Mounts Required, why.

[Endaris.1452]

6 hours ago, Albi.7250 said:

HoT was worse in that regard. I think op stated that somewhere too.

Personally I found PoF way more annoying in that regard. Canyon Jumping is a tier 3 mastery, meaning you need 6 mastery points and a total of almost 1m experience to unlock. Just playing through the PoF story right away gets you nowhere close to either of those requirements.

In HoT you only get those requirements for Gliding and the initial auric mastery which are both lower (individually and summed up) and the story already provides you with the required mastery points in advance. Additionally HoT story grants you Tomes/Writs of HoT experience on first playthrough and the maps give you more opportunities to quickly farm Exp through having many adventures that give you massive daily and all-time rewards on initial completion. Not to mention that exploration feels much less like "doing other stuff" compared to PoF due to how closely the story and the entire map design of VB are integrated with each other.

PoF does not grant you bonus experience on first playthrough, if you play through the story immediately you will be lacking 3 mastery points by the time you reach that gate. PoF completely punches you in the face by making many of the commune mastery points in Crystal Oasis and Desert Highlands require a Jackal, a Springer or a Raptor with Canyon Jumping which makes farming these remaining mastery points very frustrating because you cannot know that you are absolutely incapable of reaching them until you tried your luck. My personal experience with this was very sour and even though I recall gnawing a bit on the initial Gliding mastery as well, it wasn't nearly as bad because of how heavy HoT is on event chains and how you could do literally anything to gain Exp. For mastery points you can't, you have to play the achievement game, aka the worst quest system MMOs have ever seen.

[DexterousGecko.6328]

2 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Mounts are required Why?

 

 

So they can sell you skins.

I still shake my head when people think they invented that many mounts just for the utility.

[GWstinkt.6094]

Yeah imagine tying major features of expansions into their story. Ugh.

[Vayne.8563]

I feel like the OP is laboring under the assumption that the story in this game is the instances and everything between the instances is not story but a lot of the story comes from the zones.  You're not supposed to run from star to star in this game, it's the point of the entire game, probably why Anet changed the personal story so that you have to wait 10 levels to do each part.

This game's story is deeper than instance to instance. Being in the open world doesn't ruin the story, it fleshes out the story. In HoT, for example, meta events are part of the story itself.   This is less apparent in POF, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of what's going on in the world is as much as part of the story as what's going on in instances. 

The fact that the OP is divorcing the instances from the story, that he/she thinks that the story is somehow seperate from everything else going on is the problem of coming to this game from other games and thinking it's the same. It's not. In this game, the open world is the focus, not the instances, and without it, the instances are shallower, less defined, less rich in texture.

 

It's a matter of attitude and approach, and that's all it is. If you just want to race through the instances, in my opinion, you're missing the point.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Imagine progression in a video game. Insanity. 

 

[Rasimir.6239]

21 hours ago, Yvelta De Forlee.1690 said:

It's just my preference for Mounts and movement based shortcuts to be unlocked at the end as something that makes the map easier, once the story is done. As a big pay off for all your work, especially in reward for harder content like raids and such.

 

21 hours ago, Yvelta De Forlee.1690 said:

Mounts are a huge thing however and to my personal preference should be one of the final large pay offs for an expansion/end game content.

  

20 hours ago, Yvelta De Forlee.1690 said:

Needing multiple mounts to get around a map effectively feels unnecessary to me.

"Mounts" the way they are implemented in GW2 are much less the (prestige?) reward they are in many other, similar games. Instead mounts in GW2 really are new skills and abilities you can unlock in the course of playing.

 

I think the disconnect here comes from the fact that you associate mounts with the ultimate gameplay reward for what you preceive is the pinacle of the game's challenges. You even mention harder content and raids in this context. In reality though, GW2 mounts are much less rewards and much more tools for gameplay.

 

To me, getting new tools/skills/abilities only after I've done most of the content defeats the purpose. Why should I replay the content with tools that reduce the challenge after I've beaten the challenge without them? I love that GW2 allows me to unlock different masteries (no matter if mounts, gliding, whatever) and that I need to use them in my journey. Having those abilities locked until I'm done with the story/map defeats the purpose for me.

 

 

[Gibson.4036]

8 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

I still shake my head when people think they invented that many mounts just for the utility.

Even if the number of mounts was a completely calculated, cynical design to make money off skins, the gameplay is better for it. Having a stable of mounts you choose for different types of movement makes for much more interesting play than one mount that does everything.

[AliamRationem.5172]

55 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Even if the number of mounts was a completely calculated, cynical design to make money off skins, the gameplay is better for it. Having a stable of mounts you choose for different types of movement makes for much more interesting play than one mount that does everything.

Agreed.  I don't think anybody is naive enough to believe that mounts were developed without any thought toward monetization.  However, they're also a legitimately good system.  I'd go as far as to say it's the envy of the industry (which is why WoW is copying some elements of it!).

[Kalavier.1097]

15 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

In HoT you only get those requirements for Gliding and the initial auric mastery which are both lower (individually and summed up) and the story already provides you with the required mastery points in advance. Additionally HoT story grants you Tomes/Writs of HoT experience on first playthrough and the maps give you more opportunities to quickly farm Exp through having many adventures that give you massive daily and all-time rewards on initial completion. Not to mention that exploration feels much less like "doing other stuff" compared to PoF due to how closely the story and the entire map design of VB are integrated with each other.

 

I don't know if you were around before the XP gain/mastery requirements were changed in HoT, as well as required masteries.

It used to be really bad.

 

Frankly, on the subject of mounts, I think it was done the way it was so you could get used to what the raptor could do, before dumping the springer on you.