Guild Wars 2

Whats the point of level restrictions on traits?

While leveling up, I cant put points fully into the branch I want without going into other branches I dont want to play with, because the trait system limits players by level requirements. whats the point of that?

defeats the purpose really.

if the passives stats are the issue, why not make those unlocked by level instead of the traits themselves?

Sense of progression.

penatbater.4710:

Sense of progression.

aaand .. gold sink.

When Anet let anyone have any trait, they found most traits were simply ignored and only a handful of builds existed that used only the best traits and no one went far in any line, because they got the best trait in all five lines.

This led to a build stagnation one of the major reasons it was changed. A lot of people complained about it at the time, a huge stir it caused, until people saw it and most people said it was okay the new way. There are still some hold outs though.

I think it’s better for the game the way it is, than the way it was.

The primary reason is sinking 3.10g per character.

Vayne.8563:

When Anet let anyone have any trait, they found most traits were simply ignored and only a handful of builds existed that used only the best traits and no one went far in any line, because they got the best trait in all five lines.

This led to a build stagnation one of the major reasons it was changed. A lot of people complained about it at the time, a huge stir it caused, until people saw it and most people said it was okay the new way. There are still some hold outs though.

I think it’s better for the game the way it is, than the way it was.

Without wanting to restart that debate, that was a problem with many of the traits simply not being compelling (some traits are plain garbage). Honestly, the current design is horrible. The traits weren’t designed with a tier system in mind, the same traits from the no tier system are still around, just shoehorned into tiers now. The problem being some grandmaster traits are garbage and some major traits are better than them (some are also worse). The distribution also wasn’t optimised for build synergies. Had the system been built from the ground up as a tiered system (like wow talent trees) it would have made a lot more sense (they could have made sure grandmaster traits were meaningful things worth investing 30 points and minor traits all focused on supporting and increasing build diversity rather than simply stuff people didn’t want to take). The current design is the result of ArenaNet trying to fit a square into a circle and a lower quality product is the end result.

It is a system to avoid trait cherry picking in SPVP that bites PVE-ers because the “play as you like, any profession can fill any role” type traits are found mostly on the third tier.

I believe the OP is talking about why you get enough points to spread your traits through multiple paths before reaching the level required to unlock deeper traits.

Looking at the daily system, and other stuff, I think one thing ANet designers like to do is to gently encourage/incentivise/force players to try out things they might not otherwise do.

I’m sure everyone’s first instinct is to either go deep into the path of their choice, or copy-paste a build from the internet.

The current system means you end up getting 10 in several trait lines, so you can try them out, before resetting your traits and giving you the ability to go to 20, etc.

Shiren.9532:

Vayne.8563:

When Anet let anyone have any trait, they found most traits were simply ignored and only a handful of builds existed that used only the best traits and no one went far in any line, because they got the best trait in all five lines.

This led to a build stagnation one of the major reasons it was changed. A lot of people complained about it at the time, a huge stir it caused, until people saw it and most people said it was okay the new way. There are still some hold outs though.

I think it’s better for the game the way it is, than the way it was.

Without wanting to restart that debate, that was a problem with many of the traits simply not being compelling (some traits are plain garbage). Honestly, the current design is horrible. The traits weren’t designed with a tier system in mind, the same traits from the no tier system are still around, just shoehorned into tiers now. The problem being some grandmaster traits are garbage and some major traits are better than them (some are also worse). The distribution also wasn’t optimised for build synergies. Had the system been built from the ground up as a tiered system (like wow talent trees) it would have made a lot more sense (they could have made sure grandmaster traits were meaningful things worth investing 30 points and minor traits all focused on supporting and increasing build diversity rather than simply stuff people didn’t want to take). The current design is the result of ArenaNet trying to fit a square into a circle and a lower quality product is the end result.

A lot of traits did change from the first version to the others. However, I agree a lot more work needs to be done. It’s STILL better for the game than it was the old way, even though people liked it more.

Well yeah, people want to be as powerful as they can be…but that doesn’t necessarily make it better for the game.

But yes, traits in some professions are really problematical, while in other professions they’re less so.