Guild Wars 2

As in the skill system we had in GW1, with attributes and such. Which would you prefer out of the 2?

EDIT: Excluding the possibility of secondary profession.

I don’t think the two systems are all that different.

In GW1 we had attributes, which raised the power of skills. And then individual skills which we bought, unlocked or were given as quest rewards.

In GW2 we have traits, which raise your stats and therefore the power of your skills. Then we have individual skills which we buy with points we earn through levelling or challenges.

It’s pretty much the same as the stat/feat system from DnD or any other RPG.

As for which I prefer I think I’d say the GW2 system because it gives us more skills in total and therefore more flexibility. The bonuses you get every 5 or 10 points on a trait line are things that require an entire seperate skill in GW1 so you have to sacrifice another skill to use them. This way you can have both.

I disagree that GW2 has more flexibility. Your skills are your skills, you have limited decision making to do on your skillbar.

Also the trait points are linear, in order to get X skill down the line, you have to spend your other points, potentially on things you wouldn’t want otherwise. In GW it was a’ la carte, you could pick a skill from anywhere, and it didn’t matter where your attribute points were (except for overall effectiveness of a skill).

I’m not saying better or worse, but I do not see them as so similar, except the skillbar in both games is limited to a small number of skills, as opposed to WoW or Rift or SWTOR etc where you have too many skills for the standard bar in the UI.

As to the OP, I prefer the GW way, personally.

If they add more traits (and make existing pointless traits viable) then GW2 offers more since traits can modify the behaviour of various mechanics and offer passive effects that drastically alter gameplay. (eg. Evasive Arcana pre-nerf.)

There weren’t many skills in GW1 that did that. Maybe 55 monks and stuff like that.

I think the trait system needs to be completely rethought. Having multiple, completely unrelated trait-styles in the same tree limits builds more than is necessary. For example, you want to play a staff Necro with tanky pets? Too bad, the staff traits and pet survival traits are in the same tree, you don’t get to play like you want. Every class has trait trees riddled with the same problem, completely viable playstyles locked out because two completely unrelated build paths occupy the same space.