Guild Wars 2

ozmaniandevil.6805:

So, it only took like, 30 pages on the gemgate scandal to get some action, yet here we are, 57 pages in to traitgate and… what?

ANet, I honestly would like to know WHY? Maybe we should “revolt” against this en force as well?! It affects our gold. It affects our time.

Time for change here. 7 months past time, actually.

I don’t believe there is any change on the horizon.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

We do need to keep this thread on topic and constructive.

I’m almost confident that no one in a halfway official function will read this unless I start talking about procuring nuclear weapons to fight the jihad.

But alright.

I’ve been thinking for the last hours and have started writing down a few suggestions until my train of thought was derailed by an important thought:

We’re asked to give our suggestions here, but no one ever defined what for. All we have to go by right now is the implementation, leaving us guessing what it actually was supposed to achieve.

Perhaps someone in the know could outline the design goals or requirements behind the new trait system, because any suggestion we come up with that clashes with those is basically wasted time and effort.

Was the goal to make trait acquisition more challenging, locking them behind a wall of skill?

In that case, many of the suggestions here complaining about level requirements and lack of variety apply.

Was the goal to integrate trait acquisition more into the overall narrative, increasing immersion?

Then we’ll need a LOT more variety in the acquisition methods, and these methods need to be far more evenly distributed among the content. You’d need to be able to unlock the majority of traits alongside a wide variety of play styles.
In this case, it would also make sense to tie trait acquisition more closely to thematically sound methods, which would in consequence mean to personalize acquisition for each trait line of each class. Tie the explosives line of the engineer, for examples, to events in the game that actually have something to do with blowing kitten up.

Was the goal to introduce players more to traits?

Then you’d probably want short instances for each trait in which a npc will walk you through activating, applying and using the trait in play, not allowing you to leave the instance until you, for example, have hurt an enemy with acidic elixirs.
Tying the traits to hard to reach or achieve content is probably counterproductive for this goal, anyway.

Or was the goal to force the players to leave their comfort zone and try out more content?

Then stop that immediately. Because holding content hostage for that kind of goal is never a good idea, and you might want to tie that to a more positive incentive.

In the long run, some form of requirement tracking would be nice, so advancements can be judged by merit of the original request put forth by the community.
Granted, by now a lot of those requirements would be in Chinese and interspersed by confused cries to the communist party to provide an Official Guild Wars 2 Playing Guide of the People, but even those would probably help.

Excellent perspective, barefootstep. A lot of people noticed the dissonance between the stated “make it easier to experiment” goal and the reality. What you just said adds to some hard questions that should be asked of dev/management teams.

Meanwhile, the warband hit 80 today. In between fishing around for exotics/runes/sigils, I still have lots of traits to hunt down for my build to be complete.
…This is not helping with my experimentation. I don’t feel ready for end-game content.
Trait system is still bad. :\

I’m honestly a bit dumbfounded.

Maybe its just ease of making the tweak. i don’t know. Maybe. i hope it is anyway.

Honestly though I think it has more to do with gems to gold and vice versa and how Anet makes money. The gem thing gets addressed?!?!? So quickly??!!?

Wow.

Did we not complain enough and did we not offer up enough suggestions to help fix the trait system for the better???

It’s a bad idea to lock traits behind time gated, multiplayer stuff. It’s absolutely NOT fun to stand around and wait until MAYBE something happens – it’s horrible. I ran around in an area with my new engineer to get a trait and it never popped up – i. e. the NPC you need to talk to never was around. It’s horrilbe bullkitten!!!

they put more time in making the trait system work with unlocks then it takes them to make it the way we want it, all traits unlocked from the start and traits available from lvl 15. (giving you 1 point every 4-5 levels)

khani.4786:

• Make the unlocks account wide per class. Example: You have a guardian main and have unlocked all of the traits, your new guardian would automatically know these traits because your older guardian “mentored” them in the learning process. If you made a new thief though, the skills would be locked until a thief on that account unlocked those the traits. I know this would not be easy to implement, but it would be a huge QOL improvement.

The most People I know don’t have many different characters of one class, instead they have different characters of different classes. So they will gain nothing and still have to do the same boring stuff with each and every character.

Shylock.4653:

khani.4786:

• Make the unlocks account wide per class. Example: You have a guardian main and have unlocked all of the traits, your new guardian would automatically know these traits because your older guardian “mentored” them in the learning process. If you made a new thief though, the skills would be locked until a thief on that account unlocked those the traits. I know this would not be easy to implement, but it would be a huge QOL improvement.

The most People I know don’t have many different characters of one class, instead they have different characters of different classes. So they will gain nothing and still have to do the same boring stuff with each and every character.

It would be better than nothing though at least. I don’t have multiples of every class, but for some I do have two or more (depending on how many races I wanted of that class).

I don’t think “better than nothing” will suffice. Sorry.

So, since this last update came and went without a peep or an actual update to traits, and I am going to assume that the fixes to the gem conversion debacle are going to eat up resources to fix THAT problem, that we probably won’t see any movement on anymore Trait updates or work until Nov. 18th at the earliest. Is that a safe assumption at least or is there ANYTHING in the chamber that can be spoken about before the next update?

Anything?

Bueller?

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I don’t think “better than nothing” will suffice. Sorry.

Well it looks like all we’re getting on this is nothing. ~shrug~

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Labjax.2465:

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Labjax.2465:

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.

It wasn’t the people in the gem exchange thread that got them to start working on a fix. It was the review sites that blasted the game and the people that chimed in on those sites. You are correct in saying that the correct people need to be outraged for change to happen though. We need more review sites to get in on this.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Labjax.2465:

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.

It wasn’t the people in the gem exchange thread that got them to start working on a fix. It was the review sites that blasted the game and the people that chimed in on those sites. You are correct in saying that the correct people need to be outraged for change to happen though. We need more review sites to get in on this.

I don’t understand why review sites and the whole player base didn’t start blasting on this back in April.

I have been following this, but it hasn’t effected me, so I didn’t bother to comment. Now I have a new guardian that I have to level through this system and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m not even going to talk about the WvW grub because almost everyone agrees that … what? Seriously?

What I am not liking is the map completes. I know they took out the higher level ones, but I don’t even like the lower level ones. I now feel like as I am leveling, I should really be doing those maps so I can get my traits. I can’t even remember what maps are used right now, but if I roll a Norn and want to level in Shiverpeaks, I don’t want to artificially move over to Kessex Hills instead of Snowden. Wasn’t part of the point of mentor system to make all maps viable? Why are they now herding us into a set route – because, face it, most people are going to play efficiently to level. Not the first time, true, but with alts, yeah.

If they want people to explore, give us a specific place to explore to find a trait unlock. Maybe an out of the way skill point or poi, but not the whole map. So I am not opposed to the idea behind the unlocks, but the implementation makes little sense to me.

I’d rather have flexibility and the ability to know I can grab a friend or 2 at most to unlock it whenever I want. No events, and especially no group events. I don’t mind that at Grandmaster, but when just plain leveling it seems too much a pain.

Yes, you can buy them. So what? You shouldn’t have to unless you want to. I like leveling, exploring and map completion, so I don’t hate that I have to unlock them on many maps and by doing a variety of activities. I do mind that I feel I am being railroaded into doing things in a set sequence (maps) and things I have to wait on (events) or other people to be kind (grub).

eta: actually, events are not the problem, it’s the variable nature of them. Looking at barefootstpes post above, I like the idea of tying traits to events thematically (engineers having events that blow stuff up, for example). Thinking about it, it would be kind of great to have a specific NPC you could talk to to kick off an event for your traits.

eta2: Oh gods – I forgot about the Dungeon story unlocks. : head desk : I don’t even have all the story unlocks on my main because it’s mostly useless.

tofumon.5924:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Labjax.2465:

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.

It wasn’t the people in the gem exchange thread that got them to start working on a fix. It was the review sites that blasted the game and the people that chimed in on those sites. You are correct in saying that the correct people need to be outraged for change to happen though. We need more review sites to get in on this.

I don’t understand why review sites and the whole player base didn’t start blasting on this back in April.

People didn’t find out how bad this was en masse. It kind of trickled in as people rolled alts and hit the trait wall themselves. A lot of people did not roll them right away, some still have not.

I’ve seen it mentioned on gaming sites here and there but nothing big.

Gregori is right. And on top of that, many new players will simply FEEL bored and frustrated and not come to the forums.

I think I already posted (not sure here or elsewhere) but …
What I love: the new indicator for map exploration (although there are few issues I already reported elsewhere).

What I hate:
with my newer elemental, at level 35(36?) I can have 1 trait (why should I wait so much ? is already a question).
Then I looked at traits: some of the “blue” ones (read: low level) are acquired by

• completing a lvl 40+ map,
• completing a dungeon – you know nowadays people do dungeon fast to get fast money with their lvl 80 characters, right ? and they will never recruit a non-80 character – and that anyway there is no way to complete a dungeon if you are not well equipped – I mean a group of levelling character with the stuff he receives can’t complete a dungeon.
• taking a fort in WvW … really ?at level 40 we are supposed to go in WvW ?

Imarion
PS: After 30-40 pages in the “new gemstore” issue post, Anet understood they have to change quickly.
After 57 pages here, did you also undertstand there is something to change ?

Imarion

For people wondering about it, I am pretty sure that the reason the new gempage was changed so quickly has nothing to do with forum feedback (or external reviews), but simply with finances. ANet released their seasonal event with new items and they were probably expecting some increase in revenue. However, with the new gempage I can speculate that there was significantly lower exchange of gems, leading to lower prices in gold, while on the other hand numerous people have also refrained from buying gems with cash exactly because of the change. In other words, there was probably a significant drop of income and the only thing to correlate it to was this new gem trading system.

Based on that, even if it gets to 10000 pages this thread won’t do anything unless ANet can see a significant reduction in their income that can be directly and unquestionably linked to the new trait system. Otherwise, good luck to all of us talking to a wall.

Sadly, Pourekos, I think you may be right, although i think the combination of the complaints and those metrics you stated helped them make that correlation.

As it stands right now, the only reason my post traits change necro is still alive is because i tied her existence to a GW1 toon of mine, and that’s it. That is what is keeping her from becoming another key farming slot. Now she basically helps me clear dailies if it calls for condition damage and cleanse. Other than that she really doesn’t do much.

Leveled another character to 80 and had a grand total of five traits unlocked (four of which i had to buy)

Well i guess playing without traits is this games version of hard mode people have occasionally asked for. Maybe that was the intent all along.

I’m sure there are lots of people out there who still don’t realize the extent of the changes wrought by the trait system redesign. Anyone who hasn’t rolled an alt since the redesign went into effect won’t necessarily know about ‘trait hunting’. One of my guildies, for instance, didn’t understand what had changed until just the other day, when I was grumbling about it in guild chat.

Gregori.5807:

People didn’t find out how bad this was en masse. It kind of trickled in as people rolled alts and hit the trait wall themselves. A lot of people did not roll them right away, some still have not.

I’ve seen it mentioned on gaming sites here and there but nothing big.

Tachenon.5270:

I’m sure there are lots of people out there who still don’t realize the extent of the changes wrought by the trait system redesign. Anyone who hasn’t rolled an alt since the redesign went into effect won’t necessarily know about ‘trait hunting’. One of my guildies, for instance, didn’t understand what had changed until just the other day, when I was grumbling about it in guild chat.

These are the reasons why its taken so long to get this many posters and why the gem conversion went to over a thousand the first day. Many people had all the alts they needed at the time so it did not affect them personally so they did not care. Most new people don’t know any different and if they do not like they just quit. That reduces the volume of people affected tremendously. If it affected everyone instantly and uniformly the way the gem conversion did then maybe more people would have posted in the forums and more sites would have blasted arenanet. Its like a slow poison that someone ignored rather than the knife wound that obviously needs medical attention. Hopefully they can cure the poison before it does permanent damage.

The thing it, I think it already HAS done perm damage. Unfortunately I think it will end up slowly driving away players as opposed to a mass exodus, so they might not even realize the slow bleed of population. :/

Seriously the trait thing (among others) has soured the game so much for me that I only barely show up for WvW anymore either since just being in the game for too long irks me. i don’t play games to be annoyed by them and not being able to experiment with alts has severely hurt my playing experience.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Gregori is right. And on top of that, many new players will simply FEEL bored and frustrated and not come to the forums.

I hopped on the forum BECAUSE I felt bored and frustrated. I only made ONE character and got him to level 52 I think before I felt too unmotivated to continue. I luckily did make him right before the patch so I didn’t have to go trait hunting, but the fact that I have to grind until level 60 to get the 2nd tier of traits, and the fact that I only get 1 at every 6 levels, bored me out of my mind. I was considering making a 2nd character to try out the NPE but then I thought about the traits again and shuddered because I know that character isn’t going to get anywhere anytime soon.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Labjax.2465:

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.

It wasn’t the people in the gem exchange thread that got them to start working on a fix. It was the review sites that blasted the game and the people that chimed in on those sites. You are correct in saying that the correct people need to be outraged for change to happen though. We need more review sites to get in on this.

Well, I’ve contacted the owner of the review site that convinced me to get GW2. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Getting review and community sites involved is a great idea. With the trait change GW2 is essentially a different game from launch and that should be accounted for in review scores. I know for me it turned from a 9/10 game that I played almost daily to a 6/10 that I wouldn’t recommend to my friends and haven’t played in months.

Wow. And then there are posts like this one.

Phenn.5167:

Further examples of non-communication that’s being labelled as communication:

Gaile Gray.6029:

As of today, Friday, the developers have been actively working on creation of the Custom option. They then will put it through a testing pass after which it will be rolled out into the game. We think you’ll like the option, and I believe you’ll be pleased with the timeframe for this implementation, as well.

Once again, “We think you’ll like the option,” and “you’ll be pleased with the timeframe for implementation” are not communication. They’re pedantic instances of informing the playerbase what they should feel, and how ANet expects them to respond. This implies that, if the playerbase does NOT like the option, or is NOT pleased with the timeframe of implementation, it’s the players’, not ANet’s, fault.

Secondly, this response in no way communicates that ANet is truly listening to its playerbase. Why? I’m glad you asked.

• The posts on October 22 saying that the change was en route came only after two prominent gaming critics, and Dulfy herself expressed extreme displeasure with the change. What’s this communicate? It communicates ANet cares only about its PR, not about its players.

• It took two days for the developers to actually start working on a change. That the option was never even considered in the design phase says that the Devs were content to let things slide the way they were until enough outrage (read, bad PR) couldn’t let them continue. Now that the Devs are working on a change, it’s two full days after the acknowledgement was posted. Maybe this is a fast turnaround for ANet. But either way, it certainly doesn’t communicate that the player’s opinions are valuable—especially with how fast hotfixes have come down for other content.

• (THIS IS FOR THE PLAYERS) Stop congratulating ANet for listening! The reversion of this change does not in any way prove that ANet has changed its stance or practice on listening to and communicating with the playerbase. All it proves is that, when ANet’s bottom line is threatened by external bad PR, it’ll get its rear in gear.

Once again, in the interest of communication, here’s what Gaile’s post could have been to solve many of the above issues:

Sorry for the slow start, but we finally have a team working on a fix for the gem converter. The proposed solution looks like <blank>. Despite starting on it today, we anticipate rolling out the change <specific release date>. If experience any setbacks, we will notify you ASAP with an update.

Would that be so hard?

This seriously makes me want to cry. They get results after forty-eight hours, and it’s not good enough.

And now to top things off, they’ve closed the thread talking about communication between us and A-Net.

Guhracie.3419:

This seriously makes me want to cry. They get results after forty-eight hours, and it’s not good enough.

Seriously. I don’t understand how people got so up in arms so quickly over the gems but the trait problem is still just sitting here.

tofumon.5924:

Guhracie.3419:

This seriously makes me want to cry. They get results after forty-eight hours, and it’s not good enough.

Seriously. I don’t understand how people got so up in arms so quickly over the gems but the trait problem is still just sitting here.

Especially considering the trait change is preventing a lot of revenue to Anet. I see these outfits for Halloween, and I haven’t bought any despite them looking good simply because I don’t know if I’m going to keep playing this game. My only drive to constantly play was linked to the trait system and alts. They destroyed the trait system, which destroyed alts.

I have no drive right now outside of Living Story, and as the tournament showed me, I logged in once a week, got my 5 events done, and logged out…every week for the ENTIRE tournament. I had fun those few events, but then when WvW started slowing down, I realized there was nothing else I could do to waste time…because I can’t work on alts due to the kitten ed trait system change. I don’t want to quit the game because it was the most refreshing MMO I’ve ever played…but now it’s changed, Anet has started destroying it. I may leave unless this is changed soon.

Back to check on the progress with this dismal system. Not that I expected much improvement if any, but I actually loved this game.

I have hardly played since the April patch that foisted this on us. I do have 7 level 80’s pre-patch and thus they are not affected, but I immediately stopped my plans for more characters, and began playing less as overall . I dislike the direction the game has been going in.

The trait system is the killer for me. That is what drove me away.

I play one other game and had 3 friends who joined me here in gw2 when I started playing gw2. They stopped; having joined after me they have several characters affected by the trait change and they lost interest. They simply don’t like it.

Perhaps they are an example of many people who dislike it. You see, they never posted here. They simply gave up when the fun was gone.

We were playing our other game last night, and gw2 came up. Their advice to 2 other people with whom we were playing? Don’t waste your time with gw2, they made awful changes to the game.

I logged in gw2 this morning, as every so often I return for a short bit. I was actually told that only noobs need the “OP traits” by some “pro gamer” (he/she said pro gamers do not need the crutch of traits) . It has gotten very weird in the game.

In addition, I noted players still having no traits. I make it a point to talk to friendly players and see what they think, say, how they feel. Those who began after the patch just seem to feel that traits are optional extras. They have no builds, really.

A while back, I met someone who had placed points in the various trait lines, and had no traits. Just the minor adepts in each line….I was informed this was the “balanced build” that people should be using if they know how to play. I did not argue, I am just interested in how this has affected things.

I just cannot see this as a good thing.

I love the game. Actually, I love the game I bought and can, for the most part, ignore the parts of the game we have now that I can’t stand (vertical progression, for one).

As I watch devs reply around this thread and fix issues that have arisen since this one (commander tags and gems, for example), the milk is being spoiled for me. I have 4 80s and a grandfathered 42 Necro so I should be good but I am finding myself playing less and less as I watch this ignoring.

I gave the system a fair shake: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/page/54#post4467452

The only dev response we have gotten is to tell us that the thread was too long to read and jump back on the hamster wheel to crank out more ideas. Later, Gaile Gray came in to repost that dev post.

… all while Gaile and others post around this one.

Brtiva.9721:

I play one other game and had 3 friends who joined me here in gw2 when I started playing gw2. They stopped; having joined after me they have several characters affected by the trait change and they lost interest. They simply don’t like it.

Perhaps they are an example of many people who dislike it. You see, they never posted here. They simply gave up when the fun was gone.

We were playing our other game last night, and gw2 came up. Their advice to 2 other people with whom we were playing? Don’t waste your time with gw2, they made awful changes to the game.

Anet has no clue how many sales they are losing. I know, for a fact, that I have cost Anet quite a few customers just by showing prospective buyers this thread and by them telling their friends, etc.

Us vocal ones are the minority. Most of the customer hemorrhage are certainly coming from those who quietly leave the game in disgust… and tell their friends.

Brtiva.9721:

I logged in gw2 this morning, as every so often I return for a short bit. I was actually told that only noobs need the “OP traits” by some “pro gamer” (he/she said pro gamers do not need the crutch of traits) . It has gotten very weird in the game.

In addition, I noted players still having no traits. I make it a point to talk to friendly players and see what they think, say, how they feel. Those who began after the patch just seem to feel that traits are optional extras. They have no builds, really.

A while back, I met someone who had placed points in the various trait lines, and had no traits. Just the minor adepts in each line….I was informed this was the “balanced build” that people should be using if they know how to play. I did not argue, I am just interested in how this has affected things.

I just cannot see this as a good thing.

^^This is scary. Whelp, maybe that’s why I am having better luck in WvW in my exotic gear w/ ascended trinkets. And here I thought I was getting better.

Gregori.5807:

Brtiva.9721:

I play one other game and had 3 friends who joined me here in gw2 when I started playing gw2. They stopped; having joined after me they have several characters affected by the trait change and they lost interest. They simply don’t like it.

Perhaps they are an example of many people who dislike it. You see, they never posted here. They simply gave up when the fun was gone.

We were playing our other game last night, and gw2 came up. Their advice to 2 other people with whom we were playing? Don’t waste your time with gw2, they made awful changes to the game.

Anet has no clue how many sales they are losing. I know, for a fact, that I have cost Anet quite a few customers just by showing prospective buyers this thread and by them telling their friends, etc.

Us vocal ones are the minority. Most of the customer hemorrhage are certainly coming from those who quietly leave the game in disgust… and tell their friends.

Brtiva.9721:

I logged in gw2 this morning, as every so often I return for a short bit. I was actually told that only noobs need the “OP traits” by some “pro gamer” (he/she said pro gamers do not need the crutch of traits) . It has gotten very weird in the game.

In addition, I noted players still having no traits. I make it a point to talk to friendly players and see what they think, say, how they feel. Those who began after the patch just seem to feel that traits are optional extras. They have no builds, really.

A while back, I met someone who had placed points in the various trait lines, and had no traits. Just the minor adepts in each line….I was informed this was the “balanced build” that people should be using if they know how to play. I did not argue, I am just interested in how this has affected things.

I just cannot see this as a good thing.

^^This is scary. Whelp, maybe that’s why I am having better luck in WvW in my exotic gear w/ ascended trinkets. And here I thought I was getting better.

I have a feeling one day the few remaining veteran players with BiS gear (full ascended) and actual builds (with real synergy between equipment, traits and skills) will be looked at as “gods walking amongst mere mortals” even if they are mediocre or just marginally above average players. What a sad state of affairs.

The last of my October gaming money went to Steam. There’s plenty of Halloween stuff I’d like to get in GW2, but at the rate my time in-game is decreasing, it’s probably better that I find my entertainment elsewhere.

I really wish the April patch had removed traits from the game entirely. Alternately, I wish they hadn’t grandfathered anyone in. If everyone had to obtain their traits this way, I suspect this would’ve been handled about six months ago.

Brtiva.9721:

In addition, I noted players still having no traits. I make it a point to talk to friendly players and see what they think, say, how they feel. Those who began after the patch just seem to feel that traits are optional extras. They have no builds, really.

A while back, I met someone who had placed points in the various trait lines, and had no traits. Just the minor adepts in each line….I was informed this was the “balanced build” that people should be using if they know how to play. I did not argue, I am just interested in how this has affected things.

I just cannot see this as a good thing.

Holy kitten wtf this is some backwards kitten thinking. If traits are “extras” then skills are just “extras” too. Balanced build? Jesus christ wtf…

PookieDaWombat.6209:

The thing it, I think it already HAS done perm damage. Unfortunately I think it will end up slowly driving away players as opposed to a mass exodus, so they might not even realize the slow bleed of population. :/

You might be right. You’re speculating, of course, because we don’t have hard numbers, and even if we did it might be pretty hard to know for sure. But what you say sounds right. It pretty well describes what has happened in my own guild.

Leaving the game has been gradual, and I can’t be sure that everyone has completely left. Up until a couple of weeks ago I was still occasionally logging in to try out an idea for a build or whatever. I still check the forums periodically, looking for any signs of an encouraging change of direction. No luck so far.

The guild’s gradual loss of interest has a lot of causes, but the most prominent is the traits debacle. We used to like to tinker around with builds a lot, even at lower levels. The changes to the trait system made that close to impossible, and that was the beginning of our slow slide out of the game.

I don’t remember exactly when I logged in last. Maybe it was as recent as last week some time, or maybe a little longer. Maybe some of the others in my guild are still logging in.

What I do know is that our group events have moved on to another game, and folks have pretty much stopped talking about GW2. The game came in with a bang in my group, but it looks like it’s going out with a whimper.

But I’ll keep checking the forums for signs of a change until…I dunno. Until I don’t remember to check anymore, I guess.

I absolutely hate the new trait system. It’s probably the worst aspect of any game out right now. You don’t want people grind, but you force people to farm traits… /facepalm

Brtiva.9721:

…
I logged in gw2 this morning, as every so often I return for a short bit. I was actually told that only noobs need the “OP traits” by some “pro gamer” (he/she said pro gamers do not need the crutch of traits) . It has gotten very weird in the game.

In addition, I noted players still having no traits. I make it a point to talk to friendly players and see what they think, say, how they feel. Those who began after the patch just seem to feel that traits are optional extras. They have no builds, really.

A while back, I met someone who had placed points in the various trait lines, and had no traits. Just the minor adepts in each line….I was informed this was the “balanced build” that people should be using if they know how to play. I did not argue, I am just interested in how this has affected things.

I just cannot see this as a good thing.

With the whole new trait system I can understand not wanting to jump through the hoops but this sounds like “sour grapes” to justify not having any traits. It results in another aspect of the “dumbing down” of GW2. I feel sorry for new players and sad for the game.

Please Anet, tell us you plan on doing something with this. A simple account unlock for all classes upon doing this once would be good enough for all of us, because then we’d all know we only have to do this ONCE.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Please Anet, tell us you plan on doing something with this. A simple account unlock for all classes upon doing this once would be good enough for all of us, because then we’d all know we only have to do this ONCE.

I just can not understand why this hasn’t been done yet. The longer they don’t do it, the more people are going to be annoyed at having wasted time farming out traits.

This should have been done by May at the latest. Once they worked out an actually decent system then they could have implemented it later.

Leaving such an utterly broken core system in place for six months is unbelievable.

6+ months, 57 pages of people trying to tell Anet that their new system is bad, Anet still silent, ignoring, ignorant.

Quite amazing. Actually I’m starting to get this feeling, that Anet decided that they aren’t doing anything about this new system. Argument: <Insert blah blah blah, due to technical limitations of our game.> period. That’s how they usually do it.

And whoever made the call about it was like: “Ignore this, they will get used to this new system or get bored of whining about it.”

No, no Anet – People HAVE quit because of this trait system, people ARE QUITTING right now and people WILL BE QUITTING in the future.

Bah, why do I even bother… It’s not like you care. This thread is a perfect example of a game’s community having a monologue, hoping that the other side hears them out…

Unfortunately, after reading this thread there’s nothing I can add that hasn’t already been shared, suggested or pointed out. I had four characters grandfathered in – but recently have had the urge to play some other classes.

When I first played this game, it was great. More sandboxy exploration than I had anticipated from playing MMO’s in the past that centers on quest/story/farm drive. Explore and complete a zone, move on to the next, start exploring it and realize you need to level. Notice you have some personal stories you can do to gain a level or two. Complete any events along the way and just do it your way – Anet was actually pretty true to their word in the beginning – do it your way.

Now, I hit a level wall, I can mope around or map hop looking for events – maybe use an asura gate to go to another area of the game w/a zone near where my level is, but I can’t rely on just falling back on my personal story anymore to gain a quick couple levels to continue my world exploration.

Until I read a few pages back that PvP was actually accessible via asura gate, I figured that was out of the picture until I hit the unlock for it as well.

What was once a rather fun, smoothly flowing, “progress at your own rate doing your own thing” type of game, has now turned into what I was used to previously: “Go here and do X to get Y”.

If it were possible, currently, to be competitive on a level 1 in WvW – my last characters would never reach level 80. It’s just a massive borefest currently and I dislike being told I have to go and do certain mundane activities to gain the traits that were and are inherent to each class’s diversity and success in their roles.

P.S. This is probably my only post on this forum ever, I just decided to voice some concern over such a broken mechanic if by chance I just decide to log off for good in the near future. With the current state of WvW – this may be sooner than later.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Please Anet, tell us you plan on doing something with this. A simple account unlock for all classes upon doing this once would be good enough for all of us, because then we’d all know we only have to do this ONCE.

Just wanted to repost this quote on PAGE 58. Such a simple solution to this trait mess.

Daggos Skelito.2910:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Please Anet, tell us you plan on doing something with this. A simple account unlock for all classes upon doing this once would be good enough for all of us, because then we’d all know we only have to do this ONCE.

Just wanted to repost this quote on PAGE 58. Such a simple solution to this trait mess.

I disagree. I don’t want to be forced to do content or be forced to do it within a certain timeframe in order to be able to trait out my character. That’s a stupid design. Being forced to WvW in order to do map completion is bad enough, this is (# of traits locked behind content) x worse.

But I also can’t believe that Anet hasn’t responded.

I’m one of those people that suffers from Altitis. I stopped playing back in February, 2013. I had 6 L80’s, a L60 and a L40, (one of each profession) who are now grandfathered into the new trait unlock system. I recently started playing again. I threw Anet $10 to level a new character to re-learn how to play the game. I still have yet to unlock all the traits on the new character and I’m at 90% map complete. Leveling a character used to be a pleasant experience. Now, it feels like a massive grind. What used to cost 3.1 gold and play as you want has now turned into pay 43 gold and 360 skill points or play as we want you to play. I don’t regret paying $10 to level the new character, it’s been fun. What’s not fun is grinding out trait unlocks. So, yeah, I’m cured of my altitis and will never level another GW2 character so long as the current trait unlock system is in place.

Daggos Skelito.2910:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Please Anet, tell us you plan on doing something with this. A simple account unlock for all classes upon doing this once would be good enough for all of us, because then we’d all know we only have to do this ONCE.

Just wanted to repost this quote on PAGE 58. Such a simple solution to this trait mess.

Not good enough. I don’t want to be forced to do any of that stuff. If I only look at stuff that I have to do for T1 traits I just hold my head thinking: “Sooo much boring, annoying kitten!”

I’ve gone through PvE maps once, I don’t mind doing the personal story, but my character with highest map exploration is 61%, I don’t want to touch those maps any more. They are boring, a waste of time, Anet made them that way and now they’re forcing us to play them or spend abnormal amount of gold and skill points. kitten that.

Trait system back to what it was before or a system that doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to unlock any single trait. Similar to caping skill point.

So, Anet. I still think my prediction holds true that we won’t hear anything until mid November on this (if at all) since i know the devs are focused more on the gems/money/gold thing at this time.

That being said, I just want to address some other things here that have been said:

Trait unlock account bound – Although I am also a huge advocate for this, they will never do it now since it will be followed immediately by a deluge of people screaming that they want the gold they already spent on traits refunded to them. We’ve seen it happen before. This is the equivalent of Anet painting themselves into the corner since they have taken so long to even maybe consider this as an option.

“Balanced builds” and “pro-gamers” – Wow, that was really sad to read, but i can understand the urge to BS oneself over the sad state their characters are in thanks to not really getting proper trait load outs. i do hope they were being sarcastic though.

I saw on another thread here someone talking about “just buying” the traits and instead of spreading the info out i will try to quickly go over why this is not a thing we should have to do (or can do):

If you are a casual or semi casual player, but want to also try multiple classes (lets say 4 for argument’s sake), there is no way on one account you are going to get enough skill points per character or gold across all 4 toons to buy your traits. in fact i will wager you won’t get enough to buy half of your traits on each toon. Why? Because there are other things that people spend their money on (especially at level 80) if they really want to kit themselves out in decent gear. The cost is simply NOT feasible. Its not. Period.