Guild Wars 2

According to the specialization VOD on twitch, all characters will be limited to certain hero points (400 at 80), and in order to unlock all traits/skills that players need/want, they will have to do skill challenge, and each skill challenge will give 1 hero points. Now the maximum amount of hero points we can have is 465, which means we have to do 65 skill point challenges (hero challenges). Now this doesn’t look too bad, however when GW2 maps consist of very few skill challenges to begin with, such kitten ~ 10 per map, and with added time for traveling through maps, it will literally take hours for new characters to complete hero challenges just to unlock some skills.

Also with change in U.I, there will be no choice to unlock certain skills/traits people want. For example on Elementalist part, in order to unlock mistform/cleansing fire, you have to spend dozens of hero points to unlock skills that you will never use in order to unlock mistform/cleansing fire. This is literally FORCING people to do map completion before even allowing them to use certain skills. Now mixed with current disaster that is NPE, you will now gated from accessing the skill and now even acquiring the skills regardless of whether you want it or not.

Also developers did not mention whether unlocking system is accountbound or soulbound, but again, based on NPE, it will definitely be soulbound. So what this means is people who actively use their alts for pve/wvw, are now forced to do map completion with each of their alts. This is just added grind of what we have now, just another time sink which forces people to play what they don’t want by gating skills/trait unlocks.

For example, I have 8 alts each of different professions, and I have 2 map completion. I use 6 of my alts actively and have geared them for pve/wvw and unlocked all their skills and the traits that I wanted to use. But with this new change, now I will have lost all of my skill points and gold that I spent to unlock traits/skills, forced into map completion of remaining 4 alts, and possibly with 3 more since I will be gearing my revenant and other professions depending on the specialization.

Now how is this alt friendly? How is this encouraging us to play our alternate characters without going through already a painful grind that is NPE? If they want us to explore Tyria, well then create more maps instead of forcing us to do same events and travel to same place 8 times with different accounts. Right now after map completion for legendary, there is no merit other than having a title and a gold star next to our names. Map completion was fun at the first time, a little boring at second, and now I have to do map completion to unlock basic skills/traits that I can’t even choose?

With the upcoming change, we will now lose all of our traits/skill points, lose the choice of unlocking skills (I never unlocked race skills but I guess now I am forced to unlock it), be forced to complete the same old maps over and over, or never create another alts unless I’m playing pvp with it. The old way of paying few golds to unlock all traits and using skill points to unlock desired skills is way better. This new trait/skill unlock is just another time sink that will unnecessarily hinder all players who like to play pve/wvw with different characters.

When the patch hits, it will be just like another NPE feedback thread that anet developers never cared to look into. Apparently we are too stupid to press Fs to feed cows, and now we are too stupid to decide which traits/skills we want to unlock first. And after the patch hits, the NPE thread will explode with hatred, but Anet won’t care as long as they are milking us via gem store items.

Enjoy the skills/traits you have on your alts now because they will be gone when the patch hits.

TLDR; New skill/trait unlock will force everyone and their alts to map completion and limit our choice of unlocking skills by creating time and hero point sink, forcing us to unlock skills/traits that we don’t use to unlock those we want.

Has ANet said or hinted at whether or not we’re going to have to unlock all our skills again in the new system? I know we’re going to get 400 points flat from leveling, but they also said that unlocking everything costs 465, and I don’t even think that number includes the Elite Spec line.

I’ve spent tons of skill points and gold to unlock all my skills and traits on the majority of my characters, but I only have a big chunk of world completion on 1 out of all 9 of them. If I log in on patch day and suddenly I’ve got to go out and grind Hero Challenges just to make sure I can have everything again… I’m probably going to leave the game, because you’ll have robbed me of skills and traits I’ve had for literal years in this game and given me only one very slow, very boring way to get it back. I’m not doing 65 (or more) challenges each across 8 characters simply to get stuff back that I’ve earned previously.

I shouldn’t be stuck doing PvE so I can have 100% of the options available to me in WvW, which is the only gamemode I play aside from SPvP. Either preserve the skills of legacy characters, or introduce another way to get Hero Points that isn’t so lopsided. ANet has seriously overestimated how engaging skill challenges are for players; it’s like their heads are in the sand with regards to the quality (or lack thereof) of their PvE content. And please: do not even try to pass it off like Skill Challenges in WvW are “WvW content”. Right now I can buy every skill and trait in the game with the XP and loot I get from kills and captures in WvW. After this patch, I won’t be able to. That’s broken.

I’m okay with using the new system on the Revenant, obviously, and any characters I might make after the patch, and for the Elite Specialization track, but I would sincerely hope that ANet will take the same route as they did last time and allow legacy characters to keep what they have. And if not, at least compensate us for the money we’ve spent buying skill books from trainers. I know I personally have dropped upwards of 30 gold buying Master and Grandmaster traits since the last change. To have that large amount of gold be gone forever simply because your first redesign of the trait system was a failure would be massively insulting.

And honestly, how long do you think it’s going to be before ANet is going to be designing yet another system for trait/skill unlocks because this one winds up being just as off-putting as the last time? This one will probably have an even shorter lifespan, as there’s not even a way to bypass the PvE nonsense this time, since Hero Points are earned “strictly” through leveling and Hero Challenges. You’re removing the ability to earn Skill/Hero Points when you level past 80, you’re removing the ability to buy traits with gold… this game is becoming so narrow and it’s making me sad.

Why is 14% (65/465) of a character’s functionality walled off behind Hero Challenges, when doing Skill Challenges now is basically grunt work you do for map completion, and doesn’t require any skill at all? A third of these challenges are just standing in one place with your arm outstretched, “communing”… how is that “heroic” at all? You must’ve seriously drank the PvE Kool-Aid if you think that something so trivial should be so strongly tied to a character’s functionality.

For what it’s worth, I do like the trait changes that are being made… but you’re killing experimentation by walling everything off into reward tracks, and forcing Skills and Traits to compete for the same limited currency, where there was no limit to said currency before.

Honestly, I’m probably so pathetic that I wouldn’t stop playing even if I log in and I’ve got to spend a week grinding out enough Hero Points to get back to where I was… but this all just reeks of a bad idea that hasn’t had nearly enough thought put into it.

What was so wrong with getting skill currency every time you re-leveled to 80? What was so wrong with just buying traits from the trainers, or, if you go way back, not having to unlock traits at all? You’re undermining player progression, and the game itself, by layering on new forms of artificial progression where they don’t need to be.

These are just my two cents, take them or leave them. If legacy characters get to keep their skills, or if a new, non-PvE-exclusive way to get Hero Points is introduced, then there’s much less of an issue I think. I obviously don’t think the HP system is particularly good, but I’d be happy simply not to have my previous progress erased by 14%. Definitely want to hear back on that point especially.

I’m in the same situation, and just as cranky.

I see where you are coming from when you’re talking about the things you earned. Earned by spending time to unlock things in the world or earned by paying gold in order to unlock traits.

Imho earned things shouldn’t be taken away from players, this only creates anger and frustration, especially when looking at alts and the repetitive process of unlocking it the same way as before over and over.

I reckon the system could detect who has done which skill challenge in the world, so these points could be kept. The problem left is traits unlocked via gold.

I also see the problem though, traits are located in the new reward track system, so you unlock those one after another. If you already have trait 12 unlocked, this would mean that you get trait 1-11 as well, even if you haven’t earned it in the old system yet.

So keeping the traits you have now and simply not giving us the traits we haven’t unlocked yet, might not happen because of technical limitations of the new reward track system for skills and traits (speculation).

personally I’d be happy with a compromise:

Everyone has to unlock the traits/skills with the new system again BUT those unlocks would be accountwide. So leveling up your 2nd tief would have all the thief skills/traits unlocked you got before.

Also hero-challenges could be accountwide as well, so you don’t have to do a hero-challenge in the world twice. (do a hero challenge with a tief unlocks these hero points for all of your other characters). You still have to level up each of your characters for the most of the hero points though.

(the problem with this compromise: you’d have lv.1 characters which already have hero points to spend from hero challenges, so new characters would have access to tons of skills/traits already.)

They should just base unlocks for existing characters on what has been unlocked already. If that means for some legacy chars that certain skill challenges/hero challenges only count towards map completion and dont award a hero point (because that character effectively already has it) then thats hardly a problem.

Webba.3071:

They should just base unlocks for existing characters on what has been unlocked already. If that means for some legacy chars that certain skill challenges/hero challenges only count towards map completion and dont award a hero point (because that character effectively already has it) then thats hardly a problem.

take a look at the reward track UI for the new skill/trait unlocks:

http://massivelyop.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/gw2hot_04-2015_ui_specialisation_reward_track.jpg

Now think of it: you have trait/skill 12 unlocked but not skill 2, 5 and 7. In the new system you have to unlock the skills/traits one after another. As I mentioned above I can imagine that there are technical restrictions with giving you traits/skills without giving you everything that’s located before that in the corresponding reward track.

It might work without a problem though, I don’t know.

What about traits you bought with gold?

I mentioned this on the Reddit thread on the same subject, but… I’m not optimistic.

I have a few alts that have done very little world completion. Some of them didn’t even spend their own skill points for traits, utilizing the account bound trait books I purchased with long established characters.

I expect that my low-completion alts will get the short end of the stick once these changes are implemented. Even though I spent skill points and gold to unlock the traits that I wanted for them, my suspicion is that they’ll have to go out and do hero challenges just to get back to where they are currently.

I’m not pleased with this prospect, but I’m also not holding my breath for a good solution.

Of course on the positive side, this will allow me to be very pleasantly surprised if a good solution does come along.

Because the bulk of SPs will come from levels, the importance of skill challenges has been downplayed, so alt characters won’t need to do something crazy like 100% world completion to get the full legacy set. This softens the problem, and might have been the best solution they have found.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Because the bulk of SPs will come from levels, the importance of skill challenges has been downplayed, so alt characters won’t need to do something crazy like 100% world completion to get the full legacy set. This softens the problem, and might have been the best solution they have found.

However, it does not solve the problem.

Right now:

• You are basically penalized for spending skillpoints on skills because you would loose skills and not receive whatever they will give for unspent skills/skill scrolls – that is huge no-no, veterans should not be advising newbies to abstain from unlocking skills and to hoard scrolls and skillpoints.

• Many people leveled alts by playing however they wanted to (using books, in dungeons, in wvw, by crafting, by staying in whatever area they liked…) and left out world completition as secondary – they spent skill scrolls/levelup skill points to have UAS characters and now they will not. Adding any gameplay element as necessary to character development is not good idea in my opinion.

• Reward track way of unlocking skills look stupid in this regard – it is not backwards compatible as it is not possible to unlock single item on its own and my own issue of having to go all the way through it for that one trait/skill even thou you do not want anything else from it.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Because the bulk of SPs will come from levels, the importance of skill challenges has been downplayed, so alt characters won’t need to do something crazy like 100% world completion to get the full legacy set. This softens the problem, and might have been the best solution they have found.

It’s 25% (more to unlock elite specializations) of the world map; that may not sound much, but multiplied with my 17 affected alts, it is a major pain in the butt.

What if I have a post NPE character where I hit 80 without doing any skill challenges, but unlocked every trait with gold? (An extreme, but possible, example.)

Would I seriously have only 300 hero points to spend? All that gold wasted?

They should calculate how many hero points total it would take to acquire everything we have right now under the “old” system.

Than proceed to allocate that amount of hero points to every characters made before this new system is introduced.

This way there is no technical limitation or any other kind of crappy excuse to lock us out of stuff we have already paid for with either gold or skill points.

I strongly encourage a.net to look at what their own company president said during the Pax HoT announcement event.
invalidating the time and resources players have put into their characters is not what guild wars 2 is about.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Imho earned things shouldn’t be taken away from players, this only creates anger and frustration, especially when looking at alts and the repetitive process of unlocking it the same way as before over and over.

Spot on I’m in a similar boat to the OP if they take away the traits and abilities that I already have earned via gold and scrolls I will not be happy. You do not take away what the players already have under a previous system just because you change systems going forward.

To me its easy, if a toon is level 80 it gets allocated 465 hero points on the changeover (or whatever the full amount required is).

Just award 5 Hero points for every trait and skill you currently have, no matter how acquired.

Another thought: If we lose all progress except skill challenges, then every skill scroll you ever used was for nothing.

Naevius.3185:

Another thought: If we lose all progress except skill challenges, then every skill scroll you ever used was for nothing.

Indeed.

It should be easy. The game knows which skill challenges you have and haven’t completed. Our unlocks will likely be reset to zero, but we’ll be given all the hero points for a level 80 character that has completed all the skill challenges we’ve completed. If you’ve done at least a few, you should have enough points for all the core stuff as soon as you log in. Well-mapped characters should even be able unlock everything, including the full elite spec, on day one.

You will probably have to go through and spend your new hero points to re-unlock everything the first time you log into a character after this gets patched in, but I seriously doubt you will be missing much, if anything. In fact, if you’re like me and have alts that have only unlocked a handful of traits – you will probably suddenly have enough hero points to buy most, if not all of what you’ve been missing under the current system.

I expect most characters will actually have more available to them after the change than they do currently. We are much more likely to gain than to lose, here.

Gulesave.5073:

It should be easy. The game knows which skill challenges you have and haven’t completed. Our unlocks will likely be reset to zero, but we’ll be given all the hero points for a level 80 character that has completed all the skill challenges we’ve completed. If you’ve done at least a few, you should have enough points for all the core stuff as soon as you log in. Well-mapped characters should even be able unlock everything, including the full elite spec, on day one.

You will probably have to go through and spend your new hero points to re-unlock everything the first time you log into a character after this gets patched in, but I seriously doubt you will be missing much, if anything. In fact, if you’re like me and have alts that have only unlocked a handful of traits – you will probably suddenly have enough hero points to buy most, if not all of what you’ve been missing under the current system.

I expect most characters will actually have more available to them after the change than they do currently. We are much more likely to gain than to lose, here.

You’ll be missing a lot if you use a character for WvW or SPVP, I’ve got a few chars with less than 10 PVE skill points, I dont want to go farm to have the same stuff that I’ve had for years…..

I think they will unlock every old thing for every old character as they done in the last time

Naevius.3185:

Just award 5 Hero points for every trait and skill you currently have, no matter how acquired.

The problem with this solution, is that you’ll then be able to do all skill challenges on top of your extra hero points, and end up with more points than any other players.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Naevius.3185:

Just award 5 Hero points for every trait and skill you currently have, no matter how acquired.

The problem with this solution, is that you’ll then be able to do all skill challenges on top of your extra hero points, and end up with more points than any other players.

They said in the original statement, that the number of hero points will be capped to how many you’d be able to get through levelling and skill challenges, that the currently posessed skill points will be converted into hero points (at a rate they haven’t revealed yet) up to a cap, and those that will exceed that cap will be converted into some kind of crafting currency. Unknown what will happen to the skill points you have already spent on skill/trait unlocking though.

So no, nobody’s going to end up with more points due to doubling challenges.

Latinkuro.9615:

They should calculate how many hero points total it would take to acquire everything we have right now under the “old” system.

Than proceed to allocate that amount of hero points to every characters made before this new system is introduced.

This way there is no technical limitation or any other kind of crappy excuse to lock us out of stuff we have already paid for with either gold or skill points.

I strongly encourage a.net to look at what their own company president said during the Pax HoT announcement event.
invalidating the time and resources players have put into their characters is not what guild wars 2 is about.

This^

DiogoSilva.7089:

Naevius.3185:

Just award 5 Hero points for every trait and skill you currently have, no matter how acquired.

The problem with this solution, is that you’ll then be able to do all skill challenges on top of your extra hero points, and end up with more points than any other players.

This is a competition now!?!

I don’t think it really matters if some charactershave extra unlocks, compared to the issue of characters losing unlocks.

Suppose you have a post-NPE character who gained a lot of traits by jumping around the world and doing the designated events. You want to lose all those just because they were not unlocked with Hero points?

I posted a thread with a suggestion of how skills and traits could be grandfathered to legacy characters, while still remaining finite. It’s a simple solution that I don’t really see any major `technical` problems with, but comes with it’s own drawback.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Grandfathering-using-negative-hero-points

As someone with multiple level 80 characters, I too, have been considering these issues. However, I do think that, for the sake of the new system and new players, it would be better if Hero Points were distrubuted purely in a manner equivalent to the new system’s obtainment methods.

We know of two methods by which we obtain Hero Points: levelling up and open world skill challenges. Awarding some characters additional points based on tomes/scrolls of knowledge would unbalance the system terribly, especially considering that this is Anet’s proposed long-term expansion/progression system. Having old characters be awarded a full track’s worth of Hero Points (or more) would give them a permanent leg up on any new players, giving them more points to spend on future specialisations.

As such, I would propose a method of compensation for those who have used skill scrolls and the like. Once a character’s Skill Points have been converted into Hero Points, I think it would be beneficial for whatever Skill Points left unconverted be turned into this new currency for Mystic Forge ingredients (Bloodstone Shards, Augur’s Stones etc.) or simply turned into gold. This way, players who lose out, get something for their efforts without unbalancing the new system before it gets a chance to find its footing.

Let’s say some of my 2 year old characters are used for SPVP or WvW, they can obtain the ammount of points equivalent to the ammount of skill points that they’ve already obtained and if the ammount is too much they get to the hero point cap and leave it there, the # can’t go higher even if I go PVE and do hero challenges.
Problem solved, I dont have to farm with many 2 year old characters and the system isn’t broken.

They said on the stream that everything will be unlocked in sPvP. So think the only concern here is WvW. They really havent announced all the WvW changes yet for HoT, so maybe builds will work more like sPvP in the future for WvW rather than the PvE overlap that exists today.

Raziel.4216:

Let’s say some of my 2 year old characters are used for SPVP or WvW, they can obtain the ammount of points equivalent to the ammount of skill points that they’ve already obtained and if the ammount is too much they get to the hero point cap and leave it there, the # can’t go higher even if I go PVE and do hero challenges.
Problem solved, I dont have to farm with many 2 year old characters and the system isn’t broken.

…which is exactly how they said it’s going to work…

A simple solution I haven’t seen anyone make yet:

Adjust the numbers so all core traits and skills are unlocked by leveling to 80. This can be done either by adjusting how many points the tracks cost to unlock or the number of hero points gained from leveling up. All HP gained by skill challenges will then be used for elite specializations.

Done. No one’s character gets nerfed, and no one ends up with extra HP.

This should be the rule of thumb. New systems should be applied to new content. It would have saved a lot of grief over the first trait revamp if the new trait unlocks were only applied to new traits.

Astralporing.1957:

Raziel.4216:

Let’s say some of my 2 year old characters are used for SPVP or WvW, they can obtain the ammount of points equivalent to the ammount of skill points that they’ve already obtained and if the ammount is too much they get to the hero point cap and leave it there, the # can’t go higher even if I go PVE and do hero challenges.
Problem solved, I dont have to farm with many 2 year old characters and the system isn’t broken.

…which is exactly how they said it’s going to work…

Where? They said a character with world exploration will have plenty of points to get everything. They said nothing about WvW characters

“Hero Points will be limited, and they’ll be earned strictly through what are currently called skill challenges (these will become known as hero challenges) and leveling up.”

Where does that say they’ll grandfather all legacy characters into the new system?

The rest of that quote:
“A level 80 character that’s done none of the hero challenges should be able to unlock more than enough skills, specializations, and traits to make several unique full builds. A single character who’s done a fair amount of the hero challenges should be able to unlock all of the core specializations, skills, and traits. PvP players won’t have to worry about unlocking anything, as all skills and traits will be automatically unlocked upon entering the Heart of the Mists.”
Points out that my lvl 80 with no hero challenges will be able to make some builds, however, to be able to unlock everything I’ll be forced to go out there and do some hero challenges. We know we’ll need at least 65 extra hero points for all the core stuff, that means 65 skill challenges per character to have the equivalent of what we already have.
Now multiply that by your number of alts, doesnt sound fun at all.
This would screw the whole “progress thru WvW only” philosophy that they sold the game with.

I’ve read few of these threads now, and I struggling to understand what the issue is exactly. If we get all of our skill points spent on traits refunded back as hero points we should be able to unlock everything to the same extent that we had before. That should include all the old skill point challenges (the new hero challenges?). I doubt Anet will deliberately short change people and incur the wrath of pretty much the whole community. I’m I missing something here?

Vague Memory.2817:

I’ve read few of these threads now, and I struggling to understand what the issue is exactly. If we get all of our skill points spent on traits refunded back as hero points we should be able to unlock everything to the same extent that we had before. That should include all the old skill point challenges (the new hero challenges?). I doubt Anet will deliberately short change people and incur the wrath of pretty much the whole community. I’m I missing something here?

Yes, the fact that many characters (of players who prefer PvP and/or WvW for leveling) haven’t done any skill challenges, but instead used skill scrolls.

For instance, at the the of HoT I will have 17 alts – 7 are already level 80 and currently have all traits and skills unlocked, but no map completion/no skill challenges. With the new system, I will have to unlock 25% or more of Tyrian maps on every single one of those, instead of spending my time in PvP kitten far I was able to (while still being able to fully level/gear/trait/outfit my characters).

Considering I couldn’t care less about doing world completion, pve, or skill challenges..all my characters, even my first 80, were leveled with crafting and wvw. As much as I want to still love this game, I feel like getting this much of the shaft is going to push me away. Not everybody wants to bother doing world completion after they already have everything they need unlocked. This system is just going to push players like me farther away. Five 80s with most of them having under 5% map completion, it isn’t even worth it. Rip the game I once loved.

Humm… so should I start doing world completion on my characters just to be safe? What will happen to the 500+ points I have in skill point scrolls that I have hoarded in the bank?

It would be nice if Anet would be a little more clear on these points, there seems to be some confusion with no clear answer.

Bahir.5132:

What will happen to the 500+ points I have in skill point scrolls that I have hoarded in the bank?

from their blogpost:

“Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge. Items and activities that were previously repeatable sources of skill points will now also provide that same crafting material. "

Raziel.4216:

Astralporing.1957:

…which is exactly how they said it’s going to work…

Where?

here

and specifically here:

Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge.

In excess. So, as long as you currently have enough skill points to reach cap , you are golden. In the future, yes, there will be a problem – strictly WvW characters will need to do hero challenges in open world if they’d want to unlock all skills and elite specialization. Leveling and hero challenges in WvW will not be enough to get everything.

Astralporing.1957:

here

and specifically here:

Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge.

In excess. So, as long as you currently have enough skill points to reach cap , you are golden. In the future, yes, there will be a problem – strictly WvW characters will need to do hero challenges in open world if they’d want to unlock all skills and elite specialization. Leveling and hero challenges in WvW will not be enough to get everything.

You are golden…. for that new currency? we’re not talking about that. I dont even mention it in any of my posts
I repeat: I’m not talking about mystic forge currency.

What I’m talking about:
A character that reaches lvl 80 will have 400 hero points.
You need 465 to unlock all the core lines (that’s 65 hero challenges per char)
You’ll need more than that to unlock the elite specialization.

That means a WvW char will have to farm a lot of PVE content to continue playing the game in the mode that they want to, this goes agaisn’t the “play however you want” philosophy that this game was sold with.
Now imagine you have 10 alts with little to no world exploration, that’s at least 650 hero challenges just for the core lines. Sounds like fun uh….

Vague Memory.2817:

I’ve read few of these threads now, and I struggling to understand what the issue is exactly. If we get all of our skill points spent on traits refunded back as hero points we should be able to unlock everything to the same extent that we had before. That should include all the old skill point challenges (the new hero challenges?). I doubt Anet will deliberately short change people and incur the wrath of pretty much the whole community. I’m I missing something here?

That’s not now it’s working. Hero points in the new system are strictly limited, and gained only from leveling and skill challenges. If you haven’t done skill challenges at all, you won’t be able to unlock everything.

Raziel.4216:

That means a WvW char will have to farm a lot of PVE content to continue playing the game in the mode that they want to, this goes agaisn’t the “play however you want” philosophy that this game was sold with.

Hence why there are skill challenges in WvW maps.

Raziel.4216:

Astralporing.1957:

here

and specifically here:

Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge.

In excess. So, as long as you currently have enough skill points to reach cap , you are golden. In the future, yes, there will be a problem – strictly WvW characters will need to do hero challenges in open world if they’d want to unlock all skills and elite specialization. Leveling and hero challenges in WvW will not be enough to get everything.

You are golden…. for that new currency? we’re not talking about that. I dont even mention it in any of my posts
I repeat: I’m not talking about mystic forge currency.

Neither am I.

What do you think happens with skillpoints up to a cap? Those that do not get converted to new currency?

Bahir.5132:

Humm… so should I start doing world completion on my characters just to be safe? What will happen to the 500+ points I have in skill point scrolls that I have hoarded in the bank?

It would be nice if Anet would be a little more clear on these points, there seems to be some confusion with no clear answer.

There’s a perfectly clear answer. People just can’t read the kitten posts. Right now skill points are used for two things: unlocking skills, and mystic forge currency. Since Hero points will be taking over the job of unlocking skills, present-day skill points will be placed in the wallet and renamed, but will otherwise be unchanged.

Strill.2591:

Raziel.4216:

That means a WvW char will have to farm a lot of PVE content to continue playing the game in the mode that they want to, this goes agaisn’t the “play however you want” philosophy that this game was sold with.

Hence why there are skill challenges in WvW maps.

Except that skill challenge searching in WvW maps isn’t playing WvW for the most part. With a few exceptions (like the castle), if you’re taking up a slot to go skill point hunting in WvW, you’re just a liability.

There’s a reason that WvW map completion was despised by WvW players too in high population servers. It brought in people who didn’t help at all and just ran around to already capped locations when they were available, taking up space that could have housed people who would.

Plus I’m pretty sure there aren’t enough skill challenges in WvW to unlock everything.

I really really don’t want to do map completion another 6 times just to get / re get the stuff I already have right now.

nekretaal.6485:

I really really don’t want to do map completion another 6 times just to get / re get the stuff I already have right now.

This exactly. If the amount of progression we have on our characters today is sufficient to have all skills unlocked for the privilege of making any build we want, then that should always be the case for these characters. Anything else is a massive violation of player trust.

Gibson.4036:

A simple solution I haven’t seen anyone make yet:

Adjust the numbers so all core traits and skills are unlocked by leveling to 80. This can be done either by adjusting how many points the tracks cost to unlock or the number of hero points gained from leveling up. All HP gained by skill challenges will then be used for elite specializations.

Done. No one’s character gets nerfed, and no one ends up with extra HP.

This should be the rule of thumb. New systems should be applied to new content. It would have saved a lot of grief over the first trait revamp if the new trait unlocks were only applied to new traits.

which changes nothing.
because then they will have to up the cost of unlocking the elite specialization.

which in the long run, if they end up adding more elites, as they say they might, means you will actually have to grind more skill points total.

every point they put in the level up system basically means in the long term, each skill challenge gets you less actual skills.

if they had used the old numbers, its likely you may only have to do 50-60 skill challenges per elite spec, whereas now, its probably going to be around 100.

in the long run? it would probably be better if they decreased the amount from leveling.
your basically going to have to like 80-90% skill challenge completion to get all skills/spec no matter what.

Skill challenges might not be weighted equally. What if WvW skill challenges were balanced around WvW-only players and worth more?

Each borderland has 3 skill challenges whereas the main map has 4. That makes 13. How many skill challenges are needed? 65. 65/13 = 5. What if each WvW skill challenge was worth 5 hero points?

As for the elite specialization, what if the new borderland offered enough hero points to completely unlock it?

The problem this creates however is people will recommend WvW for fast hero points in the same way EotM is recommended for power leveling. Would you rather have to do a bit of PvE or have an influx of people with no intention of WvWing?

The future problem however with hero points, and this includes the entire game, is that they are a limited resource. ArenaNet wants them to be limited because they don’t want people to casually unlock everything on day 1 every time a new specialization is released. That also means however that new skill challenges are required for every new specialization, which basically means they’ll always be locked behind new areas/expansions. I would expect new/higher level skill challenges to be worth more, following the typical vertical progression route which has the downside of leading to a bloated system, but that doesn’t really matter. I can’t see them adding a new borderland every time though, so there’d have to be another way.

Well, the bottom line is that I have 7 x lvl 80 chars that can do anything right now in the game (they were leveled through different methods in PvE, WvW and crafting).

From what I understand, in HoT I will need to get hero points to get all the skills I need in all the chars (specially the ones I leveled through crafting). This means that my now fully functional chars will be nerfed with the release of HoT.

I am really surprised that ANet thinks this is a fair system.

To be honest, I hate leveling chars to lvl 80. What I like in this game is the high-end content and I do not want to spend hours and hours going through some hero challenges to get again the chars I have now, with all the skills unlocked. Also, most of my 13 skills were acquired by buying the book with skill points and gold. Will I be refunded?

HoT seems grim to me…

Face.4216:

Has ANet said or hinted at whether or not we’re going to have to unlock all our skills again in the new system? I know we’re going to get 400 points flat from leveling, but they also said that unlocking everything costs 465, and I don’t even think that number includes the Elite Spec line.

I’ve spent tons of skill points and gold to unlock all my skills and traits on the majority of my characters, but I only have a big chunk of world completion on 1 out of all 9 of them. If I log in on patch day and suddenly I’ve got to go out and grind Hero Challenges just to make sure I can have everything again… I’m probably going to leave the game, because you’ll have robbed me of skills and traits I’ve had for literal years in this game and given me only one very slow, very boring way to get it back. I’m not doing 65 (or more) challenges each across 8 characters simply to get stuff back that I’ve earned previously.

I shouldn’t be stuck doing PvE so I can have 100% of the options available to me in WvW, which is the only gamemode I play aside from SPvP. Either preserve the skills of legacy characters, or introduce another way to get Hero Points that isn’t so lopsided. ANet has seriously overestimated how engaging skill challenges are for players; it’s like their heads are in the sand with regards to the quality (or lack thereof) of their PvE content. And please: do not even try to pass it off like Skill Challenges in WvW are “WvW content”. Right now I can buy every skill and trait in the game with the XP and loot I get from kills and captures in WvW. After this patch, I won’t be able to. That’s broken.

I’m okay with using the new system on the Revenant, obviously, and any characters I might make after the patch, and for the Elite Specialization track, but I would sincerely hope that ANet will take the same route as they did last time and allow legacy characters to keep what they have. And if not, at least compensate us for the money we’ve spent buying skill books from trainers. I know I personally have dropped upwards of 30 gold buying Master and Grandmaster traits since the last change. To have that large amount of gold be gone forever simply because your first redesign of the trait system was a failure would be massively insulting.

And honestly, how long do you think it’s going to be before ANet is going to be designing yet another system for trait/skill unlocks because this one winds up being just as off-putting as the last time? This one will probably have an even shorter lifespan, as there’s not even a way to bypass the PvE nonsense this time, since Hero Points are earned “strictly” through leveling and Hero Challenges. You’re removing the ability to earn Skill/Hero Points when you level past 80, you’re removing the ability to buy traits with gold… this game is becoming so narrow and it’s making me sad.

Why is 14% (65/465) of a character’s functionality walled off behind Hero Challenges, when doing Skill Challenges now is basically grunt work you do for map completion, and doesn’t require any skill at all? A third of these challenges are just standing in one place with your arm outstretched, “communing”… how is that “heroic” at all? You must’ve seriously drank the PvE Kool-Aid if you think that something so trivial should be so strongly tied to a character’s functionality.

For what it’s worth, I do like the trait changes that are being made… but you’re killing experimentation by walling everything off into reward tracks, and forcing Skills and Traits to compete for the same limited currency, where there was no limit to said currency before.

Honestly, I’m probably so pathetic that I wouldn’t stop playing even if I log in and I’ve got to spend a week grinding out enough Hero Points to get back to where I was… but this all just reeks of a bad idea that hasn’t had nearly enough thought put into it.

What was so wrong with getting skill currency every time you re-leveled to 80? What was so wrong with just buying traits from the trainers, or, if you go way back, not having to unlock traits at all? You’re undermining player progression, and the game itself, by layering on new forms of artificial progression where they don’t need to be.

These are just my two cents, take them or leave them. If legacy characters get to keep their skills, or if a new, non-PvE-exclusive way to get Hero Points is introduced, then there’s much less of an issue I think. I obviously don’t think the HP system is particularly good, but I’d be happy simply not to have my previous progress erased by 14%. Definitely want to hear back on that point especially.

So we can’t get the most important question of all answered?

Many of us could well not buy the expansion or leave altogether is we’re told we have to do this ALL over again.

Kick in the teeth.

Disrespecting precious, precious time spent unlocking them all the first time.