Did soto have too many masteries for such a short expansion?

[Firebeard.1746]

Basically, given the short duration of SOTO, i'm curious if the community felt like it was harder to keep up with the masteries and maxing them. 

[bq pd.2148]

i feel like the difficulty to get the masteries maxed mainly depends on the abundance of mastery points and their ease of access as the exp is easily gained, especially with boosters running.

in that regard i didn't have to go much out of my way to get enough mastery points, despite not doing any of the strikes and so it was easy to get them.

however i wouldn't mind more options to gain mastery points so players can pick and choose more. for HoT for example i have like 30 extra mastery points (might be also because i did do raids and adventures for gen2 weapons), indicating that there are more than enough options to skip some but for other mastery areas i have 0-5 spare mastery points.

[Parasite.5389]

over half the mastery points needed can be eatned through stoty completion and mastery insights; the remaining half can easily be obtained by simply doing events across the 3 maps.

compared to IBS where a huge chunk of masteries were earned thought weapon collections, and grinding for commendations, SotO was unbelievably easy

[Sobx.1758]

No, they were as easy to max as always. 

 

I'm not sure why this is was in a JW subforum.

Edited July 17 by Sobx.1758

[Ryuk.6840]

I am guessing its "too much" for the average population , because the majority haven't unlocked the Leyline Mastery to get faster in the Epach fight .

For that particular fight , i wouldn't say "no" to giving away a free replacement , in case they also don't have the upgraded bot too .

Edited July 17 by Ryuk.6840

[Gop.8713]

I'm not sure you can really have "too many" in any kind of absolute sense. It can only be too many relative to how many mastery points are available and how long it takes to grind out the xp, so in this case no, def not too many . . .

Now whether all of those masteries were necessary or useful is a different question entirely . . .

[Cyninja.2954]

SotO has 88 mastery points which require a total of around 30.5 million experience to complete within 1 year.

EoD  89 mastery points and required a total of 26.5 million experience within 1.5 years.

All previous expansions had significantly longer times to complete the masteries but also came with in part significantly longer time in-between expansions with Ice Brood Saga being by far the shortest (but also most Mastery Point starved).

SotO is also heavily designed for open world content in the form of rift hunting and meta events, the main draw being open world legendayr armor, with most masteries serving only that purpose.

I wouldn't say SotO has to many masteries or needs to much experience, it is a slight step up from EoD though. Using boosters and completing events and metas can still yield 1 million xp per hour and more. That's more than sufficient to clear this mastery experience within 1 year.

All of this does add to a growing problem of new mastery and experience requirements for newer players pilling up. Which is great for players which enjoy this type of progression, given this is one of the few ways to progress in GW2 to begin with, but it does become more and more daunting for new players as time moves on.

Edited July 18 by Cyninja.2954

[Ashantara.8731]

My biggest beef with the SotO Masteries is how they mixed unrelated stuff into a single Mastery line to force you to finish them all.

Like, what the heck do the Arcane Chests have to do with Rifts, Updrafts and Ley-Lines? Or Armor Crafting with Rifts? Total nonsense.

[Parasite.5389]

35 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

My biggest beef with the SotO Masteries is how they mixed unrelated stuff into a single Mastery line to force you to finish them all.

Like, what the heck do the Arcane Chests have to do with Rifts, Updrafts and Ley-Lines? Or Armor Crafting with Rifts? Total nonsense.

what on earth are you rambling about?

Opening Arcane chests, Kryptis rifts, and operating Ley-line looms and updraft generators use the Heart of the Obscure; Hence, all those features are on the "Heart of the Obscure Research" marstry line

Rift mastery (which i is the only rift based mastery related to armor crafting) provides more Kryptis essence when completing rift events, and is the mastery right before Obsidian Armor Crafting which required a boat load of Kryptis essence to complete

none of these are 'unrelated' to one another.

[Ashantara.8731]

9 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

none of these are 'unrelated' to one another.

Movement and looting are two unrelated categories in my book. 🤷‍♀️ I understand your argument, but I still did not like having to waste points on looting when all I wanted was to enhance my movement abilities.

[Randulf.7614]

53 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Movement and looting are two unrelated categories in my book. 🤷‍♀️ I understand your argument, but I still did not like having to waste points on looting when all I wanted was to enhance my movement abilities.

Masteries have been this way since the core/HoT ones though. They’re tied by theme rather than function

[Ashantara.8731]

5 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Masteries have been this way since the core/HoT ones though. They’re tied by theme rather than function

I admit, it probably was my annoyance with the content in general that made the Masteries feel more painful to me than usual. I just wanted to be done with them and therefore perceived nonsense like Arcane Chest opening especially unnecessary and timegating my leveling of the useful stuff.

[Randulf.7614]

7 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I admit, it probably was my annoyance with the content in general that made the Masteries feel more painful to me than usual. I just wanted to be done with them and therefore perceived nonsense like Arcane Chest opening especially unnecessary and timegating my leveling of the useful stuff.

There's no doubt there's some very poor masteries existing for the sake of existing. I love the system, but they do put in some very strange/superfluous things at times

[Sobx.1758]

14 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Movement and looting are two unrelated categories in my book. 🤷‍♀️ I understand your argument, but I still did not like having to waste points on looting when all I wanted was to enhance my movement abilities.

Pact commander, 1st mastery: mentor, swiftness in cities. 5th mastery: auto-pick up loot. This is not new.

7 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

There's no doubt there's some very poor masteries existing for the sake of existing. I love the system, but they do put in some very strange/superfluous things at times

Yes, some masteries are more or less "fillers", either for the sake of immersion/story telling (where you "get to know" the new areas) or to provide "that sense of progression" within each of the expansion in place of the usual mmo lvl/gear treadmill.

Edited July 18 by Sobx.1758
typo

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, Randulf.7614 said:

There's no doubt there's some very poor masteries existing for the sake of existing. I love the system, but they do put in some very strange/superfluous things at times

I meant the SotO content, Inner Nayos in particular. I just wanted to be done with it, and leveling through some useless Mastery fillers was a drag.

[Astralporing.1957]

It's not about it being "too much". Mastery points and xp were easily available, so in that context the number of masteries was not an issue. The issue was in that the masteries were needlessly too much. For example, the whole Inner Nayos line (tied to convergences) just should not exist at all. There are also a number of padding masteries in other lines as well.

Granted, SotO was not the first example of this, but with how generally unimpactful most of its masteries are, it's just more visible here.

[Hotride.2187]

Felt like a chore getting them, but that isnt new.

[illuminati.8453]

I don't mind the count, but rarely do any of the masteries feel rewarding.  Huge, missed opportunity.  I mean, this is leveling.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

well, it depends on your goals with the expansion:

did you want to make Legendary Obsidian Armor? YES: then it had the right amount of masteries  NO: then it had many masteries that you just didn't need, since all but one Inner Nayos mastery had to do with earning essences/ interacting with NPCs for the armor, and most Astral Ward Masteries had to do with earning essences. which essences are needed to craft legendary Obsidian Armor. 

The Skyscale masteries were the only ones that felt worth it outside of SoTo and Legendary Obsidian Armor

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

Soto floods people with mastery points, sometimes even for just existing, XP gain is also nice, so in that sense there aren't too many.

In the sense of "only that in a single mastery?" yes. Mount Updraft, Leyline spread into multiple masteries, Arcane Treasure chests split into 2 masteries, updraft/leylooms in separate masteries. Astral Ward masteries are also small bonuses. 

Too many masteries gave small unlocks making them feel kinda pointless upgrades.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

The number for there being entirely too many "increase loot" masteries is 1. Other than that, the masteries were good.