your points. Maybe back before LWS3 HoT grind sucked, but as I said previously, we did get LWS3, but there won't be anything similar for IBS, so it's unfair to compare pre-LWS3 HoT masteries with IBS.

Not really unfair. Hot was an expansion.  IBS is a living story Season. The argument that people are making is you NEED to those masteries, but many of them you don't need.  And HoT was the same way.  When you added Season 3 that added ways to get HoT masteries because people complained. They added a couple of IBS masteries too.

But masteries weren't meant to be go out and get them all in one night. They were meant to replace leveling in other games. They were a form of horizontal expansion meant to keep people in zones playing.  It's their purpose.  In a game where you don't level in expansions you need that horizontal progression, because if people don't progress they go nuts.

When HoT came out, people complained about how grindy HoT was.  When PoF came out, people complained they finished the whole thing in a month there wasn't anything to do.  IBS, I'm guessing here, was meant to bridge the gap. Anet needed to keep people in those zones and masteries were how they chose to do it.

The fact that you want every mastery point for that higher number doesn't really change the fact that I got every mastery by playing without doing stuff I normally wouldn't do.  Obviously your opinion varies, but it's just that, another opinion. I found IBS easier to fully master than HOT, even though you don't need every single mastery in IBS to get stuff done.

Edit: Keep in mind season 3 came out 9 months after HoT launched.  Some people hadn't even finished their masteries by then.  The design was to keep people in the current content.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Vayne.8563

[Rasimir.6239]

14 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

But I still think that it's unfair to exclude LWS3 in the consideration of HoT, because those points are there. But IBS will not be continued and masteries will not be made easier to gain via new content.

Neither comparisson is fair, if you want to call it that. Considering that IBS died an untimely death 5 episodes into what was supposed to be an extensive story arch that was to rival expansion plus living world, comparing it to a full expansion plus living world season plus raid season isn't exactly "fair" either.

 

So far, HoT, PoF, and IBS all started with relatively few extra mastery points. Even Core Tyria didn't have all that many extras at launch of the mastery system (and didn't really get easy access to them until the mastery insights were released when Aurora was introduced at the end of Season 3).

 

The problem isn't that IBS did things much different from the expansions when they launched, because it didn't. The problem is that IBS was killed early on, before it branched out to have a comfortable amount of extra mastery points available. I certainly hope EoD will not die before it's run its course, but I fully expect it to launch with considerably less easy mastery points than are needed to max the new masteries. After all, expansions are supposed to keep players busy for months, not days, and keeping them progressing through the mastery system is an integral part of that.

[Vayne.8563]

19 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

Neither comparisson is fair, if you want to call it that. Considering that IBS died an untimely death 5 episodes into what was supposed to be an extensive story arch that was to rival expansion plus living world, comparing it to a full expansion plus living world season plus raid season isn't exactly "fair" either.

 

So far, HoT, PoF, and IBS all started with relatively few extra mastery points. Even Core Tyria didn't have all that many extras at launch of the mastery system (and didn't really get easy access to them until the mastery insights were released when Aurora was introduced at the end of Season 3).

 

The problem isn't that IBS did things much different from the expansions when they launched, because it didn't. The problem is that IBS was killed early on, before it branched out to have a comfortable amount of extra mastery points available. I certainly hope EoD will not die before it's run its course, but I fully expect it to launch with considerably less easy mastery points than are needed to max the new masteries. After all, expansions are supposed to keep players busy for months, not days, and keeping them progressing through the mastery system is an integral part of that.

This I agree with completely.

[Despond.2174]

I personally lost passion for getting every Mastery point when it became more of a routine than some awesome new unlock to get.

 

The vanilla and HoT masteries, had some REALLY impactful universal game play changes. All these new IBS areas have so many masteries with just gimmicky benefits for just that map that I honestlly just didn't feel the need.

 

I think we're flooded with too many trivial and filler masteries and wuld rather it go back to less, still hard but more impactful masteries

 

You look through the mastery page now and it's just gotten so out of control and now the problem is people expect them EVERY single time so they most likely will never stop.

 

For me I lost the incentive when every single map had a gazillion masteries that I'll never use once I am out of there.

 

 

[Vayne.8563]

8 hours ago, Despond.2174 said:

I personally lost passion for getting every Mastery point when it became more of a routine than some awesome new unlock to get.

 

The vanilla and HoT masteries, had some REALLY impactful universal game play changes. All these new IBS areas have so many masteries with just gimmicky benefits for just that map that I honestlly just didn't feel the need.

 

I think we're flooded with too many trivial and filler masteries and wuld rather it go back to less, still hard but more impactful masteries

 

You look through the mastery page now and it's just gotten so out of control and now the problem is people expect them EVERY single time so they most likely will never stop.

 

For me I lost the incentive when every single map had a gazillion masteries that I'll never use once I am out of there.

 

 

I guess the difference between my play style and yours is that I go back to every single map eventually for some reason.  So those masteries will come in handy repeatedly over time.  I spent a ton of time in Bjora anyway, weeks, if not months.  I spent that much time in Grothmar as well. And I spent even more time in Drizzlewood (as have a lot of people since it's one of the more popular farms in the game).

 

At the end of the day, probably depends on your play style and what you play for, and especially how much time you play.

[Gorem.8104]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:51 PM, Rasimir.6239 said:

Neither comparisson is fair, if you want to call it that. Considering that IBS died an untimely death 5 episodes into what was supposed to be an extensive story arch that was to rival expansion plus living world, comparing it to a full expansion plus living world season plus raid season isn't exactly "fair" either.

 

So far, HoT, PoF, and IBS all started with relatively few extra mastery points. Even Core Tyria didn't have all that many extras at launch of the mastery system (and didn't really get easy access to them until the mastery insights were released when Aurora was introduced at the end of Season 3).

 

The problem isn't that IBS did things much different from the expansions when they launched, because it didn't. The problem is that IBS was killed early on, before it branched out to have a comfortable amount of extra mastery points available. I certainly hope EoD will not die before it's run its course, but I fully expect it to launch with considerably less easy mastery points than are needed to max the new masteries. After all, expansions are supposed to keep players busy for months, not days, and keeping them progressing through the mastery system is an integral part of that.

Makes me wonder if the saga was going to include zones that had all the masteries constantly in effect. That we'd constantly be using maxed out masteries for their abilities more so then just being able to open chests. That we'd be using stealth mounts for a reason in the story with an explanation as to where and how each mastery works and came from. 

Previous normal living world seasons gave us six maps to play on, IBS ended with 3, and one is a prologue. This "saga" had a prologue but was one of the shortest stories in the game. You can tell this was meant to be a story that was meant to go on for a few years and most likely would have if not for EoD. So there must have been a lot more masteries planned, and many more ways to get them unlocked. Wonder if they'll return to this after awhile with EoD, as they should honestly retcon chap 5. 

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Previous normal living world seasons gave us six maps to play on, IBS ended with 3, and one is a prologue.

Yes, and they basically warned us that this LS might have less maps even before IBS launched.

 

3 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

 

This "saga" had a prologue but was one of the shortest stories in the game. You can tell this was meant to be a story that was meant to go on for a few years and most likely would have if not for EoD.

For years? Not necessarily. It might have ended up with one map (and one or two chapters) more. After that it would have most likely transitioned into another LS season (well, "Saga") with no expansion in between.

 

3 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

So there must have been a lot more masteries planned

Unlikely, seeing how badly planned the ones we've obtained were. And even if you're right, more trash-tier masteries would have only made the situation worse, not better.