Guild Wars 2

Pifil.5193:

Well, given that Colin mentioned Traits, Masteries, Skills, Specialisations and the release of HoT in his post I think it’s fair to say that this change (whatever that change is) will be coming either with HoT or the major patch that precedes it.

Like you both, I’m cautiously optimistic but I won’t be cracking open the champagne until it’s revealed what will replace the current system.

From the mention of masteries being involved I’m guessing that this’ll mean an account wide unlock of traits in some form, hopefully.

Yeah, pretty sure it’s going to use the “Mastery” system, whatever that turns out to be. They’ve said that will be account wide, so I’m hoping the new trait unlocks are as well. However…

From what they’ve said so far, most of the “Mastery” stuff is for use in the new area(s) only. Specializations are (hopefully) not, and the trait change is tied to them as well. So, what I expect is that Specialization and traits will be ways to use the Mastery system outside of the new content. Which also keeps it right there and in your face, even if you don’t buy HoT. It will in some ways serve the same purpose as the Black Lion Treasure Chests, a constant reminder that you might get something good if you pay up for the extra (the key) that goes with it.

So, will the new trait system be easier? “You buy them with Mastery points!” is easier than what we have, on the surface. But then, what if the Mastery system is bad? What if it’s actually a worse version of our current trait system? Given ANet’s track record, I’d say that this is a very real concern.

I think the original system was fine. Certainly fine enough for the game to be incredibly popular and sell like hot cakes.

Revert to that.

Palleon.1657:

ColinJohanson.2394:

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Why do MMOs feel the need to do this after a few years? Do you think that the longer we play your game, the more dumb we get, and therefore need you to keep simplifying things?

We aren’t children, we can cope with more than one button or system, in fact most of us crave the complexity!

Please read what he wrote again. They are re-simplifying traits. They are actually going to add an additional mastery system as well as a profession specialization system. So now we’ll have traits, skills, and masteries, and specializations. That’s four systems! Last time I checked, 4 > 1.

They’re only simplifying this terrible system in which traits are arbitrarily acquired by means which are often level-inappropriate. I’d also like to point out that the trait system that was initially released with the game was far simpler than what we have now and probably also simpler than the newly simplified version will be.

Palleon.1657:

Your game “was” brilliant. Now, it is becoming like every other dumbed down one button point and click game out there.

It was brilliant until they screwed it up with this alt-unfriendly trait system. I’m optimistic that it will be brilliant again.

Are we seriously going to have to wait until HoT launches? That’s ridiculous. The trait system has been broken since April 2014 and players have been begging until they cried for a change.

My sincere hope is that when they info dump the new Mastery system, they’ll do a major patch shortly after to implement it and give players a bit of time to feel it out before the actual expansion launch.

In the next 6 months, waiting for HOT to show up with new (and based on past experience, even LESS fun) trait system, I will have moved on. I hope you all have fun with new GW2.

I absolutely can’t fathom why so many are cheering already. This company is all about hype and hyperbole, then they spring the real deal and it’s never what you really wanted. I’m currently so disillusioned with this game I can’t even express my sadness. I have no interest at all in the expansion, especially if it’s something that has to be purchased. I’ve given more cash to this company than I care to admit. The buck stops here.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

In the next 6 months, waiting for HOT to show up with new (and based on past experience, even LESS fun) trait system, I will have moved on. I hope you all have fun with new GW2.

I absolutely can’t fathom why so many are cheering already. This company is all about hype and hyperbole, then they spring the real deal and it’s never what you really wanted. I’m currently so disillusioned with this game I can’t even express my sadness. I have no interest at all in the expansion, especially if it’s something that has to be purchased. I’ve given more cash to this company than I care to admit. The buck stops here.

I haven’t played the game since April. If you don’t like the trait system or the way the game is in general at the moment, why are you still playing? Of course that’s going to make you sad :/

I occasionally (every 2 months or so) check back on GW2, and on this thread in specific, to see if any progress have been made. For a long time, there wasn’t. Now there are signs that maybe in the future the game will become playable again for me. That’s good news. I’m not overly optimistic yet, I’ll wait what the actual changes will be. But it’s good to know that at least something is being done.

Awbee.8405:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

In the next 6 months, waiting for HOT to show up with new (and based on past experience, even LESS fun) trait system, I will have moved on. I hope you all have fun with new GW2.

I absolutely can’t fathom why so many are cheering already. This company is all about hype and hyperbole, then they spring the real deal and it’s never what you really wanted. I’m currently so disillusioned with this game I can’t even express my sadness. I have no interest at all in the expansion, especially if it’s something that has to be purchased. I’ve given more cash to this company than I care to admit. The buck stops here.

I haven’t played the game since April. If you don’t like the trait system or the way the game is in general at the moment, why are you still playing? Of course that’s going to make you sad :/

I occasionally (every 2 months or so) check back on GW2, and on this thread in specific, to see if any progress have been made. For a long time, there wasn’t. Now there are signs that maybe in the future the game will become playable again for me. That’s good news. I’m not overly optimistic yet, I’ll wait what the actual changes will be. But it’s good to know that at least something is being done.

Check out Colin’s replies regarding Arenanet’s definition of grind in the ‘No-grind philosophy’ thread. If you haven’t played since april, I think they’ll convincingly discourage you from purchasing HoT.

Why did you have to wait for HoT to just pop on and say “We recognize that this is a problem and are working to fix it.”

Do you realize how much nicer it would be if we were to receive timely information? Is that asking too much?

I realize that there was a hint about this given a couple of weeks ago by Gaile, but that was still 70-some odd pages into this thread — about 8 months since this thread started.

That’s eight months widening the gap of distrust between ArenaNet and it’s players. Eight months of rage that could have been avoided from the start by just engaging with us in a timely manner. Seriously, ask yourselves — is this how you want your company to present itself to its players?

I hope that post-HoT, the need to wait for every meaningful communication to require hype and theatrics is gone.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

That’s a shame.

I liked the system, I just didn’t like the objectives or how pricy the alternative was. I also didn’t like how it was the same for all professions.

If it were all PvE, didn’t include map completion, and the low ones could be solo’d (no champion giants!) and were different depending on profession I would love the system – love it more if the cost to unlock traits were half what it is now (maybe a little less even).

I just hope that characters are not grandfathered in.

What I would like would be profession-specific quests / missions. Every trait row would have its own unique little mission that would take maybe 10 minutes. Story-wise, it’d be connected to your profession, and they would all be solo-able, and would scale up / down to your level.

Ideally, they could be connected to the individual trait line: say, you have to fight a fire elemental to unlock the “Fire” trait line for Elementalist. Or you have to do a small mission where you have to lay down some traps, to unlock the ranger “Traps” line.

So you’d have to do all five of these to unlock all five trait lines for a character.

That would be a nice little bit of extra flavor and progression, but it wouldn’t be an annoying obstacle.

I think ArenaNet is aware that this broken system will come under scrutiny when others that have not experienced this trait collecting system start with new characters. The red post is just a sidestep from this problem to fix it before more players join this thread and complain about it. This fix seems months away and I don’t understand why many in this thread are cheering. You are still stuck with your characters that don’t have all traits till then. They could have done atleast a simple fix in the coming weeks such as remove locks from Adept/Master and keep the grandmaster ones. They didn’t, but they saying to wait more. Anyway, to all of those that put in hardwork to come up with ideas of how this could have been fixed ( I know theres many in this thread), sorry to say but you wasted your time and effort coming up with these ideas. Meanwhile hype continues…“off the table, Out of the bag….Sooon”

They should have reverted to the original system at launch, especially during the $10 sale. It would’ve gave the new players a much better experience.

So a friend recently purchased GW2 and pushed me to reinstall (I quit over a year ago). I decided to delete my warrior (level 71) and create a new one because I wanted to experience the game as a new player would (and all my other character slots were full). Well, we quickly hit level 30 just to be slapped in the face with a massive “to-do” list in order to obtain the traits we want to create a desired build. Compared to the old system, I couldn’t believe this. It honestly felt like, “You want to have fun creating a build while leveling? That’s not how this works anymore, kitten you.” and I’m baffled at the decision to move to a system that is “simpler” yet obnoxious and tedious. I wish I hadn’t deleted my old warrior. Luckily for me, nothing really seems to have changed in a year and everyone else in my old guild except 4 people have quit. Doesn’t look like we will be playing long.

I understand an expansion is coming out and was curious about it. However, I’m not impressed in the slightest. The current information is vague at best and the “expansion” seems to be used as a reason to have never patched much of the broken aspects of the game (main reason I quit). In fact, a patch today fixed the GS #5 skills “Rush” so that it works like you would think it should. This skill has been sluggish for over 2 years. While I’m glad it looks like they are ever so slowly still fixing the game, the pace is so poor that I can’t fathom the expansion having anything significant. I hope the people that still play will find it worth their money and I hold no ill feelings towards the community.

I hope ArenaNet knocks the new expansion out of the park. I hope it’s great.

I have some concerns.

I’m a member of a gaming guild that played GW2 enthusiastically for months. We don’t play it anymore. There are several reasons, but the most important and easiest to explain is the new trait system.

The news that this system is to be replaced has the guild looking at GW2 again. We might return, once we see what the expansion brings to the table, but our members are cautious.

What makes us cautious is that the new trait system was introduced without any opportunity for players to see it and comment on it before it became the only way to play the game. After it was released and received overwhelmingly negative feedback for months and months, we saw no sign that the complaints were even being heard, until today’s news that the system was to be replace by…something else.

What’s going to replace it? We don’t know. Will it be better or worse? We don’t know. Will players have any opportunity to comment on proposed changes before they are introduced? We don’t know, but past experience suggests that we won’t. What happens if the new system isn’t an improvement? We don’t know, but past experience suggests that we will wait months and months without knowing whether anyone knows or cares about our dissatisfaction.

For the most part I think ArenaNet is great at game development. I think most of GW2’s systems and features are much better than the competition’s.

One thing that I think is not better than the competition is the policy of keeping secret the details of new game systems until it’s too late to change them. Surely it’s better to expose important new systems for customer feedback before they become a fait accompli? Surely it’s better to gather the feedback before committing to some new system, rather than discovering problems only after it’s too late to do anything about them?

Because ArenaNet does not take this approach to the introduction of new systems, my guild is taking a wait-and-see approach. Maybe the new systems alluded to in the expansion announcement will be great. Maybe they won’t. I guess we’ll have to wait until release and see.

I’m itching to complain about something I haven’t seen mentioned yet – although I admittedly did not read all 80 pages ;)

The trait unlocking system is not only unreliable because of events and so on, but also seems terribly unbalanced as to the difficulty of events (within the same tier, even adept). Some traits are unlocked by map completion – easily accessible even for new players. Some are unlocked by killing endbosses in a mini-dungeon – not accessible for new players at all! I’ve only been playing for a few months and must say, some traits seem unreachable for me and my fresh lvl 80 ele unless I take an experienced party with me. Others I get for random kills and events I do anyway. Where is the predictability and fairness?

So I hope this gets fixed in whatever change Colin was alluding to :(

The way I see it, someone within the company made a very bad call on the trait system. Because of the NPE, changes were to be made regardless of whether or not the systems were broken. Take our 1st trait system, what’s so bad about it? Perhaps, the simplicity doesn’t prove to be challenging to the workaholics. So, Anet decides to raise the roof and made a mess.

Some may ask why we continue playing this game. The game, itself, is still fun and interesting. A few aspects here and there damaged the game’s good name, but not destroyed beyond repair. With our current trait system, it’s very much like a hill that you try and get to the top. Once there, you can slowly waltz down the other side. In other words, once you get past the trait system, finished leveling, sitting at 80, the game isn’t that bad.

Ironically, the change to the trait system and the NPE are better for the veteran players. The reason: we don’t have to experience it. Veteran players with lvl 80s that got grandfathered into the new system would be finished once they obtained the 5 new grandmaster traits.

Thinking back, the 1st trait system actually did uphold the play-how-you-want philosophy. Traits back then were unlocked using the 3 easy-to-use manuals. To get those manuals, you would have to buy them with… in-game gold. In the amount of: 3 gold + 10 silvers. In-game gold acts as the universal currency that buys you most in-game items. WvW, PvP, PvE all around nets you gold. The amounts may differ but they all allowed you to buy the manuals.

Now back to our baddy trait system, it has you doing random tasks all around the PvE maps. There are a few traits in WvW, if you don’t get killed by the 2 opposing servers. PvP: no trait unlocking option here. Therefore, the 2nd trait system is a major fail.

Rashy.4165:

7 Traits for one build. ArenaNet has said that they want to allow for free experimentation of builds. You can’t do that with 7 traits. Free experimentation means having all 65 traits, and no, experimenting in PvP does not count for PvE. Some professions only have one meta build, but others have many different depending on the situation. 7 Traits will not let you switch freely between these different situations/playstyles.

PvP doesn’t count because…?

In the past, I can’t freely experiment because my master, and grandmaster traits are locked. PvP is the best way to experiment either way.

dlonie.6547:

Why did you have to wait for HoT to just pop on and say “We recognize that this is a problem and are working to fix it.”

Do you realize how much nicer it would be if we were to receive timely information? Is that asking too much?

I realize that there was a hint about this given a couple of weeks ago by Gaile, but that was still 70-some odd pages into this thread — about 8 months since this thread started.

That’s eight months widening the gap of distrust between ArenaNet and it’s players. Eight months of rage that could have been avoided from the start by just engaging with us in a timely manner. Seriously, ask yourselves — is this how you want your company to present itself to its players?

I hope that post-HoT, the need to wait for every meaningful communication to require hype and theatrics is gone.

Because it was never a problem.

Bernie.8674:

…
They’re only simplifying this terrible system in which traits are arbitrarily acquired by means which are often level-inappropriate. I’d also like to point out that the trait system that was initially released with the game was far simpler than what we have now and probably also simpler than the newly simplified version will be.

Palleon.1657:

Your game “was” brilliant. Now, it is becoming like every other dumbed down one button point and click game out there.

It was brilliant until they screwed it up with this alt-unfriendly trait system. I’m optimistic that it will be brilliant again.

I also loved the original game but these changes starting last April have almost ruined it. It appears like the original creators were all fired and those in charge now don’t really understand how the game works but they keep tinkering with it anyway.

what ppl start to forget is that we know little to nothing about the new system yet i see so many complains already, i know Anet isn’t known to learn from past mistakes since 2 years ago (when they got arrogant) but complaining about something unknown is like talking to a wall.
i am not big on defending Anet since that time but come on, at least let them release info before complaining.

I have always thought this trait unlocking system was counter productive.

1. It discourages build experimentation.
2. It discourages you from playing in different formats by optimizing your builds. If I have bought traits for PvE, I would have to pay for new traits for WvW/PvP if I want to optimize my build.
3. It gives an unfair advantage to older characters who do not have to unlock traits, especially in WvW/PvP as they do not have the current restrictions to optimize their builds, like the new characters do.

felessan.9587:

Are we seriously going to have to wait until HoT launches? That’s ridiculous. The trait system has been broken since April 2014 and players have been begging until they cried for a change.

They never said that. They said the new system would be consistent with the new systems that they’re adding in HoT. They never gave a timeline for the trait revamp (or for HoT, for that matter).

runeblade.7514:

Rashy.4165:

7 Traits for one build. ArenaNet has said that they want to allow for free experimentation of builds. You can’t do that with 7 traits. Free experimentation means having all 65 traits, and no, experimenting in PvP does not count for PvE. Some professions only have one meta build, but others have many different depending on the situation. 7 Traits will not let you switch freely between these different situations/playstyles.

PvP doesn’t count because…?

In the past, I can’t freely experiment because my master, and grandmaster traits are locked. PvP is the best way to experiment either way.

Skills and traits are balanced differently in PvP. As soon as you go into the lobby, you’re using the PvP variants, and your PvE skills/traits don’t matter as much. Since the balancing is different, it will play differently in PvE. You could use the exact same builds in both PvP and PvE and “experiment” on the target golems, but it’ll still be different.

Even if you don’t have your XIII Traits, you can still experiment with the remaining 60, if you were grandfathered in. However, if you create a character after the April feature pack, you’re screwed as you’ll have no traits to unlock.

In the past, you had all of your trait tiers unlocked by level 60. All you really needed was the remaining 20 trait points to allocate, and you had all of your traits. Now, at level 80, you’d be lucky to have 4-5 traits unlocked through normal gameplay, even if you had all of the necessary trait points.

I feel the hardships new players have to go through now that I bought a new account and was leveling an elementalist on it.
Posted a topic with my top 3 annoyances I ran into in the GW2 Discussion Forum.

My lord is the incentive to make new characters been affected greatly. :S
I think the leveling time from 1-80 is increased by maybe 30-50% considering I could level much faster in the early levels of the game prior to this change.

You have to force feed a baby or someone who isn’t able to feed himself, but not seasoned players or people who grasp new stuff pretty quickly.

Colin: First, thank you very much for that update. It appears I was right when i said the changes incoming would have something to do with the new mastery thing and I greatly appreciate that things we have been saying in this thread have lead to these changes to the system over all.

That being said, I want to state that i REALLY hope these changes come to us in advance of the release of HoT for a few reasons:

• Giving players a chance to play with/work out the new system to see issues that devs maybe couldn’t see during the dev process BEFORE a major release will only help the major release go off smoother and allow the devs more time to put towards HoT related issues that might arise
• If the system is a hit with the many players from this thread and the rest of the community you stand a better chance of evangelicals jumping on board with HoT and bringing people back into the game.
• Conversely, if you wait to release WITH HoT you run the risk of many of us not buying any expansion and possibly being more critical of anything you DO release and…
• You also run the risk of having to deal with new system fallout from both us and new players trying to take in all of the new info/mechanics all at once.

runeblade.7514:

dlonie.6547:

Why did you have to wait for HoT to just pop on and say “We recognize that this is a problem and are working to fix it.”

Do you realize how much nicer it would be if we were to receive timely information? Is that asking too much?

I realize that there was a hint about this given a couple of weeks ago by Gaile, but that was still 70-some odd pages into this thread — about 8 months since this thread started.

That’s eight months widening the gap of distrust between ArenaNet and it’s players. Eight months of rage that could have been avoided from the start by just engaging with us in a timely manner. Seriously, ask yourselves — is this how you want your company to present itself to its players?

I hope that post-HoT, the need to wait for every meaningful communication to require hype and theatrics is gone.

Because it was never a problem.

Uh, this 80-page thread and my drastically diminished time in-game would like to have a word with you. You can say that it’s not a problem all you want, but even the devs have said that it’s a problem that is going to be fixed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

While it’s true that no time-frame was given (which is why I asked about it immediately following the above posting), here’s why I have a terrible feeling that it won’t be implemented for a while now, and possibly not until the expac:

The quote is, “With the introduction of the new account based mastery system… we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all… goals for Gw2.”

So, the mastery system was announced as a feature of the xpac.

It continues: “In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports [our goals for the future].”

That’s a little vague, but then the conclusion says: “We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits and specializations will work in the new GW2 world.”

That pretty heavily implies that this change will be connected to the release of HOT, which is, at a minimum, 3 months away. What happened to the quick fix in the meantime?

runeblade.7514:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

I like current trait unlocking system. It could use more work, but not enough for it to be removed completely.

A few minor additions would be enough to satisfy the masses.

Satify you, correct? Because the “masses” hate it, which is why the system is saying adios.

runeblade.7514:

dlonie.6547:

Why did you have to wait for HoT to just pop on and say “We recognize that this is a problem and are working to fix it.”

Do you realize how much nicer it would be if we were to receive timely information? Is that asking too much?

I realize that there was a hint about this given a couple of weeks ago by Gaile, but that was still 70-some odd pages into this thread — about 8 months since this thread started.

That’s eight months widening the gap of distrust between ArenaNet and it’s players. Eight months of rage that could have been avoided from the start by just engaging with us in a timely manner. Seriously, ask yourselves — is this how you want your company to present itself to its players?

I hope that post-HoT, the need to wait for every meaningful communication to require hype and theatrics is gone.

Because it was never a problem.

CJ seems to disagree:

ColinJohanson.2394:

we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future.

ColinJohanson.2394:

you can purchase traits for skill points and gold which you can earn from different types of content and game modes OR play the content, this would not be considered a “grindy” system by our definition – but that doesn’t mean it’s right for Gw2’s future.

Been thinking about this since the “new-new” change was mentioned. I sadly think it will not be satisfying for me either. The game simply has been going in a direction I dislike.

Specializations intrigue me, but given everything since the April trait patch, I feel that I will dislike the “new-new” systems that will arrive for skills, traits, specialization, and mastery.

I just keep hoping they prove me wrong, and they alter things in a way I enjoy. I’d love to come back to playing the game as I once did. This game was really, really fun for me.

I hate to rain on everyone’s parade… but can you all take a second look at what Colin posted? What exactly did he say? That the current Trait system is not good, and a change is coming? That’s basically what they have been saying for almost a year. I don’t know why every one is all happy all of a sudden.

How are they going to change it? When will we see these changes? We have been asking those two questions for a while, and still have no answers. All CJ said was the some old stuff they have been feeding us for months… no details were provided.
So please explain what exactly I am missing here?

(sorry if this post isn’t all puppies and rainbows, but this issue has gone on for far too long and it angers me)

Rashy.4165:

runeblade.7514:

Rashy.4165:

7 Traits for one build. ArenaNet has said that they want to allow for free experimentation of builds. You can’t do that with 7 traits. Free experimentation means having all 65 traits, and no, experimenting in PvP does not count for PvE. Some professions only have one meta build, but others have many different depending on the situation. 7 Traits will not let you switch freely between these different situations/playstyles.

PvP doesn’t count because…?

In the past, I can’t freely experiment because my master, and grandmaster traits are locked. PvP is the best way to experiment either way.

Skills and traits are balanced differently in PvP. As soon as you go into the lobby, you’re using the PvP variants, and your PvE skills/traits don’t matter as much. Since the balancing is different, it will play differently in PvE. You could use the exact same builds in both PvP and PvE and “experiment” on the target golems, but it’ll still be different.

Even if you don’t have your XIII Traits, you can still experiment with the remaining 60, if you were grandfathered in. However, if you create a character after the April feature pack, you’re screwed as you’ll have no traits to unlock.

In the past, you had all of your trait tiers unlocked by level 60. All you really needed was the remaining 20 trait points to allocate, and you had all of your traits. Now, at level 80, you’d be lucky to have 4-5 traits unlocked through normal gameplay, even if you had all of the necessary trait points.

The difference of Skills/traits between pve and pvp is numbers, which is negligible. If a difference in number is so important, ANet should make all ascended gear free so I can ‘test’ it.

Vix.6730:

runeblade.7514:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

I like current trait unlocking system. It could use more work, but not enough for it to be removed completely.

A few minor additions would be enough to satisfy the masses.

Satify you, correct? Because the “masses” hate it, which is why the system is saying adios.

If it was there when launched, no one would complain.

In fact, this was a hyped up feature when it was announced. Everybody wanted it before it was implemented.

Guhracie.3419:

runeblade.7514:

dlonie.6547:

Why did you have to wait for HoT to just pop on and say “We recognize that this is a problem and are working to fix it.”

Do you realize how much nicer it would be if we were to receive timely information? Is that asking too much?

I realize that there was a hint about this given a couple of weeks ago by Gaile, but that was still 70-some odd pages into this thread — about 8 months since this thread started.

That’s eight months widening the gap of distrust between ArenaNet and it’s players. Eight months of rage that could have been avoided from the start by just engaging with us in a timely manner. Seriously, ask yourselves — is this how you want your company to present itself to its players?

I hope that post-HoT, the need to wait for every meaningful communication to require hype and theatrics is gone.

Because it was never a problem.

Uh, this 80-page thread and my drastically diminished time in-game would like to have a word with you. You can say that it’s not a problem all you want, but even the devs have said that it’s a problem that is going to be fixed.

I take back my statement.

New statement: The only problem is that ANet didn’t implement this in the beginning.

Bernie.8674:

It was brilliant until they screwed it up with this alt-unfriendly trait system. I’m optimistic that it will be brilliant again.

I have many alts, I never once thought it was alt-unfriendly.

runeblade.7514:

If it was there when launched, no one would complain.

In fact, this was a hyped up feature when it was announced. Everybody wanted it before it was implemented.

You are right about no one would be complaining if it was at launch. No one would be playing! Read what the new players are saying.

I’m thinking everyone wanted elite SKILL hunting like GW1 had it. Now that was fun!

Daggos Skelito.2910:

runeblade.7514:

If it was there when launched, no one would complain.

In fact, this was a hyped up feature when it was announced. Everybody wanted it before it was implemented.

You are right about no one would be complaining if it was at launch. No one would be playing! Read what the new players are saying.

I’m thinking everyone wanted elite SKILL hunting like GW1 had it. Now that was fun!

You think Elite skill hunting is fun but you don’t think Trait hunting is fun. Okay.

Let’s see who can’t spot the troll up to this point.

I didn’t think some of the Elite Skill hunting was fun. Specifically, the kind where you had to run a mission to a specific boss to snag it. With the proper class, naturally.

Most of it was . . . eh? I mean, that’s how things were done. I suppose it was a fun way to do things but really was kind of restrictive when you look back on it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I didn’t think some of the Elite Skill hunting was fun. Specifically, the kind where you had to run a mission to a specific boss to snag it. With the proper class, naturally.

Most of it was . . . eh? I mean, that’s how things were done. I suppose it was a fun way to do things but really was kind of restrictive when you look back on it.

I think they’d do really well to make a few traits like that, provided there are several means of acquiring each trait that’s locked behind some event or task. One should not have to get Trait 1 out of just WvW – there should be a way to unlock it in WvW, out in open world and/or dungeon PvE and PvP.

Going for the quality over quantity approach to emphasizing a reward for exploration and getting out there and doing something would, I feel, be a far better route to take than either going back to how it originally was (which, while joyfully available, lacked a factor of engagement that could’ve been present) or doing as its presently done.

A few select traits of reasonable value in each tier could be tied to certain activities, and then, even if someone had to sometimes go get one of the few traits gated behind some activity for some build they were cobbling together, a lot of builds wouldn’t require them to do that and nobody would ever wind up at level 80 with, very possibly, no traits at all and quite possibly not enough skill points (after buying skills) to buy any, even if they have the gold.

A level 80 should have a granted access to at least half of the traits available so as to foster both a reasonable number of immediately available builds that they can enjoy utilizing as well as to balance ability to experiment no matter one’s preferred mode of gameplay with turning acquisition of SOME traits into a reward for exploration and accomplishment

There’s a lot of middle ground they could cover with this idea. As they implemented the current system, it feels like a hysterical over-correction that’s, for my own experience at the very least, actively damaged my overall regard for Anet and Guild Wars 2.

Caeledh.5437:

I think the original system was fine. Certainly fine enough for the game to be incredibly popular and sell like hot cakes.

Revert to that.

I agree. The original system was so much better. I really want to support Arenanet and pickup the expansion and new character slot for the new class. However, I really, really dislike this trait system. I will not roll a new character till this is fixed. This reduces my desire for the expansion quite a bit.

alceste.8712:

Caeledh.5437:

I think the original system was fine. Certainly fine enough for the game to be incredibly popular and sell like hot cakes.

Revert to that.

I agree. The original system was so much better. I really want to support Arenanet and pickup the expansion and new character slot for the new class. However, I really, really dislike this trait system. I will not roll a new character till this is fixed. This reduces my desire for the expansion quite a bit.

That’s where I’m at too. And I agree the original game, before these changes, was much better.

Lazuli.2098:

alceste.8712:

Caeledh.5437:

I think the original system was fine. Certainly fine enough for the game to be incredibly popular and sell like hot cakes.

Revert to that.

I agree. The original system was so much better. I really want to support Arenanet and pickup the expansion and new character slot for the new class. However, I really, really dislike this trait system. I will not roll a new character till this is fixed. This reduces my desire for the expansion quite a bit.

That’s where I’m at too. And I agree the original game, before these changes, was much better.

Likewise. I am not convinced the announced “new-new” trait system which will come with mastery and specialization , will be satisfying to me.

The current trait system, which I dislike, was also advertised as being better, improved, fun etc. I disagree personally, and since that patch have played sporadically. GW2 is now a little diversion from my other game that I play.

I have kept hoping for reversion to the original, though I have seriously doubted that would happen. Now we see there will be another iteration of change (and as suspected, not a reversion), and I want to believe it will be pleasing to me but as I have not liked the direction things have gone since that trait changing patch, I am a skeptic now.

Specialization really intrigues me. But I won’t be getting the xpac unless I am happy with this new change.

Has anyone ever made the suggestion for trait templates. This is something I would really like to see.

The ability to save 2-4 trait templates and load them up at the click of a button so you could have a template for open world pve, one for dungeons etc. and you would not have to go through the trouble of refunding all points and then adding the 7 traits, sometimes reading through them all to remember which one it was that you wanted, etc..

I know it is not that important it is just a feature I would like to see in the future. I mean trait refunds are free and if you’re like me you re-trait daily depending on what you’re doing and/or who you’rer playing with, so why not just make it easy.

Thanks for listening.
cheers.

Everyone wants this already.

So I’m guessing this has been beaten to death before but I am so unbelievably frustrated.

So i decide to make a new character because I’ve finally decided to play this game after playing it in beta and being disappointed, and lo and behold, I have the following problems:

-can’t survive long enough to get to the locations where wiki says they are
-can’t find the goal (chest or boss or whatever) in said location on the wiki or can’t figure out how to trigger the event
-can’t beat the boss because the trait is in a higher level area that I can’t survive in, and can’t solo it either, too bad there’s no henchmen?
-can’t afford to buy the traits

And this is for getting "low level " adept traits, not the higher level ones. Oh I guess I have to find all 65 traits to fill my trait tree too…

What is this ridiculousness?

And all this is coming from my lvl 35 war (that I was lucky enough to craft to level 60, oh wait, they decreased crafting experience gained too apparently), not some fully geared lvl 80 with rare equipment.

I read some of the possible reasons for why they changed it and quite frankly it’s BS. They want people to experience content, fine, they have the hearts. But they then limit skill progression? What the hell is that?

Im more concerned about the fact, why did they even screw around with ’’Tutorial’’

What aNet did wasnt ‘’introducing new players to Guild Wars 2’’…

While the way how you level up is fine (Event like quests etc)
…getting your levels up to 80 is a chore and punishment.

Honestly, compared to GW1, the only things that have improved in this game is art design, jumping/swimming, open world, trading post. It’s too bad GW1 is dead now since everyone migrated here.

Otherwise it’s a lot more than just a few steps back comparatively. UI customizability, map/radar system, level progression, item stat system, skill system and mechanics, single profession/class system, lack of a skill/trait template system. Just to name a few. It’s as if the people who had their vision for GW1 all left and new people stepped in for GW2. Maybe it’s got something to do with Arenanet being a subsidiary of NCSoft and their fantastic games?

Oh and I guess there might be a change in the trait system with the upcoming expansion. So the trait system was fine, then it was changed and people all hated it, so now they’ll change it again because people are so frustrated, and now people have to wait to pay for the new expansion before they even get to see any of the new changes.

I’m lucky I have friends to help me with gear and that I had characters made before the change when the game came out, otherwise I’d be wondering why I’m even playing this game. I don’t think this applies to just the trait system either where they decided to change things that were just fine before…

Maybe they should add a new condition. “Frustration” – “Throw your hands in the air in frustration. Nothing happens. Stacks in intensity.”

I’ll just play my other two characters, not deal with this crap, and leave my warrior to twiddle his thumbs,

I’d almost put gold down Trait Masteries will get attention again before the expansion. Almost.

Kulpath.6314:

Has anyone ever made the suggestion for trait templates. This is something I would really like to see.

Seems they’re going to add more content before they actually improve the game.