Guild Wars 2

I think it’s worrisome that their stance has been “No comment on anything that is a work in progress” and then they commented “hey, yes, we’re totally fixing this” and then went back to complete silence. Traits are why I’m not going to pre-order HoT for both of my accounts. Traits are why I’m not going to buy HoT for either of my accounts, in fact. I will snub my nose at precursor crafting, hang gliding, languages, and character progression because of traits. This is the strongest message I currently know how to send to the company. I don’t care what else is gated behind the expansion, because I will not buy it until I see for myself that the fix to traits and leveling is an improvement.

If that’s better than the potential backlash over the new system, I shudder to imagine what they’ve come up with.

Galphar.3901:

Behellagh.1468:

No as bad as announcing something that’s the player base polarizes over. Right now we are only unhappy because they are telling us the barest minimum, that it’s being simplified. It’s not generating any additional stories about how much we dislike being in the dark about specifics.

I think that almost 100 pages over the past 11 months would disagree with you.

It hasn’t been 11 months since they told us it’s being changed.

Behellagh.1468:

Galphar.3901:

Behellagh.1468:

No as bad as announcing something that’s the player base polarizes over. Right now we are only unhappy because they are telling us the barest minimum, that it’s being simplified. It’s not generating any additional stories about how much we dislike being in the dark about specifics.

I think that almost 100 pages over the past 11 months would disagree with you.

It hasn’t been 11 months since they told us it’s being changed.

Ah, it’s been a mere 2 months, and 500+ responses. Or has it been nearly 7 months, and 4000 replies since we were told there were going to be fixes incoming?

Guhracie.3419:

Behellagh.1468:

Galphar.3901:

Behellagh.1468:

No as bad as announcing something that’s the player base polarizes over. Right now we are only unhappy because they are telling us the barest minimum, that it’s being simplified. It’s not generating any additional stories about how much we dislike being in the dark about specifics.

I think that almost 100 pages over the past 11 months would disagree with you.

It hasn’t been 11 months since they told us it’s being changed.

Ah, it’s been a mere 2 months, and 500+ responses. Or has it been nearly 7 months, and 4000 replies since we were told there were going to be fixes incoming?

It’s been 11 months since they “improved” the old Traits system and gave us what we have now. I think it’s funny that it only took a few days for them to fix the Gem Exchange after “improving” it. But I guess if we actually had that many players rushing to the forums about the Traits as the Gem Exchange had we wouldn’t be here in this thread now.

The Gem Exchange is a web site that can be dynamically changed on the fly if need be and is completely independent to the game client which simply loads up the Coherent UI browser irregardless to the actual TP web page sent to us.

((takes up gameshow announcer voice))

Gooooood Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen and Charr, and welcome to this exciting edition of Number Crunches! This is the programme you don’t want to miss. Through the aid of the advanced AI we have affectionately named METRIX, here are the latest results;

335 days since the introduction of the Super-Awesome Traits System.
930 days since the release of Guild Wars 2. (not counting the head start)
36% proportion of GW2’s lifespan this amazing system has been implemented.

4 months. How long it took Arenanet to tell us our complaints raised “a lot of valid points”
Nearly 7 months. Time between the initial acknowledgement that we had raised valid points and now.
0. Number of changes in that period.

63. Current page the original mega thread is on.
1. Page the original mega thread was most seen on before the lock.
4111. Number of posts in old thread.
215472. Number of views of old thread.

4613. Number of posts of old thread and current combined.
235952. Number of combined views.
13. Average number of posts per day.
704. Average views of the topics per day.

Conclusions? Sorry, but as we should all know by now, METRIX is not a conclusion machine. It gives the figures, it doesn’t give the hows, whys and what should be done in response. And it doesn’t give certain information that may help those conclusions.

Other possible pieces of information that may be interesting is number of Anet posts in relation to number of posts we make, and all that. Ultimately, it is for each of us to decide what those numbers mean, if indeed they mean anything at all. It might be they have ignored us, it might be they have been too busy developing to respond as much as some of us would have liked.

I’m still willing to give Anet that chance, and I understand that the communications team has to take a lot of flak, especially given that ultimately the devs are the ones working on the new system. But for me, so much of the fun has been sucked out of the game. I don’t feel the desire to play as I used to, or even visit here and moan as much as I did. No doubt that is partly the traditional pre-expansion blues that comes with all MMOs I’ve played right before the latest release. I play for a grand total of a minute a day now. I log in, get my daily chest and go. Part of, but not all of the reason is I don’t feel the desire to level my characters any more, and that is in part due to traits as they stand. And it really has affected how much I’m hyped for HoT. If this was 18 months ago, I’d be wailing to all and sundry about how my life is soon to be complete, with the release of HoT. Now, I’m almost completely indifferent. Has my enthusiasm gone, or have I just grown up a little, and put away childish things? I have no idea.

I do know I await with bated breath the info on the new trait changes, and I know it will bear a significant part in my decision to buy HoT.

The trait system can turn new players into ex-players much faster than Anet can be bothered to fix it, apparently. I’ve been playing for 3.5 months and no longer have any solo content I care to do while waiting for guildmates to become available for fractal/dungeon runs each night. In a normal MMO, this would be where alts come in and I’d stay busy for a very long time. Sadly, since alts have been non-viable for 11 months, I just log out after my dailies unless I find a fractal or dungeon group in that brief period of time. I’ve thought about sucking it up and doing the scavenger hunt a second time, but every time I do I just shudder and log out.

In theory a successful fix to the trait system would be a necessary condition for me to consider buying HoT. In practice, I’ll probably be playing another game whenever HoT releases and won’t even know that it came out, let alone whether traits were finally fixed.

Hard to believe Anet let this disaster remain in place for so long.

Alts for me are a mixed bag. I love making them, and since the trait change I have made 3 that are in various stages of leveling up. I don’t really plan on them doing anything though. I’m kind of hoping the trait changes will be fixed and by that time I will have a new stable of level 80 alts to play with TADA traits. Other than that, I’m in no rush.

I am feeling the stat slump though. I understood what people were talking about before, but now I know how it feels. And it feels bad. I will sometimes switch to a lower level zone when I hit a bad patch because it’s less of a struggle. With the slump and just a few random traits to help me out, sometimes you just feel like a sitting duck.

Guhracie.3419:

I think it’s worrisome that their stance has been “No comment on anything that is a work in progress” and then they commented “hey, yes, we’re totally fixing this” and then went back to complete silence. Traits are why I’m not going to pre-order HoT for both of my accounts. Traits are why I’m not going to buy HoT for either of my accounts, in fact. I will snub my nose at precursor crafting, hang gliding, languages, and character progression because of traits. This is the strongest message I currently know how to send to the company. I don’t care what else is gated behind the expansion, because I will not buy it until I see for myself that the fix to traits and leveling is an improvement.

If that’s better than the potential backlash over the new system, I shudder to imagine what they’ve come up with.

For me it will be a combination of traits, loot for progression, and a more diverse combat situation in PVE (truly diverse and not this “oh you can play this way” even though we know all other builds are meaningless nonsense)

I’m watching and you know if not, I’ve recently been a console convert, RPGs now have the capability of minor multiplayer, and new MMOs will be converted or releasd for consoles this year. If Anet wants my money they’ll do right by the community, really simple isn’kitten

I’m hoping that one of the things in traits that’s fixed is having a separate trait line for underwater combat, or switching and also some of the more annoying aspects of chemical gameplay like Explosives with the Engineer in PVE. I’d love some more options for explosives like adding a chemical element to explosives to increase damage (a damage version of the healing choice with bombs but for grenades and healy grenades would be nice too.)

While I definitely like the QoL stuff dropped with this latest patch regarding the camera and FPV finally being added (buggy as it might be at the moment), or the ability to now survive running down a flight a stairs, or a hill, I can’t help but wonder why I’m not as excited as I might have been otherwise.

Oh wait.

I remember now.

I share my sentiments in this fashion for a valid reason other than to seem snarky. I’m genuinely this upset about the lack of noticable movement on this to the point that even things I have been wanting for a long time in this game being made available to me isn’t enough to get me excited about the game.

Furthermore, just from some of the comments I’ve seen already (and a failed attempt to even DL the patch by my wife), I am more worried than ever about how Anet has rolled out this patch, and by extension what they will do for the Traits revamp. If this patch wasn’t honestly ready for prime time, then someone should have gone into that thread and said, “hey we hear you but we are still working out some problems”, or if Anet really thought it was ready, they should have warned more people to be mindful of the patch size or even that some bugs were still persisting and being looked at. This all boils back down to communicating with us.

So fine.

I’ll be over there…waiting…

Its been a year though (more or less), and I don’t really think I can wait much longer. Maybe I’ll see HoT. But the chances aren’t likely at this point.

-HEY GUYS !

- ?

- NEW PATCH !

:D

…Universally hated trait unlock system now available in First Person perspective !

You like ?

Worblehat.8697:

Hard to believe Anet let this disaster remain in place for so long.

It really is hard to believe…
This game was almost perfect in the beginning…
Now it’s just… /sigh… I can’t even wrap my brain around it.
I can’t even form the correct words to describe my disappointment in Anet’s decisions.

What is the logic or reason behind keeping such a hated system?
Just revert back to the original system and if you still feel it’s absolutely necessary to make changes to it…. let us know what you’re thinking and LISTEN to the feedback BEFORE the changes are made….

What’s so hard about that?

I honestly didn’t think that there could be a bigger game breaking change than the Trait system. I thought that I could at least enjoy the one game mode left that was at least semi fun to still play when I had some time to actually play.

So now that WvW is completely wrecked, is there ANY chance of hearing something about the Trait update? Anything at all?

I have I think 2 more logins before I hit the final free gift for the cycle. After that, I’m probably going to just stop logging in. People were warning long before this went live how much the FOV thing would break WvW and it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

We get it. There is no reason to discuss anything.

Have fun ya’ll.

Any chance we could get a time frame for when we’re going to hear anything about these alleged changes to the trait system? Or is 2 months an insufficient amount of time to so much as put together the highlights?

Anet wanted to revive the glorious days of gw1 elite skill capture, and failed miserably, I remember some alpha videos about the system of skill, traits “gathering” they wanted and some where quite good but could not delivered because there was not “enough” staff available for it, and this new trait system was a poorly executed attempt to gives us what they thought we wanted.
I think certain people should go back to the gw1 code, play the game as well, finish what it was promised on guild wars beyond and come back to gw2 with a fresh mind set.
Also trying to see the youtube videos from the games conventions when they where still making gw2 is a good idea.

Is there a reason that ANet hasn’t just gone ahead and reverted back to the old trait system? I mean it is literally one of the most universally reviled parts of this game (in that I have yet to meet a single person in game defend it).

If you want to improve it, revert back to the old trait system, then you can improve from there.

can you buff shadow art thief traits

kittenInYourButt.6530:

Is there a reason that ANet hasn’t just gone ahead and reverted back to the old trait system? I mean it is literally one of the most universally reviled parts of this game (in that I have yet to meet a single person in game defend it).

If you want to improve it, revert back to the old trait system, then you can improve from there.

Good news!

Well, if they keep up with their standard response time of every 4-6 months to this issue, you only have about 2-4 more months to wait before we get new information!

The bad news is that the information might be: “We’ve totally got changes incoming, guys, and we’re super excited that we can talk about them now!” Or, you know, in another 4-6 months. Too much information is confusing to new players.

Guhracie.3419:

Good news!

Well, if they keep up with their standard response time of every 4-6 months to this issue, you only have about 2-4 more months to wait before we get new information!

The bad news is that the information might be: “We’ve totally got changes incoming, guys, and we’re super excited that we can talk about them now!” Or, you know, in another 4-6 months. Too much information is confusing to new players.

“Traits have proven too confusing for our developers and have therefore been removed.” At the rate it’s going, this is what I expect. :\

Or the mastery/trait system will completely bork when they launch it, and we won’t have any traits anyway. >_>

Considering traits are a major item that really, really needs to be addressed, being mum about it serves no good for anyone in the community.

I really hope the new trait system doesn’t turn into a chore list. You guys have favored this type of thing before. It tends to upset players.

I really favored the initial trait system. New players had to work a bit to get the gold to unlock their traits. However, as you played and got more experience and gold it became less obtrusive. In this way the original trait system supported the learning curve.

The old system also encouraged experimentation with traits and builds. Players tend to find this fun.

I have no idead what this new trait /skill system will bring. we’ll just have to wait and see. what do I hope it isn’t? a grindy list of chores.

Adept traits should be rewarded as leveling rewards, making the past level 40 leveling feel more rewarding and leaving only master and grandmaster traits to be unlocked trough some chores… Being a much reduced number of traits they could be unlocked by doing something that really haves something to do with that specific trait.
having the first traits rewarded as you level up also would let new players experiment on them and try different builds. This of course if master traits are unlocked by doing something appropriate for the level the player should start to use them.

James Spades.4720:

Adept traits should be rewarded as leveling rewards, making the past level 40 leveling feel more rewarding and leaving only master and grandmaster traits to be unlocked trough some chores… Being a much reduced number of traits they could be unlocked by doing something that really haves something to do with that specific trait.
having the first traits rewarded as you level up also would let new players experiment on them and try different builds. This of course if master traits are unlocked by doing something appropriate for the level the player should start to use them.

Many people have mentioned this. IMO I think if they went that route that only the new grand master traits should be unlocked through tasks, with adept, master traits, and the original grand master traits being unlocked the original way. This gives a solid foundation for players all the way up to level 80. Allowing proper builds and experimentation along the way. Then any new traits for the original classes can be locked behind tasks. If they had done this originally there would be no complaints from the majority of players that are keeping these trait threads alive.

I bet this was the original idea they had when creating the new grand master traits and then some jack kitten said lets just do it to all traits. Because they thought how great an idea it is to use a trait hunt to force players to do certain content but it takes less work than creating new traits for the same tasks.

If they do not find a way to incorporate traits back in to the normal leveling progression for the majority of traits, then the new new trait system is going to be just as big of a failure.

I still wonder if it would be better to simply buy traits with Skill Points. No gold, no arbitrary event requirements, just a fair skill point cost. Adepts should only cost 1SP, up to 10SP for Grandmasters, equivalent to the cost of skills from basic to elite.

Worblehat.8697:

The trait system can turn new players into ex-players much faster than Anet can be bothered to fix it, apparently. I’ve been playing for 3.5 months and no longer have any solo content I care to do while waiting for guildmates to become available for fractal/dungeon runs each night. In a normal MMO, this would be where alts come in and I’d stay busy for a very long time. Sadly, since alts have been non-viable for 11 months, I just log out after my dailies unless I find a fractal or dungeon group in that brief period of time. I’ve thought about sucking it up and doing the scavenger hunt a second time, but every time I do I just shudder and log out.

In theory a successful fix to the trait system would be a necessary condition for me to consider buying HoT. In practice, I’ll probably be playing another game whenever HoT releases and won’t even know that it came out, let alone whether traits were finally fixed.

Hard to believe Anet let this disaster remain in place for so long.

See this is the thing. We warned folks about the trait system and what it would do 11 months ago, no one listened. In fact the same people that to this day continue to attack those of us who care enough to come here and point out the flaws in order to make change for the better for the whole community, are the same people who said that traits wouldn’t be a problem when they made the change 11 months ago. Other things we’ve been right about have been, DR causing whole unlucky accounts, PVE combat being stuck in the Zerker meta, Nerfs to classes like Engineer making them most likely to be booted out of pugs.

But for some reason, traits are now being fixed. What I’d like to know is what about the rest of it.

Don’t misunderstand, but if traits have caused people to leave why not fix the other items that have caused people to leave as well? Wouldn’t it be more profitable to fix the problems this game faces while you have the development team available and the funding?

Luckily for me however, trait changes came after I had already reached a high enough level that it didn’t matter on my guardian. I did go and buy the ones I needed which was extremely tedious considering my account is still on a reward embargo right now. Every time I login it’s almost impossible to make any gold.

Someone mentioned getting traits for gold. Well why not karma? Why not get traits for the one underused currency in the game? Oh or how about no cost at all just getting traits at certain levels then one wouldn’t have to worry about buying anything you’d just level and get them normally. I like the second system better.

I absolutely don’t mind the unlock for the new grandmaster traits. When they came out it was fun to hunt them down (well, fun as in fun the first time – for each character … not as much).

I am totally fine with high level traits being huntable, if the tasks are difficult, but not gated by some random thing out of your control. It’s when each and every single gosh darned bugger is something you have to hunt down.

The three new alts I have taken through this system only have a handful of traits, and that’s with me leveling in the same maps (boring) because I know I need a map complete for a trait and know a few of the other on that map now, so I make sure to hit em up when I am in the area. So I know how to get a few traits pretty well, and most of them not at all and I can’t really bring myself to care enough to look them up all the time and go from one to another.

That’s something that’s lacking, I think. A way to see if there are traits to unlock on a map. The ones on the same map are scattered throughout the lines and it’s difficult to see if you’ve picked up all the ones can without tediously searching each description. (and when I say ‘lacking’, I mean if we are forced into this system, it’s the least they could do to make this a little less painful)

All they would have to do to make this better is revert the buying your traits from a trainer to exactly the way it was before while leaving the events aspect of getting them in place. Then everyone is more or less happy. People that want to grind events on every character can and people that want to buy them can do so just the way we did before the change.

This wouldn’t even be a huge amount of work.

Why not, once you unlock them with one character, you unlock them account wide?
a) This introduces the new player to shiny content types and gets them to try things they wouldn’t otherwise. (flipside: they can’t play “they way they want to”)
b) After they’ve done this content, they don’t have to do it again. No one likes re-doing content 4+ times. And at this point, they know if they don’t like JPs, and really don’t want to do them again. And oh, map completion. Doing that multiple times = AWFUL.
c) It wouldn’t be cost-prohibitive if you don’t want to re-do content.
d) If they wanted to, they could still pay for traits they don’t want to bother getting (and now they can “play the way they want to”) if the buying was still in place. Also, if you only unlocked them once, you certainly wouldn’t be buying them all. So the cost would be low.

As of right now, how many traits in the game are currently 100% broken… equipping them does not affect your character in any way, shape, or form? Does anyone know?

Gaile I don’t mean to push, but " I’m not saying “this week” but I’m definitely not pointing at Q2 2015!" Not going to lie, I was hoping we’d get more than oh yea we’ll fix traits along with releasing this expansion, eventually, sometime, “when its ready”. Any chance you can prod the team into a few details, maybe you know, if we’ll see it in Q2 or Q3? If there are any details you know how ravenous the forums are for this. Then again, posting this on a Friday late afternoon I have a feeling its not going to get seen…

HA, “not pointing at Q2”.

So, is Anet going to make a liar out of you Gaile?

If the traits update doesn’t happen either of the next 2 weeks, well…I guess that whole not pointing thing would be wrong.

If it IS slated to happen though, then someone should really be in here talking to us about it. Right? Just to bounce some of it off of people before going live? No?

Riiiiiiight.

Maybe the beta testers will have some insight they can share soon…gonna hit up my guildie who got an invite to take a look at traits when he can (though they may all be unlocked for beta)

Cameo.4073:

Maybe the beta testers will have some insight they can share soon…gonna hit up my guildie who got an invite to take a look at traits when he can (though they may all be unlocked for beta)

I’m going to go out and limb and guess that the beta testers are going to see the EXACT same content that everyone else that has seen the new stuff so far has seen. This is only going to be a stress test on the system.

Fairly certain traits are going to look exactly the same. :/

I’ll be looking at the traits in the stress test, but I also doubt that will be part of this early stage of testing.

tevoro.1587:

Gaile I don’t mean to push, but " I’m not saying “this week” but I’m definitely not pointing at Q2 2015!" Not going to lie, I was hoping we’d get more than oh yea we’ll fix traits along with releasing this expansion, eventually, sometime, “when its ready”. Any chance you can prod the team into a few details, maybe you know, if we’ll see it in Q2 or Q3? If there are any details you know how ravenous the forums are for this. Then again, posting this on a Friday late afternoon I have a feeling its not going to get seen…

You must be new to this fight.

Now, you guys, there’s no reason to think ANET will make a liar out of Ms. Gray. I mean, they could be aiming for Q3 or Q4.

Traits aren’t going to be there. This is a new server code test. Nobody will see traits until they first tell us about traits, in broad nearly uninformative strokes.

Guhracie.3419:

Any chance we could get a time frame for when we’re going to hear anything about these alleged changes to the trait system? Or is 2 months an insufficient amount of time to so much as put together the highlights?

I guess… until a time frame is confirmed, the only thing I can do is extrapolate from past experience that it really is going to be 4-6 months between platitudes. Awesome job at that improved communication.

Behellagh.1468:

Nobody will see traits until they first tell us about traits, in broad nearly uninformative strokes.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about info from Anet. We get drips of info that’s supposed to be informative but it just drains the life out of any excitement for me. If they wait until HoT releases to actually fix the traits, they will lose a lot of goodwill from me. They can’t use the excuse of ‘working on the expansion’ because this needs to be rolled out too and can’t wait. They could use it as an opportunity to show us their new vision of progression and get us excited again. Well, that and it just needs to be done, like yesterday. And if for some reason it’s so tied into the new mastery system code that they can’t separate it, they need to tell us that so our expectations are kept in check.

So with today being beta stress test day, that leaves next week (Tuesday) to get that update in during Q1…

So I guess that means that something might be said between now and then yes? Even if that something is, “ok its looking more like Q2”. Anything?

I think it’ll be more like Q3 or Q4. Most likely one week before HoT drops. And we won’t hear anything from the devs till two weeks before HoT drops about the Traits and then no real discussion just when it’s coming.

Galphar.3901:

I think it’ll be more like Q3 or Q4. Most likely one week before HoT drops. And we won’t hear anything from the devs till two weeks before HoT drops about the Traits and then no real discussion just when it’s coming.

I agree.

Which saddens me a bit given the messaging we have already received.

Yeah, what’s worse is this is if you complain this will be another “This is why ANet never say anything because players get angry when they don’t deliver!!!!!”

It would be, at minimum, polite if someone came in an gave an explanation as to what is going on and (shudders) maybe even apologise for the delay and lack of communication.

I’d be shocked if a developer sets foot in this thread before late May/early June.

I now have six characters across 2 accounts running around with a patchwork of traits. All it’s taught me is that they will be a detriment to group activities and that I shouldn’t bother to play them outside of pvp. My first post-patch character has 52% map complete and still doesn’t have at least one trait in each tier/line unlocked. I’d really like to have some idea of ANET’s “solution” to this issue, but I guess I’ll be strung along a little bit longer. We’re almost at the year mark. What’s a few more months?

In the meantime, I’m going to revert to my habits of spending my entertainment money elsewhere.

I don’t understand the new skill point system they are suggesting and ArenaNet’s motivation to change the existing system.

Here’s an excerpt from their announcement:

“characters that have reached level 80 will no longer gain skill points through leveling
Skill points will be added as rewards across high-level content to offset this change.”

So for those of us who decided to start playing this game again lately, who haven’t racked up hours upon hours of gameplay and haven’t accrued a large amount of unused skill points, will now have to go out to “high level” areas to get them and can’t play general content and other game modes such as WvW and PvP (tomes of knowledge) to level up and acquire more skill points.

My concern is for items that require skill points such as ascended gear and legendaries, under the new system, would require me to go to “high level” areas to acquire them. I have five level 80 characters that I’ve worked hard to level in the past couple months, and two of them have 100% map completion including WvW. All of them have gone through the story line. None of my characters have enough skill points for Bloodstone Shards for example. I play all my characters fairly evenly as well, I don’t focus on one particular character, so reading about this change has been very frustrating. Buying those items that require skill points would force me to focus on a single character instead of playing my whole account. I would have to play yet more PvE (which I’ve done more than enough of, repeatedly, five times in fact). Skill points aren’t account bound either.

The PvE story is great and all but I’m pretty tired of leveling new characters to 80 and I have no plans to make anymore, mainly due to the new trait system. At this point it’s a grind.

I’m lucky that I made 5 characters when the game first released to reserve my old character names from GW1, otherwise I’d have to spend even more skill points for traits under the new system. Thankfully I don’t have to deal with that on my old characters. On my new characters though…

I don’t understand how this new system would make things any better for me and others that might be in the same situation.

I’ve been forcing myself to play the game lately. Trying to find anything in it that will hold me for an hour or so.

When I’m done i usually feel less like I did something fun and more like I was going through the motions to pass some time before going to bed.

In a way its saved me a chunk of change this past year, but wow has it ever killed my enjoyment.

Same – after long time, I decided to build a new character, and this “NPE” and the new “trait system” just destroyed the joy of playing and leveling up for me

Fiennis.4387:

I don’t understand the new skill point system they are suggesting and ArenaNet’s motivation to change the existing system.

Here’s an excerpt from their announcement:

“characters that have reached level 80 will no longer gain skill points through leveling
Skill points will be added as rewards across high-level content to offset this change.”

So for those of us who decided to start playing this game again lately, who haven’t racked up hours upon hours of gameplay and haven’t accrued a large amount of unused skill points, will now have to go out to “high level” areas to get them and can’t play general content and other game modes such as WvW and PvP (tomes of knowledge) to level up and acquire more skill points.

I don’t understand how this new system would make things any better for me and others that might be in the same situation.

In fairness, we don’t know how they’re going to change other things that are currently reliant on skill points, and they’ve said they’re going to change the trait system. They haven’t said how, of course, but it’s something. Additionally, skill scrolls drop more frequently in wvw and pvp currently. I see no reason to assume they’re going to remove that. If anything, they’re probably going to increase the drops.

My overarching point is that it’s hard to draw any sort of conclusions about the impact of the removal of skill point gain without any context about the way the rest of the game is changing.

I agree Guracie. I mean, look at the uproar over the reduction of karma! It was sooo bad. And yet, I can still rack up karma like mad. Let’s wait and see to make any judgments on things that haven’t happened yet.

Fiennis.4387:

I don’t understand the new skill point system they are suggesting and ArenaNet’s motivation to change the existing system.

Here’s an excerpt from their announcement:

“characters that have reached level 80 will no longer gain skill points through leveling
Skill points will be added as rewards across high-level content to offset this change.”

So for those of us who decided to start playing this game again lately, who haven’t racked up hours upon hours of gameplay and haven’t accrued a large amount of unused skill points, will now have to go out to “high level” areas to get them and can’t play general content and other game modes such as WvW and PvP (tomes of knowledge) to level up and acquire more skill points.

My concern is for items that require skill points such as ascended gear and legendaries, under the new system, would require me to go to “high level” areas to acquire them. I have five level 80 characters that I’ve worked hard to level in the past couple months, and two of them have 100% map completion including WvW. All of them have gone through the story line. None of my characters have enough skill points for Bloodstone Shards for example. I play all my characters fairly evenly as well, I don’t focus on one particular character, so reading about this change has been very frustrating. Buying those items that require skill points would force me to focus on a single character instead of playing my whole account. I would have to play yet more PvE (which I’ve done more than enough of, repeatedly, five times in fact). Skill points aren’t account bound either.

The PvE story is great and all but I’m pretty tired of leveling new characters to 80 and I have no plans to make anymore, mainly due to the new trait system. At this point it’s a grind.

I’m lucky that I made 5 characters when the game first released to reserve my old character names from GW1, otherwise I’d have to spend even more skill points for traits under the new system. Thankfully I don’t have to deal with that on my old characters. On my new characters though…

I don’t understand how this new system would make things any better for me and others that might be in the same situation.

I think you misunderstand somethings. “High level content” does not mean high level areas, it means literally ANY content in the game when played on a level 80 character.

I may gain 3, maybe 5 skill points every few days with my level 80s via “leveling up.” But I get dozens of skill point scrolls, everywhere. From everything. That’s what they mean.

The 1 single skill point you “earn” every couple hours of gameplay is nothing compared to the 5-10 scrolls which dropped during that gameplay.

A handful of people have been freaking out about this change, but anyone who has started stacking skill point scrolls in their bank because they drop too often to even bother using them knows it won’t effect endgame acquisition of skill points in any way.