It was a nice attempt to spice up the game, I’ll admit, by adding in new traits and making them unlocked by killing bosses. It has issues though:
First, 1 trait point per 6 levels (2 later on) and not starting till level 30 really makes all of my non 80s feel un-heroic. This on top of turning into Trahearne’s puppet sorta gets rid of the ’I’m the Hero of a story’ feel that is the center of every fantasy game in the world… unless I’m unaware of one where you’re a peasant farming and the only way you know an adventure is taking place is when a knight is sent off on a quest and when he comes back with the princess without knowing what happened in between because you had to stay on your farm.
Second, tying the new traits to world/group events. Major issues will turn up when A. all the hard core players get all their traits in the next few days and B. the casual players finally make their way to the zones to earn them and find them as barren as any zone except Queensdale and Frostgorge pre-update. One time payouts are not a way to bring players to harder events and keep them coming back.
Third, the cost to ‘just’ buy them is out of reach of most casual players. The gold is hard enough for new comers and the SP is just ridiculous following the nerf to the champion train in Frostgorge (which, by the way, didn’t do anything to stop the one in Queensdale where the most annoying train participants- you know those ones who think you can only kill a champion if you’re in the train- exist). Instead all its done is taken a massive source of T5- think its T5- crafting materials out of the game, which will slowly drive up their prices, which I guess is as intended but did not fix the real issue most people have with the train play style.
I can see some easy-ish fixes.
Bring back the trait unlock at level 10, and have 1 per level again but keep it so you can shuffle them to your hearts content like you can now. Keep the traits tied to specific monster kills, but make them into the non-event champions which were turning into Elites spread out around the world. This keeps the idea to drive players out into the world you created, but also lets them- with any luck- able to get their trait either solo or at the least with a single friend. If you purchase them, no more than 1-3 gold and 3-6 SP per, it isn’t like you’re unlocking Elite skills after all. Keeping them unlocked per instead of account wide would promote the gold sink since it wouldn’t be such a grind since that’s exactly what it is requiring 10 SP (that’s either 10 levels or 10 places of power, doable if you really want to but unnecessarily high and extremely boring for alt-ers).
Of course, way I see it, the past few releases have been designed to drive players to PvP- which has many flaws in itself from the bigger stack of players in WvW winning and balance issues between classes for smaller scale skirmishes- so much for play as you want.
I am a big fan of the wardrobe, however, and if the update had just been that it would have been enough for me as a casual player since I’ll never bother with legendary weapons or ascended armor- that’s just too much of a grind. The new trait system, however, seems to have turned enjoyable gameplay for a casual player to a grind as well.