Guild Wars 2

Last night I posted this on my guild’s forums:

Okay, pet peeve that I hope to hell they address in Heart of Thorns.

You know what’s fun about your class? Traits. You know what traits are fun? Grandmaster traits. Up until you get Grandmaster traits, you don’t really have much build defining or interesting synergy. It reminds me that ANet has stats, and back when the Marionette came down they talked about how the majority of players, the casuals, almost never touch their traits. Like, literally just leave those trait spots blank and don’t bother picking any.

And I know why. It’s because while leveling, traits are near useless. They’re minor perks. Some classes have powerful traits at the Master level, like Mesmer with Deceptive Evasion. Most have the interesting traits at the Grandmaster level. You don’t unlock Master and Grandmaster until level 60 and 80 respectively. By then, people will have forgotten that traits exist and will not bother.

In the Specialization system, people must be allowed to trait a Grandmaster trait as soon as humanly possible. You should unlock the first specialization line by level 20, and can crank that all the way to Grandmaster as long as you amass the Hero points. Second specialization comes at 40, third comes at 60, and at 80 you can then switch one of those regular specializations for an elite.

Doing anything other than this means that I will reconsider leveling my upcoming Revenant by any means that don’t include mass usage of Tomes of Knowledge.

A guildmate mentioned to me that from what we know of the system, it should actually work the way I’m hoping. I’m just hoping to lower the level requirements to get the really good traits in players’ faces as soon as possible.

Level 1-10: Weapon Skills
Level 10: Downed State and Healing Skill (give them a free one)
Level 11-20: Utility/Elite Skills (give them a free one of each)
Level 20: Equip One Specialization Line
Level 40: Equip Two Specializations at once
Level 60: Equip Three Specialization Line
Level 80: Mastery System/Elite Specializations (if expansion is owned).

The second you unlock your First Specialization line, if you have enough points, you should immediately be able to slot all the way to Grandmaster.

In fact, because I’m worried for the good people that play PvP/WvW and won’t have extra Skill/Hero Point Challenges done from the PvE world, how about instead of needing to do that you give enough freebies from each Skill line that they have a whole bar of skills to start with, then investigate for more. This has the chance of new players not learning how to buy new utility skills (like we have now with them not looking at traits), but I’m betting that players are more likely going to investigate skills as that’s something connected more directly to button presses than traits/specializations.

Yeah…. let’s make the game easier than it already is….

If people don’t wanna stick around cause they’re too lazy to learn the game and the things it provides to make one stronger, then the hell with them. You can’t expect to get everything on a silver platter.

The game’s already casual enough, it doesn’t need to get any more casual. And I’m a casual player. I got my first character in around 80h to max level. And I wasn’t even trying to level up as fast as I could. I was just running around…. exploring the map…. in zones way lower than my level….

“Level 10: Downed State and Healing Skill (give them a free one)”
Characters already start with a healing skill on creation (the mastery line associated with healing skills would have the first unlocked automatically?)

“Level 11-20: Utility/Elite Skills (give them a free one of each)”
Currently, characters do get a few utility skills while leveling up. This would need to be changed to unlocking mastery lines, which give you the “lowest” type of that skill just for unlocking it. Elite would be wierd to give away though, I think they should have to spend mastery to get one.

Yeah, the suggestions were under the assumption they may not give us a free skill and instead try to have a UI tutorial where they force you to put a point in trait line.

Little known fact: “Grandmaster Faster” was my rap name in the 80’s.

I don’t know about the OP’s idea, but I’m really glad I got my characters to 80 before the new player experience. It looks like it takes entirely too long to get to the fun parts, now.

game isn’t supposed to be played the same way while leveling as it is in end game PvE or PvP, if you don’t like leveling and improvements over time, don’t play RPGs…

it looks like many people are just so sybaritic from all the QOL of GW2 that they would rather be L80 right after the tutorial, how sad…

you know what? go farm tomes of experience and don’t ruin leveling experience to those who like it…

PS: you probably skipped the fact that improvements must be slow and constant, if you give whole specialization at level 20 and say “hey man, you need another 20 levels until you get something new”, many people will just quit, because for many people the feeling that you get something new and improve with each level is part of the fun in RPGs… think about it

Iason Evan.3806:

Little known fact: “Grandmaster Faster” was my rap name in the 80’s.

God kitten I spat my coffee. Thank you.

MaXi.3642:

game isn’t supposed to be played the same way while leveling as it is in end game PvE or PvP, if you don’t like leveling and improvements over time, don’t play RPGs…

it looks like many people are just so sybaritic from all the QOL of GW2 that they would rather be L80 right after the tutorial, how sad…

you know what? go farm tomes of experience and don’t ruin leveling experience to those who like it…

PS: you probably skipped the fact that improvements must be slow and constant, if you give whole specialization at level 20 and say “hey man, you need another 20 levels until you get something new”, many people will just quit, because for many people the feeling that you get something new and improve with each level is part of the fun in RPGs… think about it

Hey, that’s what Hero Points and the new tracks for skills and such are for. In fact, you still have to put points in just to get that specialization to grandmaster, I’m just asking for the option to get there faster. The same points you can get quickly from a combination of leveling and exploring the open world. In fact… you’d get more rewarded over time with this method than the current.

Current method? I level and feel unrewarded, and bored. It takes multiple hours to get more trait points. I pretty much do it just for certain build practice and the few times I feel like exploring, but then eventually I feel like doing that same exploring on a max level character that I can experiment more with.

It does not take that long to level to 80.
Just do it. I have done it eight times. You can can, too.
Revy will take 1 month, max, without all the xp scrolls and whatnot.

Doombringer BG.3740:

Yeah…. let’s make the game easier than it already is….

If people don’t wanna stick around cause they’re too lazy to learn the game and the things it provides to make one stronger, then the hell with them. You can’t expect to get everything on a silver platter.

The game’s already casual enough, it doesn’t need to get any more casual. And I’m a casual player. I got my first character in around 80h to max level. And I wasn’t even trying to level up as fast as I could. I was just running around…. exploring the map…. in zones way lower than my level….

By casual, do you mean competitive?

Casual is when you can overcome things without having to learn the game, and gain advantages based on factors other than your own skill. Character progression strengthens this, as content is balanced around a certain point, and the ability to out-level it means that it can be overcome by just playing long enough.

Competitive would be if you automatically had everything unlocked, and content was balanced around that assumption. The only way to progress being to improve your own skill. It’s why SPvP gear is its own separate and easily acquired setup.

The whole reason that the rate of ability acquisition was slowed down, and enemies in lower level zones were declawed to compensate for it, was because they wanted to appeal to casual players that couldn’t cope with learning the mechanics of the game unless it was drip fed to them.

I guess that’s my problem. I’d like things get more interesting earlier on. At launch and in the initial betas, the game was hard, and you needed everything you could get to overcome challenges. Now the challenge is lowered, and most of the build defining (and more interesting to me) traits are gated to level 60 and 80.

It’s actually a pretty sensible suggestion. Synergies across trait lines are relatively rare by comparison to those within them, and it really is something that new players should be experimenting with before level 80.

Iason Evan.3806:

Little known fact: “Grandmaster Faster” was my rap name in the 80’s.

I’m in love with that!
10/10 would buy album