Guild Wars 2

Broom.2561:

eyestrain.3056:

Broom.2561:

eyestrain.3056:

I find it relevant to post in this thread again now that I have been waiting for about two hours, just sitting and waiting for a chance to do the grenth priest fight to unlock a grandmaster trait. The timer between gaining and losing the temple again to restart the chain of events is too long. Especially while there are people defending the temple each time. I don’t know how to check when to come back for the events so I’m just sitting here waiting, doing nothing, alt tabbing… hard to believe i’m playing a game. gg

Please note: you get to fight the grenth priest during the defense. Which then unlocks the trait. And since defending is WAY easier than attacking (especially if the zerg keeps failing the attack), I really do not know why you are complaining.

Didn’t know about this, for one. It’s good to know there’s another option (too bad I wasted all that time) but also keep in mind if I had been doing the defense event I’d be screwing over the whole map that was hungry for the assault event. There were others besides me who had been waiting a long time, either for trait unlock or the loot farm.

There’s still a real issue with players getting in each other’s way due to conflict of interests.

The defense event is an entirely valid event that was put in there for a reason. It tells a story in the big fight against zhaitan, which is just as important to the game storyline as the assault event. The only reason ‘the rest of the map’ insists on letting it fail is because they think they get more loot that way. Which is, frankly, just about the worst reason out there.

Personally I do not care one bit for the attitude. I’ve had people in my guild who had 30 minutes a day to play. I would NEVER advise them to wait until the zerg said it was OK. The zerg hangs in the zone for hours at a time, they can wait their turn or do other loot events, like Plinx. If you need the trait, go ahead and do whichever comes up first. If you want your daily temple chest, same.

Whether I agree with other people’s goals or not I think there’s a problem when the system forces me to choose whether to cooperate or be selfish in order to get what I want. This game is really good about rewarding cooperation and playing together (everyone who hits a mob gets equal loot/reward so not a big killsteal problem etc). I know they want people to look forward to seeing other players, hence the megaserver. When there is a conflict of interests between letting an event fail or succeed it’s a problem, made obvious when trait unlock requirements crowd up areas with so many players.

I will say this: From the things I’ve read (and no I’m not hunting down each instance of something that made me raise an eyebrow) it does look like someone is at least reading what we’ve been saying.

Now, does this mean that I agree with how long its taken for them to acknowledge this/us? Nope.

Do I think they could have acted sooner/with more gusto? Yep.

Do I think they are just ignoring us? Not at all.

If we can try to keep this thread on point though with good/solid suggestions and reminders that we still care about fixing the system though we might be able to keep the proverbial fire at their feet.

So nothing has changed with traits. They just say that maybe they will adjust something. The thing is we, unhappy will be better off with just unlock all traits.

Dont repair what is not broken…

eyestrain.3056:

Broom.2561:

eyestrain.3056:

Broom.2561:

eyestrain.3056:

I find it relevant to post in this thread again now that I have been waiting for about two hours, just sitting and waiting for a chance to do the grenth priest fight to unlock a grandmaster trait. The timer between gaining and losing the temple again to restart the chain of events is too long. Especially while there are people defending the temple each time. I don’t know how to check when to come back for the events so I’m just sitting here waiting, doing nothing, alt tabbing… hard to believe i’m playing a game. gg

Please note: you get to fight the grenth priest during the defense. Which then unlocks the trait. And since defending is WAY easier than attacking (especially if the zerg keeps failing the attack), I really do not know why you are complaining.

Didn’t know about this, for one. It’s good to know there’s another option (too bad I wasted all that time) but also keep in mind if I had been doing the defense event I’d be screwing over the whole map that was hungry for the assault event. There were others besides me who had been waiting a long time, either for trait unlock or the loot farm.

There’s still a real issue with players getting in each other’s way due to conflict of interests.

The defense event is an entirely valid event that was put in there for a reason. It tells a story in the big fight against zhaitan, which is just as important to the game storyline as the assault event. The only reason ‘the rest of the map’ insists on letting it fail is because they think they get more loot that way. Which is, frankly, just about the worst reason out there.

Personally I do not care one bit for the attitude. I’ve had people in my guild who had 30 minutes a day to play. I would NEVER advise them to wait until the zerg said it was OK. The zerg hangs in the zone for hours at a time, they can wait their turn or do other loot events, like Plinx. If you need the trait, go ahead and do whichever comes up first. If you want your daily temple chest, same.

Whether I agree with other people’s goals or not I think there’s a problem when the system forces me to choose whether to cooperate or be selfish in order to get what I want. This game is really good about rewarding cooperation and playing together (everyone who hits a mob gets equal loot/reward so not a big killsteal problem etc). I know they want people to look forward to seeing other players, hence the megaserver. When there is a conflict of interests between letting an event fail or succeed it’s a problem, made obvious when trait unlock requirements crowd up areas with so many players.

But that is the point. It is not selfish to do an event that is obviously designed to be played. It IS selfish to insist that others fail an event and wait because they want something that is frankly unintended gameplay, as in gathering the maximum amount of loot, something ANet frowns upon.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

I will say this: From the things I’ve read (and no I’m not hunting down each instance of something that made me raise an eyebrow) it does look like someone is at least reading what we’ve been saying.

Now, does this mean that I agree with how long its taken for them to acknowledge this/us? Nope.

Do I think they could have acted sooner/with more gusto? Yep.

Do I think they are just ignoring us? Not at all.

If we can try to keep this thread on point though with good/solid suggestions and reminders that we still care about fixing the system though we might be able to keep the proverbial fire at their feet.

The thread is filled with good/solid suggestions. Almost a half year’s worth. How many times do you think the community should repeat themselves?

The ball has to be in their court now. Either they will make a meaningful patch that will sort it out, or they won’t. My bet is on the latter, in that they will make token changes that demonstrate cooperation, but they won’t be adequate.

My view is that the team who, imho, ruined a perfectly working system with such absurd requirements to gain traits, simply cannot bring it back to an equitable state that will please the community. While that may come off as hard over on the negative, for me it’s just honest realism. While I dislike the direness of this forecast, I feel it’s important to accept it and move on.

Any news on when we’ll get a CDI for this?

I thought this change would be horrible for players making new characters. I have been playing with this change for a few days now, and I have gotten my thief from 1-46 pretty quickly in this new trait system.

I still hate it.

My character is level 46, but he is crippled without the proper traits. I have unlocked the majority of the traits for Gendarran Fields, Kessex Hills, Harathri Hinterlands, and Fields of Ruin. I still only have traits mostly for the first two lines, and even a few of those adept traits aren’t all unlocked.

When my thief hits 80, this is just going to create a massive barrier, for me, an experienced player. As someone who has played since launch, I do appreciate leveling still, and forcing me to wander around the would to be accepted in end game dungeons makes me hate it. As an experienced player, I just want to buy my rares/ a few exotics and jump right into the dungeons. Once I’m all geared out in exotics, jump straight to WvW. However, now I need to get into WvW to unlock some of my traits. That means fighting other players at a severe disadvantage, because traits are literally the CORE OF YOUR BUILD for every facet of the game. Expecting new characters to fight experienced PvP’ers without all of there traits accessible to them is ridiculous.

Please remove traits from Orr temples. I really cannot comprehend, even months later why you would appease people who deprive others by adding traits to defense events.

It’s really pretty bad when you can, by simply playing the game and doing an event, conflict with and deprive others of rewards. People who have potentially been waiting in a map for hours to get their daily rewards.

It’s WORSE now, because there’s new content in the form of a new recipe that is only obtainable from temple chests.

It’s really quite silly to me that you’re moving trait unocks away from map completion, and yet still haven’t done anything about the Temple traits. I would rather complete maps all day long than even bother to sit in a map all day, scanning LFG, attempting to get my chance at a temple chest that rarely happens anymore.

At the very least, if you’re going to go as far as making temple defends reward traits, make defense reward the full ground chest and daily bonus. Or just undo this unnecessary change, and move the traits elsewhere.

Orr is emptier than ever before now, mostly filled with foxfire harvesters and people camping for temple defense traits. I miss being able to run temple metas.

Do you all think it would be as bad as it is if the cost were on par with the cost before the change, to buy the traits? I mean, the only thing really stopping me from having all the traits right now is that I don’t want to toss 42g and hundreds of skills points out the window for what amounts to something I should have by level 80. In my opinion, if they want to HOT FIX this, then simply cut the cost by about 80-90%. Voila! Happier players. Then you can take your sweet kitten time to really fix it.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Do you all think it would be as bad as it is if the cost were on par with the cost before the change, to buy the traits? I mean, the only thing really stopping me from having all the traits right now is that I don’t want to toss 42g and hundreds of skills points out the window for what amounts to something I should have by level 80. In my opinion, if they want to HOT FIX this, then simply cut the cost by about 80-90%. Voila! Happier players. Then you can take your sweet kitten time to really fix it.

This might be the best that could be hoped for; I doubt they will revert this new system. I even doubt they will reduce the costs.

As it is, I stopped making alts as soon as the patch hit. Under the current system, I have no interest in leveling new characters at all.

Halcyon.7352:

Please remove traits from Orr temples. I really cannot comprehend, even months later why you would appease people who deprive others by adding traits to defense events.

It’s really pretty bad when you can, by simply playing the game and doing an event, conflict with and deprive others of rewards. People who have potentially been waiting in a map for hours to get their daily rewards.

It’s WORSE now, because there’s new content in the form of a new recipe that is only obtainable from temple chests.

It’s really quite silly to me that you’re moving trait unocks away from map completion, and yet still haven’t done anything about the Temple traits. I would rather complete maps all day long than even bother to sit in a map all day, scanning LFG, attempting to get my chance at a temple chest that rarely happens anymore.

At the very least, if you’re going to go as far as making temple defends reward traits, make defense reward the full ground chest and daily bonus. Or just undo this unnecessary change, and move the traits elsewhere.

Orr is emptier than ever before now, mostly filled with foxfire harvesters and people camping for temple defense traits. I miss being able to run temple metas.

Agreed, again I feel this is a conflict of interest between players. Rather than being able to be cooperative people are set against each other based on what their goal is. The loot or the traits.

I also agree with dropping the trait costs. It may just be me but lately I haven’t been able to make gold as quickly and easily as I could a few months ago. The recent living story events have had so much account bound reward that I can’t profit off of my time spent in game the way I could from the boss blitz event for example.
I don’t like to grind dungeons endlessly or play the AH, so I don’t think I’m the target of the gold sinks, but I am affected anyway.

My last suggestion is :

Instead of forcing everyone “Unlocking Traits One by One”
You better start working on “Three Brand New -Raid- Dungeons”

Each one of that for unlocking

Adept Trait Line at level 30,
Master Trait Line at level 60
and Grandmaster Trait Line at level 80.

And leave unlocking “Major XIII Traits” same as before.

Keep working…
Peace

simple as that: i recommended this game because you could play with ‘most’ skills from start on.
For me and all people I play with, not only in this game, these changes are completely the wrong direction. I’m sorry the devs put lots of time&effort in it but for a lot of people you killed the motivation to create an alt. If that was your plan you did well I guess

back to page 1 for this ………

Five months to the day. Will tomorrow’s update hold some sort of stopgap measure?

I’ve been away for a while and just come back to this… This is so completely against what Anet preached when they began GW2 – removing the grind was what this MMO was supposed to be about. An MMO where you are never arbitrarily made to do things you don’t want just so you can progress. This is a major back step. It says something about the Dev team when they want to get people to experience their content (to play the game how THEY want it played instead of how we want to play it) and they do it by TAKING SOMETHING AWAY and making us earn it back!!! This is how you treat a naughty child – not a paying customer. Surely they have the imagination to incentivise people to go experience their content in a more positive way.

I want this on page one again as getting traits is my pet peeve with this game.
I don’t really care whether or not I have my traits before level 80, pve is that easy that I can go without. I’m fine with doing wvw with my other characters although I’m usually only in wvw, but then again I should farm some soft wood. But to think about what build I want my characters to have once they’re 80 and how to get the traits.. makes me grumpy as I know that it’ll be a pain. Either because I have to camp some event for hours or because said event is bugged or because no one knows (including me) how the event works.

Jana.6831:

I’m usually only in wvw, but then again I should farm some soft wood.

The borderlands maps have soft wood.

Sokia.3710:

Jana.6831:

I’m usually only in wvw, but then again I should farm some soft wood.

The borderlands maps have soft wood.

Try to survive in wvw as an uplevel =)

Jana.6831:

Sokia.3710:

Jana.6831:

I’m usually only in wvw, but then again I should farm some soft wood.

The borderlands maps have soft wood.

Try to survive in wvw as an uplevel =)

True.

Hi ArenaNET, are you guys actually going to do anything about his thread and fix the trait system? You guys started this thread and then went AWOL hoping that as the replies die down, then you might sneak in and delete this. This thread was neglected by you for long time and then you reply towards the end saying there is too much to go thru. I mean seriously what was really wrong with it the first place?

I started this game in around Nov last year and was not too familiar with the update or this forum and had made only 3 characters. Towards Dec end i bought a slot as well cos it was discounted. Seems like a waste of gold now.

There is really so many good suggestions in this thread that can be worked on cos the current way of getting traits is expensive and forcing me to do things such as WvW etc that i don’t know or do.

If gold wasn’t a problem i would have just bought the traits but the 40-42g + skill points for each character slot is just absurd.

Can you really like let us know if anything is getting done or we talking to brick wall or something? If you don’t plan on doing anything, just let us that this is how its going to be from now on and close this thread. A waste of time coming here in the forum to see if anything is getting done or not.

I just rolled a ranger. Slapped a 20 scroll on him and found out I had to “complete gendarran fields” for a BLUE trait. Srs? Some grandmaster traits involved killing one champ, which takes less time.
This was a HORRIBLE idea. I feel like Anet is doing too much for new players. . I’ve already done Gendarran Fields 100% four times, and I’m not that interested in doing it again. It’s well over 400 skill points just to unlock all traits and utilities if I chose to go down the payment route. The money is one thing, but 400+(!) skill points isn’t exactly done in a couple of weeks.
I’m seriously contemplating just not playing my newly created alt because of this. Since I already have several 80’s with 100% map completion I feel like I’m being forced to play just so i can get to 80 with a full skillset. Gaming is supposed to be fun, not a chore. Granted, new players probably find it a lot of fun to skill hunt, but not me, no, been there done that!

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

If you think thats bad wait till you have to kill the Overgrown Grub in the Eternal Battleground. People will rage at you for even suggesting you kill that mob.

sirian.4981:

If you think thats bad wait till you have to kill the Overgrown Grub in the Eternal Battleground. People will rage at you for even suggesting you kill that mob.

They really need to change that unlock, or provide another option. That’s just ridiculous.

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

I still think it’s bullkitten that you don’t have any traits to start with on new characters. You have to unlock them all from scratch, either by buying them or through some silly “challenges”.

Green and Yellow traits? Sure, make us unlock those. But BLUES? Let us get those for free. Come on, gotta let us start somewhere.

Thank god I have characters grandfathered in to the old trait unlocks… though it is painful for the couple of new characters I made recently.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

I still think it’s bullkitten that you don’t have any traits to start with on new characters. You have to unlock them all from scratch, either by buying them or through some silly “challenges”.

Green and Yellow traits? Sure, make us unlock those. But BLUES? Let us get those for free. Come on, gotta let us start somewhere.

Thank god I have characters grandfathered in to the old trait unlocks… though it is painful for the couple of new characters I made recently.

You’ll get no disagreement from me. I’ve been against the new trait system all along. I don’t mind the whole challenge thing, but it has to be thought out way more carefully than it has been. And yes, blue traits should have probably been free.

Now that they made some of the NPE unlocks account bound, I hope they make the traits unlock account bound. This system is really bad for the people that almost only play w vs w and pvp.

I feel that if you want to make a toon just for w vs w you are screwed. Because you have to grind pve so you can play with you character in w vs w or you have to use an insanely amount of skill points.

Inclined to agree with you, Sleepwalker.

The trait system is badly thought out just like most other recent changes to the game.

I know what they wanted. A scavenger search for skills like GW1 has. But it’s like they took everything that was fun about GW1s way of unlocking things and threw it out the window in favor of something 100x more tedious and un fun.

There’s an Elementalist trait that you have to finish the big event chain in Harathi Hinterlands to unlock.

There are lots of reasons why this is bad design. First for something as basic as a blue level trait it’s in a fairly high level area. Which is already more than a new player will be able to handle.

Second, you have to complete an event chain that requires a lot of people to finish it all the way.

And this is just for a blue trait. A group of 15+ people should never be needed to unlock something as basic as a blue trait.

And yes I’m aware they can be bought but that’s a completely different issue. Good thing for me I had a stack of 200 skill point scrolls saved up. Something no new player will have access to.

fellyn.5083:

The trait system is badly thought out just like most other recent changes to the game.

I know what they wanted. A scavenger search for skills like GW1 has. But it’s like they took everything that was fun about GW1s way of unlocking things and threw it out the window in favor of something 100x more tedious and un fun.

But the scavenger hunt was ONLY for Elite Skills and you had your own Instance in which to obtain them. You didn’t have to try to kill a certain boss in the open world and have a whole zone get mad at you for it because it messed up their “farm-train”.

Galphar.3901:

fellyn.5083:

The trait system is badly thought out just like most other recent changes to the game.

I know what they wanted. A scavenger search for skills like GW1 has. But it’s like they took everything that was fun about GW1s way of unlocking things and threw it out the window in favor of something 100x more tedious and un fun.

But the scavenger hunt was ONLY for Elite Skills and you had your own Instance in which to obtain them. You didn’t have to try to kill a certain boss in the open world and have a whole zone get mad at you for it because it messed up their “farm-train”.

That’s exactly my point. Like I said, they took what was fun about GW1’s unlock system and twisted it and made it the exact opposite of fun.

After I finish leveling up my elementalist and ranger I probably won’t ever make another new character again with this current iteration of the trait system.

JonPeters.5630:

2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

First I want to say that I really, genuinely do appreciate the changes that have been implemented to the NPE 9/9 patch. These changes have been positive and obviously directly relate to the feedback people have given you.

With that being said, your big ship certainly seems to be a lot more responsive than previously indicated. Less than a week in, and you guys have made clear steps in the right direction, but five months on and we should be patient?

I’d like to see them revert the Traits System back for pre-April Feature Patch and to give us actual Signets of Capture for Elite Skills. The signets could cost 10/30 Skillpoints depending on which Elite you want to capture. The cost would be determined by the current Skill Point cost of the Elite now. Have these Elites on certain bosses in Dungeons or even Event Bosses in the open-world. Also make sure the Elite is a skill that said boss would use just like in GW.

I’d like to see them revert the Traits System back for pre-April Feature Patch and to give us actual Signets of Capture for Elite Skills. The signets could cost 10/30 Skillpoints depending on which Elite you want to capture. The cost would be determined by the current Skill Point cost of the Elite now. Have these Elites on certain bosses in Dungeons or even Event Bosses in the open-world. Also make sure the Elite is a skill that said boss would use just like in GW.

Galphar.3901:

I’d like to see them revert the Traits System back for pre-April Feature Patch and to give us actual Signets of Capture for Elite Skills. The signets could cost 10/30 Skillpoints depending on which Elite you want to capture. The cost would be determined by the current Skill Point cost of the Elite now. Have these Elites on certain bosses in Dungeons or even Event Bosses in the open-world. Also make sure the Elite is a skill that said boss would use just like in GW.

No, please, no.

First of all a big thanks to the Devs for fixing a lot of the wrongness in the new patch. I am especially thrilled that crafting experience was fixed. I did some crafting this afternoon and progressed the correct amount of levels.

That said, something really has to be done about the traits. Yes, you can buy them, but they are terribadly expensive both in gold and skillpoints.

Everytime a new skill is added it costs skillpoints. If we buy our trait unlocks, we do not have many skillpoints left….there are only so many in the world and if we play Alts, that takes away on our earning skillpoints on that character (the one who bought all the traits) through leveling.

I then looked at all the things you have to do to unlock them…zone completion, forced teaming..brrrr..there must be another way.

How about giving us activities to do instead….like having to open so many Vistas, fight x amount of veterans…maybe set the unlocking up like our dailies and monthlies, and achievements.

Place plaques around the world for us to find and read…

Please think about it at least.

Lisa-wistful

I’m waiting on this. My new level 80 norn ranger is just languishing in never never land, because she’s pretty useless with only 4 traits, and I refuse to spend 42g and hundreds of skill points on buying these. Hopefully changes are implemented before I just delete her out of frustration.

Here’s a suggestion.

After obtaining 2 trait points (meaning level 36), you gain the I and II traits from every traitline. For every 3 levels after that, you gain another adept trait # (meaning III, IV, V, and VI using this order), the VI being unlocked the same level you unlock the Master level, at which point every 3 levels you’ll unlock a Master trait (VII, VIII, XI, X), until level 60, at which point you’ll have 6 points (and the grandmaster tier will be available). However, the Grandmaster traits will be the ONLY traits requiring you to hunt them down, and will have a total of 15 actions that must be done to unlock them, or you just buy them from a trait person.

The trait store people will be changed up to allow you to buy the unlocks for the traits (Adept, Master, Grandmaster, each specific # for ALL traitlines, meaning buying III will unlock all III for your character) separately if you wish to unlock that number ahead of time. Their costs will be similar to what is in the store already for that trait #.

sirian.4981:

If you think thats bad wait till you have to kill the Overgrown Grub in the Eternal Battleground. People will rage at you for even suggesting you kill that mob.

With a reason actually – it’s in front of the blue keep, so unless you’re not blue or the dominating colour who owns everything it’s a risk. And if you really zerg fight that thing the zerg is a good target or your towers and keeps. It is manageable to kill it with 5 or less people (use some siege maybe) so if you ask some friends you might be able to do it.
And yeah that’s no “But the trait system is fine” just an explanation why no one does it.

And on top of this it’s a bump and I actually changed my mind on being fine with having traits starting at level 80 as I realized that back in the day when I still made my own builds (before the trait changes) I always kind of sticked to traits and found afterwards, when looking cookie cutter builds up, that I already had the “approved” best traits for my purpose. EDTA: So I had the chance to get used to the traits while getting used to my class, now I have to get used to my class twice.

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

Soon you’ll accept anything if you keep accepting the little things. Don’t you have any principles.

Ish.2846:

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

Soon you’ll accept anything if you keep accepting the little things. Don’t you have any principles.

If I were to say “yes”, what then?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Ish.2846:

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

Soon you’ll accept anything if you keep accepting the little things. Don’t you have any principles.

If I were to say “yes”, what then?

Then you don’t have any.

OK, looks like paragraphs are too hard to understand. I’m going to demonstrate this trait unlock nonsense into simple conversation between veteran player and new player. New player is very casual, and play only on weekend for 3 hours each. He currently has 20g in his wallet.

Vet player: Hey what build are you running?

New player: oh, it’s 6/6/1/0/0

Vet: oh that old (blah) build. You should try the new 0/0/1/6/6 meta build. It’s really good!!

New: Ah ok, brb unlocking traits.

(ONE MONTH LATER)

New: yay, I finally got the traits for new meta!

Vet: Hey, long time no see. We are now playing 0/6/6/1/0. It’s newest meta build. You should try it! It’s amazing!

New: ………..How long did it took for you to unlock all traits T_T?

Vet: Oh, all of them were available and free to swap as we level before the feature pack.

New: ………..Sorry, I gotta go now cya later.

(New player uninstalls GW2)

I hope you can understand how bad all these are. The part that truly demolished the new player is knowing that he got ripped off by this change because he did not join the game earlier.

They wont reverse any change so we can stop holding our breath. The 9/9 feature patch broke more things, there will be months before they get rid of “bugs”.
ANet as they say “are pretty happy” how things turned up with both feature patches. Just a little tunning here and there.

Honestly, the best thing they can do now is the same that they have shown they can already do with this latest update and that’s make traits account bound, so vets have their traits to play with and new players (who are probably map opening for the first time on a toon) have a chance to hunt down and possibly get most of their traits via exploration organically.

*EDIT: The only reaosn I am advocating at least this change is because I cannot see them actually making any moves on most of the other (really great) suggestions on this thread for any number of reasons/excuses.

I don’t understand why I can’t unlock trait points as I level. Especially now that they have went through so much work trying to make the leveling system rewarding. I would absolutely thrilled if every time I leveled I gained a trait point and a skill point.

Tken.1986:

OK, looks like paragraphs are too hard to understand. I’m going to demonstrate this trait unlock nonsense into simple conversation between veteran player and new player. New player is very casual, and play only on weekend for 3 hours each. He currently has 20g in his wallet.

Vet player: Hey what build are you running?

New player: oh, it’s 6/6/1/0/0

Vet: oh that old (blah) build. You should try the new 0/0/1/6/6 meta build. It’s really good!!

New: Ah ok, brb unlocking traits.

(ONE MONTH LATER)

New: yay, I finally got the traits for new meta!

Vet: Hey, long time no see. We are now playing 0/6/6/1/0. It’s newest meta build. You should try it! It’s amazing!

New: ………..How long did it took for you to unlock all traits T_T?

Vet: Oh, all of them were available and free to swap as we level before the feature pack.

New: ………..Sorry, I gotta go now cya later.

(New player uninstalls GW2)

I hope you can understand how bad all these are. The part that truly demolished the new player is knowing that he got ripped off by this change because he did not join the game earlier.

Yeah, while I enjoy the game I don’t know if I could recommend it to any of my friends in its current state. New players just have so much grinding to do now before they can reasonably keep up with vets.

One thing I don’t think arenanet considered is how this affects new players going into wvw and dungeons. The trait changes seriously weaken low level players and its painful to try WvW pre80 now. Or to hop into dungeons at 35. These changes make it much harder to group up with my friends and have them fairly contribute.

Ish.2846:

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

Soon you’ll accept anything if you keep accepting the little things. Don’t you have any principles.

I have principles. However they don’t extend to spending some in game gold on something that once cost me in game gold anyway. My principles are you know about more significant things than the price of a skill in a game.

Vayne.8563:

Ish.2846:

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

Soon you’ll accept anything if you keep accepting the little things. Don’t you have any principles.

I have principles. However they don’t extend to spending some in game gold on something that once cost me in game gold anyway. My principles are you know about more significant things than the price of a skill in a game.

But let’s be reasonable. The trait books used to cost what? 16g? And no skill points. That was a walk in the park compared to what it is now. When I was a new player, I had no gold, or very little. And not enough skill points to get skills AND traits. I feel very sorry for new players now. They ARE at a severe disadvantage, whether they realize it or not.