Guild Wars 2

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m sorry, but it’s NOT 11 hours on one character. I have 15 characters currently and I’m working through challenges on them presently. The vast majority of them have very little world completion done, a lot of them have nothing open beyond the first few waypoints in their starter zone. Yet, you don’t see me kittening about this.

Edit: And I only get to play an hour an night if I’m lucky!

Even at 5 mins its around 5 hours for 1 character let alone if you have multiples. It may not bother you personally but how about having some understanding that others may not like having the progress that THEY EARNED reset.

This^ + 1 million

On my first character – created at launch – I unlocked all the skills, including the racials (on an asura – we were all newbies then), exclusively via PvE and has world completion. Legit, right? No problem come the patch. My second character was also mostly PvE and has 42% world completion with 76 skill challenges, spent around 140 skill points on the core and elite (non-racial) skills. Still good.

My third started out in PvE, has 32% completion and 57 skill challenges, but then clearly made some poor life choices and got into WvW. Worse, my next 3 characters were leveled almost exclusively there (and EoTM when it was released) – sometimes even with the help of tomes and experience scrolls (I call hackz) – and I unlocked just the skills I needed for my WvW guild’s builds using scrolls. These guys only really completed their racial PvE starting areas with key waypoints into all the cities. So they have a handful of challenges each, excluding the dozen or so from the WvW maps they got that no longer count.

Will ANet force me to re-unlock all those skills via PvE hero challenges or leave me with four lvl 80 unplayable (or at least non-meta) WvW characters come patch day? Of course they wont.

till we really know everything that will happen is it worth all this fighting?

TJgalon.5012:

till we really know everything that will happen is it worth all this fighting?

Yes. Not bringing things up usually ends up in Anet doing something different, and then you will be stuck waiting the next two years for them to notice and maybe do something about it.

No, I am not saying it a bad idea to ask these question and voice are concerns, but all this fighting really does not make sense to me, that all.

Bettik.4982:

On my first character – created at launch – I unlocked all the skills, including the racials (on an asura – we were all newbies then), exclusively via PvE and has world completion. Legit, right? No problem come the patch. My second character was also mostly PvE and has 42% world completion with 76 skill challenges, spent around 140 skill points on the core and elite (non-racial) skills. Still good.

My third started out in PvE, has 32% completion and 57 skill challenges, but then clearly made some poor life choices and got into WvW. Worse, my next 3 characters were leveled almost exclusively there (and EoTM when it was released) – sometimes even with the help of tomes and experience scrolls (I call hackz) – and I unlocked just the skills I needed for my WvW guild’s builds using scrolls. These guys only really completed their racial PvE starting areas with key waypoints into all the cities. So they have a handful of challenges each, excluding the dozen or so from the WvW maps they got that no longer count.

Will ANet force me to re-unlock all those skills via PvE hero challenges or leave me with four lvl 80 unplayable (or at least non-meta) WvW characters come patch day? Of course they wont.

if you only unlocked key builds, it is highly likely you will have enough points.
if you only unlocked one elite, that will save you 10-20 points.
if you didnt unlock a family of skills, (like traps) that will save you 35 points.
if you didnt unlock a trait line? (because you only used 3 lines) you will save 60 points.

you may even end up with more skills/traits, and since wvw has 15 skill points, you would have only needed 50 anyhow.

only people with near complete/complete charachters, with minimal skill challenges complete will end up behind.

and this is part of the issue, how do you figure out how many existing 80s actually deserve to be grandfathered? someone who didnt unlock like 20% of their skills will actually end up with more skills unlocked under the new system, just for being 80.

a guy with even one traitline they didnt bother with under the current system, will be like 5 points from completion. If he didnt bother with two lines, or only unlocked up to majors, he will be ahead.

I’d imagine that yea, you’ll lose things that you “earned” mearly because many traits are going way. But I also have faith in ANET not to take away that which translates over nicely. And no one has “earned” elite specialization traits or skills, so yea you’re going to have to play the game for those.

While I’m nervous about how the changes will affect my various alts, I’m certainly waiting until we know for sure how they will be implemented before I start crying about it. I don’t like the current trait “unlocking” system (luckily my main was made before that change), but I’ve adapted to it. I think we all have, and even if we have to work a little more to get our toons back to where they were pre-update, it won’t be the end of the world.

Neox.3497:

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

I don’t understand why hero points should be “limited”

…

Uhm people with 100% world completion will be able to do that already.

but they will be able to do it this time (IF they have world completion which isn’t that common as you see so many people cry here), the resource will be limited and there wont be any way how to get more… so when they introduce another content which requires hero points and at the same time content which award hero points, people will need to earn more hero points from new content (instead of having it farmed already from just leveling up or scrolls), that’s the reason…

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

I don’t understand why hero points should be “limited”

…

Uhm people with 100% world completion will be able to do that already.

but they will be able to do it this time (IF they have world completion which isn’t that common as you see so many people cry here), the resource will be limited and there wont be any way how to get more… so when they introduce another content which requires hero points and at the same time content which award hero points, people will need to earn more hero points from new content (instead of having it farmed already from just leveling up or scrolls)

According to what we know, unlocking all base specs and skills requires 65/189 challenges. Unless the elite spec uses up all the rest, it means that those with world completion will have some hero points left for the next elite spec.

RabbitUp.8294:

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

I don’t understand why hero points should be “limited”

…

Uhm people with 100% world completion will be able to do that already.

but they will be able to do it this time (IF they have world completion which isn’t that common as you see so many people cry here), the resource will be limited and there wont be any way how to get more… so when they introduce another content which requires hero points and at the same time content which award hero points, people will need to earn more hero points from new content (instead of having it farmed already from just leveling up or scrolls)

According to what we know, unlocking all base specs and skills requires 65/189 challenges. Unless the elite spec uses up all the rest, it means that those with world completion will have some hero points left for the next elite spec.

at the current rate, some wont be enough to complete it.
IF they keep the same rate as base core, it will use 90-100 to complete a specialization and the associated skills.
that means 155-165 used up. leaving you with about 65 left if you do wvw/other maps, etc.

phys.7689:

at the current rate, some wont be enough to complete it.
IF they keep the same rate as base core, it will use 90-100 to complete a specialization and the associated skills.
that means 155-165 used up. leaving you with about 65 left if you do wvw/other maps, etc.

100 seems a lot. You need 465 points to unlock 5 traitlines and 30 or so skills (I’m not sure how much that number varies between professions, to be honest). Elite specs are only a single traitline, 6 skills, 1 armour skin and 1 weapon skin.

In any case, the issue raised was that some people will get a head-start for the next elite spec. Regardless of whether you can unlock it fully or partly on launch, any amount of leftover points offers some advantage.

And I don’t really see the issue. It’s the same as how some will be able to use Tomes to get a level 80 Revenant on day 1.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

Daddar.5971:

spoj.9672:

Except i dont think its fair that someone is able to work on unlocking their elite specs if they havent done enough hero challenges to completely unlock the core specs. Thus a debt is needed. Its essentially saying they never have to complete those extra skill challenges (they arent complete on the map but they may aswell be because you got free hero points).

And you are completely misunderstanding me on my other points. Dont really know how to explain it any other way. I know exactly how they want things to work. You repeating those to me has no relevance.

AGAIN, the point is that the system announced will privilege PvE world completion over other forms of gameplay. I’m not asking that others reach my number of WvW ranks, so why should I be asked to reach their number of ‘skill challenges’?

Not that it matters a whole lot now cuz they recently changed it, but it used to be we were FORCED to go into WvWvW to get our 100% map completion to make legendary weapons. also to fulfill all the achievement for jumping puzzles we had to brave through getting ganked at puzzles choke points to get credit for a PVE reward. We are all sooooo sorry you have to experience a different aspect off the game to get the content you want. /sarcasm off

Legendary weapons were never a PvE reward. It was both a PvE and WvW reward, it had a badges of honor requirement built into it from the very start.

Besides, it’s nowhere near as important as traits. Legendary weapons aren’t a mechanical advantage outside of changing stats, which mostly just compensates for the cost of crafting it (as opposed to one weapon of every stat combination).

Lacking a legendary weapon wont give you a disadvantage when compared to multiple weapons of the same quality, which don’t require map completion.

You will be at a disadvantage if you go up against a situation that requires reflects, and don’t have feedback, because your core traits are Domination/Dueling/Illusions, and you took chaos as your fourth because blink was locked behind it (Manipulations are likely to be in the same track as the manipulation boosting traits), leaving you without feedback/Inspiration (Glamours are likely to be locked behind the trait line that boosts glamours)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

lol I hope they triple the requirements and make it 100% world completion just so I can see these entitled whiners explode…

I’d love that. It makes no difference to me personally, because I’m only going back to skill challenges once it’s time to make a third legendary regardless, and it’ll only cause even more backlash if that happens.

as you can see here

https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/6ddd5HeroPanel_ScreenshotTraining4-590x447.jpg

reward tracks AREN’T only for specializations, they are for each specialization, elite specialization and skill type… this gives you imo enough options to skip some lines to get what you need, no reason to spend points in a skill line which you don’t use, so you should have enough points to unlock what you need just from level 80, if you want to unlock everything, you will need to do some additional challanges… or am I missing something?

MaXi.3642:

as you can see here

https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/6ddd5HeroPanel_ScreenshotTraining4-590x447.jpg

reward tracks AREN’T only for specializations, they are for each specialization, elite specialization and skill type… this gives you imo enough options to skip some lines to get what you need, no reason to spend points in a skill line which you don’t use… or am I missing something?

I do agree with you, but some people want to unlock everything available to them, even if they’ll never use it. However, the people who do want to unlock everything should expect to have to work a little more for it.

On the note of not wanting to leave WvW, the majority of content in GW2 is in PvE. It’s a little unrealistic to expect Anet to let you completely ignore one of the major game modes.

RabbitUp.8294:

phys.7689:

at the current rate, some wont be enough to complete it.
IF they keep the same rate as base core, it will use 90-100 to complete a specialization and the associated skills.
that means 155-165 used up. leaving you with about 65 left if you do wvw/other maps, etc.

100 seems a lot. You need 465 points to unlock 5 traitlines and 30 or so skills (I’m not sure how much that number varies between professions, to be honest). Elite specs are only a single traitline, 6 skills, 1 armour skin and 1 weapon skin.

In any case, the issue raised was that some people will get a head-start for the next elite spec. Regardless of whether you can unlock it fully or partly on launch, any amount of leftover points offers some advantage.

And I don’t really see the issue. It’s the same as how some will be able to use Tomes to get a level 80 Revenant on day 1.

based on the video, it was 60 points for a full specialization unlock, and 35 for a skill pack, or something like that.

It offers an advantage in that skill points still have value, but it offers no advantage in that, the other player will have to do X amount of skill challenges to get to the same level as you.

My guess, is their goal is to keep skill challenges relevant and something you want to find/do as content. When you take a look at orr, most of the content direction is based around dynamic events and skill challenges. the tome skillpoint book thing they did basically invalidated skill challenges except for the purpose of map completion.

So yeah, even if they allow you to get half of the points you need for the next specialization, as long as skill challenges are the main means of skill/trait progression, it will always feel somewhat valuable to get them, and when the new content comes, maybe you will only have to get 10-20 more skill points over what was there before, but those skill points will feel valuable and worthwhile.

Eponet.4829:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

Daddar.5971:

spoj.9672:

Except i dont think its fair that someone is able to work on unlocking their elite specs if they havent done enough hero challenges to completely unlock the core specs. Thus a debt is needed. Its essentially saying they never have to complete those extra skill challenges (they arent complete on the map but they may aswell be because you got free hero points).

And you are completely misunderstanding me on my other points. Dont really know how to explain it any other way. I know exactly how they want things to work. You repeating those to me has no relevance.

AGAIN, the point is that the system announced will privilege PvE world completion over other forms of gameplay. I’m not asking that others reach my number of WvW ranks, so why should I be asked to reach their number of ‘skill challenges’?

Not that it matters a whole lot now cuz they recently changed it, but it used to be we were FORCED to go into WvWvW to get our 100% map completion to make legendary weapons. also to fulfill all the achievement for jumping puzzles we had to brave through getting ganked at puzzles choke points to get credit for a PVE reward. We are all sooooo sorry you have to experience a different aspect off the game to get the content you want. /sarcasm off

Legendary weapons were never a PvE reward. It was both a PvE and WvW reward, it had a badges of honor requirement built into it from the very start.

Besides, it’s nowhere near as important as traits. Legendary weapons aren’t a mechanical advantage outside of changing stats, which mostly just compensates for the cost of crafting it (as opposed to one weapon of every stat combination).

Lacking a legendary weapon wont give you a disadvantage in completing content. Lacking the traits needed to use reflection to the best effect in content that calls for it, will.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

lol I hope they triple the requirements and make it 100% world completion just so I can see these entitled whiners explode…

I’d love that. It makes no difference to me personally, because I’m only going back to skill challenges once it’s time to make a third legendary regardless, and it’ll only cause even more backlash if that happens.

the truth is, you werent really meant to never leave WvW. they always envisioned WvW and PVE being tied together. This is why they shared skills, traits, gear, map complete etc. As time went on they made it easier to progress in WvW without going into PVE, but they generally before thought of them as being a shared mode.

Valkyrie.1794:

However, the people who do want to unlock everything should expect to have to work a little more for it.

this can be also easily explained as additional unlocks, because as we know they removed many traits and made them baseline, but in this meaning baseline means you can unlock them permanently in a reward track, not that you would receive them when you create a character, so in fact you wont be able to unlock everything because there will be more to unlock than it is now…

Eponet.4829:

You will be at a disadvantage if you go up against a situation that requires reflects, and don’t have feedback, because your core traits are Domination/Dueling/Illusions, and you took chaos as your fourth because blink was locked behind it (Manipulations are likely to be in the same track as the manipulation boosting traits), leaving you without feedback/Inspiration (Glamours are likely to be locked behind the trait line that boosts glamours)

There are 10 separate trees, 5 for the traitlines, and 5 for the skill types. The 11th is the elite.

Engineers probably have 9+1.

Valkyrie.1794:

I do agree with you, but some people want to unlock everything available to them, even if they’ll never use it. However, the people who do want to unlock everything should expect to have to work a little more for it.

On the note of not wanting to leave WvW, the majority of content in GW2 is in PvE. It’s a little unrealistic to expect Anet to let you completely ignore one of the major game modes.

I understand this, but it’s still meaningful to make it clear that you are not at a real disadvantage if you have 0 skill challenges. Wanting to keep everything you already unlocked is a valid complaint, though.

Valkyrie.1794:

I do agree with you, but some people want to unlock everything available to them, even if they’ll never use it. However, the people who do want to unlock everything should expect to have to work a little more for it.

What about people that already unlocked everything, and just want to keep it? Should they also expect to have to work little more for it? Again?
Having to pay again for things you have already bought is never a good thing.

choovanski.5462:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

choovanski.5462:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

choovanski.5462:

if they don’t grandfather my 7 geared 80s i will just quit the game. i hate pve, and only wvw and pvp. previously i was able to gear and build my characters from doing just those. if all my progress is removed and i have to do awful boring pve to get my builds back I’ll just quit. it’s a lot of wasted time, and it’s anet basically spitting in my face.

NPR was awful, but at least i could use all the skill point scrolls from wvw and pvp to unlock traits. being forced to pve, wow so fun.

so sounds to me like your gonna throw a tantrum and toss out countless hours of fun cuz you wont spend a few hours running around hitting your f key to commune with a skill point location or kill some simple mobs that take less than 30 seconds to kill… hmmm? glad people like you dont run the country… oh wait….

it’s a video game. it’s supposed to be fun. most of my characters have close to 0% map completion so that’s a lot of walking. so, over 7+ hours of boredom to get my characters to the point where they are right now. I’m just not interested.

I’ve been playing Black Desert Online and really enjoying it. being forced to do pointless unfun pve to get things back that they have taken from me back, combined with bad pvp matchmaking, perma stealth, boring LS updates, and other issues i have with the game are enough to get me to quit. straw that breaks the camel’s back.

and as for your weird politics comment, seeing as im a neo-marxist with a degree in philosophy people like me definitely don’t run whatever country you are from.

look bud… clearly you dont like this game so why are you here? If another MMO has all you want like you claim, then go there and play the game you like, quit wasting your time here, nothing more needs to be said. Your degrees mean squat here bub, I dont care if your stephen hawking either.

i think you need to take a relaxing bath and calm down.

buddy, I did that loooooooong ago… why you still here? go play your black desert game man, and quit hatin on this game cuz it isnt catered to you.

TJgalon.5012:

till we really know everything that will happen is it worth all this fighting?

No.

But people enjoy being paranoid fantacists, apparently.

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m sorry, but it’s NOT 11 hours on one character. I have 15 characters currently and I’m working through challenges on them presently. The vast majority of them have very little world completion done, a lot of them have nothing open beyond the first few waypoints in their starter zone. Yet, you don’t see me kittening about this.

Edit: And I only get to play an hour an night if I’m lucky!

Even at 5 mins its around 5 hours for 1 character let alone if you have multiples. It may not bother you personally but how about having some understanding that others may not like having the progress that THEY EARNED reset.

The ones that EARNED it leveled to 80 and did the challenges. They won’t be affected.
I don’t consider champ training and clicking through scrolls EARNING anything. And yeah, I did it too to unlock skills. Ive spent gold to unlock traits with the new system. I’m going to lose all of it too, its not the end of the world though.

People need to take into consideration that 65 points equates to 13 unlocks. Across all of the available skills and traits. A lot of us only have “everything unlocked” because we had nothing better to do, not because we actually use all of it.

People are squealing like it’s the end of the world, like they are being reset back to 1 and being told that they have to do it all again, and that’s not what’s happening. We’re going to be going out to gather challenges to unlock the elite anyway so what the hell is the big deal, that you have to spend a little bit more time for a few more if core completion is really that important. I get that people don’t want to do it. I get that they feel its unfair.

Yeah my only complaint is the huge amounts of gold i spent on skill unlocks. But everything else i think is fair. I certainly put no effort into unlocking things with skillpoint scrolls. So i dont mind losing a few unneeded core stuffs.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m sorry, but it’s NOT 11 hours on one character. I have 15 characters currently and I’m working through challenges on them presently. The vast majority of them have very little world completion done, a lot of them have nothing open beyond the first few waypoints in their starter zone. Yet, you don’t see me kittening about this.

Edit: And I only get to play an hour an night if I’m lucky!

Even at 5 mins its around 5 hours for 1 character let alone if you have multiples. It may not bother you personally but how about having some understanding that others may not like having the progress that THEY EARNED reset.

The ones that EARNED it leveled to 80 and did the challenges. They won’t be affected.
I don’t consider champ training and clicking through scrolls EARNING anything. And yeah, I did it too to unlock skills. Ive spent gold to unlock traits with the new system. I’m going to lose all of it too, its not the end of the world though.

By that logic, you shouldn’t consider skill challenges earning them either. It’s just running to arbitrary points and completing a task that has absolutely no difficulty, it’s tedious, not challenging, just like champ trains.

If you’re going by that metric, the only people that earned them would be the people that paid for them via WvWvW kills/objectives, High level fractals or SPvP and they should be tied exclusively to WvW rank, Fractal reward level, and PvP leaderboard ranking. All of these are far more challenging, and deserving than skill challenges are. Up the difficulty on them, and give them interesting mechanics that result in every class being forced to approach each of them differently while using their full suite of mechanics, and it’ll be both earning them, and keep them from being tedious. Two to three minutes of running across a map followed by a trivial encounter that doesn’t require any actual skill doesn’t seem like it would appeal to anyone.

People like to simplify it to clicking scrolls, but that’s only the last step. It’s like saying that Skill challenges aren’t earning them because you’re just given skill points. Skill challenges are pretty much just brainless tedium.

Make the skill challenges both actually challenging, fun in and of themselves, and either make them account bound, or varied such that they’re a unique experience with each class and I’d be okay with it. But as they are now, they’re just a waste of time.

Eponet.4829:

snip

I had a long drawn out post going point by point, but I’m just going to nix that. It boils down to the simple fact that this is exactly what the challenges were designed for. Giving us points to purchase our skills are their function. They serve no other purpose, they give no other reward (world completing not withstanding). Thus it makes sense that they are the bar by which anet is measuring.

Sure, they aren’t any more challenging than running a champ train, but you can see with the addition of the skill scrolls, skill points got out of hand. The addition of skill points to purchase traits, and the insane number needed to do so (not to mention gold) shows us exactly how out of hand skill points have gotten because of scrolls. Anet is simply rolling that system back to how it should have been at the very beginning. A capped currency with a very limited number of acquisition options.

At least the way they are implementing it is “unfair” across the board.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Eponet.4829:

snip

At least the way they are implementing it is “unfair” across the board.

Strange. One of my characters will have 190 or so right away, while others will have 30 or less, purely because I played world completion on one of them while the others I used for other playstyles. That hardly seems equal across the board.

Additionally, it’s not just the champ trains. From the very beginning, you could still gain skill points from leveling past 80. Sure, it would take you a while to do it if you weren’t playing skill challenges, but you would eventually be able to do it without wasting your time on things you didn’t enjoy.

I’m okay with it taking a month per character, so long as that time is enjoyable. The time I set aside for playing is there to be enjoyable. If I’m spending my leisure time doing chores, it’s no longer leisure time.

We were promised a game in which we could have fun, instead of preparing to have fun. It started out that way, with literally everything but SPvP giving you XP, which in turn gave you skill points and a resource that you could use to unlock your traits and get a set of the mechanically best set of gear. Ascended gear was a step back from that in that the best gear wasn’t easily accessible, but you would still eventually be able to acquire it while playing pretty much any type of playstyle you wanted. This is terrible, in that it completely breaks the manifesto that they sold the game to us under, the ascended grind could be equivocated by redefining grinding to playing unenjoyable content for mechanical rewards. This, can’t. This system is literally forcing people to grind in order to unlock important mechanics of their characters.

Having to repeat progression or re-earn it is dumb. Unless they can figure out a way to dole this stuff out to people that WvW exclusively they shouldn’t go through with it like this. Full stop.

Eponet.4829:

Strange. One of my characters will have 190 or so right away, while others will have 30 or less, purely because I played world completion on one of them while the others I used for other playstyles. That hardly seems equal across the board.

Those that have done world completion aren’t affected. The only people complaining are those that won’t have all of their points after the change. However, it is ‘fair’ across the board for those player as they didn’t do all the ‘work’ for the currency. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pve alt, a wvw player, or a pvp player that stepped into pve to dungeon. They will all require the same ~65 challenges.

Eponet.4829:

Additionally, it’s not just the champ trains. From the very beginning, you could still gain skill points from leveling past 80. Sure, it would take you a while to do it if you weren’t playing skill challenges, but you would eventually be able to do it without wasting your time on things you didn’t enjoy.

Yes, you could still get 1 point per level “after 80.” That was one of the things I touched on in my original long drawn out post, but opted to chop. Yes, you’d have eventually have had enough points that way to unlock everything, but it would have been slow and just as tedious as going to do the challenges. I’m guessing after doing the math anet decided there would be too many points floating around still if they kept those additional leveled points and converted them, so they are getting nixed too.

The change is necessary. Skill points are in the same place in GW2 that they were in GW1 – abundant and essentially useless.

Honestly, I’m not against WvW having its own way of obtaining hero points (probably seems that way though). It might make for some painful coding for Anet. I am against them getting a way that is easier than obtaining them through pve play, and let’s face it, just tying them to player kills would be easier. People already farm kills in wvw for the titles…

I’m not even against WvW getting a similar set up to sPvP where it’s simply unlocked and usable in that mode. However, like pvp, once they step a toe into regular pve, it should go back to being locked if they haven’t unlocked it with hero points. The problem with this set up is that WvW isn’t a completely separate mode from straight pve, which is why I think there would be issues doing it this way.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Eponet.4829:

Strange. One of my characters will have 190 or so right away, while others will have 30 or less, purely because I played world completion on one of them while the others I used for other playstyles. That hardly seems equal across the board.

Those that have done world completion aren’t affected. The only people complaining are those that won’t have all of their points after the change. However, it is ‘fair’ across the board for those player as they didn’t do all the ‘work’ for the currency. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pve alt, a wvw player, or a pvp player that stepped into pve to dungeon. They will all require the same ~65 challenges.

Eponet.4829:

Additionally, it’s not just the champ trains. From the very beginning, you could still gain skill points from leveling past 80. Sure, it would take you a while to do it if you weren’t playing skill challenges, but you would eventually be able to do it without wasting your time on things you didn’t enjoy.

Yes, you could still get 1 point per level “after 80.” That was one of the things I touched on in my original long drawn out post, but opted to chop. Yes, you’d have eventually have had enough points that way to unlock everything, but it would have been slow and just as tedious as going to do the challenges. I’m guessing after doing the math anet decided there would be too many points floating around still if they kept those additional leveled points and converted them, so they are getting nixed too.

I think you’re missing the point. It’s only tedious if you focus on skill points. It’s not tedious if they come naturally as a result of playing what you enjoy, also, as I said before, it would be pretty hard to make it easier than skill challenges. I think you might mean less tedious than skill challenges.

I would actually be completely willing to do them if they altered the skill challenges so that they were actually challenging and had interesting mechanics that either didn’t have to be replayed on multiple characters, or had a fresh approach based on which class you were playing. But as they are, they’re just braindead run to a point and do a simple task that has practically no risk to it.

If they did that, I wouldn’t even require a reward from it, I’d do most of them because they were fun, and probably request the ability to do them multiple times on the same character.

If you think that just about any method is easier than skill challenges, you’re fooling yourself. Most of them aren’t difficult, they’re just tedious and boring.

There are exceptions though, such as the skill points in contested orrian temples. In the course of my world completion, they were the only ones that required any thought at all, causing me to look at my resources, retrait for prismatic understanding and illusory persona, equip a torch, decoy, mass invisibility and veil, throw them together, mass invisibility first, then once the stealth ran out, interrupt the first enemy attack with diversion, and then activate my one second distortion at the last possible moment before the fire rain triggered on me, and got the skill point.

It would also be a great time for engineers to realise the true extent of their stealth potential with the smoke field generated by the flame turret + blast finishers, as well as the toolbelt skill of Elixer S. Thieves can just shadow veil, which isn’t as interesting unfortunately.

If every class had a similar potential to solve the problem using their own unique mechanics (as opposed to just waiting for a zerg to clear the temple), they would be amazing.

Give us more skill challenges like that, in which each of them incentivizes you to learn and make use of the potential of your class. That was satisfying progression, not because of what the reward was, but because of the fact that it was a legitimate challenge to overcome using the tools at my disposal, instead of just a time sink like the vast majority of the skill points in the game right now are.

It’s far from healthy for the game to accept locking core mechanics behind boring content in order to make that content valuable, as it just incentivizes them into making lazily designed content and lock important aspects of the game behind it.

You should play content because it’s fun to play, not because you need to complete it to unlock fun stuff. It’s hard to imagine anyone who finds them enjoyable content the second time through (The first time at least has some appeal to people who just explore the world)

Eponet.4829:

snip

I do believe I said the challenges weren’t necessarily challenging. Of course, neither is beating on a player that’s just standing there so you can kill farm. Neither is champ training. But that’s beside the point and getting off the general topic.

You’re complaint isn’t that you don’t want to do them. Your complaint is that they are boring. That’s entirely different than most of the others’ complaints, which simply boils down to they just don’t want to do them at all….period. I understand the boring part, I don’t particularly find them entertaining either. But, they are the bar by which anet is measuring, because that was their entire purpose / function in the game. While it might be…interesting…to see some of them “upgraded” to actually be more challenging, I don’t consider that to be likely to happen for any in the core game. Maybe for some of the ones in HoT, but we’ll see.

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

MaXi.3642:

Neox.3497:

I don’t understand why hero points should be “limited”

…

Uhm people with 100% world completion will be able to do that already.

but they will be able to do it this time (IF they have world completion which isn’t that common as you see so many people cry here), the resource will be limited and there wont be any way how to get more… so when they introduce another content which requires hero points and at the same time content which award hero points, people will need to earn more hero points from new content (instead of having it farmed already from just leveling up or scrolls), that’s the reason…

This is still weird. This means if you have done everything before a new expansion you will always unlock the skills of the new expansion without even playing it first.

Eponet.4829:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m sorry, but it’s NOT 11 hours on one character. I have 15 characters currently and I’m working through challenges on them presently. The vast majority of them have very little world completion done, a lot of them have nothing open beyond the first few waypoints in their starter zone. Yet, you don’t see me kittening about this.

Edit: And I only get to play an hour an night if I’m lucky!

Even at 5 mins its around 5 hours for 1 character let alone if you have multiples. It may not bother you personally but how about having some understanding that others may not like having the progress that THEY EARNED reset.

The ones that EARNED it leveled to 80 and did the challenges. They won’t be affected.
I don’t consider champ training and clicking through scrolls EARNING anything. And yeah, I did it too to unlock skills. Ive spent gold to unlock traits with the new system. I’m going to lose all of it too, its not the end of the world though.

By that logic, you shouldn’t consider skill challenges earning them either. It’s just running to arbitrary points and completing a task that has absolutely no difficulty, it’s tedious, not challenging, just like champ trains.

If you’re going by that metric, the only people that earned them would be the people that paid for them via WvWvW kills/objectives, High level fractals or SPvP and they should be tied exclusively to WvW rank, Fractal reward level, and PvP leaderboard ranking. All of these are far more challenging, and deserving than skill challenges are. Up the difficulty on them, and give them interesting mechanics that result in every class being forced to approach each of them differently while using their full suite of mechanics, and it’ll be both earning them, and keep them from being tedious. Two to three minutes of running across a map followed by a trivial encounter that doesn’t require any actual skill doesn’t seem like it would appeal to anyone.

People like to simplify it to clicking scrolls, but that’s only the last step. It’s like saying that Skill challenges aren’t earning them because you’re just given skill points. Skill challenges are pretty much just brainless tedium.

Make the skill challenges both actually challenging, fun in and of themselves, and either make them account bound, or varied such that they’re a unique experience with each class and I’d be okay with it. But as they are now, they’re just a waste of time.

Skill challenges should not actually be challenging content( for most levels) they are designed to be small tests that show what level your charachter is. Its basically like taking tests.
The old system was flawed charachter progression, people who never played a charachter a day in their lives were somehow fully unlocked in everything.

Valkyrie.1794:

I do agree with you, but some people want to unlock everything available to them, even if they’ll never use it. However, the people who do want to unlock everything should expect to have to work a little more for it.

I have everything unlocked now I don’t expect to lose that progress and work again for it. For new character going forward its fine not for characters already at 80 with everything unlocked via scrolls and gold.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You’re complaint isn’t that you don’t want to do them. Your complaint is that they are boring. That’s entirely different than most of the others’ complaints, which simply boils down to they just don’t want to do them at all….period.

Thats a mischaracterization of those who are objecting which is that we don’t want to have progress we earned via a different system lost merely because they are changing the system and have to spend hours re-earning them when we could be doing an activity in game that we actually want to do.

For new toons going forward I think its fine.

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You’re complaint isn’t that you don’t want to do them. Your complaint is that they are boring. That’s entirely different than most of the others’ complaints, which simply boils down to they just don’t want to do them at all….period.

Thats a mischaracterization of those who are objecting which is that we don’t want to have progress we earned via a different system lost merely because they are changing the system and have to spend hours re-earning them when we could be doing an activity in game that we actually want to do.

For new toons going forward I think its fine.

he was talking about that specific poster, which was bringing up a different point, not “you” meaning everyone he was talking to.

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You’re complaint isn’t that you don’t want to do them. Your complaint is that they are boring. That’s entirely different than most of the others’ complaints, which simply boils down to they just don’t want to do them at all….period.

Thats a mischaracterization of those who are objecting which is that we don’t want to have progress we earned via a different system lost merely because they are changing the system and have to spend hours re-earning them when we could be doing an activity in game that we actually want to do.

For new toons going forward I think its fine.

he was talking about that specific poster, which was bringing up a different point, not “you” meaning everyone he was talking to.

I was talking about her comment about “most others”

hate to break it to you guys, but this type of thing happens in ALOT of games… RTS’s = new map, start gathering resources from scratch… FPS start specializing weapons and gear after your “prestige”, MMO’s = game reset when major patches/features install so you can work through the new material. This isnt a new thing, nor is it a surprise. Its how alot of games choose to do replayability.

Its already happened before in this game. Fractal reset. But with that there was pretty much no justification or warning for it. Fractal leaderboards never happened which was their justification.

Just be greatful you are getting warned about this well in advance. We never got that for fractal reset or the removal of TAFU. Those both happened 2 days after we found out about them.

Ya know, i thought about posting here for a long time…but i never really wanted too. I have 12 characters, all at level 80. 3 of which have above 50%, My ranger which is at 92%, my Guardian at 100%, and my Mesmer at 56%. the rest all hover from 10-40%, but im not upset about this change really, while i play those characters often, ill have enough points since they are level 80 to unlock the skills and traits that i use on them, for the two builds each character uses, or so it seems from what was said.

morrolan.9608:

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You’re complaint isn’t that you don’t want to do them. Your complaint is that they are boring. That’s entirely different than most of the others’ complaints, which simply boils down to they just don’t want to do them at all….period.

Thats a mischaracterization of those who are objecting which is that we don’t want to have progress we earned via a different system lost merely because they are changing the system and have to spend hours re-earning them when we could be doing an activity in game that we actually want to do.

For new toons going forward I think its fine.

he was talking about that specific poster, which was bringing up a different point, not “you” meaning everyone he was talking to.

I was talking about her comment about “most others”

The keyword in that phrase being MOST.

As in, it doesn’t apply to all others. Exceptions to all things.

morrolan.9608:

Thats a mischaracterization of those who are objecting which is that we don’t want to have progress we earned via a different system lost merely because they are changing the system and have to spend hours re-earning them when we could be doing an activity in game that we actually want to do.

For new toons going forward I think its fine.

Unfortunately this is something that seems to be relatively common in MMOs and other online games. Systems change for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it borks your build. Sometimes it borks your progress. Sometimes it obliterates a skill for no apparent reason. Anet did this in GW1 with skills; plenty of horror stories out there about their skill balancing. They’ve shown that the can and will do it as they feel its necessary in GW2.

Does it suck? Sure.
Can we voice our discontent? Yup.
Can we actually do a kitten thing about it? Not really.

Anet has pretty much stated this is what they are doing and why they feel its a better way to handle the issue. They might tweak it between now and implementation. There might be things we don’t know still. But for the most part they’ve laid out what they intend to do, and they gave us plenty of forewarning to ‘make up’ the points we may end up missing if we didn’t gather our points via the system originally implemented (the challenges) to obtain them. They’re essentially admitting that they screwed up with the very first implementation of skill points and how they were obtained, and now they are fixing that system, and imo it’s something they need to do. Because right now, skill points are worthless.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

hate to break it to you guys, but this type of thing happens in ALOT of games… RTS’s = new map, start gathering resources from scratch… FPS start specializing weapons and gear after your “prestige”, MMO’s = game reset when major patches/features install so you can work through the new material. This isnt a new thing, nor is it a surprise. Its how alot of games choose to do replayability.

This is so wrong in so many ways.

It’s like saying it would be alright if they delete all your legendaries when the expansion releases without compensation.

An expansion isn’t a “reset” more like a “continue” where usually new stuff is better than the old stuff.
However this is nothing like that.

Neox.3497:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

hate to break it to you guys, but this type of thing happens in ALOT of games… RTS’s = new map, start gathering resources from scratch… FPS start specializing weapons and gear after your “prestige”, MMO’s = game reset when major patches/features install so you can work through the new material. This isnt a new thing, nor is it a surprise. Its how alot of games choose to do replayability.

This is so wrong in so many ways.

It’s like saying it would be alright if they delete all your legendaries when the expansion releases without compensation.

An expansion isn’t a “reset” more like a “continue” where usually new stuff is better than the old stuff.
However this is nothing like that.

A few things:

• You have no basis to say that the new stuff won’t be better than the old stuff. The new stuff isn’t finished, and I am willing to bet you a pleasant back scratch that you haven’t played it yet.
• The Hero Points System isn’t part of the expansion per se, they’re fixing a broken system. (and yes, the Skill Point/Trait system is broken how it currently stands)
• What the guy you quoted said was nothing like “deleting all of your Legendaries.” Heck, most MMOs make existing Legendary items obsolete immediately upon entering the new zones (I remember getting green items in Cataclysm that were better than my WotLK Purple items). Anet did us a massive solid by not doing this.

MattyP.6954:

Neox.3497:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

hate to break it to you guys, but this type of thing happens in ALOT of games… RTS’s = new map, start gathering resources from scratch… FPS start specializing weapons and gear after your “prestige”, MMO’s = game reset when major patches/features install so you can work through the new material. This isnt a new thing, nor is it a surprise. Its how alot of games choose to do replayability.

This is so wrong in so many ways.

It’s like saying it would be alright if they delete all your legendaries when the expansion releases without compensation.

An expansion isn’t a “reset” more like a “continue” where usually new stuff is better than the old stuff.
However this is nothing like that.

A few things:

• You have no basis to say that the new stuff won’t be better than the old stuff. The new stuff isn’t finished, and I am willing to bet you a pleasant back scratch that you haven’t played it yet.
• The Hero Points System isn’t part of the expansion per se, they’re fixing a broken system. (and yes, the Skill Point/Trait system is broken how it currently stands)
• What the guy you quoted said was nothing like “deleting all of your Legendaries.” Heck, most MMOs make existing Legendary items obsolete immediately upon entering the new zones (I remember getting green items in Cataclysm that were better than my WotLK Purple items). Anet did us a massive solid by not doing this.

-I said “usually” and “However this is nothing like that.” meaning GW:HoT isn’t like that.
-Uhm yes and?
-I’m not sure what he was talking about but since he didn’t quote anything I guess he was talking about the text by OP. And the OP was talking about losing stuff he already unlocked which IS the same as losing a legendary, just not that bad.

MattyP.6954:

• The Hero Points System isn’t part of the expansion per se, they’re fixing a broken system. (and yes, the Skill Point/Trait system is broken how it currently stands)

It’s better than this system. The only reason people complained about it was because of the massive price hike in the cost of unlocking traits. No one was complaining that they were unlocked with gold.

The basic idea worked well, it’s something that could simply be fixed by adjusting the numbers instead of forcing people into playing content that they find old and tedious over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Unfortunately this is something that seems to be relatively common in MMOs and other online games. Systems change for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it borks your build. Sometimes it borks your progress. Sometimes it obliterates a skill for no apparent reason. Anet did this in GW1 with skills; plenty of horror stories out there about their skill balancing. They’ve shown that the can and will do it as they feel its necessary in GW2.

Except Mike O’Brien explicitly stated that they wouldn’t invalidate players progress with HOT.

MattyP.6954:

• The Hero Points System isn’t part of the expansion per se, they’re fixing a broken system. (and yes, the Skill Point/Trait system is broken how it currently stands)

So change it back to the original system. Having said that they aren’t just fixing the system, they are redoing the system so they can put elite specs in.

I guess it’s time to take a break from having fun ‘playing the way I want’ and go do lots of repetitive grinding on 13 of my level 80 toons. Funny, I seem to remember A-net marketing this game as the only MMO that didn’t require grinding. So much for that.

morrolan.9608:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Unfortunately this is something that seems to be relatively common in MMOs and other online games. Systems change for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it borks your build. Sometimes it borks your progress. Sometimes it obliterates a skill for no apparent reason. Anet did this in GW1 with skills; plenty of horror stories out there about their skill balancing. They’ve shown that the can and will do it as they feel its necessary in GW2.

Except Mike O’Brien explicitly stated that they wouldn’t invalidate players progress with HOT.

Unfortunately he was referring to level cap and armor tier cap with that statement. Not to the trait system, which hadn’t even been announced.

Honestly, if you want to pull that phrase out of context, any balance change could be stated as going against that statement. Any core system change could be claimed as going against that statement. A lot of things can be applied when you take a single phrase out of context.