Masteries should ALWAYS be free

The purpose of masteries is to change them according to the enemy and to the hero that we are using.
So for me the masteries should always be free (at least after they are unlocked)

Comments

Brandonmballou

Yea it's like a tax or theft I mean

Wicket329

Yup, agreed OP. After initial unlock, masteries should be free. The price to use them has already been paid, and now with so many modes of content requiring different mastery setups (or even different setups from one fight to the next in long form content like Abyss), the price per reset is too high.

Rockypantherx

As a suicides user, this is my most wanted change in the game.

Scratch that, it’s just my most wanted thing in the game.

Eb0ny-O-M4w

Well maybe, MAYBE, we will get news about that on the upcoming masteries revamp.

Or you know, maybe not ...

awesomesauce

How long are they temporarily free?

Trafalgarwar96

How long are they temporarily free?

Until the 21th of March

FiiNCH

As a suicides user, this is my most wanted change in the game.

Scratch that, it’s just my most wanted thing in the game.

I’ve been banging this drum for a while now too, I think it would be one of the most pro-player moves they could make at this point.

I wish they’d just communicate with us about masteries. Even if they could give us rationale why they aren’t free at this point.

DarkEternity

Even better make all the masteries free to unlock too and then refund all the units spent on cores (pls I would like 20k free units at random 🤣)

Trafalgarwar96

Even better make all the masteries free to unlock too and then refund all the units spent on cores (pls I would like 20k free units
Even better make all the masteries free to unlock too and then refund all the units spent on cores (pls I would like 20k free units at random 🤣)
This is too much ahahah

DarkEternity

Even better make all the masteries free to unlock too and then refund all the units spent on cores (pls I would like 20k free units
Even better make all the masteries free to unlock too and then refund all the units spent on cores (pls I would like 20k free units at random 🤣)
This is too much ahahah
Haha, yes, but one can dream

Rockypantherx

As a suicides user, this is my most wanted change in the game.

Scratch that, it’s just my most wanted thing in the game.
I’ve been banging this drum for a while now too, I think it would be one of the most pro-player moves they could make at this point.

I wish they’d just communicate with us about masteries. Even if they could give us rationale why they aren’t free at this point.

I think it’s just viewed as one these ‘micro’ costs throughout the game. Shuffle in Battlegrounds, refresh in arena and incursions. Makes no sense and not really used by most players but there nonetheless

But as we get more and more game modes, and defenders and nodes become increasingly diverse and challenging, free mastery switches just seems natural to me. It allows players to open up the full potential of their roster while retaining the strategy element

Especially with Battlegrounds in consideration it just makes sense. I mean, there are free mastery switches this week for a reason. Players like myself who use suicides permanently are significantly disadvantaged in it

Such an easy, easy win for them, especially since I’d imagine most mastery-related revenue comes from the sale of cores.

DarkEternity

Are quotes broken or something?

Gizzilla

As well as Alliance Quest!

AverageDesi

I don't want them to make it free yet. Let them introduce mastery presets and then make switching between them free but cost to change the preset.

DNA3000

The purpose of masteries is to change them according to the enemy and to the hero that we are using.

That's actually false. The intent of the mastery system is for players to have to choose between the pros and cons of the different masteries, and to live with those decisions. Allowing mastery changes at all is a compromise between not locking players into suboptimal choices and not letting players escape the trade offs of the different masteries.

It was never intended for players to be able to choose whichever masteries they wanted to use for every single fight. That defeats the purpose of having to actually make and live with game choices.

The main compromise most players - and probably the developers - are willing to live with is mastery profiles. As the game has evolved, it has evolved game modes that place radically different requirements and pressures on mastery configurations. As the devs don't want mastery decisions to lock players into or out of participating effectively in different game modes, allowing players to have different mastery configurations for each game mode is probably something the game will eventually provide an option for.

But an option to change masteries per fight? That's extremely unlikely. Masteries are intended to be a kind of development tree. They aren't intended to be prefight abilities.

BitterSteel

The purpose of masteries is to change them according to the enemy and to the hero that we are using.
That's actually false. The intent of the mastery system is for players to have to choose between the pros and cons of the different masteries, and to live with those decisions. Allowing mastery changes at all is a compromise between not locking players into suboptimal choices and not letting players escape the trade offs of the different masteries.

It was never intended for players to be able to choose whichever masteries they wanted to use for every single fight. That defeats the purpose of having to actually make and live with game choices.

The main compromise most players - and probably the developers - are willing to live with is mastery profiles. As the game has evolved, it has evolved game modes that place radically different requirements and pressures on mastery configurations. As the devs don't want mastery decisions to lock players into or out of participating effectively in different game modes, allowing players to have different mastery configurations for each game mode is probably something the game will eventually provide an option for.

But an option to change masteries per fight? That's extremely unlikely. Masteries are intended to be a kind of development tree. They aren't intended to be prefight abilities.

Yeah I agree, I'm doing the abyss Carina challenges at the moment and one thing that seems way too much is being able to literally tailor the mastery set up to each specific fight if I needed to. Free mastery changes defeat the point of masteries.

There would be no such thing as "running suicides" anymore. You would just bring say, Prof X on the team along with Omega red and switch Suicides on and off in between using either champ. Part of the reason we only have 59 mastery points is so we have to choose a build that overall suits our playstyle and roster. Maybe you wish you could run suicides, deep wounds, unfazed, limber, MD, willpower, despair and assassin all at the same time, but tough luck - you can't, you have to make the choice of what suits you best.

Free mastery resets changes that, you can run all of them, because there's never a situation where you will need every mastery possible. Unless you're using a suicides friendly mystic champion that inflicts bleed, in a fight where there is evade, stun, lots of buffs, puts debuffs on you and healing, you just don't need all of them at the same time. So with free mastery resets, you can just set up for specific quests or even specific fights.

Wicket329

Unsurprisingly valid points from @BitterSteel and @DNA3000. I’ll dial back from total mastery freedom. I could see a compromise position being free to change between the modes (example, not having to spend the units transitioning from Battlegrounds to regular quest content for those that run the recoil tree), but edits within each mode still having their associated costs.

BitterSteel

Unsurprisingly valid points from @BitterSteel and @DNA3000. I’ll dial back from total mastery freedom. I could see a compromise position being free to change between the modes (example, not having to spend the units transitioning from Battlegrounds to regular quest content for those that run the recoil tree), but edits within each mode still having their associated costs.

I do like the idea of having a War mastery profile, questing mastery profile and AQ mastery profile - but is that technologically viable, would switching doing 1 fight in AQ and then hopping to AW clog up the servers as it hops from one set up to another? Not a question for us to answer on the forum I'm sure (well, most of us eh? @DNA3000 ?)

Alternatives that I am completely throwing up from nowhere: You have 3 profiles you can set up but only one is active at a time, you get X free switches a day, then from there you have to pay units. That way you could switch but not without limits.

Allow us to recover individual mastery points, instead of resetting the entire tree for the sake of a few points, allow us to click on for example courage, and retrieve between 1-3 points from there and put them elsewhere. That way it saves us a ton (relatively) of units if you have to put them all back in deep wounds, assassin, suicides etc.

DNA3000

Alternatives that I am completely throwing up from nowhere: You have 3 profiles you can set up but only one is active at a time, you get X free switches a day, then from there you have to pay units. That way you could switch but not without limits.

I don't think that works, because it is difficult to say how many switches per day are reasonable. If you're placing defenders, you have to switch in and then out just for a couple minutes to place defenders. That burns two switches but without any actual game play. Battlegrounds adds additional pressure: the obvious intent of the design is to allow players to just bounce in, do a match or two, and bounce out. But that also implies two switches just to casually pop in and out of battlegrounds.

From my perspective, I don't think the game naturally flows players into playing one game mode, then another, then another gradually. It promotes switching back and forth, sometimes many times per day. But counting each switch into and then out of a game mode as one or two switches, when those players aren't actually "changing" anything really, seems to me to be the wrong way to "count" changes. I think it makes more sense to count picking a mastery profile for war, and then a month later when you decide there's a better way you want to try, you charge for that genuine rearrangement of masteries to be a "thing" you charge for, more appropriate.

Allow us to recover individual mastery points, instead of resetting the entire tree for the sake of a few points, allow us to click on for example courage, and retrieve between 1-3 points from there and put them elsewhere. That way it saves us a ton (relatively) of units if you have to put them all back in deep wounds, assassin, suicides etc.

The reason we can't currently do this is probably because in the general case this is complicated by prerequisites. Some masteries require others, and some masteries require a certain number of points in a section. Allowing players to individually remove and replace points requires the game to keep track of such things dynamically and correctly block inconsistent options. This is probably more work than the devs want to devote to mastery changes.

D٨RK_ANG3L

How long are they temporarily free?
Until the 21th of March

Is there a post that I can look up or was there an in-game message?

Malreck04

The purpose of masteries is to change them according to the enemy and to the hero that we are using.
That's actually false. The intent of the mastery system is for players to have to choose between the pros and cons of the different masteries, and to live with those decisions. Allowing mastery changes at all is a compromise between not locking players into suboptimal choices and not letting players escape the trade offs of the different masteries.

It was never intended for players to be able to choose whichever masteries they wanted to use for every single fight. That defeats the purpose of having to actually make and live with game choices.

…

If this were true, switching between masteries with units would never have been an option. Remember reset tokens? Something like that would have been in place to limit the number of times people would be able to switch masteries in, say, a month

Secondly, on a point bittersteel made, people already switch masteries during abyss runs, alliance wars. 100-200 units feel less significant when you have a couple thousand at hand

Arena grinders and spenders have the option to change up their masteries as many times in a day as they want, as long as they can pay in units(equivalently, in time or in money).

I’m not the guy who goes around calling this game p2w, so I have a hard time believing you’re on the right track this time.

Moosetiptronic

Could they lock changes, as they do with champions, if you are active in certain content? So special quests (abyss etc) you could change them. But if you have active champions in war, AQ, story or EQ you can't?

Could be a way of achieving limitations

Champ_Z

If not free, I wouldn't mind them costing gold or loyalty or something instead of units

Xylagor

Free resetting and rebuilding masteries is one of the most refreshing changes I have experienced the last time while playing mcoc. It allowed me to tune my mastery setup exactly for what I wanted to achieve, and this without the unit cost. This unit cost is what holds people back from playing around with masteries and trying new and different setups. Often you chose one average setup and stick with it. Being not optimal for the task you’re up to makes playing often dull and boring. Tuning and changing my mastery setup freely has brought me nothing but pure joy. Going from very defensive setup for AW defense, pure offence for cursing through EQ, a balanced setup for AQ and AW attack, a very specific one for completing some of Carina’s challenges or just trying out something different.
Santa, I have never asked for much, but cloud you please convince Kabam to keep masteries unit free? I promise to be a good boy! 🙏

nelsonroa

and nobody from the creative team says anything about this issue, which is something that they should have improved a long time ago.

Mik81

The purpose of masteries is to change them according to the enemy and to the hero that we are using.
That's actually false. The intent of the mastery system is for players to have to choose between the pros and cons of the different masteries, and to live with those decisions. Allowing mastery changes at all is a compromise between not locking players into suboptimal choices and not letting players escape the trade offs of the different masteries.

It was never intended for players to be able to choose whichever masteries they wanted to use for every single fight. That defeats the purpose of having to actually make and live with game choices.

The main compromise most players - and probably the developers - are willing to live with is mastery profiles. As the game has evolved, it has evolved game modes that place radically different requirements and pressures on mastery configurations. As the devs don't want mastery decisions to lock players into or out of participating effectively in different game modes, allowing players to have different mastery configurations for each game mode is probably something the game will eventually provide an option for.

But an option to change masteries per fight? That's extremely unlikely. Masteries are intended to be a kind of development tree. They aren't intended to be prefight abilities.

You can change masteries per fight now. It's just a cost, it is not a restriction by design but an economic restriction.

A restriction by design is having 60 and 60 points only. There are players switching masteries +10 times a week where other just change then once per year.

Nothing to do with game design more likely to separate the pay to win, ultra dedicated players from the rest. It is an eletist club that you can belong or not whether you want to pay the cost or not.

And even if it was a game design, it is honestly a very poor design since at least for me as a player the ability to switch masteries adds an extra element of pre planning and strategy that makes the game more enjoyable. It is like a Witcher that drinks his potions before each fight. You can make the game harder, in fact, the game has been increased in difficulty in the past years, masteries could just be another thing to face a challenge. A lot of chars are design with this or that optimal masteries. If you don't switch, you just get sub optimal chats or less enjoyable chats. I'm talking about fun, about options. It is not like they are game breaking, and the fact that you can pay to switch, it really invalidates the hard restriction...

Maybe if they are free, it should add additional restrictions, lees points, higher cost....idk, but economic restrictions on an infinite economy only limited by your willingness to spend your own money it is a very poor design game restrictions. I'd call it more a pay to win option more than design restriction

TheTalents

The purpose of masteries is to change them according to the enemy and to the hero that we are using.
That's actually false. The intent of the mastery system is for players to have to choose between the pros and cons of the different masteries, and to live with those decisions. Allowing mastery changes at all is a compromise between not locking players into suboptimal choices and not letting players escape the trade offs of the different masteries.

It was never intended for players to be able to choose whichever masteries they wanted to use for every single fight. That defeats the purpose of having to actually make and live with game choices.

…
If this were true, switching between masteries with units would never have been an option. Remember reset tokens? Something like that would have been in place to limit the number of times people would be able to switch masteries in, say, a month

Secondly, on a point bittersteel made, people already switch masteries during abyss runs, alliance wars. 100-200 units feel less significant when you have a couple thousand at hand

Arena grinders and spenders have the option to change up their masteries as many times in a day as they want, as long as they can pay in units(equivalently, in time or in money).

I’m not the guy who goes around calling this game p2w, so I have a hard time believing you’re on the right track this time.

Agreed, as I said before that explanation is irresponsible at best. You know how many units I could grind if I didn't have to worry about going back and forth between masteries for war season? It is absolutely about money. I just hear blah blah blah when anybody tries to argue differently. I'm not blaming Kabam for their profits but I think it is just time to let it go and make a pro player move for all of us.

It is a much needed change at this point, especially because Kabam can do it so easily. It's one change we don't have to worry about bugs whereas mastery presets is sure to come with a whole host of errors before it works properly given the past the history of the game.