Guild Wars 2

What was the original reason behind the trait system change in Vanilla GW2 a while back?

It forced new players to use skill points on minor traits to unlock them.

why was this designed this way in the first place?

Probably because of a number of forum threads saying how much they missed going out in the world in Guild Wars 1 to kill bosses to capture elite skills and how they wished that this game had something like it. It appears ANet read those posts and tried to put a similar system in with one of the options this game has, traits and events.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Probably because of a number of forum threads saying how much they missed going out in the world in Guild Wars 1 to kill bosses to capture elite skills and how they wished that this game had something like it. It appears ANet read those posts and tried to put a similar system in with one of the options this game has, traits and events.

Then everyone complained that they have to play the game. And cannot get everything NAOW!

So they are changing it back. Not sure what I prefer.

While a good idea, the trait unlocks were tied to a single, very specific event (or puzzle chest or map completion or champ kill). Some of the events have had serious progress breaking bugs since the release of the game, and have still not been fixed (Foulbear, Branded Devourer Queen). Another issue is that some of the events needed are on exceptionally long cooldowns (like the giant champ Kor); or are practically impossible to get a group together to kill (Overgrown Grub).

This was very unlike GW1 skill hunting where many skills had multiple options to cap (even in pure Prophecies, the hardest campaign to cap skills in). In addition, a GW1 character didn’t need to cap many elite skills to function in a wide variety of builds, while a GW2 character needs far more traits in order to function in a small number of different builds. A GW1 character could, if he or she had access to the area, cap a skill at any time, while a GW2 character has to wait for an event to trigger.

The upcoming system is a nice compromise. Originally, you paid 3g10s (IIRC) total to unlock all of them. It looks like the new system doesn’t cost anything, but you have to play the game to earn the traits. You’ll be able to unlock most of them when you reach 80, and would have to get 65 “skill points” out in the world to unlock the rest of the basic traits. Skills and traits will be earned using the same system, rather than being disparate systems.

In my opinion the trait changes occurred because of an unhealthy lack of progression in the game.

People would level to 80, get top level gear relatively quickly, and then stop playing. Ascended gear was introduced as a stopgap measure of sorts to keep people playing longer, but ultimately didn’t work. Too many people didn’t care about the small stat difference, or didn’t want to craft.

The idea behind making you “work” to get your traits isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but the implementation was awful.

Pandeh.5248:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Probably because of a number of forum threads saying how much they missed going out in the world in Guild Wars 1 to kill bosses to capture elite skills and how they wished that this game had something like it. It appears ANet read those posts and tried to put a similar system in with one of the options this game has, traits and events.

Then everyone complained that they have to play the game. And cannot get everything NAOW!

So they are changing it back. Not sure what I prefer.

They tried something it failed (debatable), tried something else it failed (debatable), now they’re trying something different. So at least they’re willing to try,try again.

I generally just play 1 character so I enjoyed the idea of “go out and find traits” BUT it made leveling alts just a bore with lack of access to fun/useful traits (even going for them involved running to the other side of the world to find the event required was 2hrs from starting or something like that).

I think the base level traits might be best with unlock through skill points but maybe the elite specs done through exploration? Dunno I like bits of both but I really felt annoyed when I was low level without access to all the WPs and traitless in the current system.

Coulter.2315:

I generally just play 1 character so I enjoyed the idea of “go out and find traits” BUT it made leveling alts just a bore with lack of access to fun/useful traits (even going for them involved running to the other side of the world to find the event required was 2hrs from starting or something like that).

I think the base level traits might be best with unlock through skill points but maybe the elite specs done through exploration? Dunno I like bits of both but I really felt annoyed when I was low level without access to all the WPs and traitless in the current system.

Yeah it’s not as much fun when you have 25 level 80s. lol

Really they should have traits available via WvW badges and PvP rewards sort of like they did in GW1.

There is no reason a player who only enjoys PVP or WvW should be forced to PVE to be competitive in the game, each game mode should be playable in it’s own right rather than trying to force people to do something they find unenjoyable due to the very different play styles of the players in the different game modes. There is no point in punishing players simply because they have different playstyles. No one forces PvE players to go WvW or pvp, so they should not be trying to do the same to those who only enjoy the other game modes as well. It is great when a person enjoys all game modes, but that should not be forced upon those who do not.

Vayne.8563:

Coulter.2315:

I generally just play 1 character so I enjoyed the idea of “go out and find traits” BUT it made leveling alts just a bore with lack of access to fun/useful traits (even going for them involved running to the other side of the world to find the event required was 2hrs from starting or something like that).

I think the base level traits might be best with unlock through skill points but maybe the elite specs done through exploration? Dunno I like bits of both but I really felt annoyed when I was low level without access to all the WPs and traitless in the current system.

Yeah it’s not as much fun when you have 25 level 80s. lol

Yea TBH, the traits should only need to be unlocked once, after the first character unlocks them all, they should be automatically unlocked for each additional character as repeating for the sake of repeating reduces gameplay and enjoyment rather than contributes to it.

lil devils x.6071:

Really they should have traits available via WvW badges and PvP rewards sort of like they did in GW1.

There is no reason a player who only enjoys PVP or WvW should be forced to PVE to be competitive in the game, each game mode should be playable in it’s own right rather than trying to force people to do something they find unenjoyable due to the very different play styles of the players in the different game modes. There is no point in punishing players simply because they have different playstyles. No one forces PvE players to go WvW or pvp, so they should not be trying to do the same to those who only enjoy the other game modes as well. It is great when a person enjoys all game modes, but that should not be forced upon those who do not.

You can buy traits in HotM from the profession vendors (either PvP only unlock or PvE unlock).

Coulter.2315:

lil devils x.6071:

Really they should have traits available via WvW badges and PvP rewards sort of like they did in GW1.

There is no reason a player who only enjoys PVP or WvW should be forced to PVE to be competitive in the game, each game mode should be playable in it’s own right rather than trying to force people to do something they find unenjoyable due to the very different play styles of the players in the different game modes. There is no point in punishing players simply because they have different playstyles. No one forces PvE players to go WvW or pvp, so they should not be trying to do the same to those who only enjoy the other game modes as well. It is great when a person enjoys all game modes, but that should not be forced upon those who do not.

You can buy traits in HotM from the profession vendors (either PvP only unlock or PvE unlock).

And for WvW players skill points take forever to unlock them all? WvW players use skill points to build siege as well. Skill points to wvw player = superior siege. HAHA

Vayne.8563:

In my opinion the trait changes occurred because of an unhealthy lack of progression in the game.

People would level to 80, get top level gear relatively quickly, and then stop playing. Ascended gear was introduced as a stopgap measure of sorts to keep people playing longer, but ultimately didn’t work. Too many people didn’t care about the small stat difference, or didn’t want to craft.

The idea behind making you “work” to get your traits isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but the implementation was awful.

I have to disagree with your characterization of the leveling system at launch as “unhealthy.” The idea was to make leveling a natural aspect of “just playing the game” and it succeeded in that. A lot of traditional MMOers “ran out” of things to do, because they were used to always having more leveling to do. That doesn’t mean the system was inherently bad, it means it didn’t meet the expectations of a particular subset of players.

Further, I don’t understand why we assume that “working to level” has to mean gating or repetition. We didn’t have to “work” for skill points before the change and we still don’t have to “work” for them either. ANet only changed the rules for traits.

As you say, regardless of the intent, the implementation was horrible. I haven’t “leveled” a character since the change. Under the original system, I probably would have bought another 4 to 8 character slots (and be more invested in the current game, with or without new content). Under the current system, I have no interest in being forced to do content I’ve done several times nor in paying massive amounts of gold and skill points to avoid something.

I like playing the game; I don’t like being forced to repeat content, regardless of how fun it might have been the first or even 10th time.