Guild Wars 2

Player: “Maybe we should look into how traits are unlocked”.

Does not justify…

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI.

This new system (for good or bad) is entirely ANet’s. Don’t bring the CDI into this.

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

I still feel like you went and fixed something that wasn’t broken. The acquisition of new traits and points wasn’t exactly fast with the old system, even though it started at level 10. Also I don’t agree with you 100% that the new system was asked by the players on the CDI.

Here’s again my bullet points to take the best things from both systems:

- Start giving trait points at level 10. 1 point every five levels. Shouldn’t overwhelm anyone!
- Make ONLY grandmaster traits acquired with the new system. Give Adept and Master the same way as the old system, automatically. Additionally, you can make GM traits harder to acquire since they are meant to be powerful.

Again, with the new system you more or less removed fun experimentation from traits. People get what they want to use and leave others.

who inevitably will be pulled away by real life from time to time.

What about people who are pulled away because the game is dumbed down for the casual players and doesn’t offer them challenge? What about people who are pulled away because of a lack of serious content updates?

No offense, or anything, I understand why new players are important, but in the initial stages GW2 was advertised as “everything you love about GW1 and more”. GW1 was challenging and had tons of depth. GW2 is constantly getting easier without adding anything for people who are looking for a game with depth, and tactics, and strategy. Unlike the vague “it’s something we’d like to do,” the idea of Hard Mode was specifically shut down in a Gamescom interview. You guys continue to refuse to return to the highly successful PvE-PvP skill split because it ‘might be confusing’ despite the fact that it was confusing to nobody in GW1, and GW2 has far fewer skills and traits to worry about, and it was incredibly healthy for the game.

I’ve seen all the developer brainstorming on how complexity =/= fun, or how retaining newer players is important, but the game’s been along for two years. The number of new players will only go down if there isn’t something to keep them engaged in the end: content, and things to learn.

Magic: The Gathering is more successful now than it’s ever been despite being one of the most complex card games out there. They haven’t changed how the game works to attract new players. They make a game that appeals to a wide audience and has a learning curve where people feel enticed to learn on their own, not by holding their hands. People are playing MTG more and more because it’s something they feel is worth learning, not because it’s made easier to learn.

What are you doing for GW2 to make it a game that’s worth learning, and to continue to challenge players who have already learned it?

Not everyone is a new player but they make an alt. It’s simply too expensive to unlock all traits and skills unless you had your character grandfathered in.

I forget the total numbers, but it’s something like 500 skill points to unlock all traits and skills for a class? That’s a bit excessive. And by a bit… I mean about 400 over what an established player should be expected to invest.

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

The unlock system works just fine, imo. You just need to actually use it to keep us engaged

I think the biggest issue is we still havent seen real end game (level 80) horizontal progression.

Veteran players unlocked all of these new traits and bought the new healing skills within a few hours of their release. Even more casual players probably had the traits they wanted within a week or two.

Releasing 6 new traits and 1 new heal skill in six months may technically be horizontal progression, but it hardly qualifies as fun or a way to continually grow our characters.

This gets into the whole end game discussion again – and keeping players engaged by giving them ways to develop their characters (horizontally – NEVER vertically) through the continual addition of new traits and utilities.

While I agree it would be easy to flood us with useless traits if you are too aggressive, many of us expected at least a few new traits or skills with the feature pack coming next week. Not seeing that makes people worry that Anet’s idea of horizontal progression is more like tiny hops once a year – which isn’t nearly enough.

That said, Im still loving the game. Thanks for the great work so far.

I think the thing ArenaNet didn’t anticipate with this system is that players would EXPECT (yes, EXPECT, not WANT) to unlock EACH AND EVERY TRAIT RIGHT AWAY instead of unlocking them as needed for a build.

I absolutely don’t understand this desire, but it certainly seems widespread. For players who have it, their characters feel “incomplete” until they finish unlocking everything. Which is, as many have said, time-consuming and expensive.

I think the best bet would be to reduce the cost of paying for traits or to switch trait unlocks to Grandmaster only.

JonPeters.5630:

Trait Tier level increase. We made this change because despite what the more hardcore players like myself want, most players need to be introduced to systems more slowly so that they don’t get lost. Every time we overwhelm new players that is an opportunity for them to stop playing the game. Every time that happens it becomes harder and harder for new players to develop into longtime players. Without more longtime players it becomes hard for you and your current guilds to meet and find people to replace those who inevitably will be pulled away by real life from time to time.

Level 30 is just too slow. You run the risk of boring new players who struggle to get to level 30 or 35 just to start unlocking traits. That in itself will stop new players from playing the game. What you had before couldn’t have possibly been any worse. As many have said in this thread, you can readjust the points down to start at level 15 and still have the same system as before.

Maybe we should give new players more credit when it comes to learning a new game. After all, we “veterans” managed to learn just fine in two years.

Lytalm.5673:

Sigh

If you’re not happy how unlocking traits works, BUY THEM.

Sure, if you’ve got a lvl 80 or two, already grandfathered in to the traits, that you can spend all your time farming gold and skill point scrolls…then maybe the 400 gold and what is it, 800+ skill points, is possible to raise to bring a new character into parity with a grandfathered in character.

But how, in the name of all things chevron shaped, is a new character supposed to get all those skill points and all that gold?

That’s the point here, those of us that were grandfathered in, got to play with ALL of our traits once we unlocked them for a gold or ten (or whatever it was), my son and all of his friends have quit playing, because they don’t want to play a game “on rails” that forces them to do thing X to be able to play their character the way they want to play.

So, while I’m still playing my level 80s, and leveling my characters that were grandfathered in, I know a double handful of kids who got gem cards as rewards for things that have all stopped playing. Most of those kids never got a character to 80, they all get online, and do alt-itis with their friends, so they unknowingly deleted all the characters they may have had that were grandfathered in.

And now, since none of their characters have any traits unless they play the game the way Anet wants them to play it, they’ve all started looking at different games, or playing xbox instead.

I think reverting traits back to the way they were, and instead putting in achievement points for those areas Anet wants to see more populated would generate significant improvement in both player experience and player goodwill.

Hey Jon,

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but:
Don’t you think a well developed, clear and concise tutorial would have at least curbed some of the issues you have with new players “understanding” the game, instead of changing the core game pacing?

JonPeters.5630:

Trait Tier level increase. We made this change because despite what the more hardcore players like myself want, most players need to be introduced to systems more slowly so that they don’t get lost. Every time we overwhelm new players that is an opportunity for them to stop playing the game. Every time that happens it becomes harder and harder for new players to develop into longtime players.

Have you ever considered that the new players will follow the lead of the vets, like rush to lvl80? Why? Because your new system is way to slow and you do not learn your builds like the old system taught you.

This is bad! After starting an alt the day you released this, I quickly found out I was underpowered because of the lack of traits. Powered leveled and discovered I didn’t know how to play this toon.

BUT! The first 2 characters with the old system ALWAYS had a feeling of accomplishment as they progressed. No need to power lvl at all because it was FUN learning those builds as I went. Now…..well……

Right now, the entire list of trait unlocks is too onerous; that’s the simplest summation of the complaint that I can make.

If they’re suppose to take so much time to do that you could be eighty for a month and still be working on them, then make them account bound. At least that doesn’t impact your veterans with a tedious shopping list for every new alt.

If they’re suppose to be to portion out trait acquisition to help newbies learn, why do we have to go to the wiki to understand the tasks required?

- too onerous (especially the map completions)
- completely out of whack level-wise. Adepts should be achievable sub level 45, master sub 70, and grandmaster anywhere.
- actually, scrap that – traits come too late anyway. Level 20, at least, please!
- frequently, they’re group content that most people don’t want sub-80s in anyway.
- unlocking them via vendor is far too pricey, and the skill point cost should be completely removed.

I’m not going to create an itemized list of which traits to adjust when 90% of them suffer from these complaints. Seriously, you must have some metrics on this already. How many characters have reached 80 since april 15th with even six traits unlocked via the actual activity?

JonPeters.5630:

We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

There are three issues I personally see with the trait unlocks. This comes from a player that recently leveled four characters to 80 under the new system, with a number of others that were grandfathered in to have all but the newest grandmaster traits unlocked.

First, the adept traits are available at level 36. None of the adept traits should require level 50+ zone tasks. Want to know which ones those are? Wiki to the rescue: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide and scroll down to “Trait unlock methods sorted by level range”. Any trait that’s I-VI and that should ideally be no higher than level 40 or so. If you ask me. Which you did, so there. Or… something.

Depending on the profession, some characters are going to have a difficult time getting the traits they want/need without spending skill points. A currency which is not in abundance for a leveling character (those four characters I mentioned earlier? Still have elites and the new healing skills to unlock, not to mention all the “extra” traits they’re not currently using).

The second major issue I see with the system is an utter lack of variety. This is a game where I can freely move to any zone I desire, as long as its level isn’t too high. I can craft my way to 80, or PvP, or run dungeons… flexibility is nice.

But to unlock traits, I have to go complete Harathi Hinterlands. Again. I have to fight the champions there and participate in the centaur chain. I have to go complete Lornar’s Pass. Again. I have to make sure to fight Lord Ignius and the champion wurm and… all of that. Again.

I have zero incentive to go complete Brisban Wildlands. In fact I feel that I’m wasting my game time when I do something like that, since I’m not actively working on traits. I have no reason to go play in the Plains of Ashford or Metrica Province and so forth — and so all the players are funneled into just a few zones.

On one hand it’s nice that when you say Kol Skullsmasher is up, you get a number of people rushing to help. He awards a trait, after all. On the other, good luck finding anyone at all to help with Robbari in Brisban Wildlands.

I would like to see some more flexibility and player choice with the traits. Possibly add in more tasks that will award traits. And then, instead of unlocking a specific trait for a specific task, give the character a manual. A coupon, if you will. “Good for one Adept level trait of your choice.” This might need some work, I’m not a game designer. But choice is nice.

Finally, the third issue I see is with simply finding the traits. “I am level 30, where can I go to unlock some things?” The wiki trait guide is a good resource for this, but I dislike going out of the game for in-game information.

Or “I am in Fields of Ruin. What traits can I unlock here and what do I have to do?” If I click the “show me” button in the traits window, I would like to have a personal waypoint set for the resulting location. So I can easily mark off the things I want to do.

I would expect that this would be a filter of some sort, like in the crafting UI. Filter for traits in the current zone, or for traits within a few levels of my own. Filter for WvW traits if you’re inclined to do that.

This post is probably far too long, but hopefully it is helpful in some small way. Thank you for your time.

ThanatosAngel.8024:

JonPeters.5630:

Trait Tier level increase. We made this change because despite what the more hardcore players like myself want, most players need to be introduced to systems more slowly so that they don’t get lost. Every time we overwhelm new players that is an opportunity for them to stop playing the game. Every time that happens it becomes harder and harder for new players to develop into longtime players. Without more longtime players it becomes hard for you and your current guilds to meet and find people to replace those who inevitably will be pulled away by real life from time to time.

Level 30 is just too slow. You run the risk of boring new players who struggle to get to level 30 or 35 just to start unlocking traits. That in itself will stop new players from playing the game. What you had before couldn’t have possibly been any worse. As many have said in this thread, you can readjust the points down to start at level 15 and still have the same system as before.

Maybe we should give new players more credit when it comes to learning a new game. After all, we “veterans” managed to learn just fine in two years.

That’s what happened with me, I created a Mesmer, got her to around level 20 and hated every minute of it. It had to be the most boring painful thing I had to ever do in this game.

JonPeters.5630:

Every time we overwhelm new players that is an opportunity for them to stop playing the game.

The opposite is also true – every time you bore new players that is an opportunity for them to stop playing the game.

Between level 21 and level 29 the new player gains nothing new – these are effectively dead levels. Sure, you get a skill point every level but mechanically there is nothing to overwhelm them. You swing a sword, you swing a sword again.

With the current trait system, the same can be said for 31 – 35, 37 – 41, 43 – 47, 49 – 53 and 55 – 59 before even Master traits are unlocked. That is 34 levels of padding to work out how to use traits, which seems excessive.

In addition, the chances of unlocking Major traits in regular play for a new player are minimal (Edge of the what now? Obsidian Sanctum? Dungeons? Map Completion?), leaving them with very little to play around with even once trait slots are actually unlocked.

Neither is there any rhyme nor reason for the unlocks – they do not ‘teach’ a player how to use the corresponding trait because they are simply a checklist of hoops to jump through which is exactly the same for every race and every class. The trait unlocks and tier changes are simply busy work and padding.

*Returning the trait tiers to give access to one minor trait at level 15 and then one additional trait point every five levels thereafter, with Master unlocked at level 40 and Grandmaster at 60 would be my preference.

*Keep unlocks for Master and Grandmaster, but Adept traits should all be available from the get go.

*No Personal story, Dungeon or Map Completes for unlocks.

Short Version: Dead levels are boring and turn people off. Laundry list trait unlocks are not conducive to entertaining play. Adept traits should be unlocked automatically. Return trait tiers to their previous levels. Please.

JonPeters.5630:

Hey all,
…

Trait Tier level increase. We made this change because despite what the more hardcore players like myself want, most players need to be introduced to systems more slowly so that they don’t get lost.
…

Since when does Anet introduce new players to the game by any other way than throwing them into the game and hoping they can figure it out? Different people learn best by different means. Some learn best via sight and reading. I’m that way so got the GW2 book and read it and the wiki. Some people don’t learn well via sight but learn better through spoken instructions. They have good audio memory. Some learn best by touch, by doing. Some people are confident and bolder than others and will try things to see how they work. Others are more tentative. Your one size fits all will never work for all players no matter how much you hamstring the game in the beginning.
GW2 needs a tutorial where it introduces the basic game concepts and UI for new accounts. The instructions should be in text and spoken and the whole process should require hands on interaction. It should be able to be toggled on/off so players who want to learn by immersion can skip the tutorial. There should be a menu of these basic topics so players can access it easily.

Unlocking traits. We talked about this a bunch in the horizontal progression CDI and it came to our attention that many players were not learning about traits, how they worked, or understanding the options. …
At the end of the day this system has helped spread out the teaching of the system
…

Again there is no teaching. A short tutorial about traits could have been introduced at level 11 when characters got their first trait points but instead the whole trait system was mangled. Put the old trait system back with one point per level starting at 11 and master unlock at 40 and grandmaster at 60. If you want to tack on individual trait unlocks OK but make the tasks more reasonable. Or create a pool of task for adept level. Doing any adept task would allow the character to unlock any adept trait. Same thing with master and grand master.

Good luck fixing the trait system.

List of things I dont like
-Map completion
-Personal Story
-Overgrown grub
-WvW objectives

To Jon Peters I can only say that no matter what changes are made to the actual requirements to unlock traits, the very least that needs to happen is that they are then unlocked account-wide. No one should have to do the same stuff over and over and over for every toon they make. That is tedious and boring…. as is getting to level 80 and having only unlocked 6 traits by actually playing the game. I honestly think the whole unlock system should be completely scrapped. Or hey, if you’re absolutely not going to do that, then decrease the gold/SP sink, because 42g is outragous, as are the amount of SP needed to buy these things.

The way ANet has handled traits proves once again that when players say one thing, ANet hears something completely different, or simply they don’t care what we really meant, because their overriding goal is to create gold sinks and force you to buy gems.

Line one

1 – level 55 story. Too high level.
2 – EOTM capture. Arguable, definitely not pleasant for some
3 – 100% Gendarran – right level range, too much work
4 – Rhendak the Crazed – group mini dungeon. Hard to find, unless you scour wiki. Hard to get group for.
5 – 100% Blazeridge steppes – too much work, high level
6 – lvl 42 group event. If you can get a group, s’fine..
7 – Event in EB – not pleasant for some
8 – level 70 dungeon completion, high end of appropriate level range
9 – find a chest in a level 70 area; high end of level range
10 – level 68 group event. An appropriate one, wow!
11 – find a ship in cursed shore. Appropriate!
12 – Priest of Balthazar. S’fine, if you get your timing right!
13 – Arah event – s’fine, with timing

.. so that’s typical of how I’d evaluate each line. Ironically the grandmaster traits are much much better than the adept and master levels.

nethykins.7986:

Hey Jon,

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but:
Don’t you think a well developed, clear and concise tutorial would have at least curbed some of the issues you have with new players “understanding” the game, instead of changing the core game pacing?

Wow .. such genius. But hey, that would be too … i don’t know… what’s the word… intelligent?

Traveller.7496:

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

I still feel like you went and fixed something that wasn’t broken. The acquisition of new traits and points wasn’t exactly fast with the old system, even though it started at level 10. Also I don’t agree with you 100% that the new system was asked by the players on the CDI.

Here’s again my bullet points to take the best things from both systems:

- Start giving trait points at level 10. 1 point every five levels. Shouldn’t overwhelm anyone!
- Make ONLY grandmaster traits acquired with the new system. Give Adept and Master the same way as the old system, automatically. Additionally, you can make GM traits harder to acquire since they are meant to be powerful.

Again, with the new system you more or less removed fun experimentation from traits. People get what they want to use and leave others.

+1

I have 3 accounts and main account have 41 character slots. I was one of altholic before
April patch.
In my opinion, Current trait system is just waste. Any improvement does not resolve this problem. Please rollback to old edition.

Tutara.4906:

*No Personal story, Dungeon or Map Completes for unlocks..

And for heaven’s sake, no WvW for trait unlocks. I’m an avid PvXer and love WvW, but forcing new players into the WvW maps to complete tasks that do nothing to help your server’s team just creates even MORE tension between new players and veteran WvWers. Merc camps? Overgrown Grub? Anet pls. :-/ If you HAVE to link trait unlocks to WvW tasks to get new blood into WvW, link higher level traits (i.e. grandmaster traits, none of this low-level unlocks) to tasks that actually matter in WvW.

Also, requiring Obsidian Sanctum for an adept trait? While it’s one of my favorite JP in the game, I wholeheartedly feel that forcing new low-level players into a PvP map to complete one of the most difficult JPs in the game is absolutely and utterly cruel.

Haruka.9624:

I have 3 accounts and main account have 41 character slots. I was one of altholic before
April patch.
In my opinion, Current trait system is just waste. Any improvement does not resolve this problem. Please rollback to old edition.

It sounds like Anet already squeezed every penny from you. They need more cash/gem infusion from newbloods, not veterans. They could care less about us.

Hi Jon Peters. Here as a GW1 player to give feedback to a GW1-inspired system (traits)

First, as a player who leveled a lot under the new trait system, I will say I really enjoyed trait unlocks which get us to explore unique areas in the world.

I enjoyed these trait unlocks:
O- Flame Legion Tombs in (Diessu Plateau)
O- Vexa’s Lab (Fireheart Rise)
O- Provernic Crypt (Gendarren Fields)
O- That bandit cave with the Chest (Kessex Hills)
O- Ship of Sorrows (Straits of Devastation)

See something in common? All of them revolve around taking the player to a lesser explored area in the world.

Keep in mind what made GW1 skill capping so pleasant: Everything was instanced. You had a clearly set challenge before being able to capture a skill, which often brought you to new areas of the world. Furthermore, there was no timegate.

Compare with GW2: Sharky the Destroyer. Waiting for a champion…. and waiting… and waiting… waiting for someone else to join the [Group Event]… waiting… then waiting while autoattacking for his hp to go down.

I think it’s pretty obvious what sets them apart.

Hint: More mini-dungeons!

1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.

And that brings us to the BAD trait unlocks…

X- 100% anything… No, no, no, no!!!! I do not want to do map completion on my 5th alt.
X- Kill Champion X [Group Event] and timegates. Waiting for Champ to spawn, then waiting for people to help…
X- Personal Story Traits… Too little, too late. A possible consequence of traits unlocking at level 30 instead of level 10.
X- “Find the grand chest near Scholar Fryxx.” (Straits of Devastation) This one is just annoying.
X- Any WvW objectives… This is THE worst of all trait unlocks! It combines time gates of waiting until an Ogre Camp expires, so that you could cap it… Then it also has the issue of no one wanted to help out. I’m sure even your own metrics will report that trying to kill the Overgrown Grub is dumb.

I would also like to note, introducing traits at level 30 is BAD, because it trivializes the most core aspects of most GW2 builds.

I do not have the metrics to prove this, however I do question the metrics which state that unlocking traits at level 10 would somehow make players quit the game? Honestly, I do question this. Are people like that even someone who would continue playing GW2 regardless of the traits system? Are you sure that is even your target audience? How is clicking a menu button to give +10 Power and +10 Precision so difficult and confusing that it actually makes people quit the game? Are you sure the mechanic itself is overwhelming, or just the presentation? Either way, I do question the metrics behind this.

The thing I really like about the new system is the level range between when you’ve just unlocked a trait tier, and when you get enough points to get a major trait. When I levelled, I never looked at the minor traits, because I was focusing on the stats I got. In the new system, you get a minor trait at level 30, so they end up being a big part of your. That’s great! It’s pretty difficult to unlock major traits, so sometimes you want to put points in a line for the stats and not the major trait slot. I like that! I like that it’s not all about the major traits. I liked that as you get into the 50s and 60s that new adept options open up, because adept traits should always be relevant. With my playstyle, unlocking traits influences where I’m going, particularly after level 40 or so where the zones start to flow a little less well.

Most of the suggestions to fix the system break what I like about it.

nethykins.7986:

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but:
Don’t you think a well developed, clear and concise tutorial would have at least curbed some of the issues you have with new players “understanding” the game, instead of changing the core game pacing?

This. So much this.

JonPeters.5630:

Unfortunately, unlocking traits in the open world generally causes one of the #1 things we never wanted in the game which is players in conflict. You want might the Balthazar trait but someone is about to complete the chain and leave you waiting. This is bad for the game, but I think right now only occurs this dramatically for a few of the traits.

That doesn’t make it okay! It’s shouldn’t be the case for any of them.

I get that you want to award traits 1 at a time to give players a better overview of what they have available. I can see the point of this – I personally found the trait list overwhelming on my first character. But not on my second, or third, and certainly not on my 10th. I don’t think you fully appreciate how cumbersome it feels to have to go through these unlock activities when they’re very time-consuming things that you’ve already done many, many times before.
If every single trait needs to be unlocked individually, the activities should be simple, quick and readily available! – like discovering areas or completing available events (either quickly respawning ones or hearts, preferably the latter).

WvW events (and I would argue dungeons as well) should absolutely not be on the list of tasks. Nor should map completion.

Ideally, you would have made 65 new events for trait unlocks and scattered them across the world in level appropriate zones (similar to how skill points are earned but perhaps a little more involved).

Problem: Trait unlock at level 30. I understand why this decision was made. At level 30, I’m still unlocking most of my utility and elite skills.

Solution: create an in-game tutorial. Instead of just a little flashing blurb that says ’You’ve unlocked traits!’ actually take the time in-game to explain what traits are and how they work. Also, you should seriously consider giving 2 points at 30, so a player can experiment with selecting a major trait immediately, instead of having to wait 6 levels and forgetting that the option is there at all. Make the tutorial skippable for players who don’t care or already know what to do and repeatable for players who need to see it again

The trait system…no, I don’t like it. Not at all. Some of the traits having been changed from what they were originally when the new system was released was a start, but there are still core problems with the system – the big ones being that level 30 is far too late in the game to start unlocking traits, many of the unlocks are tied to content that is far too high of a level for the trait itself, and it completely kills the idea of experimenting with builds (since you cannot even get grandmasters until level 80).

I’m just going to go ahead and link to what I wrote about traits back in April as the vast majority of it is still relevant, despite the most offensive Adept traits having been changed (they’re all pretty unreasonable still, but they’re at least not quite AS bad).

http://thepaletree.net/2014/04/18/trait-disappointment/
http://thepaletree.net/2014/04/19/trait-disappointment-a-followup/

Remove all of these individual unlock trait requirements. Then on each map highlight 5+ areas like vistas/skill points/hearts. Completing each one of these gives you a “trait unlock point” and you use that point to unlock any trait of your choosing. WvW could unlock traits by capping a tower or gaining a wvw level. PvP would unlock the traits by finishing part of a reward tract.

You can even gate these unlocks by having different levels of maps provide different tiers of unlocks, where cursed shore would unlock 11-13 traits and newbie areas would unlock the 1-3 traits. 20+ zones could unlock 4+, etc.

This would encourage players to travel and explore, and give them a painless but fun way to feel progression and play their way.

Kain Francois.4328:

I enjoyed these trait unlocks:
O- Flame Legion Tombs in (Diessu Plateau)
O- Vexa’s Lab (Fireheart Rise)
O- Provernic Crypt (Gendarren Fields)
O- That bandit cave with the Chest (Kessex Hills)
O- Ship of Sorrows (Straits of Devastation)

See something in common? All of them revolve around taking the player to a lesser explored area in the world.

Keep in mind what made GW1 skill capping so pleasant: Everything was instanced. You had a clearly set challenge before being able to capture a skill, which often brought you to new areas of the world. Furthermore, there was no timegate.

couldn’t have said it better, incentives to explore the world is the best thing the game can do imho. It’s strengths are the huge open world and the well crafted map-pieces. Finding a hidden cave and defeating the monster in it should feel rewarding, not blue-or-green-rewarding.

Bigger issues aside, I’ll list out the traits I personally want to see changed after having unlocked all of them on a character via the task unlocks and not buying them. I like the trait unlocks that require an open world boss on a short timer as well as the exploration-based ones.
To preface what comes below, I believe trait unlocks should be fun and desirable. If the alternative of buying the trait unlock is better outright, then that trait needs to be reworked. I don’t buy the excuse lobbed against any criticism is to say “Just buy it”.

In general:

- Any WvW trait unlock (with the possible exception of the jumping puzzle and even then, that one can be a fatal pain with no checkpoint because of the very fall damage trait you are going for in the first place.) It’s extremely frustrating to get these unlocked since it’s not predictable and not every server has an active and willing population forcing you to wait and hope you are able to get to the objective you need. For me it comes down to the need to do PvP when I do not want to.
- Any map completion, any. Instead of having one event to go after, you effectively have to pursue a map’s worth just for one trait. Map completion is not fun when done repeatedly. It should be something the player wants to do, not required to do.
- No dungeons please. There are plenty of good reasons to run them in the first place, you didn’t need to incentivize them even further. Even worse was with the recent DDOS issue and possibly losing progress.
- Temple and the Promenade of the Gods traits in Orr need to be moved elsewhere. People will fume at you if you try to defend these events. Move trait unlocks away from locations where player goals will clash, typically farming spots.
- Though not the worst, personal story requirements could be removed too, especially if bugs keep popping up preventing progress from what I’ve heard. I understand that they’re placed for the bigger events that all players go through, but it’s concentrated too high up in the level range. Not to mention that it’s easy to hit max level before getting through a good portion of the personal story.

Specifics:

Trait line 2:

XII – Find the grand chest near Scholar Fryxx. – I learned this was fixed this time around. I was fortunate enough to be on a ranger with my pet to absorb some of the poison hits and the spear dash. This one is too finicky. Please don’t.

Trait line 4:

IX – Defeat the dredge commissar. – I’ve seen complaints of people doing the prerequisite events for this and not spawning him. I had similar issues.

Trait line 5:

II – Kill the Foulbear chieftain and her elite guards. – The events leading up this bug out too often. I had to give up and periodically check on this one because of that.
X – Defeat the Branded Devourer Queen. – Again, the event where you escort a devourer bugged out. I had to leave and check back every so often for this as well.
XI – Defeat the Overgrown Grub. – Trying to even rally people for this meets you with “Just solo it”. It’s an overly difficult boss tucked away in one side’s area that is not worth it. Change this one!

P.S. Allow for an option on the map to display the location of trait unlocks instead of needing to repeatedly click through trait lines to make sure you’re not missing anything in that area.

[Edit: Kain reminded me of Fryxx, ugh!]

My opinion is from a casual-ish point of view and an alt-aholic.

- Make them cheaper to buy from trainers.
- Make trait unlocks account bound.

This new system, whilst I understand it will introduce new people to new parts of the game, is very off-putting, imo. I was going to buy an extra character slot during the sales but then remembered the mess that is traits and didn’t want the bother. And I love making alts!

There is a fine line between encouraging people to try new content and forcing people into content they hate or have done a thousand times already. So either significantly drop the cost of buying traits (it is way, way too much) or make unlocking them account bound.

I like the idea of having ‘quests’ which are unique to each profession to unlock a good trait. Something like a scavenger hunt to unlock a special trait at levels 25, 50 and 80, that would personalize it a lot and give a good sense of achievement.

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

Please do not try to blame the players for the changes to the trait system. That was your decision, not ours. If the players had our way the system would be restored to the way it was at launchj, where you can pick any abilities you want automatically. Luckily for me, most of my characters are at 80 already, and the one that is 41, while he has to suffer through the new “occasional trait point” element, at least got in before the full changes went in so he doesn’t have to unlock anything. I have no interest in making a new character though until the “Unlock all traits as they become available” option is returned to the game.

The tweaks you listed above certainly improve things a bit, but it is still a hassle to unlock traits that you may want to use as soon as possible, and the leveling process is still significantly less interesting for not being able to access all available traits. My youngest character was level 30 when the change went in and had had one minor and one major trait, now he’s 11 levels higher and hasn’t gained ANYTHING of value in that time. I just feel very little interest in messing with him, when before these changes he would have gained another two tiers of traits by now and would be into his Master traits by now.

Could we maybe just streamline things a bit more? Maybe, Instead of awarding individual traits, unlock whole tiers at a time (not just one tier of a trait line, I mean all trait lines for that tier)?

You could still tie them to events or something in the world. Make it a new reward tab to show all the things that you need to do (no more than 5 things) in order to unlock your master or grandmaster skills.

As it is, I could tolerate the new system more if it just weren’t so tedious (or expensive to buy).

Or at the very least make the trait unlocks account-bound. It really discourages build experimentation with the current system and it is very VERY tedious and not alt-friendly.

Once upon a time I could talk to new players about builds I’ve found useful, and they could try it out (admittedly for a few silver) and make a decision on how they want to play. Now, if I do the same thing, that player is left with a laundry list of things to do just to try it out -and there’s nothing worse than spending a whole lot of time on something you don’t really want.

Mr. Peters, I can appreciate that you’re trying to get feedback here, but I’ve been trying to get my feedback heard for four months, now. It’s more than a little disappointing to have given my feedback already, only to have you come in and complain about the length of the thread being imposing. Did anyone at Anet try to navigate this system before it was implemented? If you genuinely don’t have time to go back through and read the feedback, I’m afraid I don’t have time to reiterate the feedback I’ve already left.

Here’s a tip, though: The wiki for gw2 has a breakdown of all the traits and their tasks. You can use it to easily see the items that are not level-appropriate. Start there.

Problem: the vast majority of the trait unlocks are tedious and unreasonable. (This was specifically requested, so here we go) I’ll break this into five posts and do each trait line individually.

1-I: Obsidian Sanctum. This is WvW and most of the time your opponents will be fully traited level 80 characters. Let’s call this “Generic WvW Problem.” As this is actually one of the easier traits to get. (no need for groups, combats, or other traits) it’s one I expect level 30-36 toons to run, only to get steamrolled by people camping the puzzle. This is just lambs to the slaughter.

1-II: Inferno’s Needle. Generic WvW Problem

1-III: 100% Gendarran Fields. Map completion is extremely tedious. It’s far, far too much work for little to no reward. Let’s call this “Generic Map Complete Problem.”

1-V: 100% Blazeridge Steppes. Generic Map Complete Problem.

1-VII: Ogre Camp. Generic WvW Problem

1-VIII: Citadel of Flame. People who run dungeons usually expect and demand a fully-traited level 80 character for any mode. People are real kittenhats about dungeons these days.

1-XII: Temple of Balthazar. Event chain is the longest in the game and if it fails, the rebooting process is extremely long. Also, if it succeeds, there’s a three-hour wait for the event to start again, which is impossible to track because of megaserver issues.

1-XIII: Gates of Arah. Long periods between events, coupled with demands for “LET IT FAIL GET MORE BAGS” is a problem.

I just came back to the game because of my cousin. I am a gw1 player and quit this game because of ascended gear.

I am barely sticking around because ascended gear is account bound. If it had been 1,000 silk more I would have quit.

The trait system is now grindy. If I did not have 21 grandfathered characters, I would quit again. It is not alt friendly.

My cousin started over, unknowingly deleting his grandfathered character. He has now stopped playing, mostly because of the new trait system.

Kain Francois.4328:

Hi Jon Peters. Here as a GW1 player to give feedback to a GW1-inspired system (traits)

First, as a player who leveled a lot under the new trait system, I will say I really enjoyed trait unlocks which get us to explore unique areas in the world.

I enjoyed these trait unlocks:
O- Flame Legion Tombs in (Diessu Plateau)
O- Vexa’s Lab (Fireheart Rise)
O- Provernic Crypt (Gendarren Fields)
O- That bandit cave with the Chest (Kessex Hills)
O- Ship of Sorrows (Straits of Devastation)

See something in common? All of them revolve around taking the player to a lesser explored area in the world.

Keep in mind what made GW1 skill capping so pleasant: Everything was instanced. You had a clearly set challenge before being able to capture a skill, which often brought you to new areas of the world. Furthermore, there was no timegate.

Compare with GW2: Sharky the Destroyer. Waiting for a champion…. and waiting… and waiting… waiting for someone else to join the [Group Event]… waiting… then waiting while autoattacking for his hp to go down.

I think it’s pretty obvious what sets them apart.

Hint: More mini-dungeons!

1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.

And that brings us to the BAD trait unlocks…

X- 100% anything… No, no, no, no!!!! I do not want to do map completion on my 5th alt.
X- Kill Champion X [Group Event] and timegates. Waiting for Champ to spawn, then waiting for people to help…
X- Personal Story Traits… Too little, too late. A possible consequence of traits unlocking at level 30 instead of level 10.
X- “Find the grand chest near Scholar Fryxx.” (Straits of Devastation) This one is just annoying.
X- Any WvW objectives… This is THE worst of all trait unlocks! It combines time gates of waiting until an Ogre Camp expires, so that you could cap it… Then it also has the issue of no one wanted to help out. I’m sure even your own metrics will report that trying to kill the Overgrown Grub is dumb.

I would also like to note, introducing traits at level 30 is BAD, because it trivializes the most core aspects of most GW2 builds.

I do not have the metrics to prove this, however I do question the metrics which state that unlocking traits at level 10 would somehow make players quit the game? Honestly, I do question this. Are people like that even someone who would continue playing GW2 regardless of the traits system? Are you sure that is even your target audience? How is clicking a menu button to give +10 Power and +10 Precision so difficult and confusing that it actually makes people quit the game? Are you sure the mechanic itself is overwhelming, or just the presentation? Either way, I do question the metrics behind this.

agreed with everything this guy said, except the last paragraph.

i like the new “6 points instead of 30” system, my problem is that lv30 is too long of a wait for trait unlocks. why not lv20, or 25? IIRC, i managed to calculate a way that from lv20 until 80, you could unlock trait points more frequently than you do right now, unlocking tiers faster than you do now, and reaching the same number of points at 80 (i think it was one point every 4 levels, and 2 points at lv80). that gives new players a slower pace for unlocking trait points, while at the same time not being too slow for veterans (being actually faster than the old system, in the long run!). a middle ground that should (hopefully) please more people.

as for trait unlocking itself, yeah, more exploration of hidden nooks and crannies, less map completing/group events/waiting hours for events to trigger. IIRC, implementing simple events (such as “interact with this object to summon a boss, now kill the boss”) is fairly easy with your tools, so why not make a bunch of them, spread them throughout tyria, and use them as objectives? it would be similar to skill challenges (though hopefully harder and with more interesting enemies), but tied to traits, and not displayed on the map for completionists.

As an aside, overgrown grub (and oakheart) wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t out of line with the other champions and events in WvW, specifically hylek champion (which can be killed before the event ends b/c of randos easily) and the harpy champion in EB. Compare also to like, veteran worm outside bay. At that point they would just be regularly done events that the WvW community as a whole wouldn’t be annoyed by someone wanting to do.

As it stands doing overgrown grub will generate an orange sword notification, which in turn will likely result in you not finishing the grub.

Total skill points needed to unlock all utilities that are NOT racial or healing (all are available by level 30): 134

Total skill points needed to purchase all traits:

adept: 60
Master: 100
Grandmaster: 100
Grandmaster final: 100

Total: 360

Skill points available from skill challenges:

Below level 30: 79
Between 30 and 60: 43
Between 60 and 80: 39
in WvW: 13

Total: 174

Skill points available from leveling to 80: 75

Total skill points available to level 80: 249

Amount of skill points needed above and beyond number you earn: 111

This does not include racial or healing utility skill purchases.

The best thing you could do, IMO, that would open up traits easier, and STILL encourage people to play the game is generalize more. Make it so you have to kill 1 level-appropriate boss for a trait, without letting you do the same boss over and over. Make it so you have to discover ONE thing, be it a JP, mini-dungeon, hidden chest, or whatever, to unlock a trait. Again, no duplicating for a second unlock. Make it so you have to participate in 5 events in a zone, level-appropriate, to unlock a trait. As you level up, make it be a bit harder, but still make them level-appropriate. Solo a veteran. Join in on a world boss. Help capture a temple or defend it. Gather 10 ancient wood or oricalchum ore.

You say you want to encourage horizontal progression, and open it up to players. But you are forcing players to follow a select path through this game. They have to do exactly one path to get traits. There are not enough skill points to unlock them all. And many are hard to get at level. Most new players can’t get gold easy enough to get them, either. If you want players to enjoy the game, you have to let them play their own way. Not follow a ‘go here, map this, kill this, find this, go here’ footprint. You make it so players can level so many ways, then tie them to just doing this one path. If you want players to just follow that, then you may as well delete the rest of the game. Then shut it down, because you will soon end up losing the player base, and thus an income.

tl/dr open up the traits by giving more options for each, we don’t get enough skill points or gold to unlock as we want. If you want us to follow a set path, then delete the rest of the game and shut it down, because that is, frankly, boring.

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

Don’t blame this one on the CDI. There, we were (by and large) asking for SKILL unlocks. This was to make skills more interesting to gain, and to add new skills into the game. Taking the old traits and making them harder to get to is nothing like what most people were asking for.

1) No. The entire system you’ve created is broken and flawed. Adjusting a few tasks isn’t going to fix it, nor will I allow myself to become an excuse to pretend it’s fine. This is like taking an old, beat up car to a mechanic to have the engine fixed, and all the mechanic will do is repaint the car. If you say “I want it blue”, then they can paint it blue and say they gave you what you asked for.

2) How long do you need? Months? How about we give you a few months? Because, we’ve already DONE that.

If you have no intention of changing this basic system, then say so and be done with it.

Context regarding feedback: I have only been playing post-April feature patch, and I have one Level 80 character and one Level 70 character.

Opinions:

• Trait unlocks via achievements is fine, but the way it is now is it tries too hard to scatter them across all aspects of the game when really it should be limited to PvE only (since one does not need to unlock traits to use them in PvP).
• My understanding is that ideally the game encourages us to play around with different traits for different scenarios and mix-match when appropriate. This seems evident with the April feature pack and how we can reset our trait build out of combat. I like this very much!
• The problem is traits that I believe could be fun but I don’t believe are as useful/are too situational, I end up never using and do not go out of my way to unlock. I would choose not to pay for it because skill points are used to buy other things that are more valuable (ie. Philosopher Stones/Crystals).
• It’s often not worth going around unlocking traits just to play around with a particular build type when a more reliable, tried-and-true one exists. I am far more willing to experiment away from a tried and true build if I have the trait readily available, not if I have to venture far and wide just to get it or pay for it. Strider’s Defense (Ranger) for example is definitely not worth 3 gold and 20 Skill Points, even after the September patch.

Suggestions:

1. Allow traits to be acquired purely from level ups alone – either at the same time trait points are rewarded (lv30, 36, etc) or some other interval. For example, at Level 30, allow a player to unlock 1 Adept trait of their choice within a line. You can keep the current trait unlock achievements where they are, but give us a means of acquiring them from just level ups alone.
2. Allow us to continue unlocking traits from re-leveling past 80 – keep track of this somehow (every 6 level 80 level ups would be fine).

I started a new character to try out the new system. I already have several level 80s, but I felt like making another ranger.

Over the course of several days I finally got to 30. That’s even knowing what I’m doing, so I imagine it would take new players a lot longer. I haven’t even gotten to the point where I have to go do events in various places, or complete maps, or (worst of all), go force myself into PvP-oriented areas I don’t have any interest in. I already fight tooth-and-nail every change in every game that tries to force players into PvP areas. I definitely don’t want to hear about more of it being added. And I look forward to none of that.

Overall I just feel like 30 is WAY too late. 1-29 felt so boring, and the “payoff” at 30 was almost nothing. At least under the old system I had some say in the direction of my character. Even if all I got from leveling is the chance to add +10 power and precision, at least I got to make that decision. Now, you gain a level and nothing happens. I really don’t like games like that. Having played a lot of tabletop games in the last couple years, one of the things I really hate is dead levels. And now the game is almost entirely dead levels.

With skills costing 3-6 points each, and already having your small selection of weapons unlocked, you can easily go several levels in a row, over the course of a few hours, and feel like your character hasn’t changed at all and you haven’t made any progress or really done anything. I quit playing MMOs like that a long time ago, and I’m not interested in seeing GW2 become that. Every level should feel like it matters. And you should be able to have a lot of influence over what your character can do from start to finish.

42 pages and they ask for more feedback… I think they miss the troll face at the end of the post.

momofuku.5248:

Suggestions:

1. Allow traits to be acquired purely from level ups alone – either at the same time trait points are rewarded (lv30, 36, etc) or some other interval. For example, at Level 30, allow a player to unlock 1 Adept trait of their choice within a line. You can keep the current trait unlock achievements where they are, but give us a means of acquiring them from just level ups alone.
2. Allow us to continue unlocking traits from re-leveling past 80 – keep track of this somehow (every 6 level 80 level ups would be fine).

These would be beautiful changes.

Palador.2170:

1) No. The entire system you’ve created is broken and flawed. Adjusting a few tasks isn’t going to fix it, nor will I allow myself to become an excuse to pretend it’s fine. This is like taking an old, beat up car to a mechanic to have the engine fixed, and all the mechanic will do is repaint the car. If you say “I want it blue”, then they can paint it blue and say they gave you what you asked for.

That’s really over-dramatic.. but it’s basically true.

The trait unlock tasks require major revamp, not just a tweak or two. I participated in that CDI, and I loved the idea of unlocking skills out in the world – but I never ever imagined a shopping list as long and offensive as the trait system turned out to be. Nor did I imagine that traits would be pushed back to the point where it would be painfully boring for the first 20+ hours of playing your character.

The ghost of the system the CDI contributors were imagining is there, but.. monkey’s paw.

JonPeters.5630:

Simmu.9405:

List of things I dont like
-Map completion
-Personal Story
-Overgrown grub
-WvW objectives

Thanks. I’ll pass this on.

So, this is how it works? Cherry pick ONE PERSON’s “list of things I don’t like”, while ignoring 40 pages of really good feedback and ideas? OK. I’m done with this thread.

2-II: Twilight Arbor. Dungeon group problem

2-VI: Lornar’s Pass. Generic Map Complete Problem.

2-VII: Hylek Camp. Generic WvW Problem

2-X: Personal Story Forging the Pact. Good task, but far too deep in the personal story. If one does not want any of the traits before this point, it’s a serioud grind to get here. As mentioned elsewhere, the personal story is not rewarding enough in most cases. Call this “Generic Personal Story Problem”.

2-XI: Crucible of Eternity. Dungeon group problem

2-XIII: Temple of Grenth. Reset timer is too long and hard to predict. Great event otherwise.