Guild Wars 2

Turgut.4397:

Zoid.2568:

Storm of the Ages.9076:

Zoid.2568:

Storm of the Ages.9076:

First thing I thought of =o But we would need a lot more than 2 free slots. Once you can save builds, people will start trying crazy things. It will really open up diversity ^.^

Buy in gem store if you need more than two. Simple as that.

In gw1, I had a minimum of 10 specs for each class, and almost everyone that I knew that played did. Just 2 spots for free would be a huge mistake, and I think anet would already know that. IF a restriction was to be added, it should be much larger, as there will be dozens of builds a person will want to save on their main.

I expect the temple unlock in the gem store would be account wide, so if you really want more than two, you can convert gold to gems and buy a few slots. I expect them to be about 200-400 gems for each unlock.

Why should this feature cost us money? And why are people discussing it’s prices? Such a basic feature was 100% free in GW1 and accessible with the click of a button. You can save dozens maybe hundreds of builds. I don’t see why people jump straight to the payment options before really thinking it through. We’re already being bombarded with gem store items and restrictions (the account-wide bank space is a good example).

GW1 is a totally different game. In a totally different age of gaming.

It sucks that a lot of the people on page 1 DID NOT READ the OP or the TLDR. I go out of my way to make a TLDR for once (since the OP was quite large), and some people assume they know what the topic is about by the title, and spam some off topic drivel lol.

As for the people that understood this was about the levelling process (I even quoted the part about the levelling changes) and how the new changes would affect it (frankly in a bad way), thank you for the on topic input.

As well as boredom, less character customization, less engagement in content, and taking longer to learn about the class, we have the stat point issue.

You gain 10 stat points per trait point spent currently.

In the proposed change, a character at level 29 will be missing 180 stat points, that is not a small amount, especially at that level, where gear provides almost nothing.

At level 30, in the current system you would have 180 points. But under this new system at level 30 you can place 1 trait, which gives 50 points (25 + 25), so they will still be missing 130 stat points.

This also doesn’t mention the effects of uplevelling at events, living story, wvw etc. We have no idea how badly this is going to impact it. Uplevels are already paper weak, under this new system I fear they will be even worse.

Uplevelled players will be missing stats and traits until level 80, frankly a non 80 is now even weaker than they already are when uplevelled.

As for the boredom it creates by having less to do, and less to learn early on, I’ll compare this to another game.

Diablo 2, has 3 skill trees per class, with spells/abilities able to be learnt at character levels 1, 6, 12, 18, 24 and 30. So at level 1 you have no spell (besides some that start with +skill on weapon), at level 2 which only takes a few kills, you learn your first ability. Now imagine you had to get to level 18 first before learning ANY spells? It would be horrendous.

Edit: for some reason I doubled the stats gained by traits.. fixed that.

I generally agree with the OP that level-locking traits until level 30 is overkill. We should start getting traits at level 15 and get 1 trait point every 5 levels for a total of 14 points. Starting at level 30 is way too late, and it doesn’t make any sense to backload so many trait points at the level 66 and onward point. If I were a new player experiencing that, I’d absolutely hate how boring things would be until then.

Not being able to change traits whenever I want, without additional loading screens was literally the biggest issue in running dungeons for me. I am so grateful.

Why would trait changes affect skill points?

Why are you concerned about skill points when they’re talking about Traits?

I am also confused on how trait changes affect skill points… You unlock traits either with gold or through activities… no one has mentioned Skill Points anywhere as far as I can tell…

Though this may still happen if they also introduce 10+ skills in this patch all of which cost ~30 skill points. Though most people I know have 500+ skill points so I don’t see them running out.

Vol.7601:

I remember in Aion, there were highly desirable skill signets that were a rare drop in the world. I wouldn’t mind having some really nice skills that have a low drop chance and worth 400g on the TP.

but that’s just me.

Uh … that would be the definition of “pay2win”.
“some really nice skill effects” would be a whole different story.

+1

A lot of players are still complaining about not being able to set up presets. But, eh.

It’s not a “totally different game.” It’s a squeal to a game made by the same company with the same ideas of how a game should work. Therefore, it stands to reason that they would want to encourage the sort of diversity that came with the original. If you look at how new traits are acquire, it already resembles the skill hunting that you found in gw1. If they add savable builds, they should do it in the same manor.

Paying addition money to open up experimentation is what would be unreasonable. And if they did restrict it like that, I can 100% guarantee that it will be fought about up and down the forums until everyone’s fingers are blue.

The objective of this patch is open up the game, no restrict it.

+1 I’ve been wanting this soooooo much! TY

But… you won’t have traits until 30? Why?

I disagree that this a “bad idea”. When I played my first character and got my first trait point, it seemed pointless as it really added little to my abilities.

I just stuck it into a trait line not knowing how it would affect my build in the future. When the numbers of points dedicated to traits became great enough to make a difference, they were just being reset anyways at the trainer.

In short they really did little for me until around level 30.

As I approached level 30 with that first character , I also was buying skills willy nilly as I had no idea how they could be impacted by one of the selectable traits.

With my next characters I would not even bother allocating trait points until around level 20 and then spent the 10 accrued in a batch to best fit the skills I had decided to take.

I do that with all my characters now.

It very much a to each his own but I do think the boredom factor is overstated.

My room mate just started playing and took a character to 30 in a few days. She is addicted to the game and loves it. She asked me to look at her character to see if she was “building” her right when she was around level 25.

She had not even used a trait point. They were all unspent yet she was having no issues hunting and was hardly bored. When she realized she had over 10 to spend she got a much greater “feedback” as to how effective those points in a traitline could be.

I would suggest a “creep” of points with her investing one point at a time would have given her less insight to their nature and how they work in a build.

The one thing I don’t like about this change is that new players don’t get traits until level 30.

That’s a pretty darn long time to go without traits, considering traits are pretty much the biggest part of building a character. Seriously, every time I create a new character I always look forward to level 11 so I can start getting traits. Now I have to wait until level 30? That means you’re going over 1/3 of the leveling process with zero access to traits. Seems pretty sad.

Doesn’t seem like a very good move towards first impressions either. Make brand-new players wait until level 30 until they can even play with the major customization aspect.

So with the new trait system not having people buy book unlocks, will people get refunds for the ones they have purchased? If you are like me and have 8 80’s that is roughly 24 gold.

Beldin.5498:

/agree

I’m really happy that i don’t plan to level any new character at the moment, since that all doesn’t really sounds funny but more like boredom.

As someone with 8 toon slots with only 2 of them 80, these changes make me want to stop playing.

Gery.2718:

overall it’s a good change, but for new players leveling a mesmer as the first character will be even more painful

This. In regards to leveling to 80 without crafting/grouping in open world, some professions do pretty well without traits while others are more painful. When I leveled my Mesmer, I had a hard time until I reached Lv40 for Deceptive Evasion (clone on dodge). With the new patch, I would have to reach Lv60 to get it. While annoying that it takes longer for some professions to get up to speed, it isn’t too bad since leveling in Guild Wars 2 is easier than other games I’ve played.

I see the reasoning for moving the threshold up. Basically, distributing the learning curve more evenly from Lv1 to 80. However, I think too much is towards the later levels with the new trait thresholds.

My suggestion is to drop the thresholds to 20/40/60 for adept/master/grandmaster access and start at 20 for trait point gain. Pre-patch it was 10/40/60 starting at 10 for trait point gain.

I have to say the whole thing is just bad design anyway you want to spin it.

My biggest gripe is that they are finally making big changes to the trait system and this is all they do? Seperate the stats from traits and make it another advancement system that starts at level 10. The stats being attached to traits was bad from the start and contributes greatly what’s a “viable” build.

The discovering system for traits just sounds awful. I get that in concept it pushes people into different areas of the game, but in reality it forces players to do things they don’t want to do. There is a reason people aren’t doing certain things, how about you address those issues before dropping traits behind that wall? Even if it gets people to branch out, it gets them to branch out long enough to get the trait and then never do it again making it harder for others to do it. Just off the top of my head there really isn’t much reason to do dungeons besides skins because you can’t get the best gear there. There is no big payoff when clearing a dungeon it’s just tokens that you need a whole lot more of before you can even get an item.

Next is the new stepping of points. This just purely hurts early play of the game. Get trait points at least made you feel like you’re progressing. Now you need to slog your way to 30 to even start it. You don’t even get your best traits until 80 but oh whats that? Sorry you need to do a dungeon, fractal, world boss, etc to get them. You know the content those traits were made to be used for…

Want to make things better? Separate the stats from traitlines and make that progression start at level 10. Don’t tie traits to certain traitlines and make them cost certain points. This would allow people to take 3-4 top traits or 10-15 lower traits, it would give a huge amount of build diversity. Sure balance would be spun on it’s head but I think we can all agree that the balance currently isn’t so great that it couldn’t be scrapped and we start again fresh.

I’m not a big fan of the trait changes either. Basically taking out the small progression of stats and putting it way later. Looking at it, I don’t see why they couldn’t just fix it so you earn 1 skill point every 5 levels, starting at level 15. That would match up perfectly with the current system, and still prevent players from putting odd numbers in their trait lines.

This also means you don’t get to play with Grandmaster traits until level 80 which is when I find that a class starts to really come together. Especially for some classes like Mesmer, their abilities don’t really gain momentum until they have a bunch of traits working together. The higher level restrictions just feels unnecessary.

Yeah, it’s a good change.

not being able to get any traits until 30 will kill this game. some of the adept traits are needed before this, or ANET are u basically saying these traits are worthless and no one needs them?

So these new trait unlock items. Are they a guaranteed drop, or do they have the typical precursor level abysmally small RNG chance of dropping?

I can see the grandmaster traits now, just 300gold at the vendor, or solo Teq for a specific trait.

Yeah, this is going to be real popular.

30 for Adept seems excessive. Somehow, if you are making a new character, you are going to need a lot of help.

I love the change. No more constantly waypointing and getting my traits reset!

THANK YOU for the change.

Edit: In addition to the free trait reset anywhere, I hope Anet removed the confirmation window when allocating X points into Y traitline. A small (I hope) QoL improvement since players will be resetting or adjusting traits much more often.

Two things about low level characters:

1. You are sub-30 for about 4 hours unless you are intentionally avoiding things that give XP.
2. Low level characters are OP when in level-appropriate areas. The only time I die while leveling is when I jump into a Group Event by myself.

Considering the two items above, I posit that the upcoming changes, while technically a nerf, will not have a large enough impact to be noticeable.

maddoctor.2738:

Max Lexandre.6279:

The thing i have wish for is one option to save trait builds, that seems to still be not there and we need to reset and make it again.

Although the save/load system would be awesome, there will also be a “-” button to make it easier to lower how many traits you have on each line, so if you missclick for example you won’t have to reset all your traits.
Also, with only 14 traits to allocate it won’t be so click-heavy anymore.

The number of clicks won’t change if you were taking a minimal clicking approach to begin with!

After you reset you allocate your highest tier traits first. The game will automatically allocate enough points in that trait line to make your selected trait available. That is a total of 14 clicks(one click to bring up the list of traits, one click to select the trait for seven traits).

Realist.5812:

Experimentation

A new player in the current system, can experiment with builds, in a minor way, once s/he hits level 11.

In the proposed system, a new player/character CANNOT even begin to experiment with builds, until level 30.

That’s how it is now. What kind of experimentation can you do at level 11 with 1 trait point? Even at level 20, there’s not enough points to actually see any difference. Besides, trait bonuses are negligible at lower levels.

My concern is actually at level 80 since now we can’t even optimize our stats because we either get 5% or 0%…but what if I only want 1%?

Regardless, it doesn’t matter at this point in time. What really matter is, what kind of story Anet will come up with that will keep players playing. The trait system means nothing if the story is the same old pig but with different make-up.

I don’t understand why people are still complaining about not having a trait build save feature. There will be 14 trait points that you can reset any time, anywhere. There will also be a minus button in case you don’t need to change everything in the build to respec it. 14 points would only be a few more clicks than choosing a different saved build. Are we getting so lazy that we can’t click a mouse a few times? I also don’t understand all the uproar about not getting traits until level 30. How many times have you gone 10 levels and forgotten to spend your trait points? It’s not going to slow down your leveling, get real. How often are you leveling new characters at this point anyway?

People complain, no matter what. You can’t please everyone.

You can experiment freely now, save what you need and you don’t need that many build. I’m curious about where and what do you need, that a few slot isn’t enough.
I suggested to start with only 2, because in my personal opinion that’s enough.

I would really love to see this feature. Of course, this should also include equipped armor, weapons and trinkets in the templates.

As another proposal for a paid extension to this system, maybe the equipment could be stored in a separate space from the inventory.

Lunchbox.6970:

I don’t understand why people are still complaining about not having a trait build save feature. There will be 14 trait points that you can reset any time, anywhere. There will also be a minus button in case you don’t need to change everything in the build to respec it. 14 points would only be a few more clicks than choosing a different saved build. Are we getting so lazy that we can’t click a mouse a few times? I also don’t understand all the uproar about not getting traits until level 30. How many times have you gone 10 levels and forgotten to spend your trait points? It’s not going to slow down your leveling, get real. How often are you leveling new characters at this point anyway?

Yes but you have to remember what traits you wanted and where to put all the points. I have a bad memory and jumping from 1 class to another can get really confusing. I don’t like just playing 1 class and even if I played 1 class I wouldn’t just use 1 build. I would much prefer a build save feature so I can quickly change builds without making the process take 30 min to 1 hour. People don’t like waiting for you and if I told them it was gonna be a bit to alter my build they would just leave the party.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

It’s not a “totally different game.” It’s a squeal to a game made by the same company with the same ideas of how a game should work. Therefore, it stands to reason that they would want to encourage the sort of diversity that came with the original. If you look at how new traits are acquire, it already resembles the skill hunting that you found in gw1. If they add savable builds, they should do it in the same manor.

Actually, they would be for the opposite. In various interviews, the devs have said that one of the problems with GW1 was the diversity.

Paying addition money to open up experimentation is what would be unreasonable. And if they did restrict it like that, I can 100% guarantee that it will be fought about up and down the forums until everyone’s fingers are blue.

Well then don’t implement templates in the first place. That’s another perfectly valid solution.

I do like the new traits that have been mentioned so far, and the IDEA of unlocking them through exploration and general play sounds good, but holy hell RNG drop rates for trait books is a very disturbing prospect, as is the ability to purchase trait books with gold. Considering they could be very expensive it could be yet another cash grab by Anet for gem to gold sales.

Skill acquisition in GW1 was reasonable. For example if you beat that boss once, you automatically got that skill 100% of the time. My fear is that this article could be yet again another hyped up, misleading bit of drivel that will only introduce more pay2win concepts.

If they make trait acquisition guaranteed or through a token system(for reasonable costs!), then it wouldn’t be so bad.

Aside from that I want to love these changes, but I can’t help but cringe a little thinking of how this could all go wrong.

Kudos to Anet.
I really love you all guys.

“but holy hell RNG drop”
no rng, you can buy trait books from trainer or finish a challenge (like skillpoints?).

mtpelion.4562:

Two things about low level characters:

1. You are sub-30 for about 4 hours unless you are intentionally avoiding things that give XP.

So new players should just buy gold for gems so that they can craft to 30 before starting to actually play the game ?

Dalanor.5387:

Since in a recent announcement we get finally the option to retrait for free on the fly, it would be nice to get build templates too.
Give 2 free slots and make it expandable with some gem store item up to … idk … 10 slot?

source:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-april-2014-feature-pack/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

Yes and NO. I like the idea about saving build templates but I don’t agree with it costing money or there being such a limitation on how many I can save. It would be nice to save my builds on GW2 servers but if that is a problem then I would prefer to save the builds locally like in GW1. If you really “Need” a pay option then that could be pay gems to save builds on their servers versus your personal computer.

wookiee.4631:

Just as I’m thinking to myself “I’ve been playing nearly non-stop since release, maybe I’ll take a break until season 2…” they start announcing more specific stuff on the feature release. >.<

Not sure I’m okay with making players wait until 30 for traits, but I guess the only way to know for sure if it’ll be okay is to wait for patch day and see for myself. Also, given that there’s the option to purchase major traits, who would want to hunt down traits in the world? Unless the prices are high, wouldn’t most people just choose to buy their stuff? Other than that, everything sounds incredibly awesome!

Well the prices will definitely be higher than they are now.

For example the Adept manual is 10s. That will unlock 30 traits. I doubt the adept trait books are going to be sold for 33c.

Whether they are RNG or not hasn’t been confirmed yet

TSS.4605:

I would really love to see this feature. Of course, this should also include equipped armor, weapons and trinkets in the templates.

As another proposal for a paid extension to this system, maybe the equipment could be stored in a separate space from the inventory.

Yeah, that’s another thing, but they stated it’s complicated because of reasons.
But i would like to see a system implemented similar how WoW worked with the equipment templates. Get your stuff on you, press save, done. And it even wrote a notification with red letters if it can’t find items in your inventory!

Asia Skyly.7198:

30 for Adept seems excessive. Somehow, if you are making a new character, you are going to need a lot of help.

It is going to be especially bad in any new living world release, because even in downscaled areas, Anet seems to balance enemies for level 80 characters with access to all of their traits. This change is going to make it even more difficult for lower level and downscaled characters to play.

wookiee.4631:

Also, given that there’s the option to purchase major traits, who would want to hunt down traits in the world? Unless the prices are high, wouldn’t most people just choose to buy their stuff?

Actually, if it’s available to earn just by playing, I usually opt to obtain something that way and save my money for things that I can’t get myself. Unless it would take an abysmally long time to get (farming t6 crafting items?). I guess I’m just a very frugal player but I prefer to save rather than spend, even if the price is not super-high. Though if an immediate need arises and I have to have a trait NOW, then I’ll lay down the money.

No. On the other hand neither will you have to pay for all your already unlocked major traits.

Yet again, screwing around “fixing” something that isn’t broken, that we didn’t ask for.

Guild management tools and guild commander tags.
Auto-loot that works.
Perma noob stealth thieves.
Forging multiple items in one pass, instead of repetitive stress injuries.
In-game moderators to start dealing with the hackers.
Game crashes at the massive boss events.

I could go on and on, but there is no point. You’re not listening.

Dav.9152:

wookiee.4631:

Also, given that there’s the option to purchase major traits, who would want to hunt down traits in the world? Unless the prices are high, wouldn’t most people just choose to buy their stuff?

Actually, if it’s available to earn just by playing, I usually opt to obtain something that way and save my money for things that I can’t get myself. Unless it would take an abysmally long time to get (farming t6 crafting items?). I guess I’m just a very frugal player but I prefer to save rather than spend, even if the price is not super-high. Though if an immediate need arises and I have to have a trait NOW, then I’ll lay down the money.

Depends what content the particular trait I want is locked behind. I find it annoying because I don’t always know that I DO want the trait. Now, I can experiment, but experimentation will for me under this new system be gated behind events that I may not want to do. I don’t think it’s a good idea to place traits behind content not everyone can do – dungeons or WvW aren’t a good idea to me.

But, if these traits cost a lot of money, then I would feel like I HAD to go and find a group and run X dungeon just for the chance that it’s the trait I think works best for my build. If I change my mind then, well, that’s even more irritating. So, generally, this would be forcing people to play things they don’t want to, which is a big thing this game was advertised as being against.

Zhaneel.9208:

I do like the new traits that have been mentioned so far, and the IDEA of unlocking them through exploration and general play sounds good, but holy hell RNG drop rates for trait books is a very disturbing prospect, as is the ability to purchase trait books with gold. Considering they could be very expensive it could be yet another cash grab by Anet for gem to gold sales.

Skill acquisition in GW1 was reasonable. For example if you beat that boss once, you automatically got that skill 100% of the time. My fear is that this article could be yet again another hyped up, misleading bit of drivel that will only introduce more pay2win concepts.

If they make trait acquisition guaranteed or through a token system(for reasonable costs!), then it wouldn’t be so bad.

Aside from that I want to love these changes, but I can’t help but cringe a little thinking of how this could all go wrong.

The RNG skill acquisition in GW1 was pretty bad too. At least for Prophecies. They probably learned their lesson after that since none of the other campaigns have that issue.

That aside and as other people have mentioned you can just buy it from the trainer. That is pretty much required anyway because of WvW. Hopefully prices will be reasonable or it’s going to be another stab at those WvW players who do not want to do PvE …

yeah definitely about time. I was seriously worried when they tried to sell trait to us in gemstores, but prob because no one bought it they scraped it and finally gave it to us.

Now I dont have to go into wvw when I want to jump between the 3 builds I have across the board on my guard.

New traits are good. Having UI-based trait reset is great. Simplifying the trait points seems unnecessary to me, but I understand the idea of streamlining the game, so whatever. The rest of it, though, presents some problems, at least in my opinion. They are:

• The justification for simplifying the trait lines is a bit condescending. Yes, someone could spend 11/14 and end up with a less effective build, but someone could also spec a power weapon in a condition build and end up with a less effective play style. I’m all for simplifying redundancies, but, you know, trait lines aren’t rocket science.

• Waiting until 30 to even begin unlocking trait lines is awful. Waiting even longer to unlock master/grandmaster traits is even more awful. Some classes are just painful to level early on. Making that period last longer discourages leveling, and especially discourages alts.

• Trait unlock needs to be handled very, very carefully, as it has the potential to force people to play in ways that they don’t want in order to unlock class mechanics. This seems to go against the GW2 ethos of, “play how you want!” Forcing a PvPer into PvE, or a PvEer into PvP in order to get the build that they want kind of stinks.

• This leads into the second point: gold unlocks make things even trickier. I honestly can’t figure out what an appropriate price point would be. Set it too low, and you trivialize the challenge of obtaining the skills in the first place. Set it too high, and you end up essentially making horizontal progression pay-to-win, as you either need to be good at the trading post or spend real-life money in order to unlock the traits with gold. I honestly don’t believe that there’s a good middle point—I think it’ll be impossible to find a point where achievement-types don’t feel as though their effort is undervalued and casual players won’t feel compelled to buy gems -> convert to gold in order to unlock the traits.

These changes introduce inconvenience, then allow you to circumvent the inconvenience through gold (leveling through crafting, buying trait books). In a system where gold is directly and officially obtainable through cash purchases, this puts casual players who can’t afford to spend cash at a distinct mechanical disadvantage. There’s a level at which paying for convenience becomes pay-to-win. When paying real money allows you to completely circumvent a particular bit of content for a mechanical advantage, I feel that line is crossed.

While I am very happy about these announced changes (especially the ability to swap traits on the fly,) I have to add my voice to the others here who are concerned about early leveling with the new system.

For example, leveling an Elementalist at times can be a torturous experience without access to traits like Renewing Stamina, Final Shielding, Cantrip Mastery or the passive toughness/vitality/Attunement recharge boosts in Earth/Water/Arcana. With the new system, traits and stat boosts will only be available starting at level 30. I can see this as being frustrating for a new Ele trying to fight Dredge, Bandits, Nightmare Court or Veterans (not to mention Risen or underwater combat) in the early areas.

I’d greatly appreciate any information about what, if anything, has been implemented to avoid this scenario.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Yet again, screwing around “fixing” something that isn’t broken, that we didn’t ask for.

Guild management tools and guild commander tags.
Auto-loot that works.
Perma noob stealth thieves.
Forging multiple items in one pass, instead of repetitive stress injuries.
In-game moderators to start dealing with the hackers.
Game crashes at the massive boss events.

I could go on and on, but there is no point. You’re not listening.

That you didn’t ask for.. but there have been many that have.