Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

the new system is better for a new charachter that you actually want to play than any other system before it.
leveling to 80 alone gives you enough points to create any build, in fact you can create the majority of builds available with just leveling to 80.
If you were leveling how people normally level you would have enough skill challenges to unlock every skill by the time you were about 35
If you autoleveled to 80, it would take you about 1.5-3 hours.

the main problems

how will they grandfather older charachters, having to spend any time at all to get back what you lost is a very negative feeling for many players.

the next big issue is versatility of aquisition.

i think the best solution would be a soul bound method of unlocking skill challenges that were previously unlocked on your account for doing various things. (for versatility)
this method would require you to play or do things on that charachter

and then giving completely unlocked charachters access to 65 uses of that mechanic.

How can you say “actually want to play” and mean open world pve opposed to dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp. Do you consider open world pve to be more difficult than those 4 activities? Because I think it is fair to say, if you complete higher difficulty content, that is more deserving of progression than completing lower difficulty content.

You say “normally level”, is it so hard for you to believe people play differently than you? Anet introduced tomes of knowledge and writs of experience for a reason. They have pretty much said switching toons at the end of a dungeon is fine. They have made it clear buying dungeons is fine too. I mean, how much clearer can it get. There are a large variety of play styles.

Finally, I want to say, I think that a problem which really deserves to be brought up is, yes lv 80 will have 400/465 heros points. But elite specializations are going to require heros points too right? And again, we are forced to play open world pve 9 times just to try out that new content on all our toons. No alternative options, no progression through dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp. Its open world pve or nothing.

Coulter.2315:

Teratus.2859:

Coulter.2315:

WvW and PvE are the same thing, you cannot have 1 getting full unlock without affecting the other. PvP will have the option to buy the traits just as before no doubt.

WvW is just PvP in a PvE style environment… a hybrid of the game modes
it would not be difficult to seperate them entirely Anet simply have choosen not to

people can argue WvW is PvE but it isnt.. it just shares elements
and since the core focus of WvW is to fight other players that defaults it as PvP content

PvE shares every element with WvW, and character skill unlocks is one of them, you cannot separate them. You can argue that WvW should use the PvP system but that isn’t what this thread is about.

1) WvW retains the PvE character and does not have the option to unlock traits.
2) WvW changes to PvP system and gets the option to unlock PvP versions of traits.

Choose 1) or 2).

WvW and PvE traits/gear are the same but the game modes are not even close to related. Here is an example. I have 3 maxed characters on my second account. I transferred nothing from my old account (which I don’t even use anymore). I have had my second account for a year and a half, and my highest map comp on a single character is 4%, and I don’t have a single complete map comp. I think I’ve done one world boss once…other than that the most PvE I do is using the mystic toilet and linen farming. So no, u r completely wrong in your assumptions.
WvW should not run off of the pvp system because that promotes standardized stats, which would be okay but WvW allows for uniqueness (and use of gear other than zerker that only PvE scrubs use) in builds. WvW players currently utilize skill points and gold to unlock traits. I don’t think that should change. There should also be a way for WvW players to get the necessary traits without having to do mind numbingly dull PvE content.

Real easy idea…have existing level 80s have all base specialization lines unlocked, and than have hero points have a 10% chance to drop from WvW rank up chests. Our method of getting these points will be slower, but atleast we will have existing builds until we get enough hero points. This would also let us save hero points for our revenant that we make and dont level in PvE.

thrag.9740:

phys.7689:

the new system is better for a new charachter that you actually want to play than any other system before it.
leveling to 80 alone gives you enough points to create any build, in fact you can create the majority of builds available with just leveling to 80.
If you were leveling how people normally level you would have enough skill challenges to unlock every skill by the time you were about 35
If you autoleveled to 80, it would take you about 1.5-3 hours.

the main problems

how will they grandfather older charachters, having to spend any time at all to get back what you lost is a very negative feeling for many players.

the next big issue is versatility of aquisition.

i think the best solution would be a soul bound method of unlocking skill challenges that were previously unlocked on your account for doing various things. (for versatility)
this method would require you to play or do things on that charachter

and then giving completely unlocked charachters access to 65 uses of that mechanic.

How can you say “actually want to play” and mean open world pve opposed to dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp. Do you consider open world pve to be more difficult than those 4 activities? Because I think it is fair to say, if you complete higher difficulty content, that is more deserving of progression than completing lower difficulty content.

You say “normally level”, is it so hard for you to believe people play differently than you? Anet introduced tomes of knowledge and writs of experience for a reason. They have pretty much said switching toons at the end of a dungeon is fine. They have made it clear buying dungeons is fine too. I mean, how much clearer can it get. There are a large variety of play styles.

Finally, I want to say, I think that a problem which really deserves to be brought up is, yes lv 80 will have 400/465 heros points. But elite specializations are going to require heros points too right? And again, we are forced to play open world pve 9 times just to try out that new content on all our toons. No alternative options, no progression through dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp. Its open world pve or nothing.

i say actually want to play that charachter, in relation to actually playing that charachter. IE if you intend to actually play a charachter, the new method is faster than any previous system for getting max unlock.

when i say normally level, im talking about how charachters are normally leveled, normal doesnt mean every single person ever, it means how it is generally done.

you do get progression through dungeon/fractals/wvw/pvp
you get 400 points from doing those things.
i can guarantee you that just doing skill challenges alone will not get you 80 levels of experience. Most of your skill points actually comes from doing the things you talked about.

as far as the future of specializations, hero challenges may in the future be found in dungeons, and in WvW, they can even put them in fractals. They can put them wherever they want to. In fact skill challenges are currently found in WvW.

but lets be honest, the right place for basic charachter progression should be soloable, not too difficult, and not linked to elite group activities which are not available to everyone. This is why it is the BASIC starter charachter progression that you only have to do once per charachter.

phys.7689:

i say actually want to play that charachter, in relation to actually playing that charachter. IE if you intend to actually play a charachter, the new method is faster than any previous system for getting max unlock.

What if I want to play that character in anything that’s not pve exploration?
How can this new method be any better than leveling and obtaining my skills thru activities I enjoy?

phys.7689:

when i say normally level, im talking about how charachters are normally leveled, normal doesnt mean every single person ever, it means how it is generally done.

Anet advertised WvW as a viable way to progress, that’s normal too.

phys.7689:

you do get progression through dungeon/fractals/wvw/pvp
you get 400 points from doing those things.

You do get progression, up to a certain extent, then you’re forced to do the one and only available method to access the rest of your skills/traits and try out specializations, one of the biggest selling points of the expansion.
Very cheap shot

phys.7689:

i can guarantee you that just doing skill challenges alone will not get you 80 levels of experience. Most of your skill points actually comes from doing the things you talked about.

We’re not asking for “most” or “some”, it’s either progress doing what you want or not.
Anet is banning anyone who doesnt want to go thru a grindfest….
8 chars = 8 × 65 = 520 skill points, let’s say the specialization costs 50, that’d be 920 skill points to try out new content, wow so fun. That’s just like completing the whole map 4 times and then some.
Hey, at least I got some leveling and doing stuff I like, now just 920 to go before I can use specializations on all those chars!! Anyone else getting excited?

phys.7689:

but lets be honest, the right place for basic charachter progression should be soloable, not too difficult, and not linked to elite group activities which are not available to everyone. This is why it is the BASIC starter charachter progression that you only have to do once per charachter.

Why should the basic progression on a massive MULTIPLAYER game be restricted to solo methods? Sure, have your solo method, let me keep my MULTIPLAYER method in the MULTIPLAYER game.

Clearing OP is blowing things out of proportion.

We all understand that 400/465 (86%) isn’t the max unlock to traits/skills. However when you look at the bigger picture, how many of your alt characters did they actually have EVERY SINGLE trait/skill unlocked? Currently leveling to 80 via tomes doesn’t even give enough skill points to unlock all the skills either, or the fact that you needed to pay gold to get traits.

Then comes the next question, when was the last time you used a particular skill set in PvE?

• Thief: Venom, Traps. Venom is used exclusively in PvP. I have yet to see a Thief to use traps, ever.
• Guardian: Spirit weapons. Besides the fun factor, they’re not exactly practical.
• Warrior: Physical skills.
• Ranger: The beastmastery tree. Niche build.
• Mesmer: Chaos tree. Only few build uses it and they’re conquest pvp builds.
• Necromancer: Corruption. Also is used exclusively in PvP only.
• All others: The newest ‘anti-toxin’ heal or racial skills.

From these exclusions alone, you have gathered yourself enough points to unlock everything else you need. While it does mean you’ll have to work for them for WvW, it’s not any different than now where you have to earn them in some form. Scrolls for skillpoints was just the easy way out.

^ So in other words, it’s either don’t use all your skills/traits or go thru the grindfest?
I could swear this game was advertised as grind-free when it comes down to character progression, did they change that? Can anyone give me the link for the quote?
Because what I can find is
““We have a lot of fans who feel abused by the process of other MMOs. MMOs have the assumption that you’re supposed to dedicate your life to it. Each expansion pack is going to invalidate all the work you did before. It’s going to be a constantly moving goal post. Because we have a lot of people coming to Guild Wars 2 who have done that kind of thing before, they don’t want to be doing it again.”
And that quote pretty much says we’re not going to screw your progress, quite the opposite of what this system will do (aside from taking a big dump on the progression grind-free philosophy)

Change for the better even though it is going to screw up veteran players. I hope Anet knows the risk.

Raziel.4216:

quote

I would say it’s both a positive and negative at the same time. It is possible for some characters to gained more than the current system because that 86% is more than enough for their current setup. It also shouldn’t impact majority of main characters, if you haven’t gotten 65 done and it’s your main….well that’s another story.

On the other hand, it will most definitely affect some builds, chars and players. Though it’s a new set of traits and system, it’s a whole new paradigm and the previous meta builds would be less relevant.

Whether it is a grind or not is debatable. Do you believe that running your lv80 character thru low level maps a grind? (You’ll most likely 2-5 shot the hero challenge mobs). Do you desperately need the last 14% missing skill set that most certainly you never used anyways? (The current builds doesn’t use >70% of the traits/skills). Do you truly believe that a mmorpg doesn’t involve grind of any sort? (Masteries, Legendaries, skins, if it’s not gear grind, it’s grind in another aspect).

phys.7689:

but lets be honest, the right place for basic charachter progression should be soloable, not too difficult, and not linked to elite group activities which are not available to everyone. This is why it is the BASIC starter charachter progression that you only have to do once per charachter.

So unlocking ELITE specializations should be linked to “soloable, not too difficult” content? So MAXING a character should be linked to “soloable, not too difficult” content?

Also where is this content that is not available to everyone?

^ This MMORPG in particular was advertised as progression grind-free.
The devs said in an interview less than 3 months ago that they didn’t want to invalidate past progress.
So yeah I’d like to keep my unlocked skills and avoid doing more than 2 times the total # of skill points available in the entire game to have my characters back to where they are now, tyvm.

Raziel.4216:

^ This MMORPG in particular was advertised as progression grind-free.
The devs said in an interview less than 3 months ago that they didn’t want to invalidate past progress.
So yeah I’d like to keep my unlocked skills and avoid doing more than 2 times the total # of skill points available in the entire game to have my characters back to where they are now, tyvm.

It’s only about 1/3 of the total number available…. or 65 out of 220….

Raziel.4216:

Stop ignoring the core problem, Anet promised progress by different means -level & skill points by WvW, PvE or sPvP – they won’t be keeping their word in the expansion if they don’t provide another way to obtain hero points.

They never promised skill points in new locations, they promised new progression e.g. the mastery system. As far as I’m concerned they kept their word on that part.

Ranatoa.4869:

Raziel.4216:

Stop ignoring the core problem, Anet promised progress by different means -level & skill points by WvW, PvE or sPvP – they won’t be keeping their word in the expansion if they don’t provide another way to obtain hero points.

They never promised skill points in new locations, they promised new progression e.g. the mastery system. As far as I’m concerned they kept their word on that part.

They promised different ways to progress since the game was first announced, as far as I’m concerned limiting that to one particular aspect of PVE breaks that promise.

Raziel.4216:

^ This MMORPG in particular was advertised as progression grind-free.
The devs said in an interview less than 3 months ago that they didn’t want to invalidate past progress.
So yeah I’d like to keep my unlocked skills and avoid doing more than 2 times the total # of skill points available in the entire game to have my characters back to where they are now, tyvm.

What? Do you actually understand how the change is working? You only have to do 65 skill/hero challenges in the open world. 400 of your hero points are awarded to you for simply getting to lvl 80, which you can do by any method you desire be it WvW, crafting, tomes, etc.

As for the change not being alt friendly. Trait-wise at least it will still be a massive step forward from the current system. Also speaking from experience as someone with 14 characters 10 of which are lvl 80, rushing through maps for skill points really is not very time consuming at all. I think the longest it has taken me on one of my alts was a little over 3 hours.

meanwhile here i sit enjoying what i see! I have 12 characters, 10 80s and 2 characters being leveled. I have one character with 100% map exploration, one with 92% and the rest are 55% and below, lowest is 1%. Heres the thing though, my primary activities are RPing, Dungeons(My main) And mapping when i get bored. I Seldom PVP but then again im not affected there at all. And i WVW Sometimes when i can, and then again there are Skill challenges in those maps too.

none of my non grandfathered characters have more than the traits needed for their builds unlocked.

The other thing though, i only use 2 or 3 builds per character, under the new system i will still have enough HP to use those same builds.

400 points for being level 80. 465 for full core unlock. At 60 points per specialization line, the difference amounts to 1 of 5 lines, plus 5 points worth of skills. With racial skills part of the picture somehow, that might amount to 1 or 2 racial skills, or 1 regular skill.

With characters made since the 4/15/14 trait changes, how many of them have unlocked all traits? I sure didn’t bother. I can sort of see it for traits for earlier characters that were grandfathered into the original trait system, but even they had to unlock the XIII traits. Did everyone bother? I didn’t. I got 2 on purpose, some of the others by coincidence, but by and large didn’t get ’em all.

thrag.9740:

phys.7689:

but lets be honest, the right place for basic charachter progression should be soloable, not too difficult, and not linked to elite group activities which are not available to everyone. This is why it is the BASIC starter charachter progression that you only have to do once per charachter.

So unlocking ELITE specializations should be linked to “soloable, not too difficult” content? So MAXING a character should be linked to “soloable, not too difficult” content?

Also where is this content that is not available to everyone?

essentially yes. The highest level of the game is not usually required for achieving a your base abilities, which makes sense because the most advanced content expects you to have fully mastered your abilities, which means you should already have them.

and thats why other than your friends, nobody wants a level 10 in a level 20+ fractal run, and why WvW people generally mock the up levels in chat that they kill en masse, and sadly, also why its fairly rare to find a dungeon run at the minimum level.

And thats also why its not great game design to encourage people who havent even gotten their basic abilities, to be doing endgame content in order to get their basic abilties.

to be honest, i dont really think most serious WvW people like having people who are there for any other reason than WvW. They hate on the people who used to be trying to map completion, they farm people trying to get skill points, they derided people there for achievements, they mock the karma trainers

You guys are overeacting. I hate open world just as much as the next guy. But this weekend i went and speed rushed all the skill challenges in Orr on 4 different characters. Thats 44 skill challenges and it only took about an hour per character. You can even split up the work into smaller chunks so you dont bore yourself to death. Its really not such a big deal.

Of course it looks like a lot of work when you add up the time for all of your alts. But jesus its not like you are going to do them all at once. Its seriously not the end of the world. Besides it wasnt even that boring for me. I got to practise class specific mobility on classes i dont play very often.

What is grind?

Spending hours, days or weeks camping in a place, killing rats over and over for that 0.01% chance to get an Holy Sword of the Universe +5 is a grind.

Exploring the world, battling different foes, progressing through multiple ways in the meantime, while you slowly build your character is not grind. It’s normal, rpg gameplay.

Usually, when it involves rewards (pvp and wvw progression), cosmetics and titles (acchievements, collectibles, etc) or the “personal progression” is meant to take a long, long time (wvw or the new masteries), anet makes them account-bound systems, which I agree with. But the game still needs some form of personal growth, and it makes sense that such a thing is related with the story instances or with the skills or with exploration.

I can understand that skill challenges might be a bit boring for some people, but that’s more of a problem with bland mob design and the lack of any meaningful challenge, than with anything else.

I can’t say I really agree with the OP’s notions.

Yes, it does mean that you will need to do at least partial map completion on all your alts, but you need to understand the context in which those alts exist. They were likely levelled outside of any PvE content whatsoever, possibly even instantly levelled to 80 using level up tomes.

With the new system, you can still fast-track your characters to 80, but they’re just now going to be forcing you to actually do some stuff in the game if you want to unlock all your abilities, which I don’t necessarily think is bad. They could decide to work like every other cookie-cutter MMO out there and force you to grind actual levels as well. A few hours of running to skill points and such would be annoying, but it could be much worse. Not to mention you can get a start on it now and just do a bit everyday so it’s not so daunting.

However, I think it would be nice if they provided some alternative means of acquiring the remaining hero points rather than having to do PvE content. For instance, there are some players who are exclusive WvW players, and they don’t really get the opportunity (or have the motivation) to go running around PvE maps mindlessly making beelines towards skill points. Similarly, a person who plays PvP exclusively won’t be able to have the content fully unlocked in PvE (although maybe that’s fine with them since they’ll have it all in PvP anyways).

As for what those alternative means should be, I’m not sure. Maybe a “hero point scroll” that awards you a hero point, or perhaps you could unlock things directly through a sum (possibly a bit hefty) of in game cash. That way, people could still get those things without doing PvE map completion, although that would still remain the most efficient way to get the remaining hero points.

It’s like how you can buy fractal rings with laurels and such. Even though doing fractals is the most efficient means to get them, they provide an alternative for people who just plain don’t like fractals or whatever.

Raziel.4216:

^ So in other words, it’s either don’t use all your skills/traits or go thru the grindfest?
I could swear this game was advertised as grind-free when it comes down to character progression, did they change that? Can anyone give me the link for the quote?
Because what I can find is
““We have a lot of fans who feel abused by the process of other MMOs. MMOs have the assumption that you’re supposed to dedicate your life to it. Each expansion pack is going to invalidate all the work you did before. It’s going to be a constantly moving goal post. Because we have a lot of people coming to Guild Wars 2 who have done that kind of thing before, they don’t want to be doing it again.”
And that quote pretty much says we’re not going to screw your progress, quite the opposite of what this system will do (aside from taking a big dump on the progression grind-free philosophy)

We have to “grind” all of our traits out right now. It’s currently no different for traits right now in the sense that you have to either hunt for the random trait challenges scattered throughout the world or you gotta dish out hella gold to unlock all the traits you want. My main barely only has enough traits unlocked to fit one or two builds, both of which have some overlap. With the new system, I could get literally every single trait and all the utilities I use with just the 400 points, never mind the Hero Points I’ll get right off the bat for what skill completion I’ve already done.

Have they confirmed 1:1 hero challenge to hero points ratio?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Have they confirmed 1:1 hero challenge to hero points ratio?

No, not yet. If skill challenges give even 2 or 3 HP per channel/Veteran kill, the argument against it can be heavily diminished. As far as I know, they were still working on the system, which is why we haven’t heard much new about it at all.

Map completion. Do it or don’t.
Sounds simple to me.
But Anet let’s make it even easier. Is this the argument?

Congratulations on taking just over a minute per skill challenge. That’s ten seconds communing, (including moving to it), 20-30 seconds to a minute to clear mobs away from some of them, and 2-3 minutes moving between them. Good speed boost you had going there, along with leaps etc on your warrior cooldowns. Oh wait, 2-3 minutes per would be 88-132 minutes, bit more than an hour and you’re rushing it, knowing exactly where they are and probably using waypoints too.

It’s the fact that it has to be done before you can use an alt that irks. ’I’ll play my ranger today’ Oh wait, first I need to redo the armor, change trinkets, work out a new build, calculate how many hero points I need (including elite line no doubt), then run through every map from LA to Orr, THEN I can start the ‘about an hour per character’ (read 4+ Hours). Then go to several other maps (running- no waypoints opened) and grab at least 21 more- and that 44 assumed no events in the way, no aggro, no champs/bosses/blocked points.

It won’t encourage build diversity, and it sure as hell won’t encourage people to try out more classes. we’ll be driven even more into ‘this zerk build only or gtfo lfg calls’.

Of course poeple who just play ‘spam 1’ zerk builds won’t even notice- a bit like wvw lag that kills casters but allows certain skills on heavy classes to continue without a porblem.

Well, I found what I’ll be doing after work tonight : I’ll take an hour to plot a 65-challenges path (supposing no initially known WP except for LA), and then run it to time how long it takes.

It’ll be fun

Man this turning into the old Trait thread…

I wonder: Why do you need full unlocks on 20 alts? Honestly, do you play your alts often enough as to where you’re changing up your builds on them?

Especially when you’re talking about having multiple characters of the same profession, why wouldn’t you use your 400 points on each character to make sure all of the builds are unlocked between the two characters?

Heck, I only have 4 level 80s (and a 5th on the way), but I never play my alts enough to need to change their builds up on a regular basis. They each fill a niche, and, when I need to play a certain role (usually in WvWvW), I hop on the corresponding alt.

I have never been interested in map completion but it was extremely easy for me to get 65+ skill challenges done on my alts ready for the new system.

By the way i have less than 25% map completion on any of my alts.

MattyP.6954:

I wonder: Why do you need full unlocks on 20 alts? Honestly, do you play your alts often enough as to where you’re changing up your builds on them?

Especially when you’re talking about having multiple characters of the same profession, why wouldn’t you use your 400 points on each character to make sure all of the builds are unlocked between the two characters?

Heck, I only have 4 level 80s (and a 5th on the way), but I never play my alts enough to need to change their builds up on a regular basis. They each fill a niche, and, when I need to play a certain role (usually in WvWvW), I hop on the corresponding alt.

This is what I don’t understand from the complaints. Yes, you will no longer be able to give your alt 200 skill scrolls and unlock every skill at level 2 (31 for elites). But do people, honestly, use all of their alts’ skills, traits, and abilities? Maybe the most hardcore of players do, but then they probably already have enough skill points unlocked to get the HPs right away.

Baldrick.8967:

Congratulations on taking just over a minute per skill challenge. That’s ten seconds communing, (including moving to it), 20-30 seconds to a minute to clear mobs away from some of them, and 2-3 minutes moving between them. Good speed boost you had going there, along with leaps etc on your warrior cooldowns. Oh wait, 2-3 minutes per would be 88-132 minutes, bit more than an hour and you’re rushing it, knowing exactly where they are and probably using waypoints too.

It’s the fact that it has to be done before you can use an alt that irks. ’I’ll play my ranger today’ Oh wait, first I need to redo the armor, change trinkets, work out a new build, calculate how many hero points I need (including elite line no doubt), then run through every map from LA to Orr, THEN I can start the ‘about an hour per character’ (read 4+ Hours). Then go to several other maps (running- no waypoints opened) and grab at least 21 more- and that 44 assumed no events in the way, no aggro, no champs/bosses/blocked points.

It won’t encourage build diversity, and it sure as hell won’t encourage people to try out more classes. we’ll be driven even more into ‘this zerk build only or gtfo lfg calls’.

Of course poeple who just play ‘spam 1’ zerk builds won’t even notice- a bit like wvw lag that kills casters but allows certain skills on heavy classes to continue without a porblem.

Ranger was one of the characters i did it on. It was one of the fastest. Only slower than thief. The only times things were slowed down was on the balth temple when it was contested and on a class with no stealth. I had no reason to do it on warrior as mine already had map completion from over a year ago. The only classes that should be much slower are necro and mesmer. But you can get around that with consumables.

I had like 1 waypoint in cursed shore and the two waypoints at either end of the other 2 maps (already ran characters to cursed shore in the past for arah). If you dont have Orr you can go to the durmand priory/whispers base and get someone to mesmer port you over to the fort trinity portal.

I should have said just over an hour. Thief was the only one that took less. The others ranged from an hour to an hour and a half. Even so its a minor difference. Just over an hour per character is not that big of a deal. Total the time up and it adds up. But you dont need to do it in one go and you dont need them all done immediately.

I dont really understand your last comments. Just seems like you are ranting about something completely unrelated.

Baldrick.8967:

It’s the fact that it has to be done before you can use an alt that irks. ’I’ll play my ranger today’ Oh wait, first I need to redo the armor, change trinkets, work out a new build, calculate how many hero points I need (including elite line no doubt), then run through every map from LA to Orr, THEN I can start the ‘about an hour per character’ (read 4+ Hours). Then go to several other maps (running- no waypoints opened) and grab at least 21 more- and that 44 assumed no events in the way, no aggro, no champs/bosses/blocked points.

A few things about this:

1) How do you implement the elite specs without an overhaul of the system? Don’t forget, the new system is affecting traits too. They could have just added them in exactly like the other traitlines, but there’s enough complaints about the trait system as it is right now that it should be changed.

2) Every character you have will need to check their armor, trinkets, build, and calculate HPs needed. There is no exception to this rule and it is required every time any game updates a system through an expansion. WoW did this 4+ times (though their system is arguably much different).

3) Finally, no, you do not need all of the HPs unlocked to play an alt. The fact that you get a clean slate with the ability to unlock every single trait line and a good number of utilities with just the 400 points for being 80 is significantly better than what we have now, where you can unlock every utility but either need to shell out ~50G and 470 skill points for the traits or go hunting for them for literally days worth of playing time.

Riot Inducer.8964:

What? Do you actually understand how the change is working? You only have to do 65 skill/hero challenges in the open world. 400 of your hero points are awarded to you for simply getting to lvl 80, which you can do by any method you desire be it WvW, crafting, tomes, etc.

As for the change not being alt friendly. Trait-wise at least it will still be a massive step forward from the current system. Also speaking from experience as someone with 14 characters 10 of which are lvl 80, rushing through maps for skill points really is not very time consuming at all. I think the longest it has taken me on one of my alts was a little over 3 hours.

Just 65 for the core skills and an unknown amount for the specialization, now count that per char and it adds up to a crap load of skill points, almost as much as completing the total amount available in the entire map 3 times in my case.
What set GW2 apart from many MMOs out there is that we could decide what we do to progress our characters, this overhaul is removing that, we’re forced into one aspect of the game to unlock anything after leveling.
And that comes after advertising the game as progression grind-free, a so called “play how you want” philosophy and an interview less than 3 months ago saying they won’t invalidate their player’s progress.
What happened to all of that? Why does every reply that supports this sound so apologetic like “it’s no that bad” “the grind won’t take that long” ?

1) You implement’em the current way, you simply grandfather current characters by providing enough hero points to unlock all the core stuff. If that character does the rest of the hero challenges available and reaches the cap then the rest of the challenges will simply provide the new skill point currency.
You also implement more than 1 way to obtain hero points, 1 related to pvp and 1 to WvW.

2) They could provide a free 1 time ascended armor stat change, after all, re-making it would take way too much gold nowadays, specially for light armor users.

3) This sounds apologetic, you shouldn’t be forced to grind.
Game was advertised as grind-free, with a “play how you want” philosophy and they claimed they wouldn’t set us back in an interview when they announced the game.
We have to demand that they keep their word, not justify’em when they don’t.

Raziel.4216:

What happened to all of that? Why does every reply that supports this sound so apologetic like “it’s no that bad” “the grind won’t take that long” ?

We don’t know because they didn’t say they decided on anything yet. One of the biggest complaints about the complaining going on is it’s based on speculation and mentions of how they system might work, not based on literally what’s going to happen. Nobody knows how it’s going to work yet, and the fact that there has not been a dev response to any of the threads about this is a sure good sign they might still be working on it.

Raziel.4216:

1) You implement’em the current way, you simply grandfather current characters by providing enough hero points to unlock all the core stuff. If that character does the rest of the hero challenges available and reaches the cap then the rest of the challenges will simply provide the new skill point currency.
You also implement more than 1 way to obtain hero points, 1 related to pvp and 1 to WvW.

I could see them doing this except instead of getting Spirit Shards you just get the skill challenge towards Map Completion (like you do now). If they grandfather it through, this is the only way I could see them doing that still incentivizes doing the challenges but doesn’t reward you extra for having used skill scrolls for skill points.

2) They could provide a free 1 time ascended armor stat change, after all, re-making it would take way too much gold nowadays, specially for light armor users.

I’m all good for this, but they haven’t said this isn’t what is going to happen. They have yet to address this and they know that many people picked certain gear stats because they could get up to +300 per stat (1400 stats in total) in stats that were tied to traitlines that people no longer have access to. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody think this is a bad idea.

3) This sounds apologetic, you shouldn’t be forced to grind.
Game was advertised as grind-free, with a “play how you want” philosophy and they claimed they wouldn’t set us back in an interview when they announced the game.
We have to demand that they keep their word, not justify’em when they don’t.

And you don’t consider what we have to do for traits right now a grind? Right now it takes a LOT of skill points and a decent amount of gold or a LOT of time to unlock all traits, much more time than it takes to get the skill points we are going to need to get to unlock every thing in the new version. However, leveling to 80 is not a grind, especially in this game. If they really want to make it “play how you want”, why have any levels at all? Shouldn’t we have everything unlocked on every level 1 character we make? Frankly, that seems pretty unreasonable. It will not affect sPvP at all, and you level in both WvW and PvE.

Problem with 1) is it creates a mismatch between hero points and hero challenges. I doubt they want a long term mismatch like this in game. Its probably also annoying to code for.

And you dont need any hero points in PvP. WvW could just have more hero challenges on the new borderlands maps. Problem solved partially.

My main has 100% map completion so if I understand everything correctly I will be able to unlock everything again when the patch goes live. I also have 1,000+SP leftover on my main which will become MF currency which I rarely use. This will be a huge problem for my alts that I crafted to 80 for WvW and unlocked everything with scrolls. Guess I’ll stick to my main and one alt that I finished my map completion on.

Preacher.9526:

My main has 100% map completion so if I understand everything correctly I will be able to unlock everything again when the patch goes live. I also have 1,000+SP leftover on my main which will become MF currency which I rarely use. This will be a huge problem for my alts that I crafted to 80 for WvW and unlocked everything with scrolls. Guess I’ll stick to my main and one alt that I finished my map completion on.

You don’t need map completion to play your alts. You don’t even need 10% map completion to play them. You main will have literally everything unlocked when the patch goes live, yes, and then some. Right now there are 189 or so skill challenges around the map that will give some number of Hero Points (a number we don’t know right now) and there is a maximum number of these a character can have. Since these elite specs will not be the last elite specs (probably around 5 E.specs) that would mean you would eventually need 100% map completion of skill challenges only to get all core traitlines and utilities and all elite traitlines and utilities.

We don’t know what, exactly, the Spirit Shards (converted currency) will or will not be able to buy. Likely they will be able to buy what they currently do, but there’s nothing preventing Anet from adding things.

It will not be a huge problem for your alts. Do you have all traitlines fully unlocked on all of your alts?

I know this much- my credit card is staying in my wallet till I know more.
I’m a WvW player. “Thats what I like to do”. I invested in this game for that aspect alone.

WvW players are talking about this, and as it stands now a single large guild transferring off server can be a wrecking ball to a servers wvw play. How many are going to be upset?

I want to be optimistic, but I’ve already experienced radical “game changes” in other MMO’s that ended up creating nothing but a mass exodus. I’m not going to put myself through that again by trying to stick it out if players start falling off.

Baldrick.8967:

Congratulations on taking just over a minute per skill challenge. That’s ten seconds communing, (including moving to it), 20-30 seconds to a minute to clear mobs away from some of them, and 2-3 minutes moving between them. Good speed boost you had going there, along with leaps etc on your warrior cooldowns. Oh wait, 2-3 minutes per would be 88-132 minutes, bit more than an hour and you’re rushing it, knowing exactly where they are and probably using waypoints too.

It’s the fact that it has to be done before you can use an alt that irks. ’I’ll play my ranger today’ Oh wait, first I need to redo the armor, change trinkets, work out a new build, calculate how many hero points I need (including elite line no doubt), then run through every map from LA to Orr, THEN I can start the ‘about an hour per character’ (read 4+ Hours). Then go to several other maps (running- no waypoints opened) and grab at least 21 more- and that 44 assumed no events in the way, no aggro, no champs/bosses/blocked points.

It won’t encourage build diversity, and it sure as hell won’t encourage people to try out more classes. we’ll be driven even more into ‘this zerk build only or gtfo lfg calls’.

Of course poeple who just play ‘spam 1’ zerk builds won’t even notice- a bit like wvw lag that kills casters but allows certain skills on heavy classes to continue without a porblem.

no it doesnt have to be done before you can use an alt.
every level 80 charachter will have 400 hero points automatically
there is no build that cannot be made with 400 hero points
with 400 points, you can unlock every single skill in the game, and 3 specializations. that means any build that exists, can be created just for being level 80. In fact, you will be like 5 points shy of completing the 4th specialization.

If you dont use two types of skills, you can unlock every other skill type and every traitline.

basically it is impossible that you cannot make your favorite build, for many people they wont even need to do any skill challenges for any of the builds that they use.

i think a lot of people complaining about their 20 alts, havent realized that all these alts will start off with way more abilities at their disposal than they have now.

phys.7689:

essentially yes. The highest level of the game is not usually required for achieving a your base abilities, which makes sense because the most advanced content expects you to have fully mastered your abilities, which means you should already have them.

and thats why other than your friends, nobody wants a level 10 in a level 20+ fractal run, and why WvW people generally mock the up levels in chat that they kill en masse, and sadly, also why its fairly rare to find a dungeon run at the minimum level.

And thats also why its not great game design to encourage people who havent even gotten their basic abilities, to be doing endgame content in order to get their basic abilties.

to be honest, i dont really think most serious WvW people like having people who are there for any other reason than WvW. They hate on the people who used to be trying to map completion, they farm people trying to get skill points, they derided people there for achievements, they mock the karma trainers

Level 35 dungeons are not end game content.

You say most games don’t make you do ‘end game’ content to progress your character. But most games also allow you to get better gear through such content. So, most games do have progression associated with that content. But in gw2, you can get level 80 exotics from a level 35 dungeon, and lv 80 exotic berserkers from lv 75 dungeons. So then, where is the progression from doing lv 80 content? Because we aren’t getting it in gear, and after this update hits, we aren’t getting it in our alts/traits/skills either. And please don’t try to tell me the kitten poor ascended rings are our progression.

phys.7689:

The crazy part is, people are complaining that they might have to play a charachter for a few hours before they fully unlock all of its potential. Think about that.

you may have to play a charachter for a few hours, in order to get every skill/trait available to it.

a few hours

It’s not about playing for a few hours in order to get every skill and trait. It’s about playing for a few hours for each character to get access to skills and traits to which I already have earned access.

Kamara.4187:

I know this much- my credit card is staying in my wallet till I know more.
I’m a WvW player. “Thats what I like to do”. I invested in this game for that aspect alone.

WvW players are talking about this, and as it stands now a single large guild transferring off server can be a wrecking ball to a servers wvw play. How many are going to be upset?

I want to be optimistic, but I’ve already experienced radical “game changes” in other MMO’s that ended up creating nothing but a mass exodus. I’m not going to put myself through that again by trying to stick it out if players start falling off.

to be completely honest, most wvw hardcore players dip into pve whenever its usefull to them. At the start of this game you either spent 35-75 additional hours unlocking your skills, or you dipped into PVE.

Likewise many WvW players jumped on the champion trains in frostgorge to get gold for runes/cosmetics/etc

even one of the detractors somewhere said they go to pve to farm linen.

WvW players arent as inflexible, and ineffecient as people are making them out to be. Most of them would rather spend an hour in pve, then 30 hours in WvW. Many of them dont like people who play WvW in styles that are motivated by charachter/account building.

they dont like karma train farmers
they dont like achievement focused play
they didnt like people there to get map complete.

i dont think they would be too happy with a mass of people karma training in order to get their specialization unlocks or their extra skill points for side builds they will never use in WvW.

thrag.9740:

phys.7689:

essentially yes. The highest level of the game is not usually required for achieving a your base abilities, which makes sense because the most advanced content expects you to have fully mastered your abilities, which means you should already have them.

and thats why other than your friends, nobody wants a level 10 in a level 20+ fractal run, and why WvW people generally mock the up levels in chat that they kill en masse, and sadly, also why its fairly rare to find a dungeon run at the minimum level.

And thats also why its not great game design to encourage people who havent even gotten their basic abilities, to be doing endgame content in order to get their basic abilties.

to be honest, i dont really think most serious WvW people like having people who are there for any other reason than WvW. They hate on the people who used to be trying to map completion, they farm people trying to get skill points, they derided people there for achievements, they mock the karma trainers

Level 35 dungeons are not end game content.

You say most games don’t make you do ‘end game’ content to progress your character. But most games also allow you to get better gear through such content. So, most games do have progression associated with that content. But in gw2, you can get level 80 exotics from a level 35 dungeon, and lv 80 exotic berserkers from lv 75 dungeons. So then, where is the progression from doing lv 80 content? Because we aren’t getting it in gear, and after this update hits, we aren’t getting it in our alts/traits/skills either. And please don’t try to tell me the kitten poor ascended rings are our progression.

like i said, unfortunately, people dont want to run dungeons with level 35s. Its not impossible, but it is the exception rather than the rule. If you have a group of friends, or you are willing to wait around longer in a group finder, sure you can go do a dungeon at 35, but its not how the community generally chooses to play. Even casual dungeon lfgs will generally say lvl 80 all welcome.

the post level 80 progression is now masteries in pve, and WvW ranks for WvW. this is part of why you dont get skill points for leveling after 80, because you dont level any more. When you hit 80, and you have HoT your experience bar functions differently.

core skill progression is now designed to be something you generally do before 80. And the elite specializations are designed so that you can get them from the new content if you already used/have no hero points.

i will say this, with the new system, level 35s will have more skills/traits unlocked, so maybe people will be slightly less opposed to teaming up with them. Right now though? a level 35 charachter doesnt have the skills and hasnt even unlocked one selectable trait.

I have 4 alts at lvl 50 or so, with less than 10 skill challenges done, with only the minimum traits unlocked to make them work, but with all the skills unlocked.

Easy question:
When the patch comes live…

1- Will I have to re-earn the skills I have already unlocked?
Please answer yes or no.

2- Will I get any compensation for the gold I invested to get the traits?
Please answer yes or no.

3- Will I receive any compensation for the time I invested earning the skill points I used to unlock all the skills?
Please answer yes or no.

Gibson.4036:

phys.7689:

The crazy part is, people are complaining that they might have to play a charachter for a few hours before they fully unlock all of its potential. Think about that.

you may have to play a charachter for a few hours, in order to get every skill/trait available to it.

a few hours

It’s not about playing for a few hours in order to get every skill and trait. It’s about playing for a few hours for each character to get access to skills and traits to which I already have earned access.

the stuff the OP brought up in this thread wasnt as much about progress being taken away, he was more talking about the system itself being bad.

a lot of his information is not that accurate either.

Its entirely possible they have some type of plan for grandfathering, or to at least mitigate it. If they choose the wrong system for grandfathering though, they will be messing up the system before they even start.

Ardid.7203:

I have 4 alts at lvl 50 or so, with less than 10 skill challenges done, with only the minimum traits unlocked to make them work, but with all the skills unlocked.

Easy question:
When the patch comes live…

1- Will I have to re-earn the skills I have already unlocked?
Please answer yes or no.

2- Will I get any compensation for the gold I invested to get the traits?
Please answer yes or no.

3- Will I receive any compensation for the time I invested earning the skill points I used to unlock all the skills?
Please answer yes or no.

1. You’ll have to unlock all skills and traits again, but you’ll start with 400 hero points (at lv80) plus any HP for each skill challenge, out of the ~465 you need to unlock everything for your profession.

2. I don’t think so.

3. Skill challenges will still count, and other skill points will be transformed into spirit shards, so yes.

TheFamster.7806:

This is literally FORCING people to do map completion before even allowing them to use certain skills.

[SNIP]

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.

You don’t have to ‘complete’ any maps to do 65 skill/hero challenges.

And since you can only have two top tier traits active at one time through any build, even if your toon was level eighty you could build your toon as it is now.

You only need those extra 65 points to unlock all core traits / utilities.

I think there is a lot of Chicken Little-ing going on. People are up in arms about a system that we don’t know 100% about. We don’t know if more ways to get hero points added or not. For heaven’s sake people. Calm down.

Ardid.7203:

I have 4 alts at lvl 50 or so, with less than 10 skill challenges done, with only the minimum traits unlocked to make them work, but with all the skills unlocked.

Easy question:
When the patch comes live…

1- Will I have to re-earn the skills I have already unlocked?
Please answer yes or no.

2- Will I get any compensation for the gold I invested to get the traits?
Please answer yes or no.

3- Will I receive any compensation for the time I invested earning the skill points I used to unlock all the skills?
Please answer yes or no.

1) no

2) probably not but you will actually have more abilities than you had in the past, every skill, and most traits

3) you probably wont recieve compensation, but like i said, you will actually have more traits and all skills, so why would they compensate you

4) once again no, but you will have more skills and traits.

in the new system for being level 80, you will be able to unlock every single existing skill, and almost 4/5th of all traits. There is no build you will not be able to make

in fact there is a very strong chance that you will be coming out ahead.

one thing to note, is that truth is traits are drastically changing, many traits that existed will no longer exist anyway. So in all honesty? many people are complaining that they will have to re earn traits, when in truth, a lot of the traits are new/very different.

oh, wait you are level 50, not sure, it depends how often and how much hero points they give during the leveling process.

but what i said stands when you reach level 80.

assuming that you will have at least half total hero points by 50, you will probably be in around the same situation as now.
unlocking all skills will probably take anywhere from 115-165 hero points