Guild Wars 2

Kohlteth.3715:

Guhracie.3419:

Earn X guild influence
Earn X guild commendations

and for those of us that are in guilds that cannot DO puzzles, like casual guilds or smaller ones ?

Do not force people into Guilds that may not want to be part of super guilds…

and I still think that locking Adept Traits behind lvl 50 content is dumb !!

So is charging such a huge amount to unlock them, totally alienating newer players !

I love what you have come up with for the rest though :-)

Dude, they are meant to be options from a massive pool of quests. If you’re not in a guild that does that, do a different quest. I mean, I don’t want to map complete Lornar’s Pass on every character I have, so I’d skip that one more often than not. I’m not good at certain jumping puzzles. This is meant to have massive appeal to all different types of players. Instead of the current system where you have to do each quest, this would give you options from all areas.

Old system was good.dont know why they changed it

I second all the requests to make it account-earned rather than each alt.
Once a player does the task required for each trait, it is completed for the entire account.

Perhaps they can make an exception for the Grandmaster traits, and that would give them the leeway to make a separate content tailored for each individual trait.

Why not just combine the old with the new? Bring back old system and just add the tasks for those who want to hunt them? That would probably make everyone happy so not going to happen huh lol!

Bawi.9541:

I love it. It’s how it should have been all along.

Beginners are guided around the world (and the wiki and dulfy) and can unlock all the traits one by one.
People that have been around for a while will prolly be bored of all the same tasks (jk everyone’s doing farming runs all day anyway) and just dish out some coin for the traits they know they will need/like.

I don’t agree with when the different tiers are unlocked, but that’s really minor.

tl/dr A huge leap in the right direction. Smooth out the timing of unlocking trait-tiers and it’s A+

Yep.. Gotta say, at the very least, it’s a step in the right direction. I personally don’t mind it the way it is but I can see how some people might get upset over the fact that for a low lvl trait you need to do something that requires you to be a higher lvl.. Other than that though I don’t see any issues… This is how it should have been from the beginning. I’m sort of hoping they make heal, utility and elite skills similarly acquired :-P it’s nice to get real rewards from content.. Imagine if this is how it was from the start. These would be the rewards.. I’d be so stoked. Leveling new alts JUST because of this.

After level a character (a 2nd engi) in the new system, I found a few aspects that I certainly don’t like and I feel are extremely limiting/discourage to new players (or even to veteran players looking at trying an new alt).

The 14 point trait system makes sense, but backing off each trait tier by 20 levels just slows down the feeling of character progression. It’s also rather detrimental to some professions/builds that are more reliant on traits to be viable.

I also like the idea of earning trait unlocks through gameplay, but the current implementation is just awful. Most of my newly-80 engineer’s traits are unlocked by tasks that are simply too much trouble to do, and even more so for a level-appropriate character. Champions at the end of long (and not obviously related) event chains or in remote areas, which don’t often get killed. Orr temples which can leave you sitting around for a couple hours waiting for events to reset. Level 30 adept traits that require tasks in level 50+ maps, and even one that requires a level 59 story mission.

What is the purpose of unlocking the trait tier at 30, if the actual trait is walled off until I double my level?

Why would I want to repeat unrewarding story mode dungeons on a character that will likely never need to be the opener for an explorable path?

Being able to unlock them through gameplay is great, and could have been a nice encouragement to exploration. But I see the tedious/difficult nature of many of the tasks, and high cost of buying the unlocks, leading to many traits never being tried. It’s just an encouragement to buy what you need to fit a build, and never look at other options. Experimentation should be encouraged, not turned into a burden or nuisance.

There are a lot of things to do in this game, and they could have chosen much better tasks to unlock traits. Or at least chosen ones that are level appropriate to the trait tier.

Seems like there are too many alts on the servers. (New) players shouldn’t buy more additional character slots, but concentrate on one toon only, to get deterred of doing the whole unlocking tasks again with one or more alts and either just buy the traits or delete their toons/leave them untouched.

I have the impression that no one of the Designers of this trait system ever asked her-/himself: “Would I like it? If I’d play one or multiple toons, would this be what I consider fun to play? How would I react as a player, when things are taken away and much harder to achieve, that previously weren’t?” I mean, aren’t these the very basic questions a game designer should ask her-/himself before coding the first single line?

Fortunately I have some toons that were created before april 15th, the others I leave untouched, maybe I’ll delete them to disburden the login server.

Based on my experience with grandfathered characters, exploring to unlock the new grandmaster traits is fun. Fun, but flawed, because it relies on timed events instead of set quests. This is one of a few cases where the traditional quest system found in MMOs is better to handle this situation than dynamic events.

However, I admit I fear the idea of starting new alts. It’s not that I mind the new system, but rather how it is executed. This is for several reasons:

• Leveling in GW2 was never that exciting. You unlock your weapon skills extremely fast, and getting rare gear is very rare and very unexciting in this game because the Trading Post exists. For those reasons, most of the progression was felt through traits. By taking the little sense of progression that GW2 had while leveling, I can imagine that leveling an alt is going to be painful.
• Exploring the world to unlock traits is a fun idea, but not when every single little trait is gated by map completion, timed events, or the like.

Solutions

• Revert the gated trait tiers to the old level values.
• Make adept traits significantly and streamlined easy to get.
• Make the first adept tier for each trait line unlocked by default, for the sake of players having at least one option to fill the slot when they invest points into a trait line but have not yet explored the world much.
• Only grandmaster traits should be hard to obtain.

I’ve seen quite a few people recommend giving Adept trait unlocks for free.

From a development standpoint, this is a great idea. Not only does this give characters something to start with at level 36 (for dungeons), but this frees up a bunch of tasks that were unwieldly to begin with and weren’t suited to the character level they open in. (100% Harathi completion from level 35… when the zone ends at 45. And that’s not even the most egregious offense.)

Without having to spread out assigned tasks through Adept tier, those tasks could be laced into Master tier, when characters have a bit more freedom to explore zones without running into excessive level caps. So, even if they don’t change the level/point schema, they can run Master tier traits from 25-60 zones, which covers a lot of ground. It also gives them more design space for introducing new traits.

Make the first adept tier trait (trait number I) for each trait line unlocked by default

I really like this idea, so I’ll expand on it a bit.

• Allows players to have at least one option to try out in each trait line by default;
• Functions as a tutorial – Anet’s skill & balance design team can then swap traits to determine which trait fits the number I the best. (For example: Elementalist’s fire trait 1, Lava Tomb, is a very niche trait. It would have its roman numeral swapped by the more general/ universal Ember’s Might, making it so that, every time a new player gains access to fire magic, the first trait they get to experience is one that increases burning’s duration.)
• Makes it easier to unlock adept traits, which, in my opinion, should be an easier and more streamlined task than unlocking master and grandmaster traits;

Make adept (and some master) traits much easier to get – through broader or more universal content

• Have most of them be unlocked by story instances – each instance ALWAYS unlocking a new adept trait (and the last five instances unlocking a master trait for each line);
• This will streamline the new trait system, making it more natural, and less annoying and grindy;

Some adept traits, most master trait and all grandmaster traits should still require going through specific content around the world, as they currently do.

Just came here to say I dislike the current trait system, it’s way too tedious and random, imho. Players should be able to reliably play the content needed to unlock their traits.

I seriously don’t know what the heck the Dev’s were thinking. Suffice it to say, stop trying to force us to run around Zones we don’t want to be in. This new trait system is a train wreck to be certain.

I see it this way, if I want to fast level and run WvW, I should be able to without such time and expense. To balance this, how about we add this system to s/t PVP too? How about you can’t tPvP until you hit 80, have completed zones, done dungeon stories, the works! Then watch as the Dev’s listen and cater to their precious s/t PvP’ers complaints. Because it’s certainly falling on deaf ears when the complaints are coming from the rest of us.

I have 11 80’s. One of which I just finished leveling a couple of hours ago on a new account. The experience is awkward and clunky. The character is a very weak 80 without traits. Also, uplevels are far weaker than they once were. Especially weaker in the 50-60 range. All due to the new trait system. Which, I don’t recall ever seeing a player ask for such a change.

DeWolfe.2174:

Which, I don’t recall ever seeing a player ask for such a change.

It’s a side effect of some players saying “GW2 isn’t enough like GW1!” and wanting skill hunts like the good old days. So, I understand the intent.

The execution, as seems to be ANet’s modus operandi of late, is flummoxed. Even after an update a few weeks ago, the trait hunts are laborious, boring, random, and poorly paced with the leveling experience.

Sartharina.3542:

There are two good qualities I see in the new trait system – The free retraiting on-the-fly, and the ease of reshuffling traits around.

Would agree wholeheartedly….and one might even suggest that it would have made sense to have a build-saving system in place when one makes it easy to shift builds.
In fact, I saw it suggested many, many times. Hell, they could give you 2-3 slots on a toon and let you buy more in the store, as another profit-generating tool.

/ANet-missedopportunity….again

All I can say is thank God I had all 5 character slots filled. I’ll never add another if it has to level through this mess.

I find the new trait system opaque, slow, painfully grindy, unintuitive, and frankly punitive to the poor kittens starting the game now. I suspect it would make leveling significantly harder without having the traits available that you need.
It seems to force people into suboptimal builds (based on what they’ve managed to unlock) for extremely long spans of time, in order to give them “something to do” at high levels (get the rest of their traits unlocked so they can truly play however they want). Moreover – and I could certainly be wrong at this, as I haven’t played a new toon – aren’t some traits locked behind instances? Since the instances are level-scaled and impossible to ever solo, essentially ANet is forcing people to find groups to get traits….that’s staggeringly unfun. Not to mention (again, caveat, I could be wrong) but it sure seems like there are some traits locked behind zones that aren’t even level-appropriate?

Wow. I thought this was going to be interesting and challenging, like GW1’s skill-seeking, not some sort of BS content gate to make levels 40-80 somehow relevant.

With over 1200+ posts, this thread should be stickied by now

Scientia.8924:

With over 1200+ posts, this thread should be stickied by now

With over 1200+ posts, they should have done a roll back by now

The one thing I think is absolutely ridiculous is this whole unlocking traits thing. Some of the things you have to do are outrageous… and make no sense at all. Autotool Installation, for example, has to be unlocked with a level 70 quest. You get the level for that trait at level 48….
This update ruins the character training experience. You literally have no traits because almost none of them can be locked anywhere near easily. You have to kill the Karka Queen for some traits… how is a new player or someone who doesn’t have a huge group going to ever do that?
The buying prices are also outrageous. All that gold for a single trait?? And what is with the skill point cost? I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points. Not traits.
I feel bad for any new player that has to go through this… they probably won’t get any traits long after they’re level 80.

Please reconsider this change. At least make the unlocking system more logical and possible for newer players. And without a doubt lower that rip off cost of these traits -_-

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Scientia.8924:

With over 1200+ posts, this thread should be stickied by now

With over 1200+ posts, they should have done a roll back by now

Y’know, normally, I would say ‘suck it up, princess’ when it comes to “bad” things in patches.
This is not one of those times. They need to rollback the trait hunt so hard that WalMart sues them for copyright infringement.

tl;dr – Trait unlocks need to go back to the drawing board.

I can’t agree more that the new trait system is horribly flawed, unrewarding, tedious, and/or costly. I hate it. I don’t have many alts, and this is just another reason not to make any more.

Why does ANet continuously say one thing while doing something completely different? Play how I want??? Hah. Doesn’t seem so. Stop forcing players to do specific content. Just STOP.

I really don’t get why ANet is so quiet on this matter. I think most of us agree that traits are in a bad place right now and need to be returned back to the way they were. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? Well they smashed the thing apart then taped the broken pieces together.

Rollback is a no no, because this feature is already implemented, because it brings some good things, and because the playerbase (that came from GW1) actually asked for this, including myself.

What it needs to be done, is that they need to improve the new system. Improve.

Elite hunting was very fun in GW1, but it had some nuances that were not considered in this game:

• In GW1, you only hunt for elites – normal skills are brought in shops. This new system makes you hunt for every single trait, even the weakest ones. That’s a major difference right here.
• In GW1, elite hunting is very easy to understand and identify: you see a boss with the aura of your profession, then you bring the capture skill, kill him, and see what he has. It’s something that happens naturally, while you play through linear missions or while you vanquish areas, and only occasionally find those bosses optionally (when you decide to explore areas, which certainly makes exploration more rewarding).
• In comparison, trait hunting in GW2 can come from anything and anywhere – you never know what or when until you go to the trait’s page and read where you can get it. It feels random, scattered unnaturally, and for those players that are leveling their characters, it is highly restricting when it shouldn’t.

This system is awesome in theory, but it needs serious improvements.

Adept traits, and some master traits, should be significantly easier to get – thus why I have suggested that the first trait for each adept trait line should be unlocked by default, and why all story instances should unlock an adept trait and, later one, a few master traits. This will make the system a lot more natural and fluid, because what all players will need to do to unlock most of the easy stuff is to simply follow the story.

Then, they need a way for players to easily identify the places where they can unlock the remaining, high tier traits. Just like GW1 had with the boss auras, there needs to exist something, perhaps placed in the map the moment you get vision of the respective area, that there exists a trait to collect.

TheBandit.7031:

The one thing I think is absolutely ridiculous is this whole unlocking traits thing. Some of the things you have to do are outrageous… and make no sense at all. Autotool Installation, for example, has to be unlocked with a level 70 quest. You get the level for that trait at level 48….
This update ruins the character training experience. You literally have no traits because almost none of them can be locked anywhere near easily. You have to kill the Karka Queen for some traits… how is a new player or someone who doesn’t have a huge group going to ever do that?
The buying prices are also outrageous. All that gold for a single trait?? And what is with the skill point cost? I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points. Not traits.
I feel bad for any new player that has to go through this… they probably won’t get any traits long after they’re level 80.

Please reconsider this change. At least make the unlocking system more logical and possible for newer players. And without a doubt lower that rip off cost of these traits -_-

As 1 of those NEW players I could not agree more …….. Ridiculous tasks to unlock Traits I wished to explore, now I cannot ..

Anyone know how many Skill points I will need on way to 80?

I mean how many do I have to save as there has to be a finite number right ? or is there way to get more other than the ones on the maps ?

Kohlteth.3715:

TheBandit.7031:

The one thing I think is absolutely ridiculous is this whole unlocking traits thing. Some of the things you have to do are outrageous… and make no sense at all. Autotool Installation, for example, has to be unlocked with a level 70 quest. You get the level for that trait at level 48….
This update ruins the character training experience. You literally have no traits because almost none of them can be locked anywhere near easily. You have to kill the Karka Queen for some traits… how is a new player or someone who doesn’t have a huge group going to ever do that?
The buying prices are also outrageous. All that gold for a single trait?? And what is with the skill point cost? I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points. Not traits.
I feel bad for any new player that has to go through this… they probably won’t get any traits long after they’re level 80.

Please reconsider this change. At least make the unlocking system more logical and possible for newer players. And without a doubt lower that rip off cost of these traits -_-

As 1 of those NEW players I could not agree more …….. Ridiculous tasks to unlock Traits I wished to explore, now I cannot ..

Anyone know how many Skill points I will need on way to 80?

I mean how many do I have to save as there has to be a finite number right ? or is there way to get more other than the ones on the maps ?

Every time you level you also get a skill point and every time you “level” after 80 you get one. there are also scrolls.

Kohlteth.3715:

TheBandit.7031:

The one thing I think is absolutely ridiculous is this whole unlocking traits thing. Some of the things you have to do are outrageous… and make no sense at all. Autotool Installation, for example, has to be unlocked with a level 70 quest. You get the level for that trait at level 48….
This update ruins the character training experience. You literally have no traits because almost none of them can be locked anywhere near easily. You have to kill the Karka Queen for some traits… how is a new player or someone who doesn’t have a huge group going to ever do that?
The buying prices are also outrageous. All that gold for a single trait?? And what is with the skill point cost? I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points. Not traits.
I feel bad for any new player that has to go through this… they probably won’t get any traits long after they’re level 80.

Please reconsider this change. At least make the unlocking system more logical and possible for newer players. And without a doubt lower that rip off cost of these traits -_-

As 1 of those NEW players I could not agree more …….. Ridiculous tasks to unlock Traits I wished to explore, now I cannot ..

Anyone know how many Skill points I will need on way to 80?

I mean how many do I have to save as there has to be a finite number right ? or is there way to get more other than the ones on the maps ?

You’ll get loads of skill scrolls as you play, they drop from champs and other places.
A level 80 can keep gaining skill points too.

Kohlteth.3715:

TheBandit.7031:

The one thing I think is absolutely ridiculous is this whole unlocking traits thing. Some of the things you have to do are outrageous… and make no sense at all. Autotool Installation, for example, has to be unlocked with a level 70 quest. You get the level for that trait at level 48….
This update ruins the character training experience. You literally have no traits because almost none of them can be locked anywhere near easily. You have to kill the Karka Queen for some traits… how is a new player or someone who doesn’t have a huge group going to ever do that?
The buying prices are also outrageous. All that gold for a single trait?? And what is with the skill point cost? I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points. Not traits.
I feel bad for any new player that has to go through this… they probably won’t get any traits long after they’re level 80.

Please reconsider this change. At least make the unlocking system more logical and possible for newer players. And without a doubt lower that rip off cost of these traits -_-

As 1 of those NEW players I could not agree more …….. Ridiculous tasks to unlock Traits I wished to explore, now I cannot ..

Anyone know how many Skill points I will need on way to 80?

I mean how many do I have to save as there has to be a finite number right ? or is there way to get more other than the ones on the maps ?

Scrolls of Knowledge can be farmed from Champ kills in Edge of the Mists.

Many players completely ignore open world PvE and unlock traits this way.

The irony is that Anet is unlikely to ever remove Scrolls from there because:

1. EOTM is ‘end game content’ for many players working on Legendaries. Make that any harder and those players have every reason to quit for good
2. It will just lead to even MORE world boss farming (this deserves a thread itself but basically it screws the economy bad if gold dumps can’t keep up)

TheBandit.7031:

I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points.

That would mean designing and balancing more skills, eff that. Easier to put existing content behind a new artificial wall and name it a feature.

My suggestion would be keep the system but make it easier, at the moment alot of the 25 point traits are hard to do at that level lower the requirement, my 2nd recommendation is remove the overgrown grub trait in WvW this is one is kitten near impossible even with a mass zerg its a way to long fight, and some others OH and 3rd recommendation, make it that the defenses in Orr are harder and do a legendary as the final boss but make it give a daily chest & trait making it easier to get than find a map that has attack open.

Thanks to the patch, I was able to kick my GW2 habit. Watching the World Cup and camping on the coast taking up my free time now.

At first, i thought that the trait hunting would be something fun to do at lvl80 (and i always thought it was going to be for grandmaster traits only), but after getting my alt to lvl30, i was baffled by the fact that EVERY trait needs to be hunted separately? Why?

requirements including personal story (don’t like) to 100% map completions (won’t bother doing that with every single alt)

I just don’t feel like playing with alts anymore, gaining traits has become a painful chore, or an awful money sink.
There is nothing to look towards when gaining levels, when you don’t get any traits until you separately check how to get all of them.

I preferred having my traits automatically unlocked, with only grandmaster traits (and new traits) being part of the hunt.

Even in Guild Wars 1, they didn’t lock every single skill behind tedious tasks, only elite skills.

Simple comment:

This is not like GW1 system

kthxbye

I had to admit that I thought this was going to be really fun and interesting to do. I’ve only leveled 2 characters to 80 with the old trait system, and once I created my build I pretty much left it alone unless I switched content. I was under the impression that having to “hunt” traits was going to make it more interesting to play with builds and play with those traits. I was wrong, and it is a disaster.

One problem with the new trait system is that certain traits force people into content they don’t want to play. It’s bad enough that WvWers have to go into PvE for things, or that PvPers have so few options when it comes to dailies or map choice, or even that PvEers have to play WvW to get things. Forcing people into modes they don’t enjoy isn’t really the greatest way to go about things, in my opinion. The trait system, if not overhauled again entirely, could benefit from making each trait able to be acquired in a wider variety of ways. Right now, it’s just complete X task or pay X gold. Why can’t it be complete X, Y, or Z task or pay X gold? That would give people choice in the matter and is a good compromise option, I think.

The best option is to unlock love level traits automatically and lower the level that people can start playing with their traits again. Keep the grandmaster traits behind a lock and make people work for them. This allows you to build more grandmaster/elite traits in the future and gate them behind other content. Experimenting with builds isn’t fun because of this new system. You have to wait for the ability to use traits to be unlocked, and then you have to go hunting for specific traits, ruling out the traits you REALLY want because something that should be available at 30 (or close to) isn’t available because it’s in a 60-70 area or requires beating a champ that only spawns so often.

The traits system as it stands now has become one of my biggest disappointments in this game. I enjoy challenging content. I’ve been busting my butt trying to beat Liadri, and loving every attempt as I learn more about the characters I play and how to tweak those classes, but the trait system isn’t really challenging. It’s just tedious work or a huge gold sink. Honestly, I would rather pay for trait resets than do things the way they are now. As it stands, I plan on getting to 80, unlocking the specific traits I need for my main build choice, and never changing or experimenting again.

25 pages and only silence from ANet.

(Danicia posted on page 15, but it was only to say “I’ve deleted posts” (standard))

What is good:
- Unlocking traits through in game activities. Hunting is always fun.

What is bad:
- Slower all over character progression.
- Need level 30 to equip ONE trait, LOL!
- Making Alt’s is now a chore.
- Low level traits locked inside high level zones.
- New players to the game are screwed.
- New players to the game are going to be bored by having nothing to customize.
- New players are learning the game slower, this is bad.
- New players and characters cannot participate in low level dungeons AT ALL.
- 100% map completion for every character LOL! I had 4 world completions from before this change, and even I think this is stupid.

^ All of this stuff has been echoed throughout the thread. ^

GG

When a thread is so long that reading it is a chore – and it’s not even really an argument, the bulk of the posters are in agreement – you’d think it would merit a comment?
ANet: I understand that forum posters represent like 0.1% of the playerbase but “being engaged with the playerbase” is supposed to be a dialogue, not just posting marketing fluff to twitter, reddit, and facebook.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Rollback is a no no, because this feature is already implemented, because it brings some good things, and because the playerbase (that came from GW1) actually asked for this, including myself.

What it needs to be done, is that they need to improve the new system. Improve.

Elite hunting was very fun in GW1, but it had some nuances that were not considered in this game:

• In GW1, you only hunt for elites – normal skills are brought in shops. This new system makes you hunt for every single trait, even the weakest ones. That’s a major difference right here.
• In GW1, elite hunting is very easy to understand and identify: you see a boss with the aura of your profession, then you bring the capture skill, kill him, and see what he has. It’s something that happens naturally, while you play through linear missions or while you vanquish areas, and only occasionally find those bosses optionally (when you decide to explore areas, which certainly makes exploration more rewarding).
• In comparison, trait hunting in GW2 can come from anything and anywhere – you never know what or when until you go to the trait’s page and read where you can get it. It feels random, scattered unnaturally, and for those players that are leveling their characters, it is highly restricting when it shouldn’t.

This system is awesome in theory, but it needs serious improvements.

Adept traits, and some master traits, should be significantly easier to get – thus why I have suggested that the first trait for each adept trait line should be unlocked by default, and why all story instances should unlock an adept trait and, later one, a few master traits. This will make the system a lot more natural and fluid, because what all players will need to do to unlock most of the easy stuff is to simply follow the story.

Then, they need a way for players to easily identify the places where they can unlock the remaining, high tier traits. Just like GW1 had with the boss auras, there needs to exist something, perhaps placed in the map the moment you get vision of the respective area, that there exists a trait to collect.

You missed 1 other difference, the fact that they used traits instead of skills like in gw1. If they had just gone with unlocking skills and left the trait system alone we would be in a much better place.

Everything else about how they should fix it shows how inept they are. I used to have a lot of faith in their abilities but the new trait system was a complete rush job that didn’t even take 5 min to think how it would affect game play negatively. It shows they just don’t care about the player experience. There has been tons of ideas of how to do it better and they have said nothing. The best thing for them to do is roll back to the old system but leave the trait respect button. Then come up with a better way of doing it that does not make people stop creating new characters or chase away new players.

This new system is having the opposite effect and players are spending even LESS time in active PVE. This is because many of the events are ‘random’ aka not timer based or are impossible to complete solo.

As a result:
1. Players simply AFK/idle in that spot and hope to Alt-Tab back in coincidentally as the event occurs. AFK/idlers screw with map capacity which of course screws legitimate players that want to participate but are sent to another instance.

2. Players teleport in to ask “Any events?”, then immediately go back to farming WvW/PvP/Eotm for Scrolls of Knowledge anyway when told no events are occurring.

3. Players spend their time begging for help over chat but sometimes not enough players are available to kill said Champ. They have no choice but to skip that content despite willing to do it at that very moment.

4. Players literally never bother zoning into those areas unless another guild member announces the events.

In no way does this system promote fun PvE gameplay.

Wow.. there were over 30 pages of complaints here, I guess Anet edited it to make it look like its not as big a game killer as it really is!
If you really wanna stop people from playing., make PVP haver to FIND TRAITS…. people need to learn the game? Well then. change to WHOLE GAME.. instead of jumping into PVP with all traits and artmour.. EARN THEM!

Bellizare.5816:

Thanks to the patch, I was able to kick my GW2 habit. Watching the World Cup and camping on the coast taking up my free time now.

This patch has helped me cut way back playing GW2. I do monthlies and most of my dailies but that’s about it.

I used to like leveling characters in GW2. I’ve got 10 with only 3 of them below level 80. Even though they have all traits unlocked (because they were started before this patch) the whole leveling process isn’t as much fun.

Bellizare.5816:

Thanks to the patch, I was able to kick my GW2 habit. Watching the World Cup and camping on the coast taking up my free time now.

Speaking of free time, I’m starting to get nervous for this game because a lot of kids are starting summer break and are either searching for new games to play or reading whether going back to GW2 would be worth it. Not to mention the Summer Steam sale just started…If Anet doesn’t address this soon I think a lot of kids are simply going to spend their summer breaks playing another game.

I’m concerned things like this go through without propper analisys and approvals. It makes me wonder whether they really think what they are changing and most important, they are running extremely low on ideas.

What I would like to see:
- Toned down requirements and/or more variety in ways to acquire traits (i.e. more options for the same trait).
- Scrap the skill-point cost and leave the gold price as is, BUT only allow purchases once the specific trait (line and number) has already been “unlocked” on the account (acquired by any character/any profession).

This would
1: Put new players through the unlocking phase, forcing them to explore the world (but with more reasonable requirements). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this as long as the tasks can be completed reliably.
2: Allow seasoned players who’ve already gone through the content a thousand times to unlock traits quickly (purchase) while still leaving open the option to unlock through tasks for people who like to do this.

Keeping the price relatively high (40g) would be an incentive to unlock manually but people would still have the option of instant unlocks.

Incidentally, this would resemble the GW1 system of regular skill unlocks, except for the fact that a specific trait number would be unlocked across all professions.

Paul.4081:

TheBandit.7031:

I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points.

That would mean designing and balancing more skills, eff that. Easier to put existing content behind a new artificial wall and name it a feature.

I’m talking about new players/characters for this who are going for level 80. They will simply not have enough to buy all this crap and the skills they want… meaning the road to level 80 will be nearly traitless.

This is what they are working on.. a game that looks like a 3rd grade cartoon.. http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/
screwing over GuildWars for a crap kitten concept. Don’t keep your franchise going, kill it and go away…. good luck with ‘WildStar’ pos

TheBandit.7031:

Paul.4081:

TheBandit.7031:

I want to spend my skill points on SKILLS. That’s why they’re called skill points.

That would mean designing and balancing more skills, eff that. Easier to put existing content behind a new artificial wall and name it a feature.

I’m talking about new players/characters for this who are going for level 80. They will simply not have enough to buy all this crap and the skills they want… meaning the road to level 80 will be nearly traitless.

This is exactly what players are doing. Power leveling to 80 in WvW/EOTM and THEN go back to open world PvE to do Personal Story.

This is because capping traits is so disruptive to the flow of Personal Story that players would rather go traitless and instead compensate with higher stats and exotic gear.

Being level 80 is MUCH more important than having traits because max level armor defense allows me to access any location on the map without dying in one hit. Access to the entire map means my friends and I can have fun doing anything we want.

If there is no incentive to unlocking traits at the appropriate level when it is both more important and faster to power level in a fraction of the time, this current system is pointless.

Make the requirements achieveable exactly when we want to do them, and not waste our time begging for other player cooperation or randomly zoning for events that don’t run on timer.

Requirements need to be quick, predictably available, and not depend on random player cooperation.

vana.5467:

What I would like to see:
- Toned down requirements and/or more variety in ways to acquire traits (i.e. more options for the same trait).
- Scrap the skill-point cost and leave the gold price as is, BUT only allow purchases once the specific trait (line and number) has already been “unlocked” on the account (acquired by any character/any profession).

This would
1: Put new players through the unlocking phase, forcing them to explore the world (but with more reasonable requirements). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this as long as the tasks can be completed reliably.
2: Allow seasoned players who’ve already gone through the content a thousand times to unlock traits quickly (purchase) while still leaving open the option to unlock through tasks for people who like to do this.

Keeping the price relatively high (40g) would be an incentive to unlock manually but people would still have the option of instant unlocks.

Incidentally, this would resemble the GW1 system of regular skill unlocks, except for the fact that a specific trait number would be unlocked across all professions.

I think you have some good, positive ideas here. +1.

SkyEagle.5029:

This is what they are working on.. a game that looks like a 3rd grade cartoon.. http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/
screwing over GuildWars for a crap kitten concept. Don’t keep your franchise going, kill it and go away…. good luck with ‘WildStar’ pos

pretty sure arena net is totally different company than carbine, and the dont share resources, but i could be wrong.

That said, wildstar may be cartoony, but the game design, pretty good i think.

SkyEagle.5029:

This is what they are working on.. a game that looks like a 3rd grade cartoon.. http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/
screwing over GuildWars for a crap kitten concept. Don’t keep your franchise going, kill it and go away…. good luck with ‘WildStar’ pos

lol when I first saw wildstar I thought the exact same thing. It looks like kiddie cartoon. Since the same studios are behind it I won’t ever know if its actually decent though as I will not give these guys anymore money unless they turn this game around. Something about full me once comes to mind.

phys.7689:

SkyEagle.5029:

This is what they are working on.. a game that looks like a 3rd grade cartoon.. http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/
screwing over GuildWars for a crap kitten concept. Don’t keep your franchise going, kill it and go away…. good luck with ‘WildStar’ pos

pretty sure arena net is totally different company than carbine, and the dont share resources, but i could be wrong.

That said, wildstar may be cartoony, but the game design, pretty good i think.

Carbine may not be Arenanet but Ncsoft is Ncsoft. Ncsoft supposedly makes the decisions. Expecting something different is like expecting something different from EA.

I’ll add my 2 cents as well. I’m a player that returned after several months and played around with old characters, then decided to try making a new one. Leveling is much, much worse. I don’t have a problem because I’ll probably just find ways to spend the gold to go around it, and I don’t mind map completion. But I suck at doing jumping puzzles, I don’t like doing WvW, and doing group events in Orr is a crapshoot at best.

This new system is so bad, and I seriously can’t believe nobody has said or done anything about it yet. It won’t get better, it just will discourage creating new characters, I can state this definitively because it already discouraged me. After this one, I don’t think I’ll be buying a new character slot anytime soon.

And to reiterate, the lack of response to people in this thread blows my mind. People who never post on the forums are posting just to complain about this, a lot of class guides now feature a disclaimer that post-patch players are just sol, and I haven’t seen a single person say anything more than “it wasn’t as bad as i thought”. This is something universally hated that actually punishes new players to the game who wonder why everyone else is stronger than they are.

IT SUCKS, and it needs to be addressed, even if only to announce that they’re at least hearing the concerns.

It’s fairly obvious this new system was implemented to feed the new Asian demographic. It’s no secret that demographic prefers grinding(work+time) for their skills/traits/etc in MMO’s. Simple marketing tool is all.

This change has been live for more than two months, it has reached 26 pages and (to my knowledge) it never went farther than page 2 in the boards.

I think it can be said beyond any doubt that the new trait system is universally disliked (to put it mildly). What makes it worse is the lack of reaction from Anet.

Did the devs even tell us WHY they came up with the unlocking system in the first place?