Guild Wars 2

Hello ArenaNet and fellow Guild Wars 2 players!

I wanted to bring up a suggestion pertaining to game updates that involve trait changes for professions, specifically when a trait is merged/replaced/removed or when a new one is introduced.

Currently, I’ve noticed that, unless you’ve read the patch notes, players are often unaware of these changes until they notice them in-game through noticeable changes to their builds’ functions or when selecting traits for a new/different build.

For example, there was an update on April 30 where, in terms of Warrior traits, one trait was replaced, two were merged, and a new one was introduced. One of my friends, however, was unaware that a trait they used (Turtle Defense) was removed/replaced until May 30.

Even when players do read the patch notes, some may blitz through the list that describes skill/trait changes and only focus on the ‘major’ changes of a patch (i.e. WvW, PvE, Dungeons, New Content, etc.).

Therefore, I would like to offer various ideas to possibly spread the word about trait changes:

• Have a bulletin notice appear on the character selection screen whenever a player first logs in after an update listing all the patch notes
• Same thing, but the bulletin notice would only highlight skill/trait changes
• Have a message sent through players’ mail, much like the Live Story messages, to individual characters listing the skill/trait changes pertaining specifically to the race/profession they log in as (i.e. a sylvari guardian would get a notice only of changes for sylvari/guardian skills/traits, while an asura engineer would only get a notice of asura/engineer skill/trait changes)
• In addition to these messages/bulletins, give players an advanced warning prior to content updates that list any changes for skills/traits, specifically if a trait is going to be removed/replaced, merged with another, or be introduced, so players are aware that their builds may change

The same could be done for changes done to skills as well, that way players will be notified of changes in both sectors.

I hope you will consider an in-game notice system like this in a future update, and I hope that other players would find this suggestion useful!

teaandbickies.1957:

• In addition to these messages/bulletins, give players an advanced warning prior to content updates that list any changes for skills/traits, specifically if a trait is going to be removed/replaced, merged with another, or be introduced, so players are aware that their builds may change

It’s a good idea, but they will never, ever give us advance warning of a change again. They did with ascended gear, and the forums exploded with arguments, Anet covered there ears, and then thousands of players left the game.

Somehow they now think that not letting us know what changes are going to happen (barring hotfixes) will keep us from figuring out when they’ve outright lied about what changed they are going to implement.

And, I predict a flood of people claiming that if you don’t lurk on the forums and read the update notes, you’re bad at the game.

(I really do like the idea of putting the skill/trait changes on the log-in screen, btw. I just don’t believe Anet will do it.)

After every path i take 10 minutes just to look at every mesmer traitto see if something got stealth nerfed, and most of the times theres atleast 1 :/. This sugestion would let me play those 10 minute instead so i approve. Also, it would be better if arenanet just put all changes in the patch notes, because most of the time theyre simply incomplete and we find the nerfs out the hard way. I can think of plenty changes that i found but were never in any patch notes