Guild Wars 2

Currently, you can pick 3 trait lines; and in each trait line, you are given with 3 minor traits and 3 major traits. 3 minor traits are fixed and 3 major traits are changeable from group of 3 choices.

I believe the current trait system is severely limiting the number of builds people can make; thus, making the game less fun.

Therefore, I hope Anet can change the trait system to be more open and free. Give players freedom to choose traits and make all sorts of different builds.

I believe there are many approaches to making traits system more open and free:
1. 3 tiers of minor and major traits approach. You can pick 3 minor and 3 major traits in each 3 tiers. Each tier will have 6 minor and 18 major traits to choose from.
2. 6 squares + 1 trait line approach. You can pick 6 square will include 1 fixed minor traits and 1-changeable major trait from current group of 3. You can pick 6 squares from the group of 15 squares if elite specialization was chosen for the trait line (12 squares if a basic specialization was chosen for the trait line). Elite specialization can only be chosen through the trait line.

In my opinion, first approach will give lot more freedom to the players regarding to which builds they can make; but it may confuse new players. Second approach addresses the possible confusion new players might face; but the number of builds players can make is lot less than first approach.

I recommend that Anet takes the first approach. Let players make choices in their builds. Even though it might confuse new players at the beginning, it will do lot more good in the end. It will make the game a lot more fun in all modes.

Thank you.

Frozen

That’s be a nightmare to code and balance

Frozen Peace.4930:

I believe the current trait system is severely limiting the number of builds people can make;

Yes, that’s precisely why they designed it this way. The more permutations there are, the harder it is to balance.

Frozen Peace.4930:

thus, making the game less fun.

I don’t think that follows from your first statement. You might find it less fun; I think it’s fine the way it is. I think it’s much, much more fun to be able to focus on how to make the best use of our limited combinations rather than have to spend hours figuring out the difference between swapping X vs Y.

I definitely agreed with you prior to the release of GW2 — in GW1, I had a lot of fun figuring out how to make best use of not only skills & traits, but second professions. So I agree that can be fun, too.

However, it’s a lot more fun (to me) not to have to worry about it all the time, but instead focus on my use of skills. And there are lots of people new to MMOs who appreciate the simplicity.

Additionally, most of the potential combinations are garbage. For the most part, the synergies across traits and skills are better in GW2 than in GW1, because there are fewer combinations (mind you: some really weird exceptions remain, but even that is easier to fix).

There are fewer build combinations by design and some people prefer it that way; it’s not necessarily more fun to have more options.

They had free choice of traits during the first beta back in 2012. People choose the best of the best traits (of course). That was quickly nerfed.

I’d need pictures to understand what you’re saying (I’m no theorycrafter) but it sounds like the original trait system that they massively reworked, on purpose, to prune out extra bits they deemed unnecessary based on metrics and design.

At launch we could choose a random mishmash of traits from multiple lines, including selecting minor traits in the grandmaster slot once we’d spec’d far enough into a trait line to get to grandmaster. I really doubt they’ll go back to that after all the work they put in changing it.

Person 1: “What traits you run?”

Person 2: “Err…2/4/2/0/6”

But yeah, your suggestion is somewhat similar to the way the trait system worked before the June 2015 trait overhaul (see above), similar in the sense it allowed for a lot more diversity. You didn’t have to spec into an entire trait line if you didn’t want to, you could pick and choose from different trait lines and it was a great system. Although traits did also have Stats in them like power, precision etc. which was a bit odd. Removing the stats and updating a lot of dead/useless traits was a great move by ANet, but making a more rigid/less diverse trait system was not.

As for how this would work with elite specialisations, I’d say just require the trait line to be maxed to unlock the Elite Specialisation effects e.g. Berserk Mode on Warrior, Function Gyro on Scrapper etc. And perhaps even make it require more trait points than vanilla traits, I mean it’s the strongest trait line so it should require a tad more sacrifice imo. I truly believe that reverting back to this system would improve gameplay/player happiness vastly.

Tl;dr version: Change trait system back to pre-june 2015 state, minus the stats and update some traits.

I totally disagree that the old system is needed. I think the new system is a lot better and a lot more beneficial for everyone, old players and new alike. We don’t get as many toys to mess around with, but that’s ultimately better because the less they have to balance, the more fun we can have with what’s available and the more viable those fewer builds become. It is a little frustrating with how limiting it can be, but ultimately it’s for the best.

There are nearly 197,000 build combinations per profession, twice that if you count elite specializations as well.

Sorry it’s done this way to reduce the chance for OP and straight up broken builds.

Frozen Peace.4930:

Therefore, I hope Anet can change the trait system to be more open and free. Give players freedom to choose traits and make all sorts of different builds.

This is not how games work. More open system would lead to more potential builds, but less viable ones. In the end they won’t make all sorts of different builds, they’ll stick with the viable ones, just like now. Only there’d be less of them.

As other people have said this is pretty much how the trait system worked originally.

I think I’m one of the few who preferred it (and in my case it was because I could make weird ‘themed’ combinations, not because I wanted to pick only the best of the best choices), but it was apparently quite confusing for many people and difficult to balance. (I think it also bothered Anet that a lot of people didn’t want the Grandmaster traits and would use the slot for another adept or master trait instead.)

The main trade-off was that trait lines also gave bonuses to your stats. So for example if a ranger took Skirmishing they got bonus Power, if they took Marksmanship they got bonus Precision. (Which lead to me misunderstanding how stats worked – for a long time I thought, based on that, that power only affected melee weapons and precision only affected ranged weapons.) So you couldn’t just pick whichever traits you wanted – you had to pick ones that gave the stats you needed, or pick stats to match your traits.

The system we have now is more restrictive, but it does also make it easier to make a build. Which of those is more fun really comes down to personal preference, but I suspect there are more people who prefer a simple system – either because they don’t want to spend ages trying to understand the system and choose traits or because they want to make sure they’re using the best possible choices at all times and lots of options makes that hard to determine. It’s only people like me who enjoy putting together unusual builds who really benefit from lots of choice.

Trait rework number ….

If anything, they should be further restricting the Trait system so that there are even less choices making the game much easier to balance.

There was a slightly more open system for allocating points in the early days, which was reworked into the current system. I imagine a lot of thought was put into the openess of what we have right now. If you give players too much choice you risk giving yourself exponentially more work to do to create a balanced system. Or, you end up creating the illusion of choice, where a myriad of possibilities are collapsed into just a couple of overpowering configurations, thereby rendering most of your work moot.

It’s a fine balancing act, but hopefully with the new expac will come new elite specs, which will open up the game to new builds without rendering previous options inadequate.