Guild Wars 2

Step 1: Remove unnecessary Upgrade Types like Crests, Talismans, Signets or Medaillons

Step 2 Make all remaining Upgrade Types completely unique and accountbound unlocks that need to be earned and unlocked just ONLY once and can then be used by the player infinitely (see GW1/2 PvP model, where everythign is acokittenbound and needs to be unlocked and is from that point on infinetely useable for you, without that you need to worry about having to rebuy something again if you want to change your build)

Step 3 Turn the remaining Upgrades (Sigils, Runes, Gemstones) into build defining mechanics, where every Upgrade Type is responsible for something different:
- Sigils = Affect Combat/Class Mechanics = On Weapon Swap, Dodging, Blocking, Healing, On Skill Activations, When Attacking, When receiving Damage, When using Class Skills (like Steal, like Shrouds ect.)
- Runes = Affect Traits and alterate/empower them or add new effects to them
- Gemstones = Affect Attributes. Give Attributes additional secondary effects

Step 4 Give all three Upgrades a complete Quality Set that goes from Common to Legendary.

Common = Level Requirement from 1 to 15
Uncommon = Level Requirement from 16 to 35
Rare = Level Requirement from 36 to 55
Exotic = Level Requirement from 56 to 80
Ascended = Level Requirement 80
Legendary = Level Requirement 80
- Sigils add unique Skill Skins
- Runes add unique Mastery Unlocks when you use a complete Rune Set
- Gemstones add unique Finishing Moves

*Change to Rune Sets: *
With Runes becoming accountbound upgrades, the Rune Set System needs to be changed. Instead of having to get together 6 pieces of the same rune, the chosen Rune you want to use has to be empowered now up to six times to unlock its potential and so more oftenly you emporer a Rune, so more Rune Slots will fill your chosen Rune up in the Equipment Screen of your stuff you wear.

Each Quality Set is accountbound and needs to be unlocked then step by step by the player and is infinetely useable for the player, once unlocked for the account.

Step 5 Remove useless/unneccessary Upgrades, from the Game and change, all those, that make sense into Masteries, or merge them into other Sigils/Runes/gemstones that make sense to reduce this way the total amount of them to make balancing in the end easier.

Bext example:
All those useless Kill Monster Type Sigils, that are totally useless and would be better when turned into Masteries to give players which earned those an overall kind of “Character Progression Reward” for killing enough of Monster Type X, because its just freaking logical, that one should become more expertised and effective over time in killing a certain monster species, so more of them you kill.
It is unlogical to be just better at killing monster species X, only because you use a certain sigil at that moment.

Step 6 Implement if neccessary a new “Talent System” to improve the overall Character Development System, if reallocating all the upgrades should lead to too much Masteries, then change all those passive stuff into “Talents” and let us players change our earned Skill Points into Talent Points, with that we can unlock those passives. – look at this point as an Alternative Plan B if Step 5 means too much effort/work.
However, its just important that the amount of Sigils/Runes just gets reduced a bit, and if Character Development can be improved altogether with this move in one go, then this would be good for the game

Active Effects and Passive Effects should get splitted more by splitting these mechanics between Talents (Passives) and Traits/Upgrades (Actives)

If Anet could do these 5 to 6 Steps, that would improve the whole game in my opinion sooo much and would make in the end adding a build Save System also ALOT easier, because so easier the Upgrade System is and when Actives and Passives would get splitted better between two systems (Talents + Traits/Upgrades), so more easier and effective can handle a build save system all the required mechanics to save and change your builds for you when the infos that need to get saved and handled get reduced for that system to the most neccessary minimum.

Something that can be in my opinion only achieved, if the amount of upgrade types gets reduced and changed all to an accountbound mechanic, because of a build saver would have to handle also unneccessary problems like soulbound/accountbound differences.
This would make things only unneccessary complicated, when there is an easy way to make all things more handy and comfortable for a build saver, when all mechanics share a same main system that is called – everything is accountbound for the Build Saver.

While I like the idea of unlocking runes in a way similar to unlocking skins… Anet would lose a gold sink. They would have to make several changes to leveling rewards and crafting, too. I’m not sure how significant those changes would be, but they may be do-able. It would eliminate a lot of inventory managment and the ongoing fight to make lesser runes/sigils vendor junk.

I don’t think it’s a great idea to offer “talent” boosts for killing 1000 monsters of type X. This would be a power creep and not a horizontal progression. Also, it would favor long-established accounts and leave new accounts far behind a grind-climb. It would also give elitism a boost for grouping: “must have 50k AP, max. masteries, and full talents!” (1/2 j/k)

You can’t compare active players, which play this game for now 4+ years with any new player who isn’t as far progressed in this game and also will never be in the same situation as like a 4 year old veteran player, unless that veteran decides to become from now to tomorrow suddenly for 4 years inactive, so that the noob has actually a chance to catch up with the veteran to become equal with him.
That’s like comparing apples with oranges.

ANet is (and was always) in the position, that if they remove a gold sink, then they can add into the game at any time they want in theory x new gold sinks into the game as replacement for the removed ones.

If Anet should decide between Gold Sink and Fun/Game Comfort, then I definetely believe, that going for Fun/Game Comfort is ALWAYS the better decision for a game, when the Gold Sink is anyways always replaceable.

Changing Upgrades into a complete accountbound system will not only enable to implement alot easier a Build Saver System.
It will remove also like you said tons of uncomfort in this game from idiotic inventory management, that could be alot more comfortable and easier for the Players, than it is since release of the game.

It would solve as well like you mentioned the whole tragedy around the obnoxious Inventory Junk from garbage you have no need for and get spammed to death with in this game since day one >.<, because you would have under my proposed system the confort of having to unlock every sigil/rune JUST ONLY ONCE – and from that point on you can use them as much as you want, change builds with alot more freedom, without having to waste time/gold anymore on renewing your lost upgrades, only because you wanted to change something on your build (or getting forced into PvP if you want to test something out without any losses, because there we actually have what I propose should be made here for the whole game – there you have your upgrades in an accountbound matter, where you can exchange everything out whenever you want, without having to rebuy/recreate everything again everytime you do change something on your build.

And I’m so sick of it, that we don’t have the same confort that exists in PvP as well in PvE and WvW!!
The same comfort, that also already existed back in GW1’s PvP.

If Anet would reduce some of the unneccessary Upgrade Garbage finally to the most minimum needed, that is just only Sigils, Runes and Gemstones – by removing all the other useless junk types that no butt in this game uses – EVER at endgame, then this would help also in making the game more overviewable, especially when they would move finally certain stuff from these over into Talents and splitt Passives and Actives more up.

Talents aren’t there to add more Elitism. The thought behind it is, that everybody has talents – abilities that are there passively always, based upon your chosen class, based upon your chosen race, based upon you decisions in your story, based upon what you do in Tyria, based upon your experiences you make in the game.

Talents should be just the counterpart of Traits.
Where Traits change all kinds of various active effects on your Skills and your Combat Behaviour, a Talent should be there to define all the various passive effects of your character, which you progress as you play the game, similar like Masteries, just with the difference, that Masteries unlock for you just gameplay mechanics for specific maps in the game and let your character progress that way in those maps/regions.

It is a natural progress of a talent, that a character will become more efficient in defeating a specific monster species, so more of them you kill over time.
That is nothing that a Trait or an Equipment Upgrade like a Sigil should decide between characters.

It’s part of Character Progression as a character’s talent that you’ve become good at defeating monster type X, because you killed 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000 of them ect and became more experienced with dealing with it.

The game has already way too much Sigils and Runes.
It would be good for the game to remove unneccessary things like the species kill sigils out of the game and turn them into permanent passives as Talents, that are part of your character progression.

Thats not power creep, thats just logical character progression and a character progresses into both ways..horizontal and vertical!!!

Also killing monsters in this game (unless we speak of giants) is no grind, its the most naturall thing you do all the time while playing the game, without thinking about it, how many of them you killed a day…

You also forget, that my suggestion is a system rework – this means also EVERYONE WOULD START AT 0, once those talents would be there.