Mastery Points are a scourge in GW2

[Kiki.9450]

1 hour ago, Aelin.9317 said:

When I was brand new the people helping me made it clear I don't need ascended gear unless I wanted to do t4 fractals. I did wvw in full exotic for ages same for raids. I'm not sure why you're in a rush to get him ascended gear. 

I wasn't in any particular rush for masteries either. I went through the story and progressed each area more slowly and got masteries without thinking much about them besides veterans giving me tips on where to put early ones. 

I think the issue comes if you're trying to rush into certain content. I loved my birb when I first got it and getting it's masteries didn't take long, I even got the exp doing the races each day. Going through pof story alone gets you the mount progression pretty smoothly. He probably wouldn't be nearly so frustrated if he wasn't constantly comparing himself to you. 

A lot of people view this game like they view other MMOs: "the game doesn't start until endgame." And once you're at endgame, well, if you 'actually' want to play, you need so-and-so quality gear, and you need to rush rush rush to get into the content (at least in WoW this is the case for many because it's all seasonal and 'nobody cares about playing off-season content'). If you don't go go go, you're left behind, and therefore are a scrub. It's an exhausting concept a lot of players force upon themselves, and they carry it here sometimes.

[Zebulous.2934]

Has someone made a necromancer named Mastery Points?

[Jianyu.7065]

I dont believe Masteries are a bad system. In HoT it felt like you were gaining knowledge about how to survive in the deep jungle. Is that how the idea of Masteries continued through the other expansions - well, not exactly, but in essence that's kind of how I look at it. 

There are a lot of games, single player games even, where you dont get all of the "press F" features right off the bat. Often you have to complete a quest or reach a certain part of the game or gain so many levels before extra features are unlocked. 

My only criticism with the Mastery system is that it can be a real frustration-fest trying to get enough points. In the end, you're usually left with the hardest ones to get, and while there are more points available than what you need, some of the tasks are just absolute nonsense. But this is where my major criticism of GW2 lies anyway - that they don't focus enough time on improving the fun factor when it comes to dated features, and even some new features. In 2024, even the last few years, it seems like GW2 is focusing more on the carrot to keep players engaged rather than focusing on fun factor to keep players engaged. 

[pochocu.2831]

Although I don't think mastery points are a bad system, in the game, I agree with you, in several expansions, especially in Path of Fire, you need a huge amount of them to have the privileges of the expansion, and although several are easy to get, having everything you need to maximize the expansion, becomes a nightmare, it's boring, time-consuming, it requires you to play while looking at guides, and although many of them are not so necessary, they hinder progress and the amount of things you can do in the game expansion, I'm stuck in central Tyria, because I'm missing 3 MP and I'm too lazy to go get them, but I need them to be able to make my legendary weapons from S2, they should increase the amount of MP you get in the game IMO

[kharmin.7683]

Wow.  Getting mastery points is called playing the game.  I'm ultra casual and I've managed to get all of the MP that I need.  I'm glad that there are more MP than are needed to max out everything.

[Sobx.1758]

22 minutes ago, pochocu.2831 said:

they should increase the amount of MP you get in the game IMO

22 minutes ago, pochocu.2831 said:

I'm missing 3 MP and I'm too lazy to go get them

That's the thing though, the MPs aren't exactly hard to get and there's plenty of them available. Someone's laziness shouldn't be a reason to slap more mps so the system aimed at players playing the game can be basically skipped just because "you want gen 2 now".

[pochocu.2831]

4 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Wow.  Getting mastery points is called playing the game.  I'm ultra casual and I've managed to get all of the MP that I need.  I'm glad that there are more MP than are needed to max out everything.

You have more than 9k comments only in the forum, and your are very casual xD
What I'm saying is that the MP blocks your progress, forcing you to do certain boring content to advance, for the love of God, do you waste days on the HoT maps, just to use a store? to fight a Boss?, or in EoD where one of the main premises of the game would be fishing, then you go fishing and it's rubbish because you don't have the necessary MP for it, another example, I hate fractals from the bottom of my heart, but I'm forced to do them because I need MP, but to make fractals more effective I need MP, it's an infinite mess

[kharmin.7683]

3 hours ago, pochocu.2831 said:

You have more than 9k comments only in the forum, and your are very casual xD
What I'm saying is that the MP blocks your progress, forcing you to do certain boring content to advance, for the love of God, do you waste days on the HoT maps, just to use a store? to fight a Boss?, or in EoD where one of the main premises of the game would be fishing, then you go fishing and it's rubbish because you don't have the necessary MP for it, another example, I hate fractals from the bottom of my heart, but I'm forced to do them because I need MP, but to make fractals more effective I need MP, it's an infinite mess

No, I played the HoT story and did the events on the map for XP and got the masteries I wanted/needed just through general game-play.  What you define as boring may not be the same for other players -- the HoT maps are probably the most populated ones of all.

Fishing?  I haven't point a single point into fishing other than the one to get the skiff.  I think that fishing was a mistake, so I don't engage with it.  Heck, I would even go so far as to say that I find fishing boring.

What MP do you need that forces you to do fractals?

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

No, I played the HoT story and did the events on the map for XP and got the masteries I wanted/needed just through general game-play.  What you define as boring may not be the same for other players -- the HoT maps are probably the most populated ones of all.

Fishing?  I haven't point a single point into fishing other than the one to get the skiff.  I think that fishing was a mistake, so I don't engage with it.  Heck, I would even go so far as to say that I find fishing boring.

What MP do you need that forces you to do fractals?

legendary crafting to make gen 2 legendaries after spending points into everything else it seems.

[Arduin.3029]

On 2/22/2024 at 8:42 AM, Tiamat.8254 said:

One of the biggest problems I have is the majority of masteries are pretty useless outside of the expansions or, like the recent skyscale masteries, feels like a con when I already have the skyscale masteries from previous expansion.

However, I do think the system is good, just implementation is poor. When bouncing mushrooms were introduced, why are there none anywhere else in the world? The grapple in draconis Mons, awesome mastery, but only available in one map. 

I do not agree with them being available as soon as you get the game or expansion, but they have made improvements to it where you can buy potions of mastery experience from the AA store. 

You picked one mastery that did get added to a lot of other maps in the world. The dragon fight in IBS, the new fractal, convergences, even in the new map Inner Nayos... 

https://ibb.co/kMXmsCT

[AIex.4105]

Masteries are ok but sometime annoying, like in POF you have a masery point to get but u cant go to that location since you need the jackal and you neeed to go 3 maps ahead to get it. I think masteries linked to locked areas should be able to be obtained on the same map as the blocked area.

Edited February 28 by AIex.4105

[kharmin.7683]

1 minute ago, AIex.4105 said:

Masteries are ok but sometime annoying, like in POF you have a masery point to get but u cant go to that location since you need the jackal and you neeed to go 3 maps ahead to get it. I think mastery blocked areas should be able to be obtained on the same map as the blocked area.

I think that the idea here is to force map re-playability.  If you get the mastery on the map and move on, then there's no reason to return to that map.  It's a way for Anet to pad population numbers on map, at least when these maps were newer.