Guild Wars 2

I only just got this game a few days ago and have managed to get to lvl 35.
My guy was going well and in most things I was having fun. But now he’s only got one trait point (not 25) and I feel like I took a giant step back.
I really liked the speed increase trait I had but I don’t think I can get it again until lvl 50? Did characters who are under 80 just get mega nerfed?

So I logged on with much exitement at the prospect of trying the new “Read the Wind” trait on my Ranger and was sorely disappointed when I realised I would be forced to participate in an event to unlock it!

Previously we would pay 2g or 3g for a book that unlocked the traits and their skill choices. Now if we visit that trainer, we can still buy those skills but at a rediculous price!

If you were to purches all the books it would cose you a total of 43g and 360skill points!!! What a joke!

Yes you can do the events to unlock things, but come on….So basically anyone that was not fortunate enough to have made a toon to 80 and bought the manuals before the patch is now extremely unlucky.

It’s for the best though.

What’s the event? Is it that bad?

It’s the crappy new system of allowing you to get traits only after you get to level 30.

Well, I just tried to do the event to unlock my new “Read the wind” ability because i REFUSE to pay more gold.

And was immediately throw into overflow sigh where is the megaserver?! And there is nobody there, no event.

So it’s now either wait days for some dumb event or waste 20 skill points and 3g on an ability that I SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY DEFAULT!!!

I’m forced to participate in some stupid Arrah and kill a high wizard that doesn’t exist and that I cannot kill on my own.

What are these events?

I don’t know, but it feels too much to push traits till you’re level 30. They add too many stats and useful effects to be ignored. You unlock most skills by the time you’re 30 if you play the game right, so why should you be crippled there?
I have several level 80 characters, but when I get on a lower level character it just feels horrible how bad the trait point distribution is now. Before that every level up would make you slightly better, and you’d start getting them after level 10.
It’s bad enough they’re divided into once every 5 levels now, making you less effective on every level that’s not divisible by 5, but to push them to 30… ?
Not to mention the fact that most of the new traits that were added are useless IMO.

Discuss.

Absolutely! I just started playing… and until I got my traits, I couldn’t even do my story quests! It’s kinda absurd… I get that’s it’s supposed to be a grind, but this game is years old and I kind of want to get to 80 ASAP to catch up to everyone already at 80 doing the 80 stuff and being at 80…

Good thing I only bought this half off… guess it’s not that much a waste if it turns to crap.

I’m really not understanding some of this. The trainer now has a pile of books for skills I’ve already unlocked (according to the books) so why are they there?
Will I need them or are they just for new characters? If they are for new characters only then I understand it’s a nice gold sink for the game but again nerfing the new players.
I’m failing to see the advantage of the new system. I’me sure it’s fine if you have a bunch of lvl 80’s but as a new players I think things just got harder.
Can someone fill me in please?

Gates of Arrah for me, kill some stupid wizard that never spawns.

Years old? seriously?

Anyway, they said they were adjusting the mobs for this, including personal stories. This has been talked about at length long before the patch.

Oh good now we need to do some events to unlock traits. How is this better?

Good thing they adjusted all the mobs between levels 11-79 to account for the trait changes.

If your character made before the patch, he/she already has everything except those 3g traits unlock.

WaveyDL.6945:

Oh good now we need to do some events to unlock traits. How is this better?

you don’t have to you can buy them all.

Rentapest.6503:

Well, I just tried to do the event to unlock my new “Read the wind” ability because i REFUSE to pay more gold.

And was immediately throw into overflow sigh where is the megaserver?! And there is nobody there, no event.

So it’s now either wait days for some dumb event or waste 20 skill points and 3g on an ability that I SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY DEFAULT!!!

I’m forced to participate in some stupid Arrah and kill a high wizard that doesn’t exist and that I cannot kill on my own.

Read the patchnotes. Megaservers are being rolled out incrementally.

I’ve no idea what they were smoking when they came up with this to be honest. It doesn’t affect me but I’m still pretty mad about it. It’s a severe downgrade of the old system.
I apologize to you, because I’m sure they won’t.
If you need any help with it, I’ll try to assist you. Provided you even want to play the game anymore after this mess.

How is it “better” though?
Makes new players progress slower and the game less appealing. I looked forward to leveling and getting a bit better. now I need to level 5 times to do it?

I don’t understand why it’s a “better” system?

Wait people aren’t buying the traits because they cost gold?

But we’ve been hearing for almost 2 years now how there’s no struggle to make gold in this game. What happened?

I have a level 40 character. Just logged in and boom down to only 2 trait points.

foofad.5162:

Rentapest.6503:

Well, I just tried to do the event to unlock my new “Read the wind” ability because i REFUSE to pay more gold.

And was immediately throw into overflow sigh where is the megaserver?! And there is nobody there, no event.

So it’s now either wait days for some dumb event or waste 20 skill points and 3g on an ability that I SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY DEFAULT!!!

I’m forced to participate in some stupid Arrah and kill a high wizard that doesn’t exist and that I cannot kill on my own.

Read the patchnotes. Megaservers are being rolled out incrementally.

which is why he mentioned it. They rolled out a system that kind of depends on megaservers system to work properly but the megaservers system is not in game. So now you have to go grind gold instead.

I think the main problem isn’t buying the traits/doing events for them – it’s the fact that you get 1 every 5 levels after 30 and then some more in the later levels to get to a total of 14.
It just means you take longer to get to a fun part of the game.
Say, for the Engineer, instead of simply getting to 20 to get your Swift kits trait, which provides you constant 10s swiftness, you need to wait to 40. That’s twice as much.
It took me a couple of days of playing a few hours every day to get my Engie from 20 to 40, so I have to say it’d have been much more painful and boring without it. Let alone for casual players.
1 level was enough to spark some progress earlier, now they don’t feel like they’re accomplishing anything because they get one kittenty point every 5 levels after they’re half-ways through to level 80 already.
Most people I know from outside GW2 quit GW2 before level 30 because it wasn’t appealing to them. Removing traits isn’t gonna help it.

islabella.1385:

I have a level 40 character. Just logged in and boom down to only 2 trait points.

each new trait point counts for 5 old trait points. so instead of 5 to get to next trait skill, it now only takes 1, and every 1 trait now gives as many stats kitten used to give.

Mystic.5934:

islabella.1385:

I have a level 40 character. Just logged in and boom down to only 2 trait points.

each new trait point counts for 5 old trait points. so instead of 5 to get to next trait skill, it now only takes 1, and every 1 trait now gives as many stats kitten used to give.

And now you have to wait 5 levels to improve your character instead of getting a little better every level.

Enjoy the grind!

WaveyDL.6945:

Mystic.5934:

islabella.1385:

I have a level 40 character. Just logged in and boom down to only 2 trait points.

each new trait point counts for 5 old trait points. so instead of 5 to get to next trait skill, it now only takes 1, and every 1 trait now gives as many stats kitten used to give.

And now you have to wait 5 levels to improve your character instead of getting a little better every level.

Enjoy the grind!

Great, just great!

Just want to say Thank Yuo! it’s easy to use, easy to orient among the traits with the color codes, costs nothing…. Quick to change…. it’s just great and awsome!!

tigirius.9014:

WaveyDL.6945:

Oh good now we need to do some events to unlock traits. How is this better?

you don’t have to you can buy them all.

It’s not only 3g per trait skill but also a rediculous 20 skill points!!! Who in their right mind is going to waste not only gold but skill points on this?! I think it’s an outrage that we’re basically FORCED into doing the events (which some are bugged btw) to get these, they should be given by default.

LastShot.4762:

If your character made before the patch, he/she already has everything except those 3g traits unlock.

And poor newcommers are put off the game by this rediculous change. I was leveling a new character, but I will definately NOT be wasting my time doing that now.

Why break something that was working so well and turn it into a complex 20 clicks setup just to customize your hero’s traits.
That’s also forcing people to build external trait calculators to deal with the mess in the UI.
Product wise, I don’t understand the change, one of the major features in an RPG game is to allow the hero to open up new abilities while leveling up, if these traits open at level 80 after the hero finsihed leveling up, what’s the point?

Question:

In the preview for the new grandmaster traits, triumphant distortion was advertised as having no cooldown. Is the current 10s cooldown in place because it proved too powerful?

As a new player I have to say thanks for making leveling seem more tedious and slow.

Is it really a good idea to have Karka Queen be the unlock for Stone Heart (and other traits I’m unaware of)? This is the same boss you tossed into the same category as Teq and the Tri-wurm. Especially if it’s updated to match, it seems like a poor fit since it’s along side other unlocks like the Aqua Benevolence unlock. That one is just find the grand chest in a sunken ship.

Rentapest.6503:

tigirius.9014:

WaveyDL.6945:

Oh good now we need to do some events to unlock traits. How is this better?

you don’t have to you can buy them all.

It’s not only 3g per trait skill but also a rediculous 20 skill points!!! Who in their right mind is going to waste not only gold but skill points on this?! I think it’s an outrage that we’re basically FORCED into doing the events (which some are bugged btw) to get these, they should be given by default.

LastShot.4762:

If your character made before the patch, he/she already has everything except those 3g traits unlock.

And poor newcommers are put off the game by this rediculous change. I was leveling a new character, but I will definately NOT be wasting my time doing that now.

I have no idea what you’re talking about, both my 80’s have all their previous traits so it’s not an issue for those who have leveled already and shouldn’t be one for the people who are leveling considering they have to do those events for certain achievements as it is. Beside this has been talking about forever before they did it. It’s not like today was the first day we knew about it.

As far as gold is concerned, those of us who have been reporting the lopsided loot system and the DR problems for over a year now have been told multiple times how we’re wrong that anyone can afford anything with a little farming and there’s absolutely no issue with farming gold in this game, are you saying now suddenly those claims are false?

Maybe this was already mentioned, but could you add an option to save our traits, so we can load them any time we want? We had something similar in gw1 with attributes.

BTW, Wavey, you only get 1 new trait point every 6 levels…not every 5.

sad face

Looking at you, Anet…

P.S.
Change is not bad and I’m all up for change, but these huge builds with ton of new features tend to come with ton of new bugs, so the combination of bugs & trying to understand and get used to the change = less game enjoyment.

I think changing existing mechanisms should be dripped slowly and new features can be applied freely.

Somehow they must be making more money this way. It’s the only explanation. It’s not made the game any better that for sure!

Please bring back the dropdown menu for swapping traits. It was a lot more user-friendly as it was before. You can leave the trait selection on the left side for new players but please bring back the fast swap drop down menu.

I’d say that if you don’t know how the wheel works you shouldn’t try reinventing it.

What is the goal of this trait redesign? Why was it done this way?

My character is level 26 and just lost HALF its health pool. It is a significant nerf for all characters under level 80. The patch notes mention that you rebalanced all monsters to account for the big nerf, but is this conductive to better gameplay?

It seems monsters die a bit faster, but with half the health pool survivability is an issue because very quickly, before I can react, my health pool can go empty now. “Dying a lot faster” is not something I consider an improvement in a MMO.

And if this is a significant nerf in PvE, when it comes to PvP it’s nothing short of catastrophic. By matching pre-patch power levels only at level 80 it means you opened a significant gap in power between a level 80 and everyone below. If pre-patch going to WvW was at least viable with a lower level character, now it’s laughable after the huge talent nerf. How is this a good idea? PvP is fun when the power curve is as flat as possible, but with this patch you made it scale up considerably. Now attempting to go PvP with a character that isn’t already maxed is just not possible or fun.

How is this improving PvE when you remove even that little amount of choice? If allocating just one point every time you level up was a kind of scarce reward, allocating NONE is not an improvement. You just made the experience duller.

What’s even the point of having 80 levels if you offer something only every 6 levels, and only starting after level 30. It’s as if everything has been stretched so thin.

ArenaNet: Please rollback this change!

Only new characters were supposed to be subject to the new trait grinding system. Why are existing characters being subjected to it? Is this a bug or intended behaviour?

What’s the point of feedback when we spent tons of pages explaining why the Ranger traits were terrible, and you changed nothing.

You said you wanted runes to be less random, and yet gave rangers as their grandmaster trait a 15% chance to block ranged attacks while in melee.

What are you doing, throwing darts at the board?

WaveyDL.6945:

How is it “better” though?
Makes new players progress slower and the game less appealing. I looked forward to leveling and getting a bit better. now I need to level 5 times to do it?

I don’t understand why it’s a “better” system?

It’s better because they say it’s better!

On the other hand, having only played for a week, I can’t say I’m out much time or effort. If they don’t give me back my traits, I sure as hell ain’t coming back though.

If you buy a third of them you’ll be out 14g (okay, fine) and 120 skill points (WHAT???). I don’t even know how you grind that many.

Wow do all classes have to unlock gm trait in a event now? Wow thats going kitten alot of players off in this game.

I have a level 22 character, who i’d unlocked the first tier of traits using a manual. I’d spent at least 5 traits. Now it’s greyed out and says it won’t unlock till level 30. So I’ve lost everything that was there.

I’m sure I read somewhere that characters who had unlocked traits would not be affected, and only new characters would have to wait till they reached level 30?

The trait UI screen is very clunky. There is a confirmation box if you want to invest multiple points in a line but not if you use the +/- arrows. Selecting a trait then having to move over to the side of the UI every time you want to replace a trait or select the adept/master/grandmaster of that tier is annoying. The dropdown box was much more efficient. I select where I want to put the points and my cursor is still right where I go to select the trait that I want.

Events that rarely happen to unlock traits, this is hell for anyone with a decent amount of alts. Prepare to goldsink or camp events forever.

Earlier today I thought my little elementalist was shaping up pretty well with 32 trait points. I log in after the update and I only have 3 trait points. ;_; I feel like she god hit with a huge nerf bat and now I have to do a lot of work (again) to get her back to where she had been. I do not like how trait points are earned now. Those points mean a lot at low levels.