Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing GW2 since its first beta, and to date it remains the strongest MMO I’ve played. It’s very fluid and all its bits and pieces work well together, but there’s one area that I feel it’s always been weak on: build switching.

I gave the forums a cursory glance and couldn’t find anything on this subject, so I figured I’d bring it up (feel free to redirect me in the event I missed a topic and it has been discussed before). In both PvE and WvW, I find it’s very common to encounter situations where one instance of combat in which one build excels is quickly followed by another in which it does not perform as well as another may. What if between combat instances it were possible to have a quick-switch of builds, similar to weapon switching? Clearly this should not be possible mid-combat, so this could only be done while out of combat for upwards of 10 seconds. This will allow individual players to adapt themselves to more situations as they enter combat or transition into another combat instance without requiring the 30+ seconds to minutes required to fine-tune the build.

This could also add a stochastic factor into the game, particularly in WvW – teams can organize themselves to run multiple build sets which completely change each individual’s role in the larger unit. Imagine your team running into another in WvW and dying, then you come back with a team build that (you believe) would counter theirs, only to realize that your strategy isn’t a viable one any more. This adds another layer of unpredictability that either side can utilize to gain an advantage.

Build swapping has always been something I was surprised GW2 didn’t have, since one of the core advantages of GW2 is how much playstyle flexibility their trait system brought to the table. These trait loadouts and the ability to switch builds between combat would play very well into this advantage.

So this has got to be the most devastating update I’ve seen from the game. Pushing traits back to Level 30? This completely wipes so much of the fun from levels 10-30: experimenting and testing out playstyles, which was the big selling point for PvE players in Guild Wars 2. It was about discovering ways to suit your playstyle. Some people like pure tankiness – see 3-4-5 guardians – or maybe they like being a glass cannon – like a 1 2 5 elementalist – but the point was that they could experiment and figure these things out themselves. Now we can’t do that until level 30. Adding meaningful character progression after level 30 doesn’t mean taking it away from earlier stages, it means adding it after level 30. Implement more skills that you have to be level 30 to unlock, add some traits that can’t be used until then. Add traits that require you to do an event or something (more on that in a moment) in a certain area, give us additional stuff. Don’t re-organize things, stick a new UI on it, add a couple traits, and then tell us this is a major trait update.

So on the subject of conditioned traits – i.e. trait guides – this has got to be one of the stupidest revamps I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong: I think having unlockable traits is actually a really cool thing to add in. Like having special traits that require you to go somewhere in a certain map and do an event or something, adding that in is a neat idea. But making them all into this is stupid. Guild Wars 2 was really anti-grind (crafting excluded), but now not only do we have to grind to get to level 30 (levels 11+ always had SOME reward associated with them so it never felt like a grind), but it takes six levels to get to each trait point now and we have to either shell out gold and skill points to buy the books or get them as random drops or do special tasks for ALL of them. There is the big issue: all. We don’t get a chance to experiment until we’ve unlocked them all, and I’ll bet by then we’re near the next tier. Where’s the player focus? This is moving more towards the grind and farther away from being the personalized experience that we’ve all come to know and love from Guild Wars 2.

I’m just majorly disappointed with this. It feels like PvE players got the middle finger with this build.