What's wrong with Traits?
No need to yell. Before April 2014, Traits were free. Now none are free. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
They weren’t exactly free. You had to purchase a Trait book.
But, the acquisition of Traits was much different. Basically, you just bought some books to open your Trait lines.
Now, you can either do content to acquire traits, free of charge…or purchase them with Gold and Skill Points.
Some players don’t care for the way this was implemented, and thus all the ‘kittening’.
Welcome to Tyria, and happy adventuring!
Since they made that change, new players without access to free scrolls can’t experiment with builds at all. Leveling to 80 doesn’t give you enough skill points to unlock all utilities already, and my alts end up stuck with 0 traits for a while. The update killed the fun of leveling through various process, and you also have to keep in mind you’ll need some spare skill points while leveling. The fun part is, this change was implemented for new players, and they are the first to suffer from it since they can’t unlock all traits and end up buying bad ones and being stuck. It would be fine if the requirements were easily doable, but most traits are unlocked after bugged events/ obscure world events no one ever do/ underpve like eotm.
If you’re on EU and need help to get into dungeons, pm me.
Trait unlocking before used to be slightly broken in that you had to pay for a book (which really wasn’t that expensive). Now they are just completely broken (have to pay huge amounts of gold plus skill points to unlock, or do pointless things to unlock) and players have no desire to do this. Because of this, many alt go without traits and therefore go unplayed.
The requirements to unlock the majority of Traits are insane. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why this was done.
Hey guildie, I recognized your name so I thought that I would pitch in my comment!
As Sir Egil and Inculpatus mentioned, most traits used to be unlocked on all characters and as a result, creating builds for characters was very flexible. After a massive “update” in April, this was no longer the case. All traits are now locked behind tedious tasks or expensive skill books, thus making character progress less enjoyable to those who experienced GW2 back when it was readily available. There is much controversy/anger towards this sudden and unwanted change from a sizeable portion the veteran players. There is a discussion thread started by an ANet dev about the subject.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/first
Furthermore this feedback page went vastly ignored for over five months, generating more discontent over the topic, so at the moment it is a touchy subject for some. Personally, I am one of the many players that is somewhat turned-off by how the traits system was (mis)handled.
To newer players, like yourself, the “norm” is that traits are locked and must be earned. To veteran players, this is a chore that was added with the unfortunate result of great inconvenience.
Regardless, if you ever need assistance with how traits work or are unlocked, someone in the guild (or anyone in game) may be able to help you with that. Happy adventuring!
Stormbluff Isle – Baka Royale [Baka]
They did it in a really bad attempt to cater to some suggestions in one of those CDI threads were players mentioned that it’d be cool to gain new skills by “capturing” them from a boss in the world, similar to how elite skills were done in GW1.
For some reason, they thought it’d be a good idea to just do this to existing traits instead, while using it as a way for another goldsink (because hey why not) for players who don’t wish to go exploring and killing whatever it is a trait needs doing to be unlocked.
To more fully explain before the change traits were unlocked by tier, so you would buy an “adept trait guide” from your trainer and it would unlock all traits within the adept tier. So to unlock all traits for your character you merely had to purchase three books for a grand total of about 3gold.
Now traits are unlocked on a case by case basis, either requiring something close to PvE world completion or something on the order of 300+ gold and skill points to unlock all traits.
Many people (myself included) feel this very steep cost to unlock all traits discourages build experimentation (why try out a new trait setup if it’s going to require me to either go do three zone completions +x,y,&z events or 20gold & skill points?) or even discourages new players from bothering to use traits at all given they’d much rather be spending their money and skill points on gear and skills.
There’s a number of reasons players from pre-patch are ….annoyed.
1. As mentioned previously you unlocked traits earlier -lvls 11, 40 and 60 as opposed to lvl 30, 60 and 80 currently (yes you could try out that grandmaster trait a full 20 levels earlier at one point).
2.Acquiring ALL the major traits at a particular level (master, adept and grandmaster) for ALL traitlines used to be as simple as buying a tome from your profession tutor for 10s, 1g and 2g (I think) respectively. That’s under 4g and less than 15s to unlock EVERY SINGLE TRAIT to experiment and play with. This new system has a whopping 43g and 360 skill points requirement for players to achieve the same thing. That’s more than ten times the cost in gold and infinity times the cost in skill points…because they weren’t required in the first place.
4. Tied to 3 with respect to time. Previously acquiring traits took about as much time as it takes to run to your nearest trainer an click a button. Now? Dear Lord…dungeon story mode completion (which tend to be the longest btw), meta event completions (and thanks to megaserver it means you either get lucky or sit for hours in the area waiting for them to happen while hoping there are enough players to complete it…..and of course hoping that it isn’t bugged), jumping puzzle completion (quite a few people aren’t very good at gw2’s jumping puzzles-whereas before this wasn’t a barrier for you experimenting with your class, now you’re punished for it), friggin map completion <-loathed by a great many people…..I don’t even want to begin to consider the massive increase in time needed to achieve the same state trait-wise (15s pre-patch, remember).
5. Also tied to number 4 with respect to dungeon story completion, jumping puzzles and map completion is the new requirement to do crap you really have no interest in doing. This is what happened in that regard: pre-patch; ‘oh you don’t like to do that content? no biggie-it won’t affect your character at all and you won’t be punished for it’. Post-patch: ‘oh you don’t like that content….well…screw you-do it or pay out the kitten it doesn’t matter what you think’
6. Not tied to the new mechanics per se, but it was a change that NOBODY ever complained about. There was not a single person who complained the traits were to hard/easy to get and the way we acquire them needed to be changed so players were like ‘WTF is this? Nobody asked for this-we asked for free respecs or templates! This is bullkitten!’
7. The company’s response. Recently they made a bullkitten move to lock out the ability to specify exactly how many gems you wanted to purchase via gold-corporate middle finger. That decision was reversed in record time-in the heat of the moment (been displeased with the game for a long time and just recently decided to try it again only to be met with that fiasco) I had uninstalled the game..and like within hours or maybe the next day I while browsing gamesites I see articles that ANet complied with player disgust regarding the gemstore. Yet the 7month old thread of people expressing utter disgust about this new trait system is ignored…this does give a certain impression-and it’s not a flattering one.
8. The changes and rationale given hint at either incompetence or short-sightedness or some funky thinking mere mortals cannot hope to comprehend. ‘We want to give players more freedom and incentive to try out traits….by limiting their freedom and incentives to acquire said traits’. Whaaaat?
If there are more then they slipped me.
When free speech ends, tyranny begins.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.
Compared to the old way of unlocking traits, the NPE way is kitten-ed.
1) It’s basically a gold sink. It used to cost 3.10 gold to unlock all your traits. Now it costs 43 gold + 360 skill points.
2) It discourages experimentation and encourages meta building. After all if it’s going to cost you gold and sp’s then a person will seek the most bang for their buck, ie, unlocking only the traits that are the current meta.
I have an NPE alt at 100% map complete, and 70% trait complete, I refuse to pay the gold to get the other traits unless it helps make a very good build, of which there seem to be few.
I see all your points, but for me, I have an excess of skill points, and quite a bit of silver. I’ve also found several traits unintentionally, and this is my first char, not even lvl 80. I’ll admit, that what I’m doing to lvl most people don’t do (mapping) which accounts for my excessive skill points (I just spent like 50 the other night leveling up random skills). I suppose I sympathize, but I don’t mind the whole, “Finding the trait” thing to be too bad.
Anyway thanks for all your insight people.
As everyone has said, when you create a new character you want to play around with that character, experience styles of play, try out different builds, find out what a new class is like. Instead you are stuck with the chore of unlocking a massive bundle of traits and are left with a half-character at level 80, with no idea how to put any traits together to form a build except the mismatched dozen you unlocked as you leveled up.
Not only are the traits individually locked now, but acquisition of trait points and tier unlocks were severely pushed back. You used to unlock the tiers at 11, 40 and 60. Now they unlock at 30, 60, and 80. You also used to get 1 point at every level and 5 points would unlock the next skill. Now 5 points have been condensed into 1 point, but you only unlock 1 every SIX levels. So the game feels a LOT slower/boring now because of the trait system.
I like the new trait system. My only complaint is that some of the events needed to unlock the traits are constantly bugged, forcing you to have to purchase them if you don’t want to wait for a server reset and then make a mad dash to the map to hopefully complete the event before it bugs again.
One issue is that an adapt trait, one you could use at level 30, could have the unlock be in a level 50 area. Another, and the one I hate the most, is that the way you unlock the traits has absolutely nothing to do with the traits. They were all picked seemingly at random.
The problem with the new trait system is 2 fold.
1. Unlocking them via game achievements (eg. map completion, event completion/killing champs, completing dungeons, etc.) in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is how it was done. You don’t unlock them through a natural way but instead you have to seek out the ways to unlock them. But that is just a small inconvenience. Then there is the fact that some are locked behind WvW. I enjoy WvW but I know some don’t. Not only that but the way to get these traits in WvW is by doing PvE content in WvW. However, the biggest fail with this new system is the fact you have 1 tier traits locked behind lvl 60+ and 70+ content which is a level when you should be unlocking your 2nd and 3rd tier traits.
2. Alternatively to completing specific content, you can buy them. First is the price with gold. This is for new players right? Not well established 80s? This gold sink is sinking gold from the wrong crowed. The only way I see this sinking gold from the right crowed is if the only people likely to spend the gold is someone who already has at least one lvl 80 and is leveling an alt. Then there is the skill point cost. A foolish cost that slaps the NPE in the face. New players leveling new characters should be spending the skill points on the very thing the skill points were designed for…Skills.
The solution is no simple task.
Make unlocking them intuitive to a natural playing path.
As it currently is, let’s say that I want to unlock ‘Commanding Voice’ on my ranger. It’s trait #5 for Beast Mastery which requires me to defeat the Champ Ice Wurm in Lornar’s Pass. I’m pretty sure that, regardless of profession, trait 5 for trait line 5 is unlocked this way.
Where this goes right. You first get to invest trait points at 31 and Lornar’s Pass is a 25 to 40 map. So the trait tier lines up with map level.
Where this goes wrong. From what I can tell there are multiple stories. You have personal stories which are different depending on the race you choose, which order, and various choices along the way. Then you have the story of Destiny’s Edge getting back together. This incorporates the dungeons. Then you have the map events for each race which seems to tell the story of the battle between the particular race and that race’s enemy (eg. Humans vs Centaur).
So when it comes to unlocking traits, the where and how should line up. If you get it by completing an event in Orr, well every race makes their way to Orr and so all professions, regardless of race, should unlock a particular trait off that particular event. However, Modniir is an event champ that unlocks a trait for each profession regardless of race yet (I’m not all that familiar with this story chain) Modniir is the final event regarding the Human’s fight against the Centaurs. So why should all the other races have to come here to unlock a trait? Shouldn’t they have their own equivalent event and equivalent champ? Thus, this should be one of those cases where there is more than one way, and the way that the spy glass indicates to you depends on the race you chose.
Similar for the orders. If they reward players with traits for following the personal story (including completing maps that the story sends you to, completing events on said maps, and defeating champs on said maps, etc.) then the traits you would get for completing one order’s story arc, you would get regardless of which arc you choose.
The idea is for the traits to be achieved through a natural order of progression.
I like the new trait system. My only complaint is that some of the events needed to unlock the traits are constantly bugged, forcing you to have to purchase them if you don’t want to wait for a server reset and then make a mad dash to the map to hopefully complete the event before it bugs again.
As far as I know only one event is bugged which is: “Defeat the Branded Devourer Queen”. That event is stuck on NA and EU megaservers. I unlocked all but that trait and 2 map completions (I’m lazy) on EU megaservers, they might work on NA servers as well, but I didn’t unlock that many traits when I was still there.
I’m not too keen to do all of this with my 2 (+1 who’s still not created) other characters again though.
I see all your points, but for me, I have an excess of skill points, and quite a bit of silver. I’ve also found several traits unintentionally, and this is my first char, not even lvl 80. I’ll admit, that what I’m doing to lvl most people don’t do (mapping) which accounts for my excessive skill points (I just spent like 50 the other night leveling up random skills). I suppose I sympathize, but I don’t mind the whole, “Finding the trait” thing to be too bad.
Anyway thanks for all your insight people.
well, keep us posted, when you get all your traits. how you feel about getting them as you progress
The requirements to unlock the majority of Traits are insane. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why this was done.
Almost all the requirements to unlock traits are perfectly reasonable (some of them were pretty ridiculous early on, but they patched that quickly) and in zones about the level you gain access to that tier of traits.
A couple are bugged, but that’s a long-term issue that has nothing to do with traits.
The reason many are mad is because the trait system didn’t need overhauling. In fact, if GW2 went back to what it was at launch, I think many would be happy.
If the devs are going to make changes; make smart changes. Change things that are broken. Spending umpteen man hours just to make things worse and stating you made changes are what get folks upset.
Do we need new skins for vendor trash? Glob of goop, spikes, and such? How many man hours went into that? ::shrug::
BTW I know most of the dev team have changed since launch. Things seem to be heading in a good direction. I like Silverwastes and this chapter of Living Story was great. Hopefully they can change traits back, and maybe the leveling up experience as well.
I see all your points, but for me, I have an excess of skill points, and quite a bit of silver. I’ve also found several traits unintentionally, and this is my first char, not even lvl 80. I’ll admit, that what I’m doing to lvl most people don’t do (mapping) which accounts for my excessive skill points (I just spent like 50 the other night leveling up random skills). I suppose I sympathize, but I don’t mind the whole, “Finding the trait” thing to be too bad.
Anyway thanks for all your insight people.
well, keep us posted, when you get all your traits. how you feel about getting them as you progress
And keep us further posted when you have done this on 3 or more toons.
~~On Blackgate since Beta~~
80s: Necro x2, Ranger, Warr, Guardian x2, Ele x2, Mes, Thief
80s: Necro x2, Ranger, Warr, Guardian x2, Ele x2, Mes, Thief
I like the new trait system. My only complaint is that some of the events needed to unlock the traits are constantly bugged, forcing you to have to purchase them if you don’t want to wait for a server reset and then make a mad dash to the map to hopefully complete the event before it bugs again.
As far as I know only one event is bugged which is: “Defeat the Branded Devourer Queen”. That event is stuck on NA and EU megaservers. I unlocked all but that trait and 2 map completions (I’m lazy) on EU megaservers, they might work on NA servers as well, but I didn’t unlock that many traits when I was still there.
I’m not too keen to do all of this with my 2 (+1 who’s still not created) other characters again though.
There is also the Dredge commissar and Foulbear Kraal. Both break frequently and have been breaking long before the trait changes. There was no reason to add things to broken event chains without fixing them first.
The unlock for defeating the Risen High Wizard in cursed shore is also a bit buggy. The defend event is supposed to work for the unlock too but only there are enough people to scale it up so the wizard spawns.
The event to start the temple of melandru event also breaks.
In addition to the already mentioned:
Originally, you got one trait point (using current style: 5 old trait points = 1 current trait point) at lvl 15 and then every 5 levels until 80. Now, you get your first trait point at level 30, and every 6 levels until lvl 66, then 2 trait points every 6 levels. Meaning you get your trait points a lot later in the leveling process. This makes leveling less fun, and makes it a lot harder to try out different builds and playstyles until you’re actually level 80.
Also, the level at which traits unlocked has been moved back. Originally, you unlocked Adept at level 11 (well, 15), Master at lvl 40, and Grandmaster at lvl 60. Now, it’s Adept at 30, Master at 60, and Grandmaster not until 80. Which, again, reduces or removes the ability to access important parts of builds until you have finished leveling.
They did it in a really bad attempt to cater to some suggestions in one of those CDI threads were players mentioned that it’d be cool to gain new skills by “capturing” them from a boss in the world, similar to how elite skills were done in GW1.
For some reason, they thought it’d be a good idea to just do this to existing traits instead, while using it as a way for another goldsink (because hey why not) for players who don’t wish to go exploring and killing whatever it is a trait needs doing to be unlocked.
quote for truth
There is also the Dredge commissar and Foulbear Kraal. Both break frequently and have been breaking long before the trait changes. There was no reason to add things to broken event chains without fixing them first.
The unlock for defeating the Risen High Wizard in cursed shore is also a bit buggy. The defend event is supposed to work for the unlock too but only there are enough people to scale it up so the wizard spawns.
The event to start the temple of melandru event also breaks.
Right, I know that Foulbear and Dredge are often bugged, forgot about them. Guess I’ve been very lucky (I mean it).
I just tried to unlock as many traits as possible on my latest character and that was what made things easier, I guess as I didn’t really wait for one certain event to be up but instead switched to another if the one I initially wanted wasn’t availlable right now. It wasn’t too bad but I just can’t do the complete personal story, 6 dungeons and 6 map completions again right now or forever. And a friend of mine was disgusted when he told me that the Obsidian Sanctum JP was SO hard and I answered that it has become a breeze after the 5th time.
In addition to the already mentioned:
Originally, you got one trait point (using current style: 5 old trait points = 1 current trait point) at lvl 15 and then every 5 levels until 80. Now, you get your first trait point at level 30, and every 6 levels until lvl 66, then 2 trait points every 6 levels. Meaning you get your trait points a lot later in the leveling process. This makes leveling less fun, and makes it a lot harder to try out different builds and playstyles until you’re actually level 80.
Also, the level at which traits unlocked has been moved back. Originally, you unlocked Adept at level 11 (well, 15), Master at lvl 40, and Grandmaster at lvl 60. Now, it’s Adept at 30, Master at 60, and Grandmaster not until 80. Which, again, reduces or removes the ability to access important parts of builds until you have finished leveling.
Just a note, but the adept line was unlocked at 11, you just didn’t get the first minor trait until 15. But you did get the stat boosts that came from the line.
I like the compression of the points, myself. It just feels cleaner. But they need to be awarded earlier in the leveling process. I’d like to see it start at 15 and mimic the original cadence. (As above; master at 40 and grandmaster at 60)
Traits were tools to further customize your character and refine your playstyle. I can’t imagine that people using them “wrong” is worse than people not using them at all.
The major problem with the change to traits is that Anet took something that was more or less freely given (2g60s), and is now trying to sell it back to us at either 500% of just the original coin cost (that’s not taking into account the absurd 360 skillpoints) or forcing a bland, cookie cutter path to character progression. All professions have exactly the same list of trait tasks, and you might enjoy it once, but will you enjoy it twice? Five times? Twelve times?
It’s not an improvement.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
The method of acquisition was changed. Before, there was a simple, straightforward, fairly easily attainable gold cost. Now, there is a much larger gold plus skill point cost.
The alternative to the increased cost is to unlock traits by doing content (a variety of methods, listed here if you’re interested http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide). However, almost all, if not all of this, is content that’s been around since launch. For vets, especially, having to do some (or maybe most) of this stuff is tedious and uninteresting. The biggest issue for me is that instead of presenting new progression systems which involved new content, they revised an old progression system and gated it through content that was old when the system debuted and is getting older every day.
One issue is that an adapt trait, one you could use at level 30, could have the unlock be in a level 50 area. Another, and the one I hate the most, is that the way you unlock the traits has absolutely nothing to do with the traits. They were all picked seemingly at random.
When i looked over the traits back when the patch hit, it kinda felt like they had assigned unlocks based on the trait value for meta builds. Problem was that they assigned it for the same trait label across all professions.
So you ended up with build defining trait from one profession and borderline useless trait for another profession sharing the same difficult/tedious unlock requirement.
I think however the biggest mess was the use of skill points. Because while gold is shared, skill points are not. And they are a pain to get. I seem to recall that i was running in circles for a week after getting my first toon to 80 before i had unlocked the final elite skill. This because i had run out of skill challenges and basically had to earn skill points by leveling.
(edited by digiowl.9620)