Guild Wars 2

Dear A-net

no one in the kitten world wants to kill that grub please remove it from the to do under traits system because you need a got dam zerg to kill and no zerg is there to do it i just lvl a ele to find out that i know have to grind 20 skills points i dont play alot so that is going to take alone time :/ it is a find system as long it dont involde 25 ppl to it ps. i am kittened that the only way i get it is to pay 3g and 20 skills points.

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Just like some people don’t want to use gold for a precursor preferring to forge or wait for a drop, I don’t want to use gold to buy traits when there is a trait quest option. On thief it wasn’t a big deal (the trait is one I’d never use anyway) but for ele it’s blocking an interesting trait. All the other champs can be soloed, it just seems like bad design to put the toughest one on a map where no one is interested in helping.

tofumon.5924:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Nobody should have to farm 20 SP just to unlock a kitten trait. This new trait system is terrible.

Then it is a good thing that it is only 1.5g and 10SP. You get tons of Scrolls of Knowledge from champ bags, so who cares?

tofumon.5924:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Nobody should have to farm 20 SP just to unlock a kitten trait. This new trait system is terrible.

The whole new trait system, period, is terrible. I’m glad I already had what I needed in traits when this horrible new trait system was dreamed up. +1

I did it with around 6 people. It took me weeks though to finally get it done. It’s just another annoyance with the new trait system. You’re better off just buying the trait.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

tofumon.5924:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Nobody should have to farm 20 SP just to unlock a kitten trait. This new trait system is terrible.

Then it is a good thing that it is only 1.5g and 10SP. You get tons of Scrolls of Knowledge from champ bags, so who cares?

But before you wouldn’t even have to grind skill points to unlock the trait. Now the whole game has gotten more grindy because you have to grind skill points to unlock stuff that used to be easily unlockable.

tofumon.5924:

But before you wouldn’t even have to grind skill points to unlock the trait. Now the whole game has gotten more grindy because you have to grind skill points to unlock stuff that used to be easily unlockable.

Huh? It is not possible to play the game without racking up tons of skill points.

I have 24 skillpoint scrolls on my 4-month old account. It’s possible to play the game without racking up tons of skillpoints.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

Then it is a good thing that it is only 1.5g and 10SP. You get tons of Scrolls of Knowledge from champ bags, so who cares?

You’re missing the point, be it intentionally or not..
The whole system was introduced to offer people a way to progress their character through more unlocks and encourage people to venture out into the various zones and actually do the content. However certain placements on the trait unlocks are horribly missplaced and because of that, the only way to obtain them is to pay for them, which is a dreadful approach.

So no, it isn’t a good thing and quite frankly, unless you grind for the champ bags, you wont be getting “tons of scrolls of knowledge”.

Not just skill point scrolls, but skill points. You get a skill point every time you go up a level which is at least once an hour if you are actually playing.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

tofumon.5924:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Nobody should have to farm 20 SP just to unlock a kitten trait. This new trait system is terrible.

Then it is a good thing that it is only 1.5g and 10SP. You get tons of Scrolls of Knowledge from champ bags, so who cares?

This works very well….if you mindlessly farm champs in da champ train.

GOSU.9574:

Tasty Pudding.3764:

tofumon.5924:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Nobody should have to farm 20 SP just to unlock a kitten trait. This new trait system is terrible.

Then it is a good thing that it is only 1.5g and 10SP. You get tons of Scrolls of Knowledge from champ bags, so who cares?

This works very well….if you mindlessly farm champs in da champ train.

Well, or if you’re actively taking stuff in WvW . . .

OP, the new trait system works perfectly. Join EoTM. Mindlessly karma train for 3-4 weeks and eventually you will have enough skill points to unlock some of the traits that you might want to use, and the gold to pay for them.

Now go back and carry on the karma train, as you are 200-300 skill points behind the older players when it comes to using them for anything else, such as crafting parts for a legendary. Aren’t we lucky it’s not a grindy game.

Not to mention the trait system now totally discourages changing builds at all and not unlocking them until 60 and 80 means most new players are clueless about them.

I’m levelling another alt at the moment, and will unlock exactly one build’s worth of traits, locking me in to one build and set of armor as i never seem to have any spare skill points- just as soon as i level up my crafting to 500 and spend weeks making the parts for the ascended set that is part of the build with account bound materials…

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

That’s not the point. Of course it can be easily worked around, but it’s still not good design and that option might as well not exist.

This could be a minor trait that nobody uses and costs like 10 silver and it’d be just as silly.

ArchonWing.9480:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

That’s not the point. Of course it can be easily worked around, but it’s still not good design and that option might as well not exist.

This could be a minor trait that nobody uses and costs like 10 silver and it’d be just as silly.

I disagree. I think that cashing in for trait unlocks and having infinite free trait respecs any time you’re out of combat is a vastly superior system to the old system which actively prevented you from doing build swaps without going to town (or buying a gem store item)

Permanent unlocks are always a better system than constant cash sinks, and the ability to build swap on the fly allows them to make much more variant and interesting content that requires you to swap things out now and then similar to how GW1 worked.

Yes, it’s more expensive/harder than it used to be, but this resulted in new players actually carefully thinking about builds, wheras before we had a bunch of braindead 80s running around with no idea what any of their traits or stats did.

That said, I agree that no trait unlock challenges should be on the WvW maps. This is okay for map completion as legendary acquisition is assumed to be a thing you do after you have “finished” your character, but asking people to go to WvW for a trait challenge is asking people who probably haven’t finished their first build to PvP, and that’s a bad idea.

PopeUrban.2578:

ArchonWing.9480:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

That’s not the point. Of course it can be easily worked around, but it’s still not good design and that option might as well not exist.

This could be a minor trait that nobody uses and costs like 10 silver and it’d be just as silly.

I disagree. I think that cashing in for trait unlocks and having infinite free trait respecs any time you’re out of combat is a vastly superior system to the old system which actively prevented you from doing build swaps without going to town (or buying a gem store item)

Permanent unlocks are always a better system than constant cash sinks, and the ability to build swap on the fly allows them to make much more variant and interesting content that requires you to swap things out now and then similar to how GW1 worked.

That’s not my point. I don’t have a problem with purchasing the skill either, but the post I’m replying too dismissed the OP’s original concern that the unlock requirement was unreasonable. I doubt 3g and 20SP is of any relevance to anyone that plays the game often so that would just be telling something they already know. Basically, we have one choice that works, but the other choice is highly debatable. Just saying that one choice works is no reason to assume the other choice can’t be tweaked.

I won’t disagree free traiting anywhere has been a good thing, but it could be better I think.

Yes, it’s more expensive/harder than it used to be, but this resulted in new players actually carefully thinking about builds, wheras before we had a bunch of braindead 80s running around with no idea what any of their traits or stats did.

I don’t necessarily agree about it, since traits arrive so late in this new system that I wasn’t even factoring them in until level 60. If anything the inability to play with traits earlier has made some even more clueless.

Take my thief, who has been the only character I’ve rolled since. I pretty much just bought the ones that I needed and haven’t really tried anything else.

That said, I agree that no trait unlock challenges should be on the WvW maps. This is okay for map completion as legendary acquisition is assumed to be a thing you do after you have “finished” your character, but asking people to go to WvW for a trait challenge is asking people who probably haven’t finished their first build to PvP, and that’s a bad idea.

I think if it’s ok if the task is practical to do solo, like the side events in the borderlands that don’t impact things much. The overgrown grub is specifically hard to take down and having people focus on that can have detrimental effects on the server effort.

Another alternative is to offer multiple options. Don’t like wvw? Well you have these other choices, and you just need to pick one.

Holy kitten! People that actually support the new trait system?

Have you seen the traits thread? I mean this kitten Game Update: Traits. That thread right there.

In that thread there is hardly a voice, a single whimper showing their support of this horrible change (save the free respec, of course).

Oh you righteous and pious souls! Where have you been?

blakdoxa.7520:

Holy kitten! People that actually support the new trait system?

Have you seen the traits thread? I mean this kitten Game Update: Traits. That thread right there.

In that thread there is hardly a voice, a single whimper showing their support of this horrible change (save the free respec, of course).

Oh you righteous and pious souls! Where have you been?

I don’t get involved in things I don’t have an ounce of thought about. This new trait system? I prefer it in roughly 75% of the way it’s handled. The other 25% . . . meh. I don’t find it worth getting upset about, most of those traits aren’t any good by general consensus.

I’ll eventually get them, it just takes patience and maybe some arm twisting of allies to make it happen.

nexxe.7081:

I did it with around 6 people. It took me weeks though to finally get it done. It’s just another annoyance with the new trait system. You’re better off just buying the trait.

I read this as: “it took 6 people several weeks to kill the grub”. which seems pretty accurate as it’s health is somewhere around that of a unsigned 64-bit integer: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615

ArchonWing.9480:

I don’t necessarily agree about it, since traits arrive so late in this new system that I wasn’t even factoring them in until level 60. If anything the inability to play with traits earlier has made some even more clueless.

Take my thief, who has been the only character I’ve rolled since. I pretty much just bought the ones that I needed and haven’t really tried anything else.

That’s my point though, in relation to new players. You bought the ones you needed, but in order to know which ones you needed you had to carefully consider everything on offer. Well, you didn’t, because like myself you’ve been playing long enough that it was pretty easy to figure out your optimal build.

New players aren’t as well versed in GW2’s trait mechanics, which are a little complicated and esoteric in comparison to other MMOs they may have played before which usually just handhold them through a tree to prevent them from making bad or useless choices by requiring complimentary traits as a prerequisite for other traits lower on the tree.

Having spent time last month helping some new people with builds I can confidently say, at least in my experience, it has caused new players to be a lot more aware of how important traits are to defining a build, and as they hit 80 they’re much better at timing, dodging, and making the best use of their hotbar than the new players I had before that change. In the old system, newbies often bought whatever karma armor was close to their level, chose a bunch of random and unrelated traits, and later wondered why they sucked because they never had pause to think about their build. This frequently gave me headaches as I routinely found myself explaining very basic things to level 80 newbies who often had to completely re-learn the game, often had to purchase new gear, and didn’t even have a concept of “build” until they were already in content that expected them to know these things.

It’s harder for newbies now, for sure, but the end result I’ve seen is newbies being excited to go on grand adventures for specific traits they theorycrafted, and seriously weighing the pros and cons of different gear stats as early as level 15. This has resulted in an average higher skill level for newbies, and a more interesting and freeform approach to encounters for veterans.

Sure, in comparison it sucks for those of us who raised mains in the old system, and feels like a chore, but for a lot of people there was a distinct lack of personally meaningful content while leveling, and that was changed for the better. The leveling experience has definite objectives that are more personally rewarding and under your control whereas before you just completed zones and got boxes of stuff that may or may not be useful.

PopeUrban.2578:

ArchonWing.9480:

I don’t necessarily agree about it, since traits arrive so late in this new system that I wasn’t even factoring them in until level 60. If anything the inability to play with traits earlier has made some even more clueless.

Take my thief, who has been the only character I’ve rolled since. I pretty much just bought the ones that I needed and haven’t really tried anything else.

That’s my point though, in relation to new players. You bought the ones you needed, but in order to know which ones you needed you had to carefully consider everything on offer. Well, you didn’t, because like myself you’ve been playing long enough that it was pretty easy to figure out your optimal build.

New players aren’t as well versed in GW2’s trait mechanics, which are a little complicated and esoteric in comparison to other MMOs they may have played before which usually just handhold them through a tree to prevent them from making bad or useless choices by requiring complimentary traits as a prerequisite for other traits lower on the tree.

Having spent time last month helping some new people with builds I can confidently say, at least in my experience, it has caused new players to be a lot more aware of how important traits are to defining a build, and as they hit 80 they’re much better at timing, dodging, and making the best use of their hotbar than the new players I had before that change. In the old system, newbies often bought whatever karma armor was close to their level, chose a bunch of random and unrelated traits, and later wondered why they sucked because they never had pause to think about their build. This frequently gave me headaches as I routinely found myself explaining very basic things to level 80 newbies who often had to completely re-learn the game, often had to purchase new gear, and didn’t even have a concept of “build” until they were already in content that expected them to know these things.

It’s harder for newbies now, for sure, but the end result I’ve seen is newbies being excited to go on grand adventures for specific traits they theorycrafted, and seriously weighing the pros and cons of different gear stats as early as level 15. This has resulted in an average higher skill level for newbies, and a more interesting and freeform approach to encounters for veterans.

Sure, in comparison it sucks for those of us who raised mains in the old system, and feels like a chore, but for a lot of people there was a distinct lack of personally meaningful content while leveling, and that was changed for the better. The leveling experience has definite objectives that are more personally rewarding and under your control whereas before you just completed zones and got boxes of stuff that may or may not be useful.

I’ve only received the opposite reaction. Most of the new players either want you to hand them a build or just want to get it over as quickly as possible. A lot of people don’t care about optimizing builds when leveling. And honestly, when traits aren’t available for half the leveling process, and it’s since it’s all stacked towards the end, the choices made when training aren’t really meaningful. In fact when I leveled, I often just picked minor traits and ignored the trait system completely. I ended up googling stuff, instead of being able to test and find out stuff on my own. On my 4 other characters that didn’t have to unlock traits, I came up with many different variations to check out what worked, and what was right for my playstyle so I’d already know what to get by 80. But now, I can’t even access GM traits until 80, so it’s all just speculation for those.

And honestly, the leveling process does very little to teach one had to play a class, considering you don’t really need any specific build for open world content. Now don’t get me wrong. A totally green player that has to master the basics of gameplay can learn about how to move, to dodge, and to do events. But even factoring that in, this kind of thing has little replay value beyond the first character.

IMO, it’s far more efficient to teach people by ramping up the difficulty curve. The jump from pve open world content to even explorable dungeon content is a rather huge leap. Making mid-level and high level zones harder would force people to learn to make a better build and take advantage of class mechanics.

Finally, not everyone likes pve being pushed upon us. I could argue with the old trait system, wvw was still more friendly for sub-80 players, but with these trait changes, uplevels are pretty much confined to leeching in an eotm train. I mean sure they were always at a disadvantage, but more so these days.

Mystic.5934:

nexxe.7081:

I did it with around 6 people. It took me weeks though to finally get it done. It’s just another annoyance with the new trait system. You’re better off just buying the trait.

I read this as: “it took 6 people several weeks to kill the grub”. which seems pretty accurate as it’s health is somewhere around that of a unsigned 64-bit integer: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615

It really didn’t take that long to kill. Around 10 minutes with around 6 people. It took me longer waiting for people to show up to kill it because they needed the trait unlock too.

nexxe.7081:

Mystic.5934:

nexxe.7081:

I did it with around 6 people. It took me weeks though to finally get it done. It’s just another annoyance with the new trait system. You’re better off just buying the trait.

I read this as: “it took 6 people several weeks to kill the grub”. which seems pretty accurate as it’s health is somewhere around that of a unsigned 64-bit integer: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615

It really didn’t take that long to kill. Around 10 minutes with around 6 people. It took me longer waiting for people to show up to kill it because they needed the trait unlock too.

I’m going to need to see a video to believe this. Both the Grub and Tree have enough health to survive multiple atomic blasts applied directly to their faces.

Killing the Grub is like listening to Justin Beiber.

Its not something we should be encouraging.

If they want to promote good WvW they should give traits for refreshing seige, or scouting the garrison water gate.

I dislike must of the trait changes they’ve introduced, but killing the grub (which I did easily with my guild) has got to be one of the worst. We need more options to unlock this stuff.

Absolutely no problem with it. New trait system is fine. Stop complaining that your life is too hard…

Sube Dai.8496:

Absolutely no problem with it. New trait system is fine. Stop complaining that your life is too hard…

You don’t know anything about my life or how hard it might or might not be. However, I’m not complaining about my life or its difficulty. I am letting ANET know that this trait system is bad on so many levels that I will not be spending a dime in their gem shop until it is fixed.

There’s only one thing that’s better now than it was in the old system, frankly, and that’s the ability to change traits on the fly. But I’d gladly pay a bit of silver if that meant getting traits starting at level 15 and the cost of unlocks was no more than double what it was prior to April’s feature pack.

There’s no way you’ve leveled a character in this new system and have that perspective. You can’t possibly think that 100% Lornar’s Pass map complete for a single, first-tier trait is good design. I will concede that perhaps it is in line with your chosen play-style, and that’s fine. I’m glad you like it. And if ANET decides that more people like it than hate it, then I hope they’re happy with the customer base they’ll be keeping.

the costs of each trait encourages players to buy only those traits that are good / meta / high berserker build dps omfg stuff
so all your effort to make players more aware of all the traits and “we want you to experiment with all these things” do not work as intended
acutally less peaople than ever even have the possibility to try out suff because unlocking everything would just be too kitten expensive

making it easier to swap traits on the fly (while ooc) ncie if you have only unlocked about 20 traits u need + maybe 8 that u got by playing the game (not the grub but other things in some hidden some buggy places) which u will probably never use because to get these using you would need to buy aditional traits to make up a build that is actually usefull …

things like the grub would be okay if theyd be in pve
in wvw every organized player/group that rushes past them when their keep a tower or something needs help or it will be lost and those grub killers just making the player limit reach earlier.. does not help!!
if it just were the grub itd be bad enough
but there are palyers all over the wvw that do pretty much useless stuff or try to get things done that wont happen….for loong time in some cases

sure they could just play wvw untill their target is going to be the commanders target but really.. that never happens

(i know ONE) comamnder who always goes for grub etc
but thats just for trolling so.. he doesnt really count…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

blakdoxa.7520:

Holy kitten! People that actually support the new trait system?

Have you seen the traits thread? I mean this kitten Game Update: Traits. That thread right there.

In that thread there is hardly a voice, a single whimper showing their support of this horrible change (save the free respec, of course).

Oh you righteous and pious souls! Where have you been?

I don’t get involved in things I don’t have an ounce of thought about. This new trait system? I prefer it in roughly 75% of the way it’s handled. The other 25% . . . meh. I don’t find it worth getting upset about, most of those traits aren’t any good by general consensus.

I’ll eventually get them, it just takes patience and maybe some arm twisting of allies to make it happen.

I’m confused about this. Do you mean that there is a general consensus that most traits aren’t good/worth having?

Guhracie.3419:

There’s no way you’ve leveled a character in this new system and have that perspective. You can’t possibly think that 100% Lornar’s Pass map complete for a single, first-tier trait is good design. I will concede that perhaps it is in line with your chosen play-style, and that’s fine. I’m glad you like it. And if ANET decides that more people like it than hate it, then I hope they’re happy with the customer base they’ll be keeping.

Having created and leveled 4 toons in the new system.. I like it. I have bought a few traits on each but it’s no big deal for me, I have the gold and skillpoints are piling up fast. I have no problem with completing a map to get a trait.
That being said, I agree with OP regarding the grub – to have that event as a trait unlocker was a synaptic misfire of massive proportions.

Guhracie.3419:

I’m confused about this. Do you mean that there is a general consensus that most traits aren’t good/worth having?

I’m Ranger. According to people I ask? 90% of them which don’t begin with “Signet” and end in “Beastmaster” are worthless.

37 pages on this issue !!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Guhracie.3419:

I’m confused about this. Do you mean that there is a general consensus that most traits aren’t good/worth having?

I’m Ranger. According to people I ask? 90% of them which don’t begin with “Signet” and end in “Beastmaster” are worthless.

Huh. I’ve always heard that Spotter is pretty much essential to group play. I’ll concede that rangers aren’t as trait reliant as other professions, though.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Guhracie.3419:

I’m confused about this. Do you mean that there is a general consensus that most traits aren’t good/worth having?

I’m Ranger. According to people I ask? 90% of them which don’t begin with “Signet” and end in “Beastmaster” are worthless.

That’s not true at all. There’s plenty of strong ranger traits, such as any of the minors in wilderness survival, spotter, steady focus, survival of the fittest, eagle eye. But they tend to be clustered all in several trees and for some reason bad rangers make builds that tend to avoid all of them.

Soinetwa.5193:

the costs of each trait encourages players to buy only those traits that are good / meta / high berserker build dps omfg stuff

Or ignore them all together…

Luckily most of my characters have all but the last tier unlocked, because I simply refuse to pay with gold for traits. And I know there will be traits I’ll never get unless they change location (think anything WvW)

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Soinetwa.5193:

the costs of each trait encourages players to buy only those traits that are good / meta / high berserker build dps omfg stuff

Or ignore them all together…

Luckily most of my characters have all but the last tier unlocked, because I simply refuse to pay with gold for traits. And I know there will be traits I’ll never get unless they change location (think anything WvW)

Well you always had to pay 3 gold for traits, so at least buy the three you most want. lol