Guild Wars 2

How many hero challenges must we undertake to finally defeat the forum bug!

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

a lot of people didnt level their chrs by map complete.
wvw
scrolls
eotm
crafting

while one skill challenge is easy, 65 is not so much.

65, PLUS the points you need to unlock the subclass stuff.

So that equals between 25% and 50% of known Tyria. With 19 alts (all leveled in PvP), that is kind of a big deal for me. If I have to run my alt through Tyria and do skill challenges, I can live with that, but I really, really don’t want to do it 19 times over.

Guhracie.3419:

Eponet.4829:

This is awful for the people who choose to level through WvWvW or PvP.

Map completionists have a much better time under this system, but WvWvW has an extremely limited number of skill challenges available to them, and actually going to do them means that you’re taking up a slot for your world without contributing anything.

PvP might as well just not give tomes of knowledge anymore, because the characters leveled through it will be crippled by the lack of traits.

It seems as though this is even more of a step back. Under system 1 I could still play my release date mesmer and thief. Now it sounds as though I’m restricted to just my world completion mesmer. Wonderful.

1. There’s no need to go through the unlocking process in PvP. Everything will be unlocked automatically.

This already applies right now, and yet skill scrolls were consciously added to PvP reward tracks (as well as available through WvW champ bags).

Why change that now?
Especially retroactively for all existing characters?

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

a lot of people didnt level their chrs by map complete.
wvw
scrolls
eotm
crafting

while one skill challenge is easy, 65 is not so much.

65, PLUS the points you need to unlock the subclass stuff.

So that equals between 25% and 50% of known Tyria. With 19 alts (all leveled in PvP), that is kind of a big deal for me. If I have to run my alt through Tyria and do skill challenges, I can live with that, but I really, really don’t want to do it 19 times over.

Exactly. Certain people are trying to play this down and act like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing. This is a huge problem that Anet needs to address with this new system.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

a lot of people didnt level their chrs by map complete.
wvw
scrolls
eotm
crafting

while one skill challenge is easy, 65 is not so much.

65, PLUS the points you need to unlock the subclass stuff.

So that equals between 25% and 50% of known Tyria. With 19 alts (all leveled in PvP), that is kind of a big deal for me. If I have to run my alt through Tyria and do skill challenges, I can live with that, but I really, really don’t want to do it 19 times over.

19 characters!? O_o

I must ask, do you play with all of them on a daily basis? If not, then I guess just get the full unlocks for the characters you use the most. I only have 8, with a 9th coming the second Revenant is released (one for every class, 4 of which are the other races other than Charr), which is why I guess this doesn’t bug me to the level it would people with that many characters.

RyuDragnier.9476:

19 characters!? O_o

I must ask, do you play with all of them on a daily basis? If not, then I guess just get the full unlocks for the characters you use the most. I only have 8, with a 9th coming the second Revenant is released (one for every class, 4 of which are the other races other than Charr), which is why I guess this doesn’t bug me to the level it would people with that many characters.

I have 12 characters and sometimes i swap between 2 or 3 a day if i get bored of one i swap to another. Unlike most in this thread though, i leveled them to 80 in PVE only and have at least 45 skill challenges done on all of them already.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

a lot of people didnt level their chrs by map complete.
wvw
scrolls
eotm
crafting

while one skill challenge is easy, 65 is not so much.

65, PLUS the points you need to unlock the subclass stuff.

So that equals between 25% and 50% of known Tyria. With 19 alts (all leveled in PvP), that is kind of a big deal for me. If I have to run my alt through Tyria and do skill challenges, I can live with that, but I really, really don’t want to do it 19 times over.

19 characters!? O_o

I must ask, do you play with all of them on a daily basis? If not, then I guess just get the full unlocks for the characters you use the most. I only have 8, with a 9th coming the second Revenant is released (one for every class, 4 of which are the other races other than Charr), which is why I guess this doesn’t bug me to the level it would people with that many characters.

No, I play my main most of the time, but I wanted a level 80 of each class. Now that I’m done with that, I am planning out my second set of “one of each class” because I like to create characters.

My alts I use for PvP class dailies and PvP achievements – no problem there – but I also gear them out in PvE gear and builds so I can use them in dungeons/fractals/living story achievements if/when I need to (and in each case, I need to be able to trait and skill up “for the occasion”, rather than running an allrounder PvE build).

Usually I just unlock them most important waypoints and that’s it. No, I don’t play them on a daily basis at all, but when I do, I do. So far, I haven’t had to spend hours and hours map-completing with them in order to have them PvE-ready

So, my question is this…

There are 202 skill challenges in old map completion (counting the 12 or 13 in WvW). Do the remaining Hero Challenges count toward anything (e.g., mastery), or is that a separate system with different unlocks? If not, will there be anything to do with those 137 points?

And a comment:

Assuming 65 challenges is all that anyone would need for unlocking purposes … it would take me less time to do 65 challenges than it previously took to do WvW map completion. Still, it would be “forcing/enticing” unlock completionists into PvE. What will probably happen (based on past performance) is that most people will have ground the challenges out, then the system will change.

IndigoSundown.5419:

So, my question is this…

There are 202 skill challenges in old map completion (counting the 12 or 13 in WvW). Do the remaining Hero Challenges count toward anything (e.g., mastery), or is that a separate system with different unlocks?

I would assume that the remaining unused hero points remain on that character until such time future elite specializations are released.

Just finished all four+ hours of the stream and I have to say up front:

THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING US INFORMATION ON THE NEW TRAIT AND SPECIALIZATION SYSTEM!!!! IMO this warrants an all caps shout because it strikes me as a sharp break from what you have done in the past and deserves to be acknowledged as a significant positive change. Positive behavior needs to be reinforced. Also, I believe (as presented) this is positive step for the game.

Thoughts on some of the main changes:
1. Three full trait lines is good.
2. Classifying all the skills and providing synergy between them and traits is good.
3. Fewer traits is good. I know some are going to disagree with this but I believe the reality has been for several years now that there are a lot of “junk” traits in the system and they needed to be culled and/or consolidated. Properly done you will no longer need the option to slot (for example) two adept traits (one in the adept, the other in the master) or two master traits (one in the master slot the other in a grandmaster slot) or choose a basic trait over a GM trait (which I’ve actually done at least once).
4. Proposed thief changes. I think having traits positively impact a fundamental class mechanic like initiative is important. And I don’t consider steal to be the only class mechanic the thief has, yes initiative only “replaces” cool downs – but frankly the glorified gap closer you see as the thief class mechanic is nothing special. Initiative boosting traits are the thief equivalent of the 20% cool down reduction other classes have available. I like playing the thief in a very mobile and aggressive way and every time in the past you’ve limited the ability to actively boost initiative regeneration or limited activate boosts to endurance regeneration it deadens the play a bit. I suspect the proposed change to the dodging and endurance regen traits will do the same again. In theory at least the dodge/endurance regen the change your are proposing does what you intend (rewards skilled play) but it will also take away a good part of what makes the thief fun for me personally (dynamic in combat movement and the ability to quickly disengage and re-engage). Maybe a change to the initiative regen rate will be enough to assuage my possible issues with not having initiative boosting traits, but I’m much less sanguine about changes to Expeditious Dodger and Feline Grace. BTW – Dam you for figuring out the blind on stealth trait is grandmaster. That trait plus condition removal on stealth are pretty invaluable for me at least.
5. You should take the opportunity this change is giving you to reinforce the DPS-Control-Support “trinity.” I’m not saying make it a religion but it should factor into at least some of the choices you have in each tier (at the very least for certain lines).
6. Fall damage reduction traits should all be Adept traits – there shouldn’t be any of them that are Master-level.
7. Disconnecting increasing dual primary and secondary attribute stats from the trait lines is good.
8. Doing away with assignable primary stats is not good. The problem as I see it is that swapping armor for loss of stats in certain areas is relatively impractical and/or becomes a nightmare when you consider ascended armor and gear. I run a fair number of hybrid builds where I use the stat boost from a trait line(s) to balance my gear choice. I have four characters with fully ascended gear and simply swapping out weapons and armor to adjust for the loss of say 300 power, precision, vitality or toughness isn’t really a viable option. I would suggest you give every character some assignable points (say 600) that must be assigned to at least two of the primary attributes – in other words go back to a system similar to the pre-launch system you had for assigning traits and attribute stats separately. I recognize this might not be a practical option, and if it is impractical or you dislike the idea for other reasons, then I recommend a flat boost to stats be available at the choice of a grandmaster level for each of the 4 main attributes. You might scale the boost for vitality and toughness based on the base health and armor of the class. as well (so for example, a Guard would still have the +300 vitality trait but the +toughness trait would only add +100 toughness). Adjust the stat boosts you plan to give to equipment down to compensate.
9. Not my thing but . . . I think you should add some means of keeping the WvW-only player base whole through this change. Perhaps allow badges of honor to be swapped for hero points? Or have certain WvW achievements (the reachable ones provide a one time boost in hero points to any character someone chooses to claim them for.

Ok that was a ton of information last night and I’m still trying to get through it all. Not sure where to put this feedback so I’ll stick it here, I guess.

1. How are racial skills being implemented in the new system?
2. How does the antitoxin heal skill come into the new system?
3. How does the new ranger trait Beastly Warden interact with wolf fear? Which takes precedence?
4. Many of the revive trait effects are being changed to the beginning of the revive rather than on successful revival. Why is Arcane Resurrection not following suit?
5. Elemental contingency always seemed weird to me, for a class that doesn’t want to get hit, why only get defense after you’ve been hit? I suggest to instead change the trait to proc on crit (or chance to proc on crit if it’s too strong), as it is in the crit effects heavy arcane line and makes a whole lot more sense as a class.
6. Ferocious winds is a useless trait. As is Zephyr’s speed. The former is a beyond stupid choice, nobody’s going to both need precision and already have healing power. If they need precision, they’ll have it, and if they have healing power, they aren’t gonna want precision. Zephyr’s speed is just way too little. Elementalists have tons of access to swiftness, which negates this skill thanks to the speed cap, and on the rare instance where you don’t have the speed you need, 10% (and only in air, too!) isn’t gonna cut it. Either add something else to these or replace them entirely.

So yeah, that’s what I can think of off the top of my head.

Why do rangers have two revive traits? I don’t think any other class has two. It’s utter waste. Get rid of one and replace it with something better.

Looking over the new system for acquiring traits, I feel like this will be less tedious overall (and less expensive!) than the current system. I’m excited about that. I’d much rather go do skill challenges in low level areas to get my quota than do the events and puzzles as it now stands.

I do think people that unlocked everything already should be somehow grandfathered in since that is a LOT of skill points and gold they’ve invested for these. But even if that isn’t possible, it should be easy enough to take out my alts a few at a time and gradually get enough skill challenges to unlock everything.

I personally leveled most of my alts to 80 in WvW and using Tomes from sPvP, so I definitely will need to get out in the world to finish up, but I like that better than the current system. And I’ve done SOME of the world on everyone, so I have a lot of skill challenges done already.

As for making us redo skill challenges we’ve already done, I have a very hard time seeing them do this. AFAIK, they’re not taking our current map completions away from us, so this shouldn’t be a concern at all and would just be totally bizarre if they made us do it all again.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

sorudo.9054:

if it ruins everything i will just leave the game, it will permanently show how much GW1 is superior.
if it does improve the game then i will first see in what way, do we still have as much freedom to change traits at any given time or is a point spent at times a point wasted.

I think they mentioned in there and respeccing will be just as easy.

just as easy and just as free is still a question that needs answering
they said that they are gonna make traits more rewarding before but in the end we need to pay even more for them, i really hope they are not gonna do this again with respeccing.

We have no idea if it will cost anything in addition to hero points.

I certainly wouldn’t rule it out

Anet are you trolling us?

One of the biggest complains about the trait system was that you have to do the unlocking/buying with each and every char. Now we have to do skill challenges with each and every char.

In your news you told us:

“The new, more streamlined unlock system is friendlier to new players and much less of a burden on players with multiple characters.”
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/

How exactly is this “less of a burden” when you have to do the unlocking with each and every char?

Shylock.4653:

Anet are you trolling us?

One of the biggest complains about the trait system was that you have to do the unlocking/buying with each and every char. Now we have to do skill challenges with each and every char.

In your news you told us:

“The new, more streamlined unlock system is friendlier to new players and much less of a burden on players with multiple characters.”
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/

How exactly is this “less of a burden” when you have to do the unlocking with each and every char?

i got to be honest here.
its way less work.
the old method was 360 skill points if you bought them
if you did the activities, very few of them was shorter than a skill point.

you always needed skill points for skills
it took 222-234 to unlock all your skills for a class, with 270ish available in the world
so basically you would level to 80, and need to do like 100 skill point challenges, probably getting 20 extra levels from random crap.

it actually takes less work now to unlock all your skills/traits, than it used to take just to unlock all your skills.

the main difference is eventually they started handing skill scrolls out like candy

While infinitely easier for alts to acquire, my problem here is going to be my established level 80s, like my engie, that has been one of my mains in this gamer since the beginning is going to essentially be rolled back and made useless until I’ve run her around PvE to get to the SP challenges. That’s frankly nonsense and there are tons pf people that leveled in WvW and PvP using tomes, etc that are also going to feel this in a bad way.

There is honestly no reason why toons that have full skill unlock currently and full trait unlock current cannot be grandfathered in to the new system far as i can tell. Instead they are going to take things away from players that have invested a lot of time into this game. This is a very bad move.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

While infinitely easier for alts to acquire, my problem here is going to be my established level 80s, like my engie, that has been one of my mains in this gamer since the beginning is going to essentially be rolled back and made useless until I’ve run her around PvE to get to the SP challenges. That’s frankly nonsense and there are tons pf people that leveled in WvW and PvP using tomes, etc that are also going to feel this in a bad way.

There is honestly no reason why toons that have full skill unlock currently and full trait unlock current cannot be grandfathered in to the new system far as i can tell. Instead they are going to take things away from players that have invested a lot of time into this game. This is a very bad move.

if your engineer was made early, how did you get the skill points for her skills?
tons of WvW? i seriously ask this, because skill point hunting was the fastest method for obtaining skill points until they put skill points in bags. you probably average 3-10 minutes per skill point, whereas leveling would generally take 30 min to an hour?

Phys: My engie leveled up really oddly to be honest. I spent A LOT of time in the 1-30 zones with my engie helping low level/new players with beginning content with her. Basically would run those maps offering help to lowbies with map opens and events and did a lot of crafting with her. Between those things I hit level 80 without even getting halfway through personal story and once she was level 80 i started running her in WvW a lot. She has barely opened most of Tyria so I don’t have a lot of the Sp challenges across the map.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

a lot of people didnt level their chrs by map complete.
wvw
scrolls
eotm
crafting

while one skill challenge is easy, 65 is not so much.

65, PLUS the points you need to unlock the subclass stuff.

So that equals between 25% and 50% of known Tyria. With 19 alts (all leveled in PvP), that is kind of a big deal for me. If I have to run my alt through Tyria and do skill challenges, I can live with that, but I really, really don’t want to do it 19 times over.

19 characters!? O_o

I must ask, do you play with all of them on a daily basis? If not, then I guess just get the full unlocks for the characters you use the most. I only have 8, with a 9th coming the second Revenant is released (one for every class, 4 of which are the other races other than Charr), which is why I guess this doesn’t bug me to the level it would people with that many characters.

The discussion point was that the new trait system is not alt friendly. If the answer is “don’t do it on all your alts” then that pretty much proves the point, does it not?

TooBz.3065:

The discussion point was that the new trait system is not alt friendly. If the answer is “don’t do it on all your alts” then that pretty much proves the point, does it not?

I seem to be taking the opposite route to managing all my 90s and upcoming alts:

Get it done now so it’s not a qq later.

We’ve been told what’s coming and how they intend to handle it. It’s still months of development time away. We can not say we’re caught with our pants down on this one.

Rauderi.8706:

TooBz.3065:

The discussion point was that the new trait system is not alt friendly. If the answer is “don’t do it on all your alts” then that pretty much proves the point, does it not?

I seem to be taking the opposite route to managing all my 90s and upcoming alts:

Get it done now so it’s not a qq later.

We’ve been told what’s coming and how they intend to handle it. It’s still months of development time away. We can not say we’re caught with our pants down on this one.

And while I agree, it also means I will have to take a break from WvW with my engie just to run her all over Tyria to try to get ahead of this horse. AND i’ll have to do the same on all of my other level 80s that have not map opened if I want to continue to play them as is. I think this is the problem I have with this at the moment. That those of us will HAVE to change what we play for the time being just so we aren’t in a bind once the change hits. Furthermore, only those of us actually paying attention right now will do this, but there are FAR more players out there that aren’t and they will get blindsided by this. THOSE are the players Anet needs to be wary of more than anything else.

The rage will be real. As will the fall out.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

And while I agree, it also means I will have to take a break from WvW with my engie just to run her all over Tyria to try to get ahead of this horse. AND i’ll have to do the same on all of my other level 80s that have not map opened if I want to continue to play them as is. I think this is the problem I have with this at the moment. That those of us will HAVE to change what we play for the time being just so we aren’t in a bind once the change hits. Furthermore, only those of us actually paying attention right now will do this, but there are FAR more players out there that aren’t and they will get blindsided by this. THOSE are the players Anet needs to be wary of more than anything else.

The rage will be real. As will the fall out.

This is also true. I feel bad for the WvW players that are going to have to revise their play to get all their options. A lot of my alts got big boosts off the previous daily system, so their actual exploration is kind of missing. It’s going to be some work for me to get it done.

My hope is that ANet can find a way to incentivize players to get a jump on it, like a small bonus after finishing a skill point challenge and announce it on the quest list the way they do WvW and PvP tournaments. In the least, make it worth a WvW player’s time to dip into PvE for those extra skill/hero points. WXP vials, temporary magic find buffs, badges of honor.. something.

PvE/alt lovers have a way to handle it. PvP gets to ignore it completely. WvW is due to get crippled, and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Rauderi.8706:

TooBz.3065:

The discussion point was that the new trait system is not alt friendly. If the answer is “don’t do it on all your alts” then that pretty much proves the point, does it not?

I seem to be taking the opposite route to managing all my 90s and upcoming alts:

Get it done now so it’s not a qq later.

We’ve been told what’s coming and how they intend to handle it. It’s still months of development time away. We can not say we’re caught with our pants down on this one.

I agree. I’ve been running my engineer though skill challenges. That doesn’t mean that it’s what I want to be doing though…

I think it would be far better if they gave a hero point for each WvW level … Or did something like the skill scrolls, where you get a hero point potion for each WvW level, so you can’t double up on alts. (using skill scrolls wouldn’t work because they’ve been handing those out like candy.)

TooBz.3065:

I think it would be far better if they gave a hero point for each WvW level … Or did something like the skill scrolls, where you get a hero point potion for each WvW level, so you can’t double up on alts. (using skill scrolls wouldn’t work because they’ve been handing those out like candy.)

I wouldn’t be so quick to talk yourself out of it. A hero point per 1 (or 2, or 5, pick a number for balance) WvW levels that is account wide would be a fantastic way to reward WvW players and bring reluctant PvE alt-makers into the WvW experience.

TooBz.3065:

Rauderi.8706:

TooBz.3065:

The discussion point was that the new trait system is not alt friendly. If the answer is “don’t do it on all your alts” then that pretty much proves the point, does it not?

I seem to be taking the opposite route to managing all my 90s and upcoming alts:

Get it done now so it’s not a qq later.

We’ve been told what’s coming and how they intend to handle it. It’s still months of development time away. We can not say we’re caught with our pants down on this one.

I agree. I’ve been running my engineer though skill challenges. That doesn’t mean that it’s what I want to be doing though…

I think it would be far better if they gave a hero point for each WvW level … Or did something like the skill scrolls, where you get a hero point potion for each WvW level, so you can’t double up on alts. (using skill scrolls wouldn’t work because they’ve been handing those out like candy.)

wont work with a limited skill point system.

• they could give teleporter scrolls for WvW
  that teleport you to a random skill point location.

• they could change the limit to a capped system, and give you points for WvW ranks

phys.7689:

its way less work.

Yes it is less work than the actual system. But the actual system has replaced a far better system in which you only had to spend a few gold pieces for the unlock. The actual system has caused literally thousands of complains in the forum. So we are going from a big mess to a smaller mess.

I wouldn’t mind if I had to do this with one char. But to do it with each and every char really sucks. Especially after we were told it would get better for people with many chars. I can’t see any improvement for players with multiple characters. You still have to do all unlocks for all chars.

Shylock.4653:

phys.7689:

its way less work.

Yes it is less work than the actual system. But the actual system has replaced a far better system in which you only had to spend a few gold pieces for the unlock. The actual system has caused literally thousands of complains in the forum. So we are going from a big mess to a smaller mess.

I wouldn’t mind if I had to do this with one char. But to do it with each and every char really sucks. Especially after we were told it would get better for people with many chars. I can’t see any improvement for players with multiple characters. You still have to do all unlocks for all chars.

thing is, its actually less work than just getting skills used to be.
so you could just think of the traits as being free.

before you get like 76 skill points from leveling, and you need 150 more to unlock all the rest of the skills(before here means under the first system)

now you get 400 hero points from leveling, and you need 60 to unlock the rest of the skills. AND traits

now, imagining racials, maybe tht 150 goes down to 100.

still less work for all skills/traits after the change.

the major difference is extra levels dont count, and no skill point scrolls.

but honestly, the excess skill point stuff that was going on was sort of defeating the purpose of char progression.

i think they could come up with something to appease older players, and possibly to help WvW players who are willing to spend more time in wvw than they would spend in pve,

but the system is not worse in terms of effort than what previously existed.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

a lot of people didnt level their chrs by map complete.
wvw
scrolls
eotm
crafting

while one skill challenge is easy, 65 is not so much.

65, PLUS the points you need to unlock the subclass stuff.

So that equals between 25% and 50% of known Tyria. With 19 alts (all leveled in PvP), that is kind of a big deal for me. If I have to run my alt through Tyria and do skill challenges, I can live with that, but I really, really don’t want to do it 19 times over.

yeah subclass is a seperate deal, but that was never gonna be like automatic. Under the first system, they charged us 25 skill points for a new heal.
5 new skills would likely have costed 150 skill points anyhow.

if you want to play an alt, you are probably going to have to play the alt.

phys.7689:

i got to be honest here.
its way less work.
the old method was 360 skill points if you bought them
if you did the activities, very few of them was shorter than a skill point.

you always needed skill points for skills
it took 222-234 to unlock all your skills for a class, with 270ish available in the world
so basically you would level to 80, and need to do like 100 skill point challenges, probably getting 20 extra levels from random crap.

it actually takes less work now to unlock all your skills/traits, than it used to take just to unlock all your skills.

the main difference is eventually they started handing skill scrolls out like candy

I am with Phys and Rauderi, overall. It’s not like we didn’t need skill points in the original game. I do think they really need to look at how this impacts WvW players before this goes live… and I kinda think that they will.

Yeah, I know. I’m as shocked as anyone else.

I’m not saying that I’m prepared to buy the expansion, but this is at least giving me pause. I am rethinking my stance on leaving the game entirely, and that’s pretty major.

I get that they can’t really grandfather characters into the new spec system (short of just unlocking everything for all existing characters) since traits don’t really exist in the same way, but I wonder if it would be possible for them to fix the problem via skills?

Just have all pre-existing characters keep whatever unlocked skills they have when the system rolls over, so that it frees up all of those leveling hero points just for use with specializations.

I’m not sure if this would be possible for them to code with the new skill wheel, or if characters having those excess hero points would be an issue for their design goals for some reason, but it’s the most organic solution I’ve been able to come up with so far.

phys.7689:

the major difference is extra levels dont count, and no skill point scrolls.

phys.7689:

i think they could come up with something to appease older players, and possibly to help WvW players who are willing to spend more time in wvw than they would spend in pve,

Not only for WvW-Players although for PvP-Players, otherwise this changes will divide the player-base even further into the different game-modes. WvW-Players are forced to play PvE to be able to play WvW. PvP-Players are excluded from any other game-mode unless they are willing to spend hours and hours in PvE.

radioAspen.6829:

I get that they can’t really grandfather characters into the new spec system (short of just unlocking everything for all existing characters) since traits don’t really exist in the same way, but I wonder if it would be possible for them to fix the problem via skills?

Just have all pre-existing characters keep whatever unlocked skills they have when the system rolls over, so that it frees up all of those leveling hero points just for use with specializations.

I’m not sure if this would be possible for them to code with the new skill wheel, or if characters having those excess hero points would be an issue for their design goals for some reason, but it’s the most organic solution I’ve been able to come up with so far.

the thing you arent really getting is, they are basically using skill points as the new horizontal progression system.
They cant give away any points without you earning them, because then when you go back and earn them, you would have too many points.

the reason they want to put a lock on it, is so that when new skills/specializations come out, you have to go and get points.

basically asking for them to give you skill points without doing skill challenges, would be like….
letting people with old charachters gain enough experience to automatically hit lv 100 till the cap catches up, when the cap is like lv 50 in another game. But only people who were 50 before the change would have the option.

Shylock.4653:

phys.7689:

the major difference is extra levels dont count, and no skill point scrolls.

phys.7689:

i think they could come up with something to appease older players, and possibly to help WvW players who are willing to spend more time in wvw than they would spend in pve,

Not only for WvW-Players although for PvP-Players, otherwise this changes will divide the player-base even further into the different game-modes. WvW-Players are forced to play PvE to be able to play WvW. PvP-Players are excluded from any other game-mode unless they are willing to spend hours and hours in PvE.

If you dont want to PVE, why go to PVE (for spvp crowd)

Anyhow, best solution is to give out teleport to skill point consumables. They had something with scarlet
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisted_Watchwork_Portal_Device

except it only goes to skill points.
give them out for gaining ranks in WvW, or an sPVP track.

you will still have to kill monsters/commune/may die, and may get some repeats, but ehh, i dont think that would be too much to ask.

phys.7689:

Shylock.4653:

phys.7689:

the major difference is extra levels dont count, and no skill point scrolls.

phys.7689:

i think they could come up with something to appease older players, and possibly to help WvW players who are willing to spend more time in wvw than they would spend in pve,

Not only for WvW-Players although for PvP-Players, otherwise this changes will divide the player-base even further into the different game-modes. WvW-Players are forced to play PvE to be able to play WvW. PvP-Players are excluded from any other game-mode unless they are willing to spend hours and hours in PvE.

If you dont want to PVE, why go to PVE (for spvp crowd)

Anyhow, best solution is to give out teleport to skill point consumables. They had something with scarlet
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisted_Watchwork_Portal_Device

except it only goes to skill points.
give them out for gaining ranks in WvW, or an sPVP track.

you will still have to kill monsters/commune/may die, and may get some repeats, but ehh, i dont think that would be too much to ask.

If they could make such a thing it should be fairly simple to prevent it from sending you to a completed one.

phys.7689:

radioAspen.6829:

I get that they can’t really grandfather characters into the new spec system (short of just unlocking everything for all existing characters) since traits don’t really exist in the same way, but I wonder if it would be possible for them to fix the problem via skills?

Just have all pre-existing characters keep whatever unlocked skills they have when the system rolls over, so that it frees up all of those leveling hero points just for use with specializations.

I’m not sure if this would be possible for them to code with the new skill wheel, or if characters having those excess hero points would be an issue for their design goals for some reason, but it’s the most organic solution I’ve been able to come up with so far.

the thing you arent really getting is, they are basically using skill points as the new horizontal progression system.
They cant give away any points without you earning them, because then when you go back and earn them, you would have too many points.

the reason they want to put a lock on it, is so that when new skills/specializations come out, you have to go and get points.

basically asking for them to give you skill points without doing skill challenges, would be like….
letting people with old charachters gain enough experience to automatically hit lv 100 till the cap catches up, when the cap is like lv 50 in another game. But only people who were 50 before the change would have the option.

I’m not sure that’s really the issue that you’re making it out to be? We know they want hero points to be “finite” in that there are no repeatable sources of them, but they don’t seem to want them to be limited such that you’re ever locked out of potential stuff by a point cap. Characters with a lot of skill challenges completed already have early access to elite specs and so forth. I’m not sure there’s really such a thing as “too many points” (at least I’m not seeing what kind of design issue it could possibly cause, but I spoke to that in my original post), but if they do want to avoid creating the huge point imbalance that would result from unlocking everything on pre-existing characters while also avoiding reversing character progress, then I feel something like my suggestion would create a minimal amount of fuss. But again, they may be fine with one of the two extreme circumstances, we don’t really know their design goals.

I’m also not sure it’s fair to look at this system, at least holistically, as the equivalent to a new level cap in other games. Outside of elite specs, it’s built out of things that characters already have, and setting that back is taking things away from established characters. Furthermore it doesn’t affect all characters evenly, it’s very dependent on arbitrary things like where and how you level, or whether or not you primarily play pve or wvw.

I mean it’s just a bit weird to think that we could have a situation where, say, a three year old WvW character will have to go invest hours and hours in pve content just to be back to where they were before the shift, while a two month old pve character with world completion but considerably less playtime can be fully skilled, traited, and have an elite spec on day one.

I mean if that’s what they want to do, then that’s what they want to do. But it just seems odd and unnecessary.

A small drop of positivity:

ANet said, that you get 400 hero points for getting to 80. You will need other 65 to get full unlocks. But is 400 not enough? Surely, you will not need every skill in the game to enjoy playing. For (completely theoretical) example, you look at healing skills. You need 1st and 2nd, yet you never use the others and here you save some points. You look at signets and you see that the final signet is something you never use. A point saved. You look at your class specific skill tree that you don’t even need. Many points saved. Then someday you decide you need some skill unlocked and you go do a skill challenge or two (or hopefully ANet releases another way to gain points by then). Specially if you have so many alts, that you use them for different activities, you won’t need to unlock everything.

The thing is, I don’t think the system is perfect, it still could be improved, but it is better than the one we have now.

Very nervous about this change. I only spvp and wvw.

radioAspen.6829:

phys.7689:

radioAspen.6829:

I get that they can’t really grandfather characters into the new spec system (short of just unlocking everything for all existing characters) since traits don’t really exist in the same way, but I wonder if it would be possible for them to fix the problem via skills?

Just have all pre-existing characters keep whatever unlocked skills they have when the system rolls over, so that it frees up all of those leveling hero points just for use with specializations.

I’m not sure if this would be possible for them to code with the new skill wheel, or if characters having those excess hero points would be an issue for their design goals for some reason, but it’s the most organic solution I’ve been able to come up with so far.

the thing you arent really getting is, they are basically using skill points as the new horizontal progression system.
They cant give away any points without you earning them, because then when you go back and earn them, you would have too many points.

the reason they want to put a lock on it, is so that when new skills/specializations come out, you have to go and get points.

basically asking for them to give you skill points without doing skill challenges, would be like….
letting people with old charachters gain enough experience to automatically hit lv 100 till the cap catches up, when the cap is like lv 50 in another game. But only people who were 50 before the change would have the option.

I’m not sure that’s really the issue that you’re making it out to be? We know they want hero points to be “finite” in that there are no repeatable sources of them, but they don’t seem to want them to be limited such that you’re ever locked out of potential stuff by a point cap. Characters with a lot of skill challenges completed already have early access to elite specs and so forth. I’m not sure there’s really such a thing as “too many points” (at least I’m not seeing what kind of design issue it could possibly cause, but I spoke to that in my original post), but if they do want to avoid creating the huge point imbalance that would result from unlocking everything on pre-existing characters while also avoiding reversing character progress, then I feel something like my suggestion would create a minimal amount of fuss. But again, they may be fine with one of the two extreme circumstances, we don’t really know their design goals.

I’m also not sure it’s fair to look at this system, at least holistically, as the equivalent to a new level cap in other games. Outside of elite specs, it’s built out of things that characters already have, and setting that back is taking things away from established characters. Furthermore it doesn’t affect all characters evenly, it’s very dependent on arbitrary things like where and how you level, or whether or not you primarily play pve or wvw.

I mean it’s just a bit weird to think that we could have a situation where, say, a three year old WvW character will have to go invest hours and hours in pve content just to be back to where they were before the shift, while a two month old pve character with world completion but considerably less playtime can be fully skilled, traited, and have an elite spec on day one.

I mean if that’s what they want to do, then that’s what they want to do. But it just seems odd and unnecessary.

im not really talking about the right or wrong of it, im just explaining how the system is set up to work.

Basically they have a soft cap of Hero Points.
the most you can get is 400 from leveling and than all the skill challenges currently in the world
thats it.
now, that amount is close to what you need to get all the core spec, and the new elite spec.

in the future, they will add new specs, and more means of getting hero points, that will be how you unlock the new specs.

Now, if they give people hero points, without them actually doing the skill challenges, then once they do the challenges they will have more hero points than should be possible. Then when new spec comes out, they wont have to do any of the new hero point content in order to unlock the spec.

Only charachters who were givien free hero points would have this advantage.

that is why, if they cant just give people points, they have to unlock the challenges, they can make it easier to unlock them, but every hero point needs to be accounted for, for the system to work.

The other thing they could do, is change the whole system.

phys.7689:

but every hero point needs to be accounted for, for the system to work.

I do know what you’re saying, I’m just not sure that this part is actually true. There are already way more potential hero points in the world than any one character needs, and unless their longterm plan is for them to be considerably more limited with future elite specs, I don’t really see what the problem of having some imbalances is, aside from it just being sloppy.

radioAspen.6829:

phys.7689:

but every hero point needs to be accounted for, for the system to work.

I do know what you’re saying, I’m just not sure that this part is actually true. There are already way more potential hero points in the world than any one character needs, and unless their longterm plan is for them to be considerably more limited with future elite specs, I don’t really see what the problem of having some imbalances is, aside from it just being sloppy.

I can see there being a few extra points spread around, at least. It’d be really crass to ask a player to do 100% completion plus WvW just to get all their abilities. I think someone pointed out that the 65 points required to fill out the entire basic core was only roughly 1/4 of the skill points on the map. I imagine the elite spec will take another chunk to finish, up to 100 perhaps. But if each elite requires such a huge number, they’d run out of map before they could add enough hero challenges. Unfortunately, I don’t have the math for it laid out.

As a WvW solution, I can get behind having an item that helps move a player around a map. Maybe not “to any random skill point in the world,” but more a random incomplete hero challenge in the zone they’re in. Or even just to the nearest waypoint to that hero challenge (because, honestly, WvW is full of long walks anyway :P). And the in-zone limitation prevents the odd quirk of dumping a hand-me-down alt 50 into the middle of Frostgorge Sound.

radioAspen.6829:

phys.7689:

but every hero point needs to be accounted for, for the system to work.

I do know what you’re saying, I’m just not sure that this part is actually true. There are already way more potential hero points in the world than any one character needs, and unless their longterm plan is for them to be considerably more limited with future elite specs, I don’t really see what the problem of having some imbalances is, aside from it just being sloppy.

no there isnt.
465 is the estimate for getting all your CORE specializations/skills

if the elite one takes the same amount you will need about 95 for the spec/skills that puts you at 155/209 or something
now likely there will be some unlock for racials/toxin spray that will probably use most of the rest of the points (if elite spec isnt more expensive)

regardless even if you only need 155/200 whatever you still wont have enough to unlock the whole next spec when it comes out, until you do the new content.

After reading some posts in this thread, I’m also concerned for WvW. sPvP gets things unlocked by default, and PvE is littered with easy skill point challenges, so those two seem fine. But WvW has a fairly limited availability of skill points, and I suspect things like daily challenges were an important source of the skill points you’d need to bridge the gap between levelling to 80 and unlocking all your utilities & non-racial elites. With skill point scrolls now being removed, players might be out a key source of skill / hero points.

I hope they manage to implement some sort of hero point reward for WvW participants, that’s closely tied to actual WvW participation and can’t be too easily dipped into by PvE-only players.

Admittedly I forgot about racial skills. But given this and the way that we currently understand Revenants to work, I’m honestly expecting them to just remove them :<

phys.7689:

radioAspen.6829:

phys.7689:

but every hero point needs to be accounted for, for the system to work.

I do know what you’re saying, I’m just not sure that this part is actually true. There are already way more potential hero points in the world than any one character needs, and unless their longterm plan is for them to be considerably more limited with future elite specs, I don’t really see what the problem of having some imbalances is, aside from it just being sloppy.

no there isnt.
465 is the estimate for getting all your CORE specializations/skills

if the elite one takes the same amount you will need about 95 for the spec/skills that puts you at 155/209 or something
now likely there will be some unlock for racials/toxin spray that will probably use most of the rest of the points (if elite spec isnt more expensive)

regardless even if you only need 155/200 whatever you still wont have enough to unlock the whole next spec when it comes out, until you do the new content.

Did they mention how many new zones, skill challenges, etc they were adding in the expansion? Because odds are there’s going to be a lot to help with the numbers.

Yeah, I wish we knew exactly how many new zones we’re getting and how big they’re going to be. When the game launched there was what? 22 large zones to explore?

I hope there’s at least half that many in the expansion.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Yeah, I wish we knew exactly how many new zones we’re getting and how big they’re going to be. When the game launched there was what? 22 large zones to explore?

I hope there’s at least half that many in the expansion.

Haha, prepare to be Super disappointed on that level.

I will say for myself that if they pull off traits and character development well, there is a lot of content that I could enjoy… Right now its too boring.

RyuDragnier.9476:

phys.7689:

radioAspen.6829:

phys.7689:

but every hero point needs to be accounted for, for the system to work.

I do know what you’re saying, I’m just not sure that this part is actually true. There are already way more potential hero points in the world than any one character needs, and unless their longterm plan is for them to be considerably more limited with future elite specs, I don’t really see what the problem of having some imbalances is, aside from it just being sloppy.

no there isnt.
465 is the estimate for getting all your CORE specializations/skills

if the elite one takes the same amount you will need about 95 for the spec/skills that puts you at 155/209 or something
now likely there will be some unlock for racials/toxin spray that will probably use most of the rest of the points (if elite spec isnt more expensive)

regardless even if you only need 155/200 whatever you still wont have enough to unlock the whole next spec when it comes out, until you do the new content.

Did they mention how many new zones, skill challenges, etc they were adding in the expansion? Because odds are there’s going to be a lot to help with the numbers.

i mean post HOT specializations. All indications suggest that someone with all current points will be able to unlock the whole new line, or really close to it.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Yeah, I wish we knew exactly how many new zones we’re getting and how big they’re going to be. When the game launched there was what? 22 large zones to explore?

I hope there’s at least half that many in the expansion.

My guess is 3 new zones.

Colin said they dont really want a very big world.