Guild Wars 2

When I logged in on my level 53 character, there were a whole bunch of points spent in stuff I don’t want, how do you reset those so I can spend them on something else?

dunno if you can, but shouldn’t really be that needed, unless you lvled up without doing any hero challenges (previously skill challenges) you should by lvl 53 be able to get like 80-90% or so of your skills and specializations unlocked
(by lvl 80 any character can unlock everything without doing any challenges, doing challenges allow you to get it earlier)

You cant ( as previous poster said level up more or grab som easy hero points)

Well if it isn’t in yet, it needs to be. The game spent points without my permission, I want to spend them on other things.

You likely will not ever see something like this because once you’re level 80, everything is unlocked. I suggest going to do a few hero challenges to get the number of hero points that you need.

Ohoni.6057:

Well if it isn’t in yet, it needs to be. The game spent points without my permission, I want to spend them on other things.

No need to as i said earlier you should have a LOT of extra points already at lvl 53 than what the game gave you to make a build the closest possible to what you had before the patch, and you are free to spend them in what order you want, and by lvl 80 at the LATEST you will have EVERYTHING unlocked (and earlier if you do hero challenges)

GummiBear.2756:

Ohoni.6057:

Well if it isn’t in yet, it needs to be. The game spent points without my permission, I want to spend them on other things.

No need to as i said earlier you should have a LOT of extra points already at lvl 53 than what the game gave you to make a build the closest possible to what you had before the patch, and you are free to spend them in what order you want, and by lvl 80 at the LATEST you will have EVERYTHING unlocked (and earlier if you do hero challenges)

No screw that. They spent my points without letting me choose. what build I wanted, and now every single one of my characters is useless. ie Engi with only elixr skills/specs with none of the stuff I actually want.

I shouldn’t have to grind levels/challenges just to be able to play my character the way I wanted like I did before they screwed everything up. Why couldn’t they have just refunded all the points and traits and let us build up to where we were. At least The Old Republic got that part right when they replaced the skill system.

Hi. I have two eles both specced in Earth because of this. Happy with the other traits for other classes they picked but…

It’s bullkitten.

Same here. Got a lv 40 thief stuck with Shadow Art and a lv 30 Necro with Death Magic and no minion unlocked.
Leveling them will be hard. FML

I got lucky. It’s just my eles. Every other under 80 toon got traits that suit them or can be worked with.

An air focuses ele got Earth. A water focuses ele got Earth.

The justification is “you can unlock everything at 80”. Great anet – insta 80 me then.

Aerlen.5326:

I got lucky. It’s just my eles. Every other under 80 toon got traits that suit them or can be worked with.

An air focuses ele got Earth. A water focuses ele got Earth.

The justification is “you can unlock everything at 80”. Great anet – insta 80 me then.

Well since earth is bleeding and conditions are usefull now go get em tiger.

It’s a transitional problem that probably won’t be fixed, because by the time they fix it, everyone should be past the problem. That’s my guess anyway.

New characters won’t have the problem and 80s won’t either.

Already have a condi ele :p I don’t need THREE.

PLEASE enable a point reset. So far every character I’ve logged into was not specced in a way that fit my play-style… I was having fun returning to this game but this has mangled my enjoyment of my own characters.

^This.

I guess I have to grind 60 hero points to even enjoy my two underleveled eles. 60. That’s like nine maps.

It’s grind or delete at this point and delete and waste 14 more transmutation charges plus a make over kit plus silver to re-equip is looking a whole lot easier than mindless grinding.

Your points were spent to make a nearest approximation to the current build you had when the patch went live.
That involves a few things:
1: what support/healing/elite skill(s) were you using at the time? need to spend points to unlock all of those again
2: what trait line(s) were you using at the time? need to spend points to unlock all of those again
after that remaining things were left un-spent (I had level 80’s who could afford fully unlock that were not)

If you are level 80 you can buy everything (and likely to spare).
If you are sub-80, you will /soon/ be able to buy everything
if you are unhappy with the build you have, you shouldn’t have been using it before the changes, because you have your nearest appx.

Its a troll thread i think.

No need to as i said earlier you should have a LOT of extra points already at lvl 53 than what the game gave you to make a build the closest possible to what you had before the patch, and you are free to spend them in what order you want, and by lvl 80 at the LATEST you will have EVERYTHING unlocked (and earlier if you do hero challenges)

Well, in the short term that might work out, but either A: The Hero points are an entirely useless system and they should remove it entirely and just unlock everything, or B: there will eventually some point to the Hero points, so that even if you have plenty left over after hitting 80 and maxing everything out (which is true on my main, at least), there will be something useful to do with them.

I don’t want my characters to have less spare points just because the game decided that I really wanted the Virtue traitline.

On the 80’s I’ve looked at, this has not been an issue. They all have enough points to buy anything I want. On the L36 I’ve looked at, it is an issue. To those defenders saying, “Just go out and earn more points.” Sorry, not going to work for me.

ANet basically gave us a system that requires us to choose where to allocate points to get the build we want. Then they took that choice away from anyone without a surplus of Hero Points. They made choices for me — using an automated system — that I did not want.

Unlike those whose only goal with a non max-level character is to be level 80, my goal is to enjoy the process of leveling. This includes (again for me) the ability to evaluate choices and pick what looks interesting to me. Anet is now telling me that in order to build as I want, I have to either re-roll or wait how ever many levels it takes me to recoup the 60 points they shoved into a trait line (at L36) because under the old system I happened to choose the only trait I’d unlocked to that point.

And why? Because they believe I’m too stupid to be able to figure out how to generate the build I want? FKS, if you’re going to be completely redo a system that involves choice, don’t take the kitten choices out of my hands. If there really are people who want their hands held, then you should have offered the auto-generated build with an option for a one time “reset to a condition in which no Hero Pints have been spent.”

This is a bloody MMO, not a kitten Facebook game… isn’kitten

Sorry for the kittens (which I typed out as kitten). I haven’t been this kittened off at a game developer before.

#tiredofbeingtreatedlikeIdon’tknowwhatI’mdoing

The points were spent on the traits and skills you were equipped.
So actually you chose them.

Not always. I’m actually trying to figure why so many eles 27-30 have Earth and why mine did without having Earth traits.

The points were spent on the traits and skills you were equipped.
So actually you chose them.

Not true.

On my level 53 guardian, for example, I had points in all five lines, because I had none of the majors unlocked and that was the best way to spend my points under the circumstances. The game arbitrarily picked two of them to master, two that I would not have chosen and had not indicated any particular preference for.

Likewise, I had plenty of 6/6/2/2 type builds, where I was heavy into one or more lines, but dabbled in several others, and the game just arbitrarily picked one for me to max out, even if it was not the one I would have chosen.

If they knew they were going to do this, they should have said “please set your traits to ONLY be into the top three lines you want maxed out, because we’re going to spend all your points in them.” A little warning would have gone a long way. Instead they just said that you’d have all your existing traits unlocked, which I took to mean ALL the traits, not just the three lines out of five that ANet decided you might want them to spend your points into.

And as for their excuse that “we did it so you wouldn’t have to fiddle with them yourself,” that was nonsense. Not one of my ten characters was “done right” by the automated system, each required that I go in and manually tweak which majors were selected because even when a given major trait was unchanged, they’d picked a different one in that tier for me. If the goal was to not confuse people who hadn’t been playing, those players would have been better off just randomly picking their traits. Just have a log-in message “We reset your traits, but just close your eyes and click around on the screen and it should be close enough to what you had before. Whatever.”

Jon Peters explained their reasoning for doing things this way in another thread:

Cheshire.8761:

Cheshire.8761:

Are you going to address how you forced characters to train into builds using their hero points without their consent? :o

Why not. Basically there were two options, both with a large number of edge cases.

1) We wipe your stuff and let you respec as you see fit. Because so much had changed this was our initial plan. Here are problems it ran into.

• People return from a long hiatus and don’t remember what they were running
• People log in and the first thing they have to do before they can play is learn both the new unlocking system and the new build system.

2) We look at what you had equipped and unlock the necessary skills and traits to re-equip you. Here were some discussions points around that:

• We might give you stuff you don’t want
• at least this won’t matter for lvl 80s if we make all the unlocks possible by just reaching lvl 80.

There is a third option which I’m sure you will bring up.
3) let players choose
Here are some reasons we did not go with that:

• Its twice the work
• Its actually more than twice the work because it would have required temporarily saving both options until you choose which is more complex technical work.
• People who were unlikely to understand or want to explore the new system were going to be potentially more confused by the choice.

At the end of the day we wanted to ship this build so we had to decide. Based on instinct we erred on the side of helping people we thought would be more overwhelmed by the opposite choice, and I would make that choice again because it has less edge cases, impacts more expert users, and leans towards over unlocking for free to benefit most of the edge cases anyway.

Hope this info helps you understand our process a bit more.

Thanks,

Jon

JonPeters.5630:

Daegony.3604:

Does it break anything if you just add a “refund hero points” button? That way you can just let the game re-build your choices and if your not satisfied, just refund the points and assign them to what you need/want. Just a suggestion anyway =D

It actually breaks everything. The point of a system with more points that points to spend is to allow players to both eventually unlock everything and to bank for future unlocks. If you take a system like that and allow people to refund in it you break both of these fundamental reasons for the system existing. There are two ways to go with any system that has points spent.

1) Let people continue to earn and continue to progress
2) Limit the amount people can progress or spec and make a refund system.

This new system actually contains aspects of both of these. On the side of unlocking we went with a “keep making progress” system where players would eventually get all of the things they want and more, the more they played. We felt like for unlocks this is a better system because it gives people more to unlock and it doesn’t put pressure on a refund system to make the most basic functionality of having stuff work.

On the build side of things (and this is a general principle of GW2) we went with a make choices and refund system. The choices being which skills, specs and traits you select and the respec process being basically free once everything is unlocked.

Jon

tl;dr: They knew they couldn’t find a conversion that fit every player and choose the one they think will benefit the most people and inconvenience the least, since there wasn’t a practical choice that would benefit every single player.

I think they should have let people spec up how they want. Also this new system is majorly lacking in explanation too.

The idea that you should have to go out and complete more skill points, well.. at level 53 with the wrong specs, the OP might have problems actually going to the more advanced level areas and be strong enough to get the skill points.

This is the first MMORPG I’ve played where significant changes were made to skills/talents/traits/etc and a full refund of points wasn’t given to enable the player to choose how they wish to spec their character. Understandably, many are upset about this.

I really can’t work out the system that has been used. On my main character (level 39 guardian) I had 33 skill(Hero) points before the patch, and have the same afterwards. I seem to have access to skills that I didn’t choose before, and everything I did use is still there. On my alts, they appear to be the same.

On my girlfriend’s account, all of the 23 skill/hero points she had on her level 20-something necromancer have been spent for her.

We were saving our skill points for the most part until we had a better understanding of game mechanics. I seem to have been rewarded for saving mine whilst she has been punished. Yes we are both low level and can easily get more hero points through levelling and doing skill challenges, however we cannot understand why our characters seem to have been affected so differently by the patch.

Jinesis.3782:

The points were spent on the traits and skills you were equipped.
So actually you chose them.

I had just finished my daily ‘hero of the mists’ on my engineer and had left my turret build on, the toon that is normally a grenadier. So now it has been decided that I shall always remain a turret engy until I earn enough points as i level.

My build was decided on the skills I had equipped, not the traits I had selected. Releasing a new trait system and at the same time deciding to spend most of the points was a horrible idea, it removes the players ability to customize their toon.

A simple reset button would have fixed this.

Teleniel.1809:

Your points were spent to make a nearest approximation to the current build you had when the patch went live.
That involves a few things:
1: what support/healing/elite skill(s) were you using at the time? need to spend points to unlock all of those again
2: what trait line(s) were you using at the time? need to spend points to unlock all of those again
after that remaining things were left un-spent (I had level 80’s who could afford fully unlock that were not)

If you are level 80 you can buy everything (and likely to spare).
If you are sub-80, you will /soon/ be able to buy everything
if you are unhappy with the build you have, you shouldn’t have been using it before the changes, because you have your nearest appx.

Prior to the update, I had specced in Air, Arcane, and Fire. I had chosen specializations that gave me speed when equipped with daggers, increased damage when low health, and extra damage when downed. After the update, I’m maxxed out in Earth, which provides nothing that even remotely resembles any of those abilities.

I’m unhappy because my character’s specialization is absolutely nothing like it was before the update. It’s not a “nearest approximation”, it literally does not resemble my previous spec in any way.

i only have 1 level 80. i may be a specialised player but i enjoy the levelling process but i want to understand the choices available to me and make them myself. this cookie cutter approach has gone horribly wrong for all my characters except for the 80 who had more points than needed. if this is the blatant “the game is only good at the end game” kitten i’m furious. even my lvl 80 (engi) has lost core part of the build – if things are just not going to be there any more then i should get to choose the build from scratch – i’ve paid give me the choice of a complete respec or choose for me. excuse cited earlier boils down to laziness. want me to learn a new skill system? give me the points and let me make informed choices. this “you’re too stupid to figure out the new system so we just did for you” approach is insulting at best. stop it. stick in a respec npc. now.

I was pretty disappointed to see where I was pigeonholed too. Necro with no minion skills gets Death, etc. It will be fine in a while, but as a new player with a few alts who’s leveling slowly it does hurt that I can’t use the points the way I decide I want to use them to unlock the playstyle that I enjoy. Saying it would take that much more effort to allow both seems completely false, too – one NPC that resets Hero Points is too much work? They could just have them around for a month, or until HoT drops, or whatever, something to let us actually choose what to do with our points. The idea that the system is too complicated for casual/returning players to choose their own, but yet we’re basically stuck with a spec that we don’t understand or want anyway, makes no sense.

I’m not getting to 80 anytime soon with any character, so it’s going to be a long time until I get to play with the traits I want to play with. It’s not a huge deal, but it is kind of a buzzkill.

ArenaNet has already spoken on this.

Resetting everything and letting people choose where to put their points was going to be too confusing to most of the players. So Mommy ANet approximated our previous builds for us.

And letting us reset points doesn’t fit in their new progression paradigm where you eventually earn enough to unlock everything.

Bobinhood.9180:

No screw that. They spent my points without letting me choose.

You did choose, in a way – what was unlocked was based on your build on the patch day.
Also, you don’t need to get to 80 to unlock everything, just go and grab some hero challenges (and you should have some unlocked already).

Aerlen.5326:

Not always. I’m actually trying to figure why so many eles 27-30 have Earth and why mine did without having Earth traits.

Because they had no traits at all before the patch, i’d think.

Tarnicus.2865:

This is the first MMORPG I’ve played where significant changes were made to skills/talents/traits/etc and a full refund of points wasn’t given to enable the player to choose how they wish to spec their character.

That’s likely because those other MMOs do not let players unlock everything. In GW2 you can respec, because at level 80 (at worst, and most likely well before that point) you will have everything unlocked.

Bowdon.1948:

I think they should have let people spec up how they want. Also this new system is majorly lacking in explanation too.

The idea that you should have to go out and complete more skill points, well.. at level 53 with the wrong specs, the OP might have problems actually going to the more advanced level areas and be strong enough to get the skill points.

Except people threw colossal hissy fits about how they were going to have unlock skills they had already obtained and how awful and unfair it was. So instead they invested the points to get you the skills you already had unlocked.

If you don’t feel like you are strong enough to kill things in the zones which are the same level as you are you can go back through the lower level zones and grab all the hero challenges there so you can unlock the spec lines and skills you want.

The point is that they changed how the whole system works, then tried to wrench us in based on what we had chosen in the earlier system. But that isn’t the same system and the traits/skills aren’t the same ones we would pick in the new one, most likely. Plus now if you had one higher level skill that is in a long chain, they unlocked everything to get to that skill including all the skills you previously didn’t want.

It isn’t a huge deal, but it is definitely a negative instead of a positive. Giving us a pre-used build plus giving us the option to re-spec just once doesn’t seem like that tough of a thing to do.

A bit of a heads up would’ve been nice. I also don’t understand the reasoning that giving resets is confusing, seems like a lot of people aren’t sure whats going on or why they can’t fix their weird builds.

While I am not in the same situation as the OP, I can understand their point.

All six of my toons are 80 so I am not affected the same way.

But, upon looking at the pre-assigned traits that were chosen for each of my characters, they did not match up any where close to what my previous builds were. Some traits were assigned that I did not use while others I did use were not assigned.

As a level 80, I could easily reassign mine so I am not in the same boat as the OP.

But the only point to my post was that the auto-assignment of traits was incredibly flawed and did not assign traits that I was using while assigning others I did not use. If I were sub-80 and locked into the build that was assigned to me I would be none to happy.

on all my my twenty somethings…. i noticed that the auto-granted specialization was the defense-oriented one. my eles got earth, mesmers got chaos, thieves got shadow arts, etc, every single time.

for my 27 ranger that got wilderness survival, i rerolled her, used a birthday level 20 tome, and a 7 more tomes of knowledge to reacquire the same level, but then chose skirmishing spec, as that spec lined up with the traps, sword, and shortbow that she was built with. (i already have 2 level 80 rangers each with separate builds. so this one is different yet from the other 2)

i have been playing since pre-launch, so i have tomes saved up. but i understand that newer players, that may have only been playing a few months, may not even have a level 80 character yet.

since the auto-granted defensive specialization upset me, i presume it upsets the newer players even more, because they are stuck with it. they can’t do what i did. they don’t have 18 exotic-geared level 80s. they don’t have 40+ character slots. they might lose all their account progress to re-roll a character.

Yeah, my highest is 45. For a lot of you, re-rolling a low level like that wouldn’t be a big deal – tomes and/or some dedicated leveling time means you would be 45 again, or 80, or whatever, in no time flat. But those of us who play more casually are the ones being hurt by this and we’re the ones who can’t fix it. I also would love to keep seeing the rest of the world instead of re-treading the beginner zones, so re-rolling doesn’t really seem like fun to me!

Once again leveling 3-4 characters at once bites me in the kitten

Astralporing.1957:

Bobinhood.9180:

No screw that. They spent my points without letting me choose.

You did choose, in a way – what was unlocked was based on your build on the patch day.

My L21 Ele had no trait points at all prior to the patch. When I logged on, the character had “spent” 60 points in Earth Magic, a line I have no interest in for PvE. That “choice” was not based on my prior build, at all. It was just an arbitrary “decision.”

We can’t reset specializations because it’s part of the vertical progression, i.e. a part of leveling. I’m okay with that.

The devs set specializations for us (via software) on the basis that some players would be better off not having to decide right after a massive change to the system & that those who prefer deciding on their own could & would figure out how to adapt. I’m also ok with that logic.

The problem is it doesn’t allow room for some poor choices made by their algorithm. A guardian with 3 shouts equipped lost some of the shouts and doesn’t have access to the trait reducing their cool down. (Strictly a gathering toon, it needed faceroll options, not optimal ones.)

So I wish ANet had gone one step further: equip every existing sub-L80 character with a token that allows them to reset their specializations once. That preserves all of ANet’s philosophical points and also allows people to choose to avoid the paternalism that properly protected some players from the post-update confusion of too many changes.

My necro level 21 had no traits, when I logged in the character had spent my points in Death Magic, but I don’t have any minion skill unlocked!
Also, I didn’t get any hero points at levels 21, 23 and 25, I’ve alredy reported this bug.

WillyThePretzel.5390:

My necro level 21 had no traits, when I logged in the character had spent my points in Death Magic, but I don’t have any minion skill unlocked!
Also, I didn’t get any hero points at levels 21, 23 and 25, I’ve alredy reported this bug.

My Ele was 21 also. That character was “given” Earth Magic. My L36 Warrior had one unlocked trait in Discipline, and was given the entire Disc. line. I’m wondering if ANet just “gave” the third trait line to any character between 21 and 36.

Yes, there was something wrong with the algo because I ONLY ever used fire spec on my Elementalist and she was pre-loaded with all Earth Magic. Very frustrating.

And yes, I heard you all… Blah Level Blah… Blah, get more points, blah…. And as there seems to be no alternative, that is what we must do but it is silly and very BLIZZARD LIKE to need to.

I for one, thought better of Areanet ;(

Anet’s “lowest common denominator” paradigm in action.

What are people even complaining about? Do hero challenges or gain a few levels.

Right now the system is you have EVERYTHING unlocked by 80. Compared to the old one wgere you would have some things locked and some things unlocked based on if you ground through a bunch of preset things and/or spent gold.

I don’t like this. I agree with the person who said give a one time use token to reset to anyone they forced their builds on. Just go get more points is not a realistic answer. The ones who got a kitten build because of their algorithm should have to limp along until they have enough points to make a decent build. No I think that is a BAD approach to customer service.