Guild Wars 2

Only thing missing is a way to save builds, so you can easily switch between dungeonbuild, wwwbuild, farmingbuild and whatever you might wanna call them. Buildtemplates ftw!

Play how you want – the initial idea that this game is trying to stick to.

If you want to go outside and explore the content so you get your trait unlocks – awesome – go for it.

If you want to just farm the dungeons/ champ train or flip the TP because that’s what you like to do in game – awesome – go for it.

I don’t believe any category of player should be punished for liking certain aspects of the game.
I do not believe anyone should be forced to do content they don’t like or care for in order to get the things they need to do the content they do enjoy.

Remember how tedious farming dragonite ore was ? Why put people through that?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Healix.5819:

For example, imagine having the best trait locked behind Liadri without offering an alternative.

That would be awesome. I would love if they did this!

Great – And what happens to the other, more numerous players that would hate this?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Any character that was created before the feature pack build will be grandfathered into the system; meaning that they will have traits 1 through 12 of each line unlocked. The new 13 traits will need to be unlocked by everyone. Any character created after the build will be required to unlock all of their traits via content or purchasing trait guides.

Any chance you might reconsider this ruling? This means for each of my eight existing characters, all but mere 5 Grandmaster traits will be unlocked. In doing so, you essentially remove the opportunity for progression from my many low level alts (5 at level 10-30), and I certainly don’t intend to delete them just to start anew. And I assume I am not the only one in this situation.

Here is a proposal how you could grandfather every existing character while leaving room for progression for existing low-level characters: Unlock traits based on the current mastery level of an existing character. That is, if a character has unlocked the Grandmaster level, she will unlock traits 1-12, if she only unlocked the Master level, she will unlock 1-10, and if she merely unlocked the Adept level, she will receive 1-6. Existing characters that did not unlock any trait level will receive no traits.

In doing so, you wouldn’t force us to delete dear low-level characters just for the sake of experiencing the new progression system.

~MRA

Rangersix.1754:

Which would be great! Why is this a bad thing, when Lyssa is now something that is hardly ever done, basically only when the worldtrains are there? Imagine that events like that would be done on regular intervals because people would actually get meaningful rewards from them.

No – that’s not how it would go.
Most players would zerg it for a few weeks until the majority of the player base got it then nobody would bother again. Unless going with a train which makes it a guaranteed win and easy.

Remember the achievement trains of WvW season 1? Thought so.

While I wouldn’t mind if they reverted the level restrictions, what I was responding to is the people who are saying “these trait changes are horrible” and then their only explanation is that oh, you get traits later in the leveling curve now.

Well, “the trait changes” are a whole bundle of different changes. Some of them can be horrible even if others are fine, and the horrible ones don’t seem to have any baring on the good ones, so why not just remove the ones everyone agrees are horrible? Keep EVERY change listed in the blog post, except instead of starting traits at level 30 and all that, change that one portion of the update to:

• You no longer get trait points starting at level 11. Instead, you get 1 trait point at level 15 (this one point being the new “five point” version that automatically kicks you into a minor trait), 1 more at level 20, and so on until level 80, and Master and GM tiers are unlocked at levels 40 and 60 as is currently the case.

The only even minor necessity that I can see for this specific change is that they don’t want you unlocking the new GM traits until you hit 80, but in that case all they’d need to do is put all the conditions for earning them in level 80 zones, and restrict use of the purchasable versions to level 80, just as they do with number other consumables.

Now that they’re adding more ways to fight I hope they actually add something to fight. New zones? Dungeons? Raidlike content? But I wont hold my breath.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

perilisk.1874:

ArtemusHunter.9521:

The one thing I want to know is if the training manuals will change from allowing access to teaching a bunch of traits of that tier.

As I read it, there are no more tier-unlock manuals, those are just unlocked automatically at certain levels. The training manuals each teach a specific trait, and newly introduced traits will have more expensive manuals (just like the newer heal skills are very expensive in SP)

Edit: Or were you asking if they will still have some use if you bought one in that past? I… wouldn’t count on that. They aren’t that expensive, so I doubt they will be given any new use.

Trait tiers will now unlock based on the level of your character. Manuals will be removed from the vendors and replaced with the purchasable trait guides as an alternative to unlocking traits via specific content.

Hello, Roy Cronacher. Thank you for your efforts on the game and your input in this thread. Regarding the purchasable trait guides:

Q.
What currency(ies) will be usable to purchase these trait guides?

• Karma
• Gold
• Gems
• Laurels
• Skill Points
• Other

Would you also be able to tell us how much of the currency(ies) would be needed to purchase the trait guides, please?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Any character that was created before the feature pack build will be grandfathered into the system; meaning that they will have traits 1 through 12 of each line unlocked. The new 13 traits will need to be unlocked by everyone. Any character created after the build will be required to unlock all of their traits via content or purchasing trait guides.

Automatically? Because I would prefer to play through it at least once (all my characters are already made).

How about a special skill book sent to each character through the mail that unlocks the traits instead, allowing the player to make the choice.

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.

I wanted it, actually. As did many others.

Yeah color me vain, but I was hoping the process for aquiring the traits was going to be more involved, and more rewarding, than just buying them. Now I apparently will already have them all but the last in each line by default.

It would have been cool for a task or whatever that was difficult, and mastering it really well resulted not just in the unlock, but some sort of minor cosmetic thing, like a projectile color change or whatever relative to the highest compeltion criterion on the task.

Prob. asking for too much I guess… but it’s the little things…

While we who have multiple lv80 characters may rejoice for easy trait resetting and more Grandmaster traits, the rest of the changes are hardly friendly to new players.

• In early levels, instead of gaining stats every level, new chars only gain power every six levels.
• Dungeons, especially Story Mode dungeons, already have arbitrary level requirement that don’t match their mechanical difficulty very well. Weakening sub end-game characters without raising minimum level requirement to these dungeons will only lead to more new players being frustrated for unable to complete dungeons.
• The scenario where new players may put 4 points into one trait line and another 14 into another is ludicrous when considering how easy it has been to reset traits. It’s an equivalent of saying a platformer game is confusing as there’s a hole on the ground, and the player may not know how to jump to overcome the obstacle. This is basically saying new players are stupid, which is quite insulting.

It’s a good thing that level 80 characters get the supposed “horizontal progression”… but why in gods’ name do new characters have to pay for the price? This is a slippery slope. What’s next? Elite skill unlocked at lv50?

Anyway, it would be nice for devs to explain why they think sub-level 80 characters need to be weakened when there are other, more subtle ways of teaching them how traits work in gw2.

I believe that the elite is moving to level 50 since I think that is where it is at in the chinese version.

But to answer your question, they are tuning down the 1-30 content to make it easier due to the lower trait points. You can see the post about it in the dev tracker.

I’m not liking the high level requirement.
Or the hunting aspect. I know they can be bought but just don’t like that either.

I’m sulking.

I like the reset being free. Not sure if that will console me any the situation being what it is.

…I have so many characters. So many.

The question is, how many of the new players actually use traits before 30?

When the game offer you everything from the start, people complain about how easy and un-rewarding it is. When the game offer you something every few levels, people complain about how punishing it is. There will never exist a game, pleasing everyone and what you find bad, others may find good.

Harper.4173:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Healix.5819:

For example, imagine having the best trait locked behind Liadri without offering an alternative.

That would be awesome. I would love if they did this!

Great – And what happens to the other, more numerous players that would hate this?

They could learn to actually play the game correctly or they would not be rewarded?

What ever happened to having skill rewarded?

KyreneZA.8617:

goldenwing.8473:

In other words, we are upending the game for Asian customers (we’ve seen other developers do this for that exact same reason), disrupting WvW Tournament, and (optimistically) introducing (only) months of new bugs. All timed to coincide with competitive releases.

We have to have faith in the team…

…that have neither been able to break the meta nor balance/fix the classes for a year and a half yet want to add even more to (un)balance with additional complexity? Somehow I don’t share your rather optimistic view of how badly this can all go wrong.

LOL. You are assuming I am actually that optimistic. Sorry, yes, my previous statement was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I see you agree.

The fact that all of this is going down in the midst of WvW Tournament is screaming " apocalyptic" proportions. It impacts motivation to even start the next WvW season.

Although I certainly do not expect it, I’d love to hear back from a developer (with example scenarios) that show they actually considered what the WvW customer experience will be from this impact. Problem is I have yet to be convinced that there is an understanding that customer experience (that funny little cornerstone of the entertainment business) actually is important. It feels like the focus seems to be on their own internal processes which ends up somehow fortuitously creating a nominal level of content for a “next bench” segment of players.

I digress.

As a retired Fortune 20 software dev, yes, I am also concerned about the amount of overhaul and resulting fallout. Just thinking about it makes me wince.

nGumball.1283:

When the game offer you everything from the start, people complain about how easy and un-rewarding it is. When the game offer you something every few levels, people complain about how punishing it is. There will never exist a game, pleasing everyone and what you find bad, others may find good.

This baffles me. There is no evidence suggest that new players found traits being confusing, and are quitting the game over it. What we actually have is people saying overworld pve (especially lv80- maps) are easy. Maybe too easy. But a large factor of the perceived easiness is because of a downscaled lv80 is always going to be much stronger (mainly due to equipment, stats from traits, and effects from traits). Nerfing strength of progressing characters are only deepening this disparity.

So what if the game gets a little tougher while leveling up? The game is mind-numbingly EASY.

(and yes, downscaling needs to be quite a bit more savagely applied than it is now)

Roy Cronacher.1576:

ipan.4356:

Unlocking traits through content is a great idea though.

I’d even remove the option to buy them from vendors.

While we think going out into the world to unlock traits is a cool reward for completing specific content, we wanted to have an alternative option in case that wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There are many different kinds of players. =)

Awesome! This game would definitely benefit from a healthy dose of alternative options when it comes to rewards, progression, profession roles, build diversity, etc, etc. Also, it would be great to have different methods of obtaining ascended gear because crafting and relying on RNG are not everyone’s cup of tea.

We don’t even know what else they’re adding in features yet. How do you know this is the only rebalance leveling?

deleted for abusing the privilege to be stupid.

I absolutely love the sounds of the changes, except the level unlocks. I don’t understand why the system isn’t just 1 point every five levels starting at 15. Much simpler, and maintaining the smooth progression curve.

Torsailr.8456:

How will the new trait system affect the Scrolls of Knowledge? Will they still only give you 1 sp or will they give you the full 5 point step?

And similarly, the Rare Scrolls that give you 5 sp, will they give you 2 full steps or 5 steps?

By step I mean from 0 to minor or minor to major, etc.

Will that be covered in the live blog tomorrow?

Scroll of Knowledge grants a single Skill Point, not a Trait Point.

Nick.6972:

Great! They’re finally doing what they promised us back in 2010/2011? Trait hunting? Nice.

Link to promise?

StinVec.3621:

Torsailr.8456:

How will the new trait system affect the Scrolls of Knowledge? Will they still only give you 1 sp or will they give you the full 5 point step?

And similarly, the Rare Scrolls that give you 5 sp, will they give you 2 full steps or 5 steps?

By step I mean from 0 to minor or minor to major, etc.

Will that be covered in the live blog tomorrow?

Scroll of Knowledge grants a single Skill Point, not a Trait Point.

…duh, I’m an idiot….thats what I get for posting without coffee…

“Hello players, we the developers hear you, and we think a radical idea would be to do the opposite of everything that you suggest. Does this sound exciting for you, because it sounds exciting for us.”

Torsailr.8456:

StinVec.3621:

Torsailr.8456:

How will the new trait system affect the Scrolls of Knowledge? Will they still only give you 1 sp or will they give you the full 5 point step?

And similarly, the Rare Scrolls that give you 5 sp, will they give you 2 full steps or 5 steps?

By step I mean from 0 to minor or minor to major, etc.

Will that be covered in the live blog tomorrow?

Scroll of Knowledge grants a single Skill Point, not a Trait Point.

…duh, I’m an idiot….thats what I get for posting without coffee…

Don’t worry, I know the no-coffee-braindead feeling all too well! You should see some of the dumb things I’ve asked/said on these forums before having (more) coffee.

So far, this is exactly what I wanted from this game, more reasons to explore and more traits to diversify builds (So my guildies who have left (due to lack of a trinity) may come back if combat allows for builds that aren’t as dps focused all the time). Looking forward to the next blog posts.

To be honest, I, too, would like an optional email item sent to all existing characters, to reset all my acquired traits so I can experience this progression system without having to create new characters.

I much prefer to re-explore the world of Tyria while searching for 50+ traits, than only to search for 5 new ones.

Looks like another low blow for rangers. I’m starting to think Anet really does hold something against them at this point.

Faster arrows? Yeah, ok, good luck finding anyone who will use that over another trait.

Nike.2631:

Nick.6972:

Great! They’re finally doing what they promised us back in 2010/2011? Trait hunting? Nice.

Link to promise?

By ‘promise’, he means ‘that blog they released during alpha before they changed how Traits would work’.

Now that refunds are free can we get templates?

• switches traits with a few clicks when out of combat for X seconds?

Soon GW1 parity!

“The Five Monkeys”

… are dead, Jim.

I had this thought too. People will usually leave if some one who isn’t 80 joins a dungeon party. This is only going to enforce that idea.

They should just make all dungeons level 80 and save everyone a bit of time.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I believe that the elite is moving to level 50 since I think that is where it is at in the chinese version.

But to answer your question, they are tuning down the 1-30 content to make it easier due to the lower trait points. You can see the post about it in the dev tracker.

Even easier than now? lol

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Harper.4173:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Healix.5819:

For example, imagine having the best trait locked behind Liadri without offering an alternative.

That would be awesome. I would love if they did this!

Great – And what happens to the other, more numerous players that would hate this?

They could learn to actually play the game correctly or they would not be rewarded?

What ever happened to having skill rewarded?

Play the game correctly – as in how you want to play it.

Define correctly? and what makes you think your way of playing it is that?

Playing the game doesn’t mean doing EVERY bit of content – some people play it for the social side. Others for the economic aspects and the thrill of the TP.
Some people are hardcore PVP and WvWers. Others run dungeons and little else.

What makes you think that in order to " play the game right " you have to play every aspect?

Also what makes you think you’re rewarding skill? What skill is that?
Again – I go back to Dragonite Ore – how is that rewarding skill ? How is zerging content to get a gated material skill?

So we get 14 instead of 70 points to spend. Start at level 30 and get one point every 6 levels until 66 when you get 2 points at a time. How are we going to get 14 trait points? It doesn’t add up.

Level 30 1st point
36 2nd point
42 3rd point
48 4th point
54 5th point
60 6th point
66 7th point
72 8th and 9th point
78 10th and 11th point

Now if we get the extra point at level 66 where we start earning two points that’s still only 12 trait points. Where/when do we get the last 2 points?

Right now we can get all our traits for a cost of 3 gold 10 silver. If the new traits, which will all be bought individually, cost a lot as some have speculated (100 g per trait) that would mean a lot of players will not be able to buy any traits.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Right now we can get all our traits for a cost of 3 gold 10 silver. If the new traits, which will all be bought individually, cost a lot as some have speculated (100 g per trait) that would mean a lot of players will not be able to buy any traits.

People speculated the feature patch will come in 2015, just saying

Guhracie.3419:

Huh. I’ve never seen anyone solo Jormag. Or Tequatl

Those aren’t champs.

Quality of Life improvements 19 months too late that should have been in the game at launch and which already existed in the game’s predecessor being hyped as the NEXT BIG THING! Yeah, color me unimpressed.

Reinventing the wheel is often a waste of time and resources. There’s nothing wrong with taking tried-and-true mechanics from the previous game and simply incorporating them into the new game.

Beats spending these many months obstinately refusing to budge despite thousands of posts to the contrary, only to discover the fans were right all along in crying out for a return to what already worked in the past.

Seriously, 100g per trait…even suggesting that seems ludicrous to me. Maybe 10g a trait, max.

If you compare it to signet of capture from GW1 (which is what it sounds like) then most of the traits should not be too hard to get, and straight out buying them will not be all that burdensome.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

But to answer your question, they are tuning down the 1-30 content to make it easier due to the lower trait points.

Oh, no. It’s already so boring to visit a 1-15 zone with a downscaled character… It kind of defeats the idea of downscaling for the open world content…

Celtic Lady.3729:

Right now we can get all our traits for a cost of 3 gold 10 silver. If the new traits, which will all be bought individually, cost a lot as some have speculated (100 g per trait) that would mean a lot of players will not be able to buy any traits.

It’s worth questioning where people are getting this speculation from.

That place would straight out of their kitten .

I really wished you guys had based it on map completion percentage.

Let me explain.

I recently up leveled three of my characters to 80 from the pvp tomes of knowledge. And while they are 80 yes, I hardly have any map completion on them. So it would have been nice to unlock these traits exploring Tyria with them. I was planning on doing so eventually. Too bad I won’t get the whole new experience doing so. I mean I can always create a new character, but that’s not in my plans for now.

But great news this is yeah.

I think it’s better to unlock the first trait at 20, and every 5 levels after that with 2 at 80, 14 traits right on the dot with 2 for hitting cap. That lets characters start playing around with traits at lower levels (one major trait by 25) and is much more coherent than 1 per 6 levels and then 2 after level 66.

Unless we are missing something. There very much could be a viable reason to have traits truckle out starting at 30 at 6 level intervals. After all there are a dozen + blog updates before this comes out that could very well explain the reasoning.

Oh and props for having traits unlock by achieving things in the game world. The one thing I miss the most from GW1 was going out and taking on challenging content to get the Elite Skills I wanted most.

wolfpaq.7354:

Seriously… you’re that concerned about traits while leveling up or traits being locked? How many of you in this thread have not made it to level 80 yet? How many of you haven’t created a character yet? You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Leveling is easier than it has ever been. You can level up to 80 just by doing world completion and never even make it past the level 25 zones. Hell, you can skip straight from level 1 to 20 and feed easily obtainable skill point scrolls into your character to have all the utilities unlocked and ready to go. There are readily avilable tomes. Crafting still rewards a considerable amount of experience for cheap.

Leveling happens to be the main thing I do and enjoy when playing GW2. I have 8 characters and 2 free character slots, and I plan(ned) on leveling a LOT more. I love the feeling of leveling up and seeing the reward in form of a trait point I can spend, and seeing that I get closer to that cool next trait.

No access to traits until level 30 and only every 6 levels is going to reduce my enjoyment of leveling drastically. I know, because WoW did the exact same thing. You used to be able to spend a talent point each time you levelled in WoW, now you get to choose a talent every 15 levels. Pretty much ruined leveling in WoW for me, which is why I was sooooo glad about GW2’s system up until now.

I’m certainly keen on the free re-traiting and new traits etc, but the leveling aspect ruins it all for me tbh

I hope arena.net reconsiders this.

wolfpaq.7354:

You can’t miss what you never had, and there is soooo much more to guild wars 2 than traits. Sure experienced people like yourself might miss it, but you also have birthday scrolls & know all the tricks for hitting 80 super fast.

I honestly don’t see how it would drive away new people. Traits will continue to be what they were when I was leveling my first character: an incentive to hit max level.

I have to admit I agree that the push from 40/60 to 60/80 is too much, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world/massive drawback that people in this thread are making it out to be. It’s unfortunate, but mostly irrelevant.

But why mess something up that was working fine? I really don’t see how starting traits at 30, and only getting to “do” something with traits every 6 levels is in any way an improvement to the current system. I was a new player 1,5 years ago, and I never had any trouble at all understanding the trait system. And one of the things I loved right from the start was that symbol that popped up when I levelled, letting me know that I could reap my reward and spend a trait point.

nGumball.1283:

The question is, how many of the new players actually use traits before 30?

The game really isn’t that old, I remember being in beta as if it was just last week ago, and I got along very fine with traits, as did all of my friends. I really can’t imagine many new players looking at traits and not understanding it at all.