Guild Wars 2

So I just rolled a new character for the first time since I started a few weeks ago.
I didn’t realise that you can’t even view your traits at low level. That’s ridiculous.

Unless you look up a character builder online, you cannot plan anything about your class beyond your skills. That means new players are completely in the dark on what equipments they should be using until whenever the traits tree unlocks (which I assume is level 30) unless they seek advice from other players or use third party tools.

That annoys me.

After seeing the requirements for adept trait unlocking… Wow.
Requiring zone completion for a single adept trait seems over the top as it’s far more work than any trait 13. Making it a level 80 zone? That’s a really difficult decision to even comprehend.

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

THIS

You shouldn’t have to wait till 80 to get a trait you should have at 35.

Some people actually level a lot slower than that (it took me half a year to level one of my characters because I wasn’t rushing).

Wolfy Shadowheart.6798:

Here is basically what I was thinking.
The numbers would change based on the data that Anet has so this is just a visualization of it.

Level 30 – 10 Kills 3 Captures 1 Adept Trait Unlock
Level 80 – 193 Kills 128 Captures 1 Grand Master Trait Unlock

There wouldn’t be any Overgrown grub to kill either because really the only time we’ve ever killed it was when we were bored and had the people to do it.

This I’m not against, if they remove the requierement for pve’ers to go to WvW, and also pvp’ers should still have all traits free in pvp.

They need to stop pushing players into other game modes.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

play normally? Whats “normal”?
and how many hours is that?

you’re “week”, is different to my week.

In the ‘Traits Unleashed: Forty New Traits and More!’ Post/News we are told that the design was to make new players dive right into experimenting traits at an appropriate level, how is that possible when the first 30 levels your mindlessly training without any knowledge that traits even exist, even after that you only get 1 point every 5 levels. Where is the experimentation? All i see is delayed set up to PvE.

“With this system, spending traits will be much easier for new players to understand. Right now, there is the possibility for someone who doesn’t really know the system to spend 11 trait points in one line and 14 in another and wind up with a less effective build. As an added benefit, the trait panel will be much easier to understand and navigate.” – Quote from ‘Traits Unleashed: Forty New Traits and More!’ -

I’m not sure how the old system made any misunderstanding in the trait lines, the set up was perfect and easy, 1 point per level which also gives +10 / 10% or 1% to a trait depending how you spend your points. Now we don’t receive a bonus +10 to every level which made each level more fun as you felt slightly stronger. Not to mention the set up before placed the 10th point choice right under my mouse and the new set up is now to the left of the screen which i then have to go and read each one in a horrible set up.

Personally i see the set up incredible messy, being a player who just bought the game before the awesome lions arch event and only had a chance to get to lvl 65 now see my progress not necessarily slower but rather less enjoying as i must reach 5 lvls for 1/2 points. Making all those levels in between soooo boring.

Other updates are cool, just disappointed with the new layout and trait system.

I’m really beginning to hate the new traits. Not for the traits themselves but for the process of unlocking them.

This is the story of what has happened between me and getting the traits over the last week.
It’s patch day, and after unlocking all my skins, redeeming my transmutation charges, and testing out a few of the new features, I got down to business, getting the new traits. The first one was obvious to me, “Read the Wind”. Once I read this one on the preview I knew immediately it was perfect for my ranger.

To get it I had to “Defeat the Risen High Wizard and secure the Promenade of the Gods”, Simple enough. So I jumped to cursed shore, or I would have if my ranger had been there yet. In fact the closest way point is next to fort trinity in Straits of Devastation. So Began my trek through the Straits of Devastation , through Malchor’s Leap, through Cursed Shore, and up to the steps of Arah. Arah was completed. I remembered what I heard before, that nothing in the game will encourage players to fail events. So the defense event should reward the trait the same as the attack event right?

How wrong I was… After a half an hour of waiting the event began, and although I did get a small pile of riches, I had no trait. This made me immediately realize that either the unlock was broken, they forgot to add the defense event in, or (I dread) they have gone back on the decision to prevent rewards for failed events.

As this is the only way to unlock the trait except for paying gold and skill points, I’ll unfortunately have to buy the skill point.

A bit later and I attempt to get the second trait. “Experimental Turrets” This one should be very easy, “Find the grand chest in the Ship of Sorrows.” I clicked the telescope and it centered on the “Plaza of Lost Wisdom”. That’s not a ship, but it is showing there. I jump over and begin to search. I soon happen upon several other players at the plaza who are also trying to find the chest. An event there has us defend Explorer Rokk and Scholar Rolla as they try to open a chest on the sea floor. Could this be the chest? I doubted it since it was not a “grand chest” but many players where sure this was it. Sure enough both event’s completed without a grand chest spawning. Afterwards I began searching the outskirts of the plaza for some hidden chest.

A few minutes later I had returned to the plaza unsuccessful. Many of the players where still in the area and trying to repeat the event. I decided to go to the wiki at this point and found that the ship of sorrows was NOT in the plaza but rather further west. I announced this to the other players and we moved to the ship and successfully found the chest.

The third trait I wanted was “Fortified Turrets”. However this required me to kill the queen karka. The second i read this I moaned, I knew how hard it was before the patch to kill this karka let alone to get people to agree to do it. So I hoped the new megaserver system would make it much easier. Unfortunately I wouldn’t find out since the Karka had just been killed a few minutes ago and with the new event system It would be hours to wait for the karka to return. So once again I had to buy it.

At this point my engineer was completely drained of skill points so purchasing them was no longer an option.

(continued next post)

The next trait was “Bunker Down”. I have yet to understand whether I made a mistake or some bug, but when I checked for it’s location I swear it said “Defeat the Risen High Wizard and secure the Promenade of the Gods”. So I ported back to the temple as an engineer this time. lucky enough this time the event has not yet been completed and I was able to defeat the risen wizard. At that point I discovered my mistake.

I decided to switch to getting “Invigorating Precision” for my thief. This required me to “Defeat the Risen Priest of Grenth.” and although my thief did not have island the temple was on I had the nearby waypoint on the main land of orr.
Upon arriving in the area for the meta event I notice the defense event was just about to complete. This meant that not only would I not be able to see if the defense event would actually reward the trait but I would have to wait over half an hour for the next defense event. I did not want to wait so I parked my thief in a secluded place and moved on, hoping I could come back later and finish it.

I still wanted to try for “Bunker Down” but unfortunately It would be the same issue as for “Invigorating Precision”. “Defeat the Risen Priest of Grenth.” This was before they patched the defense issue for the temple of Grenth and Melandru and I still didn’t want to wait just to see if it was possible to get the defense.

The final trait I attempted for was “Gadgeteer”. That would require “Defeat the corrupted high priestess of Lyssa” and once again I had no assurance that completing the defense would reward the trait. So I Moved to the temple and found that someone had previously completed it, and I waited for the defense, and waited, and waited. Over an hour passed and I started to worry. No event. Eventually I had to give up, with no way to move to another server or even the knowledge if the defense mission would even reward the trait. This was a few hours ago.

If you didn’t read my story please do, otherwise please continue reading here.

I tried to get, Six traits, through these events.
I had to buy two of them.
I only unlocked two through these events, and one of them I didn’t even want.
In fact the only trait I unlocked that I wanted was the “Experimental Turrets”, the only one that didn’t require waiting to get.

I have a vast length of patience with arena net, this mainly comes from my love for the first guild wars game. However I find this trait unlock system the sloppiest, most unbalance, illogical, unthoughtful, poorly made feature you have EVER made. I hang my head in shame that this was released in it’s current state. When I heard about this I thought this would be a major improvement that would increase repeatability and enjoyment in the game. Honestly it seemed that no one even took the time to think this feature out, or even did a good job of QA.

I don’t mind working for unlocks, I rather enjoy it, but when I am blocked by waiting for events to start, broken events, and ambiguous information. I can only fear for the future of the game.

Please Arena Net, Fix this feature, Make the locations of these unlocks exact. Please make the required always available or rapidly restart. Make sure they don’t break leaving players without any chance to complete it, and finally NEVER release such a terrible release ever again.

Thank you for reading this. I will continue to support and hope only the best for Guild Wars 2 in the years to come.

I didn’t even attempt to hunt them down since I knew I would have more fun just getting skill points and gold in WvW.

Getting traits and skills in open world events was one of my suggestions, so I do like the idea, but a lot of the events they chose were the most frustrating ones.

It really is a shame, it feels like wasted effort on their part.

The new trait system is extremely bad for new characters, and just not fun, which is a terrible idea in an F2P game, frankly. Specific issues include:

1) Most traits sub-80 traits cannot reasonably be unlocked at the time you acquire them by the associated tasks. This is just unacceptable design – not just “poor” design, but “Okay, I’m not sure I’m interested in this game any more”-type design. I’ve got two characters to level, who have to unlock their traits the hard way, and good god, it’s just ridiculous. If you have access to a trait at 35, you need to have that trait possible to unlock by a level 35 character, unassisted.

2) The prices, both in gold and skill points for force-unlocking traits are ridiculously high. 43g and 360 skill points is not okay. It’s probably ten times higher than it should be. I have no idea what the goal here was, unless it’s to encourage people to get on the Queensdale champ train and stay there.

3) PvE in GW2 is already pretty boring. The new trait unlock system should have made it more interesting by getting you to try stuff and go around the world, and letting you freely try out whatever builds you wanted. Instead it encourages you to unlock only the traits you absolutely must, and to maybe accidentally unlock the rest, because you simply won’t be able to unlock many of them at an appropriate level.

4) This is made even worse by delaying traits to 30 and slowing their acquisition massively. I don’t know who found traits “too complicated” (I’ve never met them, and I know some very very casual players), but it seems like Anet don’t understand their own game – many of their skills and setups are pretty weak or even useless without the associated traits, and the game is significantly more dull to play without them. Whilst new players won’t know this, it’s not going to give a good impression.

A good start to fixing all this would to be to change all the requirements to ensure none of them are higher level than the level when you get the traits. If that’s not done, I can’t see myself ever levelling another character, or buying another character slot and that’s not good for my long-term interest in GW2.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

There is no way that “normal” play is going to see a player hit level 80 within a week.

“Normal play” for an adult with a job and RL friends is an average of 1-2 hours a day or less (some days you might get 4, but some will be zero). GW2 tends to average about 45 minutes to 1hr/level (sometimes as higher as 2hrs, but that’s rare). The Queensdale champ train and zone completion both hang around the 45 minutes to 1hr/level rate.

At 45 minutes/level (which is very optimistic without boosters, skip to 20 and so on), it’s 60 hours to 80. Assuming 2hrs/day so 14 hrs/week (which is very generous for “normal” play for an employed adult), so it’s going to be more than a month for most people. Only unemployed people, people on holiday, and students skipping their studies are likely to have time for the 8.5hrs/day (average) you need to do it in a week.

The new trait system was done for one reason $$.

Think about it, their going to get how many new players (China).
Do you think these new players are going to spend the time and trouble to unlock traits by grinding/world event etc, or spend some $$ to unlock them.

Singh.8206:

The new trait system was done for one reason $$.

Think about it, their going to get how many new players (China).
Do you think these new players are going to spend the time and trouble to unlock traits by grinding/world event etc, or spend some $$ to unlock them.

China is an entirely different game. Our TP is not going to be connected, our cash shop will be different, they removed massive chunks of gameplay, had to completely remake Orr, and put gates on everything. They aren’t making changes on our side to accommodate the China release.

They are trying something new, and it went poorly. They should’ve done a poll about this first, because holy crow, some of the unlock parameters are completely ridiculous. If they had kept it at a trait point at 10, and then another and another and so on until 60, where you unlock all your trait points, that would have been far better. 20 levels of hammering out your build would have been far better than “Oh, you’re 80 now and are expected to have exotic gear. Find a build already when you have no idea what all your options even are.”

I love the idea of unlocking your traits in a fashion similar to the original GW1 elite skills.
I am far less enthusiastic about the implementation. I won’t even go into the level appropriate-ness of several trait-unlocks (they are ridiculously over the top in many, many cases) – but requiring large scale group events for unlocking personal character growth is less than ideal, particularly when this requires you to fail specific events. It is bad enough that several ‘retake’ events give you far better/more loot than the respective defend events, but now you need to stand around watching events fail to get your traits! How is this going according to plan?
Also, personal character development should be soloable and far less dependent on arbitrary event timers. It should be something I can do in between other stuff, on my own time, not something requiring 50+ other players (hello karka queen pre-events) and 1h+ playtime (hello dungeons – not everything is as quick as AC and CoF).

The whole issue is, people aren’t whining. Most are pointing out the major flaws in the system. Hello, Frost Gorge, on a 35lvl character to get a Adept trait? Multiple people have pointed out ways to fix the system to make it work better for new and old players alike.

Remember, ANeT, you said that GW2 wasn’t supposed to be a GRIND and that people can play the game as they like. Well, now that is gone. We HAVE TO GRIND, and we HAVE TO PLAY AS ANET DICTATES.

The most concerning thing about this now is that there is no ANeT response in the ANeT created threads on the new patch(unless it’s to warn people). ANeT, we’d like some sort of response overall on what has been posted about the patch.

Frotee.2634:

I love the idea of unlocking your traits in a fashion similar to the original GW1 elite skills.
I am far less enthusiastic about the implementation. I won’t even go into the level appropriate-ness of several trait-unlocks (they are ridiculously over the top in many, many cases) – but requiring large scale group events for unlocking personal character growth is less than ideal, particularly when this requires you to fail specific events. It is bad enough that several ‘retake’ events give you far better/more loot than the respective defend events, but now you need to stand around watching events fail to get your traits! How is this going according to plan?
Also, personal character development should be soloable and far less dependent on arbitrary event timers. It should be something I can do in between other stuff, on my own time, not something requiring 50+ other players (hello karka queen pre-events) and 1h+ playtime (hello dungeons – not everything is as quick as AC and CoF).

10000% This!

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

The problem is the trait system is WRONG. Its DULL. And it appears the person who wrote the blurb about it “Traits unleashed” has never played the game. The fact that you can’t view traits or skills that are unavailable at the moment is just plain sloppy programming. One shouldn’t have to go to online offsites to plan future choices of skills and traits.

And anyone who goes from 1-80 in a week has no job, no school, and no social life. The person probably has a serious gaming addiction.

Taygus.4571:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

play normally? Whats “normal”?
and how many hours is that?

you’re “week”, is different to my week.

Sorry for the typo. But yes, of course I made my thoughts about ‘normally’. There are people with less time who need – let’s say – more than a month. But then those people could complain that it takes ‘months to reach max level’ as well.

Let me start by saying I appreciate the continual updates to the game. For example I am enjoying the influx of players generated by the sPVP reward tracks. That said I wanted to add my voice to those who find some of the new trait changes discouraging.

1. Traits should be unlockable at appropriate levels. I find it strange that some lower tier traits require you to complete much higher level content. When leveling and unlocking traits on a class I feel like I would then take a look at the traits in that range, figure out which one sounded coolest, and try to go unlock it. I would then repeat this trying to acquire and test different traits. However, with many traits requiring completing content that is much higher level, I think I would be frustrated by the lack of options available to me.

2. SP cost seems punishing to new players. While I think it is good to encourage players to try different things and this system could be used to direct people to content they wouldn’t otherwise try, there is some content I and others simply don’t enjoy and don’t want to be forced to do to access traits. I think the option to buy books is a nice alternative way of acquiring these traits but I think the skill point cost seems extremely punishing to new players who don’t have as many sp saved up as more veteran players.

3. Waiting for events. There are problems with tying points to content that isn’t always available. In an early interview someone at arenanet made a comment about not wanting people to stand around waiting to have fun. If an event or specific mob is required to unlock something it can be problematic for people as they may need to wait for it to spawn. They can do other stuff in the same area while waiting but would then need to be informed when the event/mob triggers. Additionally it can create a problem of players fighting over events and mobs or becoming angry at others who killed or completed it before they could get credit. This may not be a serious problem if not many people are attempting to unlock skills but it seems like something that could be problematic. Alternately if not many people are trying to accomplish these events or kills then it may be difficult to complete group events or kill champions.

4. The last thing that seems unfortunate is waiting so long for traits and having traits appear every 6 levels and then suddenly twice as fast. This seems both unintuitive and slow in terms of playing with your character. I’m not sure what the best way to handle this would be. One possibility would be to decrease the level cap and alternate what is received in different levels. With 14 traits and giving skill points on alternate levels you could have 28 lvls of alternating rewards. By starting to receive traits at 23 players could level to 50 with this alternating system. If stat points were decoupled from trait lines (since I don’t really get why they are coupled) this would further be increased to 42 levels with alternating rewards. This could however be a balance problem, so I’m not sure if this would be ideal. This kind of rebalancing could be too complex but even decreasing the heavy increase at the end and spreading things more evenly seems like it would be an improvement. There are probably other possible solutions, but something should be done to allow players to start playing with traits earlier and not have so many “empty” feeling levels, and such an odd distribution of trait point allocation.

I think people who are commenting about how easy leveling is in an attempt to trivialize what some see as problems aren’t considering the fact that others have different experiences than them.

I had considered rerolling one of my low level characters to test out the system but I can’t see myself ever wanting to make a new character given the current state of the trait system.

It should be that the unlocks have to do with 1-25 zones for adept tier, 26-55 for master tier, and 56-80 for grandmaster. None of this “Clear Frostgorge Sound” crap for adept traits. Absolutely ridiculous. They should also attach the traits to things that are actually similar. Like fire traits being to do with killing Flame Legion and elementals.

BigfootArisen.6509:

It should be that the unlocks have to do with 1-25 zones for adept tier, 26-55 for master tier, and 56-80 for grandmaster. None of this “Clear Frostgorge Sound” crap for adept traits. Absolutely ridiculous. They should also attach the traits to things that are actually similar. Like fire traits being to do with killing Flame Legion and elementals.

Yeah, people keep trying to point that out,
but either keep getting trolled or ignored, by people who don’t care if it’s level balanced or not
(most of those trolling/or ignoring valid points are the ones who want to get to 80 fast as possible, I’ve noticed)

Why don’t we have a response from the devs about this imbalance in levels with the trait system?

Sephrye.1628:

BigfootArisen.6509:

It should be that the unlocks have to do with 1-25 zones for adept tier, 26-55 for master tier, and 56-80 for grandmaster. None of this “Clear Frostgorge Sound” crap for adept traits. Absolutely ridiculous. They should also attach the traits to things that are actually similar. Like fire traits being to do with killing Flame Legion and elementals.

Yeah, people keep trying to point that out,
but either keep getting trolled or ignored, by people who don’t care if it’s level balanced or not
(most of those trolling/or ignoring valid points are the ones who want to get to 80 fast as possible, I’ve noticed)

Why don’t we have a response from the devs about this imbalance in levels with the trait system?

Because for whatever reason they are all about hugboxes. Gamer culture isn’t exactly nice, and we don’t pull punches. If we don’t like how something was done, we say that. Then they close our threads for being negative. Admittedly, part of that is we are also jerks to eachother, which should be stamped out, but when we are railing against a poor content decision? Don’t pull a Bioware/ME3 debacle and say we are flat out wrong and that what they choose is 100% right. People make mistakes, its fine, just fix the blasted things.

ANet has also been refusing to acknowledge any problems at all with GW2. If what they say could make them look bad in the short term, it is not said. I miss the jovial manner that we had in GW1, but now everyone is covering their kittens and turtling up against the players. That’s just a bad way to deal with the community of an MMO.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Taygus.4571:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

play normally? Whats “normal”?
and how many hours is that?

you’re “week”, is different to my week.

Sorry for the typo. But yes, of course I made my thoughts about ‘normally’. There are people with less time who need – let’s say – more than a month. But then those people could complain that it takes ‘months to reach max level’ as well.

Again, you’re throwing timelines around without any hours.

How many hours does it take you, doing WHAT, in game to level from 1-80.

In fact, create a new character now and tell us all exactly how many hours it takes you. Then we can talk timelines.
_
The issue isnt leveling to 80, its that trait unlocks are boring/out of reach for the level they are meant to be accessible. Even if some people can level quicker than others, it doesnt change this fact.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

…

My love for this game is waning; it’s only saving grace is that ESO is “poo” and buggy.

If you’re going to pay a sub anyway, give Eve a shot perhaps?

Lol, I have had at it in the past, but I find the control disconnect between the player and ship boring. On the subscription based front I’m really wishing for a successor to UO T2A, but I highly doubt anyone will pull one off, but there are a few promising ones in the pipeline that are very sandboxy.

Back to the topic at hand: I really hope AN will be sensible and listen to the complaints about their trait changes, but unless you’re about to release something new that people are going to buy there is simply no need for listening.

Actually I just think i’ll stop buying gems no use complaining.

I just want to echo what many have said. Earning traits is great. Doing map completion to get them is ok, but doing map completion on level 60 or 80 zones for a level 35 adept trait is ridiculous! You are basically saying you can’t have that trait unless you either pay gold (tough for new player) or become a well equipped level 80. If it wanted us to complete Gendaran or Snowden or something like that I would not be annoyed.

In my case it is a good thing I have 8 lvl 80 toons and don’t need these traits, but it is way over the top for anybody starting out.

Taygus.4571:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Taygus.4571:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

play normally? Whats “normal”?
and how many hours is that?

you’re “week”, is different to my week.

Sorry for the typo. But yes, of course I made my thoughts about ‘normally’. There are people with less time who need – let’s say – more than a month. But then those people could complain that it takes ‘months to reach max level’ as well.

Again, you’re throwing timelines around without any hours.

How many hours does it take you, doing WHAT, in game to level from 1-80.

In fact, create a new character now and tell us all exactly how many hours it takes you. Then we can talk timelines.
_
The issue isnt leveling to 80, its that trait unlocks are boring/out of reach for the level they are meant to be accessible. Even if some people can level quicker than others, it doesnt change this fact.

Without boosters or level jumps it’s usually 45 min-1hr/level, this is pretty steady across all normal methods. Only serious AoE in big events is faster (got three levels in one Scarlet invasion once), but that’s only viable at higher levels (if at all, depending on class).

Anyway 60-80 hours to do 1-80. So yeah “A week” is nuts. That’s 8.5hrs/day. Unemployed/holiday, and not in education is the only way to get that.

I predict the rise of the untraited level 80, which you will see in your dungeon group, pve, and wvw, and which you will have no way of knowing until they keep wiping or causing the group to wipe.

‘why don’t you have xyz trait’ ‘I can’t complete the event’.

Victory.2879:

‘why don’t you have xyz trait’ ‘I can’t complete the event’.

Yep, and they won’t even be being unreasonable. 3g and 20 skill points is a non-trivial investment for newer players and casual players, and many of the events simply aren’t reliably available.

It worked in GW1 because you could solo (or at worst duo) any skill-mob, and they were always up (basically), but when you need a small zerg at least… and the event has to be up… Sigh…

BigfootArisen.6509:

They are trying something new, and it went poorly. They should’ve done a poll about this first, because holy crow, some of the unlock parameters are completely ridiculous. If they had kept it at a trait point at 10, and then another and another and so on until 60, where you unlock all your trait points, that would have been far better. 20 levels of hammering out your build would have been far better than “Oh, you’re 80 now and are expected to have exotic gear. Find a build already when you have no idea what all your options even are.”

This is one of my main problems too, 60-80 is perfect for getting used to your new traits and learning what works/works best for you, then as you say, you get to lvl 80 then you can start thinking about what armour and weapons you need as you will be fully used to your character by that point.

I really wish they would change that part back (at least, won’t explain the other problems this new system has brought that I think need changing).

My first toon was a Warriror his build was 15/20/20/0/15, not a common build but it worked really well (for PvE, as that’s all I play :P), had high crit and plenty of traits that worked with this high crit, he was complete by lvl 40 (in the old system) and I used that build up to lvl 80, and still do, though i was able to tweak it a lot. So to repeat, at lvl 40 he’d completed his traits (which he carried until lvl 80) and had plenty to fiddle with, so by lvl 80 I knew what build I was using and what stats would be best on my lvl 80 armour, but I still had 20 levels to try stuff from Grand Master (as the poster quoted mentioned). This new system gives nothing to fiddle with until past 60. How exactly does the new system allow more experimenting than the previous one?

Just wanted to add my thoughts – for reference I am a casual player – I’ve played since launch and only have one lvl80 char – I have a bunch of others spread from 20 to 66.

In all that time I have had great fun, but haven’t really amassed a great deal of gold, gear, or skill points. I rarely get to play for more than about an hour at a time, so a lot of big world events, and even amost WvWvW is usually beyond the scope of my gameplay.

Generally it’s a good update – but there are definitely some issues with the changes to traits.

The trait unlock system – although i think it could be a good system – is currently so badly designed (or, more likely, not designed at all) that it’s offputting to say the least.
Any unlock system has to have level appropriate unlocks, and they have to be within fairly easy reach of most players regardless of how they are able, or how they choose, to play.

Trait point distribution and level progression – I can accept the new version, but it does seem worse, in that the sense of ongoing progression will be less, and the top heavy distribution of trait points seems odd and much too biased towards the top end – at least consider evening out the aquisition of points, maybe 1 every 4 lvls starting from 28 – but i also think it shoudl start at a lower level – however then you have a problem, since you can’t reduce the “gap” between gaining a point, and start at a lower level – tricky.

p.s.
Thanks to rstripn.8697 whose comments are all good, and i agree with (apart from maybe putting up the costs for buying traits – since i am poor

Lostyus.4250:

BigfootArisen.6509:

snip

This is one of my main problems too, 60-80 is perfect for getting used to your new traits and learning what works/works best for you, then as you say, you get to lvl 80 then you can start thinking about what armour and weapons you need as you will be fully used to your character by that point.

I really wish they would change that part back (at least, won’t explain the other problems this new system has brought that I think need changing).

My first toon was a Warriror his build was 15/20/20/0/15, not a common build but it worked really well (for PvE, as that’s all I play :P), had high crit and plenty of traits that worked with this high crit, he was complete by lvl 40 (in the old system) and I used that build up to lvl 80, and still do, though i was able to tweak it a lot. So to repeat, at lvl 40 he’d completed his traits (which he carried until lvl 80) and had plenty to fiddle with, so by lvl 80 I knew what build I was using and what stats would be best on my lvl 80 armour, but I still had 20 levels to try stuff from Grand Master (as the poster quoted mentioned). This new system gives nothing to fiddle with until past 60. How exactly does the new system allow more experimenting than the previous one?

Its good to see someone else feels the same. The whole reason for the Ferocity change was to attempt to bring zerk down to the level of everything else to increase build diversity, and then in the same patch they make it so that a new player is completely neutered and can’t even try out different builds besides different gear until level 30? This system is far more difficult than the previous system was. I’ve been leveling a warrior for the first time since September of ‘12. The reason I quit then was because warrior was boring for me. 5sig was it for leveling, anything else was just gimmicky. Now I don’t even have the option of messing about. I already know what I wanna build, yeah, but I have so much time until 80, but I can’t even see anything else about warrior until around level 60? Because I have to either pay for it or go out and complete content entirely above her head?

I have looked at all the trait changes, and I like them.
I have looked at the new ways to get the traits, and I must say I am flabbergasted again at the knee jerk actions taken by the management team that scream [lack of direction].
The coders may be simplifying the code to allow the management team to get what they want, but the management team has no idea why they want it. Everything just seems to have no direction in mind. If they wanted to make a PVP game, they should have made it instead of gutting the GW franchise to do it.

BigfootArisen.6509:

Lostyus.4250:

BigfootArisen.6509:

snip

This is one of my main problems too, 60-80 is perfect for getting used to your new traits and learning what works/works best for you, then as you say, you get to lvl 80 then you can start thinking about what armour and weapons you need as you will be fully used to your character by that point.

I really wish they would change that part back (at least, won’t explain the other problems this new system has brought that I think need changing).

My first toon was a Warriror his build was 15/20/20/0/15, not a common build but it worked really well (for PvE, as that’s all I play :P), had high crit and plenty of traits that worked with this high crit, he was complete by lvl 40 (in the old system) and I used that build up to lvl 80, and still do, though i was able to tweak it a lot. So to repeat, at lvl 40 he’d completed his traits (which he carried until lvl 80) and had plenty to fiddle with, so by lvl 80 I knew what build I was using and what stats would be best on my lvl 80 armour, but I still had 20 levels to try stuff from Grand Master (as the poster quoted mentioned). This new system gives nothing to fiddle with until past 60. How exactly does the new system allow more experimenting than the previous one?

Its good to see someone else feels the same. The whole reason for the Ferocity change was to attempt to bring zerk down to the level of everything else to increase build diversity, and then in the same patch they make it so that a new player is completely neutered and can’t even try out different builds besides different gear until level 30? This system is far more difficult than the previous system was. I’ve been leveling a warrior for the first time since September of ‘12. The reason I quit then was because warrior was boring for me. 5sig was it for leveling, anything else was just gimmicky. Now I don’t even have the option of messing about. I already know what I wanna build, yeah, but I have so much time until 80, but I can’t even see anything else about warrior until around level 60? Because I have to either pay for it or go out and complete content entirely above her head?

That’s how I’m feeling now (neutered) with my new Ranger (that I started before this patch took place, to avoid it, as even then it sounded dubious). When the patch hit, he was lvl 50 (odd) most traits I had I lost with the change, and it felt boring, not being able to try out things I would have on the old system, like whether to give strength (traits) to my pet, or make my Ranger stronger. He’s lvl 60 now so in the old system I would have been able to try all types of builds, now I still have to wait another 20 levels to see which build to use, and then, after that… then I can buy his lvl 80 armour because I’ll know what stats he needs, lol.

I really dont know why A-net did this. I definitely don’t believe the BS about it helping new players (and I can’t believe that they thought people would be gullible enough to believe it either), but I can’t understand why they would implement this when it goes against their ‘no grind’ mantra?!

ProtoGunner.4953:

As usual the whining here is pathetic – finally some work to do for your character. I imagine the complaints in GW1 when you had to unlock the last skill points in Prophecies… but then, there were only real players around. Not spoilt young brats complaining about everything.

My only complaint is that trait unlocks are locked behind time specific group content: this is bad, if I want to unlock it, I want it do immediately, and don’t want to wait for it. Also finding a group to unlock something totally necessary as traits are, is bad.

Doing different open world content though is a good idea. It spreads people out and finally they have to work for their character. With the new Megaserver it is super easy anyway. Lyssa yesterday done in about 10mins.

You can’t IMMEDIATELY clear high-level maps, either. Adept traits are locked by 30 levels in some cases. That’s far worse than having to get a group and do Twilight Arbor or capture a tower in WvW. People aren’t complaining about having to do work.

If you’d read even a single criticism here you’d find most people would be glad to 100% an appropriately leveled map for their traits. 100%ing Gendarren Fields is great for unlocking an adept trait. 100% Frostgorge Sound is fine for a Grandmaster trait.

Trait unlocking is the first thing I’ve experienced in this game that has actually made me angry. And I’m not talking about the concept, but the execution. Putting traits behind events on long timers was an incredibly stupid design decision. The chest in the Straits of Devastation is fine. The other events are horrible. I’ve been trying to do these events for days, and they’re never active when I’m online. I’ve wasted too many hours trying to complete this and it’s making me hate the game.

Shostie.6435:

Trait unlocking is the first thing I’ve experienced in this game that has actually made me angry. And I’m not talking about the concept, but the execution. Putting traits behind events on long timers was an incredibly stupid design decision. The chest in the Straits of Devastation is fine. The other events are horrible. I’ve been trying to do these events for days, and they’re never active when I’m online. I’ve wasted too many hours trying to complete this and it’s making me hate the game.

Shostie, I completely agree with you. I hope that game designers will read this topic very carefully and they realize that this “traits update” is for lots of people very frustrating. I am older casual player with family and two children and lots of work. Game is for me place for fun and relaxation and not for hunting achievements and waiting hours for triggering some event. This update definitively destroy my motivation to play with new alts and experiment with different builds. I realize that younger hardcore players will not have problems with this changes, but people like me are disgust and that is a real pity. From the early beginning of this game I appreciated that this game is friendly to casual players and you don’t have to be “no-real-life-person” to enjoy it. In past I appreciated freedom and lots of opportunities what to do. This model will force players to uniformity and making bigger differences between casual and hardcore players.

Dear designers I like your work and I really enjoy the game but this form of unlocking traits is mistake. Please consider change in the next update.

TOMES…

I deleted one of my characters to experience the new trait system. I am already seriously regretting it. It has been said before that the acquisition of some traits do not fit the level of the trait. IE: Adept level trait, and needing to map complete a high level zone.

First there needs to be some rebalancing of this.

My biggest problem is that I have the gold to unlock my traits, what I don’t have on my new character is Skill points. Between needing SP for utilities, and then if I need them for trait unlocks, I don’t have enough.

I suggest the following.

Tomes that will unlock utilities skills or traits. Have them drop from chest, champions, etc.

OR…Let me buy my tomes with a different profession.

IE: My Mesmer has 200 + skill points, I have the gold. Let my Mesmer be able to buy Guardian tomes, so that I can unlock my trait faster with SP and Gold. As I said before the major problem I have now, is the lack of Skill Points on the new Character.

I would like to have more traits sooner, as I level, to learn and experience my new character.

HappyDale.5398:

IE: My Mesmer has 200 + skill points, I have the gold. Let my Mesmer be able to buy Guardian tomes, so that I can unlock my trait faster with SP and Gold. As I said before the major problem I have now, is the lack of Skill Points on the new Character.

It would be super super nice if skill points were account bound, and that would alleviate the problem of rolling alts struggling with skill points to get traits in the new system.

But it wouldn’t do a thing for genuinely new players.

Lheimroo.2947:

HappyDale.5398:

IE: My Mesmer has 200 + skill points, I have the gold. Let my Mesmer be able to buy Guardian tomes, so that I can unlock my trait faster with SP and Gold. As I said before the major problem I have now, is the lack of Skill Points on the new Character.

It would be super super nice if skill points were account bound, and that would alleviate the problem of rolling alts struggling with skill points to get traits in the new system.

But it wouldn’t do a thing for genuinely new players.

I completely agree.

I figured many others have suggested ways for new players and for WvW only players to unlock traits. Just adding my two cents, in what I am facing.

Besides the fact the Adept levels traits need to start to be unlock at level 11. Through low level map completion, low levels bosses (Oak, Bandit), and low level Jumping puzzles, and personal story. That by the time you are level 36 you already have a fair about of trait unlocked, to experiment with. Then by level 42 most if not all Adept level traits should be unlocked. Then again By level 48 you should have a descent amount of Master level traits unlock to start messing with.

Klamath.1405:

Shostie.6435:

Trait unlocking is the first thing I’ve experienced in this game that has actually made me angry. And I’m not talking about the concept, but the execution. Putting traits behind events on long timers was an incredibly stupid design decision. The chest in the Straits of Devastation is fine. The other events are horrible. I’ve been trying to do these events for days, and they’re never active when I’m online. I’ve wasted too many hours trying to complete this and it’s making me hate the game.

Shostie, I completely agree with you. I hope that game designers will read this topic very carefully and they realize that this “traits update” is for lots of people very frustrating. I am older casual player with family and two children and lots of work. Game is for me place for fun and relaxation and not for hunting achievements and waiting hours for triggering some event. This update definitively destroy my motivation to play with new alts and experiment with different builds. I realize that younger hardcore players will not have problems with this changes, but people like me are disgust and that is a real pity. From the early beginning of this game I appreciated that this game is friendly to casual players and you don’t have to be “no-real-life-person” to enjoy it. In past I appreciated freedom and lots of opportunities what to do. This model will force players to uniformity and making bigger differences between casual and hardcore players.

Dear designers I like your work and I really enjoy the game but this form of unlocking traits is mistake. Please consider change in the next update.

I like hunting down achievements. I just don’t like waiting and waiting and waiting for a spawn to complete something like this. This goes against their original design philosophy.

HappyDale.5398:

Lheimroo.2947:

HappyDale.5398:

IE: My Mesmer has 200 + skill points, I have the gold. Let my Mesmer be able to buy Guardian tomes, so that I can unlock my trait faster with SP and Gold. As I said before the major problem I have now, is the lack of Skill Points on the new Character.

It would be super super nice if skill points were account bound, and that would alleviate the problem of rolling alts struggling with skill points to get traits in the new system.

But it wouldn’t do a thing for genuinely new players.

I completely agree.

I figured many others have suggested ways for new players and for WvW only players to unlock traits. Just adding my two cents, in what I am facing.

Besides the fact the Adept levels traits need to start to be unlock at level 11. Through low level map completion, low levels bosses (Oak, Bandit), and low level Jumping puzzles, and personal story. That by the time you are level 36 you already have a fair about of trait unlocked, to experiment with. Then by level 42 most if not all Adept level traits should be unlocked. Then again By level 48 you should have a descent amount of Master level traits unlock to start messing with.

This is a really nice suggestion.

It feels like longevity for the sake of longevity, in short, GRIND GRIND GRIND. There wasn’t anything wrong with the old system, something that wasn’t broken was fixed because x amount of players were “apparently” clueless ( but I’m pretty sure it has to do with that asian market.) and specced 5/5/5/5/5. The people that actually knew what they were doing are being punished, on top of that as others have pointed out it’s an absurd amount of skill points and gold for new players.

You should probably take down that manifesto, because at the moment I’m swinging a sword, I’m swinging a sword again and again and again. Grinding isn’t content, it’s a cheap carrot on a stick gimmick. Guild Wars II: Simon’s Quest.

Am I the only one feeling this could, in the long run, lead to sub-par builds? Like players just unlocking whatever traits they find easier to do without factoring in how efficient those may be given their equipped stats and weapon choices?

Water takes the easiest course it can – and so do players.

FrozenStarRo.7240:

Am I the only one feeling this could, in the long run, lead to sub-par builds? Like players just unlocking whatever traits they find easier to do without factoring in how efficient those may be given their equipped stats and weapon choices?

Without a doubt that is what will happen. Leveling up classes that rely on traits to make PvE content not terrible (mesmer, engineer come to mind) are going to absolutely blow until they get to 80 and can focus on traits.

But what confuses me the most is, in its current implementation, the new trait system doesn’t really add longevity to the game, it just increases the amount of grind you have to wade through until you can be relevant in the end game content (fractals, wvw, dungeons, etc). This isn’t the way to increase interest in the game.

Please either make the trait point gain begin at level 20 again or just roll back to the old system.

Before the patch, playing my level 34 thief, i had what I would consider a solid build. It was fun to gain stats each level, work towards my goal or minor and major traits and provided me with tons of utility like Mug and Kleptomaniac.

Now, after the patch, I have 1(!) trait point to spent, it feels just so wrong and useless. Now I’m all like “meh, another level I don’t gain anything” and not “yay, another level I can assign a point into the stat I want!”

What you basically did was crap all over low-level players who are leveling, without thinking about the consequences.

I am so glad I am not leveling any characters. This system seems really awful from a pre-80 perspective.

As it is, I have to stand around waiting for certain events that I have done in the past to trigger. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to have the experience using the former system and trying to level and progress a character in the current one.