Guild Wars 2

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Am I the only one wondering why they used traits to get people out in the world rather skills, preferably new ones. Why go and fix something that wasn’t broken. If they would have worked on creating new skills and added them to world events and then removed the cost respect traits I am pretty sure everyone would be kittening ecstatic. Leave the old manuals for level 20, 40, and 60 unlocks and just add any new traits to the list. They could have added an npc near each event where players could by the new skills just like in GW1 to replace the gold sink they tried with traits. It just seems like the more obvious way to do things but then again it makes the game more like gw1 and they sure the hell can’t have any of that.

In an interview with MMORPG.com, they said:

• Skills take longer to implement (since it uses more assets [animations, art ect]).
• Skills already had a progression model (purchase with skill points), while the actual aquisition of Traits didn’t (since everything was automatically unlocked when you bought a Manual).

Why are some traits unlocked by doing things much higher than the point where you’d get access to them?

The II traits that have you go do a dungeon that is level 50 (Ignoring the whole people demand you be 80 to do dungeons issue) that’s still like ten levels you need to gain before you can get the second trait as an option…..

Who thought these unlocks were a good idea?

I was incredibly excited to learn new traits were being added and that we had to go out into the world to acquire them via gameplay. My original imagining of it was that multiple new unique challenging events would be added which we could discover/conquer (ie a new mini jump puzzle or mini boss or timed challenge).

I hadn’t realized that we would instead be getting the skills through world boss events, which rely on timers and map layer activity/population etc. I didn’t want to run out there only to stand around for x amount of hours or have to try again during a certain time window the next day. I just went ahead and bought a couple of the skills instead.

The unlock cost at the trainers is way too low. There is pretty much 0 reason to spend time doing something to unlock them when you can just buy them so cheaply.

I would suggest upping the cost by 10x in gold, the SP cost is fine.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Am I the only one wondering why they used traits to get people out in the world rather skills, preferably new ones. Why go and fix something that wasn’t broken. If they would have worked on creating new skills and added them to world events and then removed the cost respect traits I am pretty sure everyone would be kittening ecstatic. Leave the old manuals for level 20, 40, and 60 unlocks and just add any new traits to the list. They could have added an npc near each event where players could by the new skills just like in GW1 to replace the gold sink they tried with traits. It just seems like the more obvious way to do things but then again it makes the game more like gw1 and they sure the hell can’t have any of that.

In an interview with MMORPG.com, they said:

• Skills take longer to implement (since it uses more assets [animations, art ect]).
• Skills already had a progression model (purchase with skill points), while the actual aquisition of Traits didn’t (since everything was automatically unlocked when you bought a Manual).

so in other words, they are lazy and greedy. If they are going to do anything that takes effort its only to add another way of monetization because there was a progression model with traits, its called leveling

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The unlock cost at the trainers is way too low. There is pretty much 0 reason to spend time doing something to unlock them when you can just buy them so cheaply.

I would suggest upping the cost by 10x in gold, the SP cost is fine.

that’s absurd, we used to unlock every trait via manuals for a little over 4 gold and 0 skill points and now you are saying it should be higher than the increase they already did. Some people baffle me

What the people who are saying to simply buy it/arenanet are saying is

1. You should have enough money to buy it. What was once 3.10 is now 8.60.
also known as

FARM MORE!! JOIN THE ZERG TRAIN!

I’m going to be spending some more time on a lower level character i made to get used to this new system, but some of the things I am reading right now kinda disturb me.

I suspect in a couple years, this Trait “feature patch” is going to be looked at the same way the patch that killed Star Wars Galaxies is today.

What they should have done (this is what I thought it was going to be) was a bunch of personal quests to unlock each trait, not rely on other ppl to work together.
Guess what, you can’t get people to work together in the real world, how on Gods green earth do you expect that in game.
I really think why they set it up this way, was to get people to spend $$ to unlock traits.

mosselyn.5081:

I’m among those who likes the new trait unlock system. I enjoy leveling and I like the idea of having to work for my traits. Alts and those who don’t want to work for on trait acquisition have the purchase option.

I enjoy levelling too; it’s my main mode of play. And if this had been well-thought-out and well-implemented to support that, I’d cheer at it (or, at the very least, give it the benefit of the doubt until I’d had plenty of time to try it out). But it hasn’t been, and I think that when you look more closely at the detail, you’ll agree. And unless it’s significantly altered, when the traits you find that you want to use at level 42, say, can’t in practice be “unlocked” until you’re pushing level 80 – I think you’ll find you end up buying them. Just like everyone else.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that it must be ANet’s full expectation and intent that most people will buy rather than unlock. Otherwise, frankly, they’d have take a lot more care to make sure that the unlocking content was at a level proportionate to the traits it granted access to.

Yeah, I’m looking into this in more detail.

All for the system of unlocking traits by tasks, but if there’s traits you can technically get at level 30 that require frostgorge sound events/completion that’s all messed up. The adept traits should definitely be gettable in level 30-40 zones, master in 40-60, and .. here’s the deal, grandmaster traits ought to be gettable 60+.

Trait points per level should have stayed the same – yes, it’s small steps between you getting to chose a trait, but it gives you a sense of accomplishment and working towards something when leveling.

Unlocking traits in the world is good– but they should not behind high-level events, those have their own rewards. Getting your character progression halted because events are not up, or even worse, needing other players to fail so you can get a shot at unlocking a trait is completely against the spirit of the game; reviving, phased gathering nodes, hearts etc. they all teach you that you want other players around, succeeding.

These two are such obviously bad design choices, one can’t help but wonder if they were introduced solely to have the game mechanics in place to tie in with future gem shop items ( level bosters, trait unlocks, etc. ), considering the not so distant launch of the game in a market that is much more conditioned to having such things in a “cash shop”.

FunnyCide.5426:

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.

Do forget the trait points have been reduced from 70 to 14 (14 now equals 70), so you didn’t lose anything, other then trying to figure out where your original trait points were allocated. The 14 points unlock the same amount of traits.

I’m not fond of the new UI interface for traits. When switching traits around in a dungeon (and not changing points) you have to move the mouse from right (select trait) to left (select which to equip there) and back again constantly.. I much preferred the older UI that used a drop box.

As for the rest I don’t really have a comment.

Sola.7250:

FunnyCide.5426:

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.

Do forget the trait points have been reduced from 70 to 14 (14 now equals 70), so you didn’t lose anything, other then trying to figure out where your original trait points were allocated. The 14 points unlock the same amount of traits.

Kinda irrelevant to what Cide is talking about though. 30/5 = 6, not 3, but 3 is what Cide got. That’s because they bumped the requirements for traits up 20 levels. That’s what Cide is upset about. Cide lost already obtained customization and access to master traits.

Not a huge fan of the new trait system. I think level 11 was a much better time to start getting trait points than level 30, it felt a lot more rewarding that way. Also re: Blade Shards, it would be nice if you guys could please put a vendor for them asap. Thanks.

Sola.7250:

FunnyCide.5426:

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.

Do forget the trait points have been reduced from 70 to 14 (14 now equals 70), so you didn’t lose anything, other then trying to figure out where your original trait points were allocated. The 14 points unlock the same amount of traits.

So many lvl 80’s saying the same thing.

While leveling you’re not getting ANY until level 30! So by the same level instead of 32 they have 3 I think that equals 15 NOT the 32 from before! (I think. My maths suck)

Nitrous Oxide.5326:

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.

Sadly that seems to be generally what people are saying that are new. The person I recruited to play has already quit.

Anet I don’t think realized how bad this would suck for new players. They either need to implement better loot at lower levels, or starting at 10 give 1 trait every 5 levels. The current system is not fun for any of the new people I’ve talked to.

I’m rather certain there is anecdotal evidence for “yeah but new people love it”. If anyone at Anet wants please pm me, I will gladly provide you a list of names of ACTUAL new players that hate this feature.

I actually did feel a little overwhelmed with the number of skills you can learn early on and think it should be more gradual. My own solution was to intentionally forego spending skill points so I could spend more time with healing/utility skills I had already unlocked. I didn’t particularly feel this way with traits, so deferring trait progression until level 30 might not have been so helpful for me (though I don’t feel strongly about Anet’s decision on this point).

What might be another solution that would have worked better for me would have been to have weapon skills unlock more gradually. I don’t mean replacing the current weapon skill unlocking system, but instead overlaying a weapon proficiency system. At level 1, you would choose a weapon (or possibly two) from your profession’s list of available weapons. You would then start with a starter weapon of that type. Maybe as early as level 5 you would gain proficiency in a second weapon of your choice if you were only allowed to start with 1. Then, maybe you wouldn’t gain an additional weapon proficiency until level 15 or so, and so on. Things might have to be a little different for engineers and eles (maybe attunements for eles?).

I doubt this will ever be seriously considered by Anet, but I just thought of it and it sounded pretty fun. And at least for me it would have been helpful. As it is, on my first alt, a guardian, I found myself totally overwhelmed with the 11 weapons I was able to use right from the get-go. I’m now level 50 something and I still only have a good understanding of a few of them.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Nitrous Oxide.5326:

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.

Sadly that seems to be generally what people are saying that are new. The person I recruited to play has already quit.

Anet I don’t think realized how bad this would suck for new players. They either need to implement better loot at lower levels, or starting at 10 give 1 trait every 5 levels. The current system is not fun for any of the new people I’ve talked to.

I’m rather certain there is anecdotal evidence for “yeah but new people love it”. If anyone at Anet wants please pm me, I will gladly provide you a list of names of ACTUAL new players that hate this feature.

We can compile a list of old players who hate it too, I’m sure, as I am one of them.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that you need to do world events that are on really strict timers now.
Work a job or live in an inconvenient time zone? Well KITTEN YOU BUDDY, BETTER GET GRINDING

It’s okay though, I’ll just spend my time and money in a game that doesn’t kick me in the kittens every time I log in. I work full-time and am taking college classes on the side so I only have a very specific time in the evenings to get stuff done. That a whole swath of PvE events that I enjoyed are no longer open to me is insulting. That I have to do these to get abilities on alts is also insulting. This isn’t an improvement, it’s a removal of content that I could do previously within the time window that I had. For example: karka. I LIKED karka, and now I can’t even get a spawn time that works for me. This is Terrible Design.

If I implemented the EMR system I’m working on half as badly as the way anet implemented this patch, I’d be sacked.

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten! I shouldn’t be forced to do something that has always been optional just for people who wanted legendaries, It’s like Arenanet can’t stop making this game worse and worse with each update, what the flying kitten!

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten! I shouldn’t be forced to do something that has always been optional just for people who wanted legendaries, It’s like Arenanet can’t stop making this game worse and worse with each update, what the flying kitten!

You can also just buy the trait.

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten!

Which trait is this?

I agree that sounds, in general, way to high requirement for a trait. The new ones are simple “do x content” not a whole map’s worth.

It’s a welcome change, but implemented in a very lazy way. Traits are discovered in all the same places for all the classes? So much for exploring.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten! I shouldn’t be forced to do something that has always been optional just for people who wanted legendaries, It’s like Arenanet can’t stop making this game worse and worse with each update, what the flying kitten!

You can also just buy the trait.

Here’s the cost for the traits if you buy them.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide

Singh.8206:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten! I shouldn’t be forced to do something that has always been optional just for people who wanted legendaries, It’s like Arenanet can’t stop making this game worse and worse with each update, what the flying kitten!

You can also just buy the trait.

Here’s the cost for the traits if you buy them.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide

That’s the fundamental problem: not the option of unlocking by grinding, but the fact that the cost of doing it in the grind-free way is so ludicrous. If the purchase cost was about 1/10 of its current level (ie 5g total to buy all traits except the new ones) then that would be fine: enough of an incentive for those who like grinding, without this “You look like you’re trying to have fun, please insert your credit card now” stuff for the rest of us.

I just bought a new character slot a few days ago. I severely regret that now.

I totally agree with you Carzor.

Singh.8206:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten! I shouldn’t be forced to do something that has always been optional just for people who wanted legendaries, It’s like Arenanet can’t stop making this game worse and worse with each update, what the flying kitten!

You can also just buy the trait.

Here’s the cost for the traits if you buy them.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide

Thanks for posting that. I admit it’s a little more expensive than I realized. But still, I don’t understand all the fuss. Don’t people want to play the game? I mean, if there’s a part of the game you really can’t stand, e.g. map completion, then you can buy those particular traits and you’re out a few gold. But if you really don’t want to do ANY of the unlock quests then….maybe you don’t actually like playing the game?

Alts, right. It makes sense that people wouldn’t want to play through all the content many times to unlock traits on their alts. But then why have alts if you don’t want to do the content with them? If you make alts for PvP and WvW, the traits are already unlocked anyway, so its not an issue. Is the problem that people want their alts for dungeons without having to do other PvE content?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide

If accurate , they really did do a major copy/paste for this. That’s really shallow. So much for alt replayablity. Do it once, seen it all. That’s rather disappointing.

Almost every map after level 25 until Mount Maelstrom and Fireheart Rise has to have 100% completion to unlock all traits. Assuming no manuals, naturally. I can’t say I’m pleased that traits would require that much effort to complete. A lot of that stuff is really time consuming and oftentimes boring. Some of the required maps are rather underlevel for a level 60. Not happy that traits are strictly bound to the linear nature of the personal story either. If it was a “complete this story, pick a trait to unlock,” I think it’d be setup better.

I know you tried, anet, but this setup doesn’t look good at all.

Edit: Wait a minute. Weren’t the Adept traits suppose to be auto-unlocked?

Eh, maybe I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Sure, execution could be better. It really shouldn’t be the same for every profession.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Eh, maybe I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Sure, execution could be better. It really shouldn’t be the same for every profession.

I have an alt that was leveled up to 40 by almost complete map completion. There’s no way I could level multiple alts like that, and that’s kinda what they’re wanting here. It’s just not doable without tearing one’s hair out.

Edit: I suppose I should clarify. Alts are a means for me to avoid burning out on a game. This setup promotes burning out. In other words, I can’t stay interested in the game without a large cost or burning out trying.

Fenrina.2954:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Eh, maybe I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Sure, execution could be better. It really shouldn’t be the same for every profession.

I have an alt that was leveled up to 40 by almost complete map completion. There’s no way I could level multiple alts like that, and that’s kinda what they’re wanting here. It’s just not doable without tearing one’s hair out.

I probably will just stick to my original plan and do map completion only on my main, using alts mainly for WvW and PvP where their traits are already unlocked. I am trying to level an alt in case I want to use her for dungeons, so I may just have to pick and choose traits I will actually use (and perhaps buy some) rather than get them all.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

so I may just have to pick and choose traits I will actually use (and perhaps buy some) rather than get them all.

That is the best choice.

Individually, the trait unlocks are not a massive problem. It’s when taken together that the design becomes toxic. Unfortunately, this applies to buying them too. 360 Skill Points is nuts especially since that number will go up if they add new traits. I don’t even have 150 on my main, let alone over double that.

Hmmm, happy I read this before buying a new chr. expansion slot. This is not how I like to play the game, so I stick to my old chr’s I guess….

Albadaran.1283:

Hmmm, happy I read this before buying a new chr. expansion slot. This is not how I like to play the game, so I stick to my old chr’s I guess….

I worked a new toon to lvl 40 before the patch—that was sure a waste of time.

There’s one additional thing of note. For new characters and/or new players, the ability to swap around multiple traits as the need arises is useless if there are no traits to swap. I’m having a hard time seeing many people going out of their way to buy or find enough new traits to make the “retrait anywhere” system worthwhile.

1. they changed the trait ui. ok fine, we just need to get use to the new one.
2. they gave gave use free respecing on the fly. awesome, no complaints here.
3. they condense trait points from 70 to 14 and we fet a point ever 5-6. Ok its a kick to the shins, but at least it evens out ever 5-6 levels. its not too bad.
4. they push back the trait tiers to lvl 30, 60, and 80 to make it newbie friendly… What how does this make any sense?

Pushing back trait tiers to later levels had ruin the game for all players under 80. Non level 80 players are too kitten to hang with level 80 players in WvW and too weak to in dungeons. The only thing non level 80 players can do now is stick to open world pve until they are level 80.

I dont know about you but the reason the old trait system works is because trait compliments skills in gw2. learning how a skill works and how it can be enhanced by a trait goes hand and hand. Anet claims pushing back the trait tiers is to give new players time to learn familiarize themself with the skills before being expose to the trait system. But what is the point of learning how to use all the profession skill only to relearn how to optimize them when they are enhance by triats.

Gw2 was design so from lvl 1-79 is when players experiment and learn how to optimize their character for endgame gameplay. Now we can’t even access the gm traits till endgame?

the project manager who propose this idea show be fired.

As a lvl 80 looking at this and the adjusted 11-79 mobs;
1. getting traits via events will be hard til megaserver is fixed. On the zones that its out, such as for lyssa, its really easy to do the events, if you can find the boss spawned…non ‘main’ overflows created recently dont seem to spawn the bosses.
2. Fighting sub 80 enemies has become much easier, alot less health pool on veterans +, was able to more easily solo some champions. (Less time, not less dmg taken) So either the change or better scaling for solo group events.
3. I dont have any classes i need to create to test out the new sytem, so the trait finding doesnt particularly effect me, and making a new char to 30 to test it out is not appealing, therefore i cannot speak to the difficulty of most trait challenges. I think that goes for most everyone who’s online this week, unless you bought it AFTER the sale, on the 15th, so i was expecting to see less grumbling this early about that.
4. Well, all i can urge is patience, if you dont have the new traits now, you’ll get them when the megaserver/boss events are fixed. Til then, it’s not like you’re losing any traits.

I had been leveling my Thief and necro somewhat slowly. I was looking forward to being able to switch traits around to experiment with the builds as I leveled. So at lvl 35 there is a loss of traits down to one trait. The necro is worse at one trait point.

So this means extra levels of grind without playing/learning builds and combinations of traits to come up with a play style.

I much preferred the slow progression of points with more traits open earlier.

After looking through the discussion here regarding the GM Temple unlocks, something came to mind: Why isn’t the book sold by the Temple Karma vendors?? 7500 Karma each would be a reasonable trade-off, if the temple in question is already open (and you probably earned a good chunk of that getting there, if you worked your way down to it). At least that would fix one major pain-point.

danbuter.2314:

I suspect in a couple years, this Trait “feature patch” is going to be looked at the same way the patch that killed Star Wars Galaxies is today.

I’m beginning to think you’ll see that happen within 3-6 months, at least for the Americas and EU markets. I feel like its been re-worked into a different MMO sub-genre, which is not normally favored in these markets. (I know this style has a name, but I don’t like calling it that, sorry.)

I’m looking over the list of requirements. It’s really not good. For starters, traits that unlock through wvw are extremely dependent on luck. Getting close to the Overgrown Grub, let alone killing it, is a problem if one is assigned to red or green. That grub is known for being insanely hard to kill, and now it has a big bullseye over it’s head so blue people may try to camp it and prevent others from earning their traits. It also appears that only blue has a wvw boss with a trait. That may cause additional strife in wvw due to the imbalance.

The towers Inferno’s Needle, Tytone Perch, and Stonegaze Spiral have similar issues. All 3 are in Edge of the Mists. One has to hope that either they get in while a given tower is unowned or that another team takes it and leaves it undefended. Which color one is assigned to will also affect this as it may prove difficult to get to other color’s towers if enemies decide to camp the towers or if a given color is stronger within the map.

In addition, the personal story quests can suffer from the story’s linear nature. If a person needs a trait to complete the step where they unlock that trait, it may prevent the player from continuing onwards. For this, as I previously stated, being able to pick which traits to unlock may prove better.

About the only thing I can recommend is to have the option to unlock multiple traits as a reward for completing a given challenge. Perhaps a similar method to picking which zenith weapon to unlock from achievement chests? Get an adept unlock, pick an adept trait, and so on.

Elementalist:
-The ICD on Blinding Ashes should be per target, or at least be able to blind 3 targets at once. Now, It is too random to use (blinds minions, spirits, not players in PvP, blinds the wrong mob in PvE).
-The ICD on Elemental Contingency should be per attunement. It is impossible to manage which boon you get the way it is now; You have to count to 4,5 to get to the right attunemetn to get the boon you want. Also, the numbers just aren’t great. Make the change, then evaluate what the numbers should be for the duration of the boons.

First, I’m not sure that reducing the number of trait points to 14 was a great idea, feels like it takes forever to progress a lowbie alt now – there’s no perceptible progression for 5 whole levels.

Elementalist
New trait “blinding ashes” is good in theory, but in practise the 5sec CD cripples it, due to a lot of random procs on incidental rather than intentional targets. Feels like it should work for AOEs as well (like a smoke field) but on a longer CD.

The application of blind from AOE burns should be deterministic, not random.

70 old points equals to new 14 ok, but what makes me furious is that now when I am at level 45 ranger, I used to have 35 trait points. Meaning I had Marksmanship, Skirmishing and Beastmastery unlocked so I had 10 points spent each of them, unlocked 2 of their feature slots.. plus few points spent in Wilderness survival and Nature Magic, which improved those too.

Now I have only 3 points, which equals 15 old points, so I lost within this update total of 20 points!!!

Which means, now I have only 10 points in Marksmanship, 5 points in Skirmishing, 0 in Beastmastery. So, only in Marksmanship I was able to unlock extra two feature skills like before, Beastmastery is 0 for me now, and Skirmishing not two slots either, just one.

I can´t understand what was the point of all this, I like to see my character progress with each level, now there is a huge gap, plus all the points lost! Have to say I am dissappointed!

Give me my 20 lost points back, or at least 4 more of these “new points” at my level, so that I can get all the points spent and unlocks like before.

I’m sure others have said it already, but I’m not at all happy about trait unlocks being tied to Karka Queen, Temple, and Arah events. I like the concept of being able to unlock the traits via quests of some sort – I hate the concept of having to wait for event window, needing a certain combination of events to pass/fail, and needing the help of 50 people to kill the boss.

I’m not technically forced to do those things… but 3 gold * 5 skill trees * 8 characters = 120 gold.

Regarding the traits I’ve tried so far:
* Read the Wind – worthless in PvE. Suggest increasing baseline longbow arrow speed slightly, decreasing the speed increase of Read The Wind, and adding a modest damage bonus to the GM trait.
* Striders Defense – I can’t see spending points for a 15% to block projectiles some of the time. How about a projectile reflect instead? Or retaliation on evade?

mosselyn.5081:

By contrast, the trait point acquisition curve is just awful, IMO. No points until 30 and then one point every six levels feels terrible.

It isn’t so much a question of whether it makes a significant difference in game play, but that it is a huge hit to the perception of increasing character power. I enjoy leveling because I enjoy watching my character grow and expand her skill set. Now, a new level is a huge yawn. Instead of a fun journey to level cap, now it feels like a slog, with new shinies few and far between. You shouldn’t go more than 2-3 levels with nothing to show for it, IMO.

This pretty much sums it up for my concerns as well. The way I know have to wait 6 levels before trait points; this is really a downer for my leveling experience as a whole.
I have no problem with working hard but this seems a bit much.

DonQuack.9025:

What the people who are saying to simply buy it/arenanet are saying is

1. You should have enough money to buy it. What was once 3.10 is now 8.60.
also known as

FARM MORE!! JOIN THE ZERG TRAIN!

lol this makes me wonder if Anet even plays the game… I am a casual player with a lvl 45 char, doing just pve content. I have not seen anything more than 3g in his money bag ever.

Could someone please explain to me what “kitten” means in this context? I notice people on these forums use it a lot