Guild Wars 2

bhagwad.4281:

Hence the importance of frequent updates and paying attention to what you’re doing, the importance of admitting mistakes, and spending time listening to community feedback.

Sorry, but there are no shortcuts here. All of the above needs to be done, and it’s just poor form to reduce a lot of build diversity to have “easy balance”.

Even if all of the above is done, if the game’s systems do not allow for easy balancing, then any “smart choice” and any “feedback taken” will bring in plenty of negative, unpredictable secondary effects. That leads to more testing time, less frequent patches, and sometimes many of those “good solutions” just end up being scrapped because they just don’t work.

“Easier balancing” does not means that anet wants to be lazier or work less. It means that all of their balancing work is going to be more effective. It means that all of their internally proposed solutions are going to have a higher chance to suceed.

BrooksP.4318:

Daddar.5971:

$60 to make a Revenant without deleting a character? No thanks. Not with the very small amount of new content we’ve seen. Sorry, $60 is overpriced.

Would you have paid $90 for the original GW2 at release?

Under the assumption that you’re using the “but only 5 char slots at launch!” argument:

Five character slots is more than enough to try out your favourite professions, which, in the majority of the cases, is merely 1-3 per player.

Zero character slots makes it impossible to try out the revenant, especially if it has potential to end up being one of your favourites.

Vayne.8563:

I think Anet should change the base package to include a characters lot for players who are adding it as an upgrade. That would give new players the base game free and existing players the character lot for the revenant. Everyone gets something and everyone goes home happy.

That’s pretty much what most people are asking for, consciously or not.

Straylight.7529:

Yes it can be. I just did it. It’s a silly argument to say “they owe us a character slot because of new profession”. They don’t. For reasons that were stated numerous times.

The “we only had 5 slots at launch” is not a good argument, nor will it ever be.

At launch, you weren’t locked out of any profession individually, you were just locked out of picking them all. In hoT, you may be locked out of revenant without further investment.

Different situations. It’s the difference between being able to pick and not being able to pick. It’s the difference between having one or more slots, and zero slots. One or more slots means you can pick something. Zero slots means you can’t pick anything at all, unless you’re willing to pay even more.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Ytlayol.5864:

“I’m a veteran so I deserve a character slot to play the revenant”.

Who are you quoting there?

No one, considering that the people that feel that they deserve to play with the revenant are the very same people that are willing to pay $50 for it. Apparently, Ytlayoy thinks that getting what you pay for is “entitlement”.

Deleting a character costs nothing, and buying a slot with gold only costs gold. You don’t have to spend additional dollars unless that is the best option for you.

Sacrificing a character is a cost by itself. Farming for weeks and stopping whatever else you want to do is a cost by itself. All options require an additional cost.

But it IS fully available to all their customers. They can put it in ANY empty character slot that they have, however they got that empty slot.

But that empty slot didn’t come for free, so you’re basically contradicting yourself.

If you truly accepted that HoT just wasn’t for you then you’d quietly go away and leave everyone else in peace.

So HoT isn’t for me because I want to play with the revenant? Your attempt to defend Anet’s marketing team decisions is getting desperate.

Ohoni.6057:

You can instead delete a character to make room, buy an additional slot with gems, or buy an additional slot with gold. Those are your options.

All of them which involve an additional cost beyond the original $50. Thanks for helping me prove that paying $50 won’t be enough.

then don’t buy HoT.

Exactly. And that’s why we are complaining about it.

I am excited for HoT, I want to buy HoT, and I will buy HoT once Anet’s marketing team decides to offer a deal where I can get what I paid for without any additional, hidden cost.

I have no idea how to parse this sentence.

It’s simple. When you buy the original game, you have the choice to pick the professions you want the most. Yes, you need to pay more if you want all of them, but no one of them is individually gated by an additional cost. Thus, you can pick your 1-5 most favourite classes, and play with them right away. In contrast, any veteran player who is very interested in the revenant profession must either pay an additional cost or not play with it at all, even though they have paid for the expansion to be able to play with it.

So, you argument about the original game only offering 5 slots for 8 professions is irrelevant, because it is a very different situation. Likewise, your argument about elite specs is equally irrelevant, because they are an expansion of the professions you already play with, so you’ll still get what you paid for. You’ll be able to unlock them immediately with hero points once HoT is out. No additional cost and no sacrifice is required.

Ohoni.6057:

Do I think it’d be nice of them to give us a free character slot? Sure, free things are always nice.

If you are paying $50 to play with a revenant, then the character slot required to play the revenant is not a “free thing”. It’s a required mechanism for you to be able to use the very class you just paid for.

Also, having 1+ choices to pick a class and having 0 choices are not the same thing.

Zefiris.8297:

““I’m a veteran player, therefore I should get the expansion for free””

Well, that’s exactly the point of the vocal minority.

“I’m a veteran player, therefore I should get the character slot for free”

Pure entitlement.

It’s just not the case, regardless of your reddit circlejerk.

Yes, because paying $50 for the expansion and expecting to be able to play with the revenant is “entitlement”.

People don’t want a character slot for the sake of “give us free rewards!”. They want a character slot because they want to play what they paid for.

This thread is about how fun or not fun support playstyles are, not about how useful they are in the current pve meta.

I agree that support is currently not very fun. I mean, timing and positioning your reflection is cool, and combo fields/ finishers can lead to some interesting rotations, but other than that, you’re simply going to melee range and throwing your PBAoE support skills to your allies, many of them that are fire-and-forget or even instant-cast. It’s not exactly… the most satisfying playstyle.

Sure, for players that like going offense with secondary support, which is how the current pve meta is more or less defined, they won’t mind. There’s plenty of other things that make it funnier, like damage rotations, timing some crowd control effects, or the pure satisfaction of seeing high numbers over your opponent’s head, etc. But for those players that wish for a more supportive/ less offensive playstyle (note: this does not means that I’m defending a holy trinity setup), the playstyle is simply not very interesting.

Fortunately, anet realizes that. Ventari’s tablet and staff seems to have a very elaborated playstyle based on support. Tablet positioning, delayed heals, your token anti-projectile field – which you can even move, healing shards on the ground that need to be catched, etc.

I hope to see more fun and elaborated playstyles around support (and crowd control too) in the future. Stuff that makes you spend more time supporting or controlling that merely dealing damage, but while still making combat as fun and as interesting.

In the last Ready Up episode about balance changes, an anet dev said in the chat that Jon Peters was going to talk about racial skills at the end of the stream. However, that didn’t end up happening.

So, can anyone from anet tell us what can we expect from racial skills in the next patch? Are there any meaningful changes coming, or nothing special?

akaCryptic.2389:

I’m so mad cause I had bought 300g worth of silk to craft ascended. Now they announced they changed their mind so I am at a 15% loss because of TP charges. Thanks a lot anet.

Many more ascended changes are coming, either in this patch or in the future. I recommend you to make your ascended gear, now that you have invested for it. It might turn out to be worth in the future.

DarkSpirit.7046:

xarallei.4279:

There never should have been an increase to begin with. Like Colin said, it goes against what GW2 is about. I’m glad they are not going through with it.

If it goes against the game then why did they introduce it in the first place?

If they want to introduce a new gear tier called ascended then by all means introduce it with courage and conviction. Otherwise, don’t introduce it! Just don’t be half way here and there. So annoying when they can’t make up their minds.

Exactly.

People are happy with the 5% boost because people are happy that ascended gear remains pointless. They are the same people that do not want to invest on ascended gear, or at least not do it under pressure, and it is understandable, because GW2’s focus should not be on massive and mindless gear grinding.

However, this leaves the people that want to get ascended, or have invested on it, a bit cold. Ascended gear will remain unsatisfying to obtain for non-fractals users. The 10% boost made it more appealing, but it won’t happen. Currently, ascended is an illusion: it makes you sink your entire gold for something that is unnoticeable and that no one cares about. And there’s nothing wrong with insignificant, theorycrafting-only vertical progression, if the gear offered some other kind of (horizontal) progression. Which it doesn’t. Well, with the exception of this new change, but even then, that’s only a QoL change to those who already have ascended – exotic users can simply buy a second piece of gear for the same value, and gain the advantage of being able to switch gears out of combat whenever they want, allowing a better playing experience.

That’s why I and many people think free stat swapping, or account-unlocking stats (wardrobe-esque), or anything of the sort, would be pretty cool for ascended. Those weapons and armors would go from the most hated to the most loved, from the most anti-horizontal progression to the ones that most favor it (alongside legendaries, of course). It would also go hand-in-hand with any build template feature that they might want to implement in the future. If ascended gear had some sort of free stat swapping, any player would be able to switch their builds in pve and wvw as they would in pvp. Huge win!

I can understand that legendaries need some sort of feature that makes them unique, but tying one of the core game philosophies of GW2 (build experimentation) with near-unacchievable end-game gear (that is currently restricted to weapons only, too) does no good to making GW2 a better game.

Considering how build switching is a core game design philosophy of GW2, it is still sad to see how heavily tied it is to an endgame goal (legendaries’ free stat swapping).

But as I said, I hope this is the first step of something greater. Stat swapping at some cost is cool to make use of undesirable ascended boxes and/ or to adapt to any meta changes, but it’s still too costly for those players that like to play with different builds very frequently. So I hope the means to obtain ascended gear are improved in the future. That being said, with it being back to 5% difference to exotics, players can always use exotics for different builds. But this benefit is also a drawback: it makes ascended gear less satisying/ impactful to non-fractal users.

In the future, I hope that:

• Ascended gear becomes even more friendly build diversity (this new change is nice even though it does not fixes everything);
• Ascended gear gets to have more impact to the playing experience such as that crafting one actually feels worth it;
• Ascended gear becomes more alt-friendly;
• Ascended gear becomes more flavorful, with more interesting themes, backstories, unique skins and unique weapon names.

Although this is awesome news for any and all ascended boxes with undesirable stats that we may get, and awesome news for any potential meta gear changes, it still does not solves one of the biggest problems with ascended gear:

Experimenting with or changing to different builds anytime I wish to.

If I ever get an ascended box out of random loot? Awesome, it’ll be a lot more rewarding now.

If the stat meta ever changes for my main build? Awesome, I’ll be able to adapt to it.

If I want to play with a direct damage build today, a condition damage build tomorrow, and back again to a direct damage build the day after, and so on? I’ll still need 2+ sets of ascended gear, which is hell.

So, I hope this is the first step of something greater.

PS: I actually liked the 10% stat increase. You guys need to add something else to ascended to make it worthier, if you’re not going with the stat changes.

They probably want to make ascended gear more useful and satisfying to obtain. Having to spend your entire gold to get something you barely notice isn’t the most satisfying thing to do.

I have nothing against this change. I am against, however, how annoying and destructive ascended gear is to the core game philosophy, but this is something that can and should be fixed independently on how useless or useful its stats are.

Sampo.9678:

When people bought the core game they could only play 5/8 classes.
You had to buy 3 extra character slots to play every class.
Nobody complained

When people buy the expansion without extra char slots they still can only play 5 classes.
Everyone loses their mind.

Even if this game had over one million classes, and only a single slot to try them, at the very least, you would be given the option to try whichever one you wish to try.

0 slots, however, means that it is impossible to try one of the core features of the expansion, unless you pay an additional cost (be it $10, massive farming or character deletion).

This means that new players will be able to experiment with the revenant right away, if they want to, but veteran players with all character slots filled will not be able to without an extra cost/ sacrifice.

Your purchases and playstyle are your responsibility. It’s your job to make sure you have an open slot, not their’s.

Anet is selling several new features for $50. Having to pay for them and still not getting access to some of those features is a scammy thing to do. Do not blame the consumers for cheap business practices.

Shatters are not an optional set of utilities, but the main mesmer’s mechanic. It is to be expected that are go against builds that benefit from you for not using shatters.

Morfedel.4165:

I didn’t say you had to LIKE the other options,, but yes, you could do that. You said it was stopping you from playing. I said, no, it’s not. You have at least three options to play, it’s not stopping you at all. If you dislike those options, thats another story.

It’s not about me liking or disliking it. It’s about the expansion pack promising several key features on purchase, and then locking them out of you unless you sacrifice your previous investment. You’re right, I can do any of those options. I can accept to be exploited, I can ignore it, and in addition to eating the full $50 price, I can accept that I won’t gain access to all its features unless I still pay an additional cost, whatever it may be. I can do all that, or, I can choose not to be treated like an idiot by anet’s marketing team.

I want to play the expansion, and I’m excited for it. But I’m not exploitable.

Ranatoa.4869:

Your point is that you didn’t get something you felt entitled to, even though there was no reason to expect that you would get it.

Fascinating. Expecting to play with the revenant by purchasing HoT makes me an entitled player. There was no reason to expect that I would get to play with a revenant if I bought an expansion where the revenant is one of its core, selling features. No reason, right?

Ranatoa.4869:

Any of those work, and two out of three don’t cost you $10. You can make your own choices and it doesn’t matter to us what choices you make and how you make them, as you have already pointed out

You don’t seem to understand my point. Or, perhaps, you don’t want to understand it.

Ranatoa.4869:

But that’s just it, you do get the class with the expansion and no one is forcing you to spend anything beyond the $50.

Then tell me, what must I do to be able to play with a Revenant without having to pay an additional cost (be it with real money, massive farming or character deletion)?

Nike.2631:

DiogoSilva.7089:

HoT Standard Edition with partial access to Revenant: $50
HoT Standard Edition with garanteed access to Revenant: $60

GW2 launches with 5 slots and 8 professions. World does not end.

HoT adds a profession but not a slot. World ends.

You’ve either lived without having every class in your stable for 3 years, learned to wipe a character and free up a slot when you wanted to try something new, or you’ve bought more character slots in the past. Which is it, and why have you lost that ability all of a sudden?

What I have done with my paid account is personal and irrelevant to this issue.

If I buy a product that advertises a new class as one of its key features, and then I’m forced to churn $10 more to play with that class, then that will feel like a scam and leave a bad taste in my mouth. I haven’t got what I’ve paid for. There’s nothing else to understand here. Anet can do what they want, they are free to treat their costumers the way they want, and that’s what we are talking about; not about what or how I’ve filled character slots that I’ve paid for in the original purchase of this game.

Morfedel.4165:

DiogoSilva.7089:

HoT Standard Edition with partial access to Revenant: $50
HoT Standard Edition with garanteed access to Revenant: $60

I’m not buying until they add in a character slot. The revenant has been promised to be one of the key features for this expansion. If I can’t play it by paying the original price of the expansion, then it’ll feel like a scam.

Or you could use one of your current character slots. I mean, no rule says you HAVE to buy a character slot.

For what its worth, I do agree they should have added a character slot for free; but it isn’t going to stop me.

But please, it isn’t stopping you from playing. There are other options.

My current character slots have all been paid for 3 years ago, they are mine to do what I want with them, and they have been filled out.

What other options are there? Paying $10 more to gain access to something that I should have by right upon paying the original expansion’s price?

papry.8096:

DiogoSilva.7089:

HoT Standard Edition with partial access to Revenant: $50
HoT Standard Edition with garanteed access to Revenant: $60

XD. For veteran Only.

Yes, of course. New players will gain direct access to the new class if they wish to.

We are so greedy.

HoT Standard Edition with partial access to Revenant: $50
HoT Standard Edition with garanteed access to Revenant: $60

I’m not buying until they add in a character slot. The revenant has been promised to be one of the key features for this expansion. If I can’t play it by paying the original price of the expansion, then it’ll feel like a scam.

HoT Standard Edition with partial access to Revenant: $50
HoT Standard Edition with garanteed access to Revenant: $60

Me and my girlfriend are waiting for any potential changes before buying the standard edition. We don’t have much money for the other editions, but we refuse to buy the cheaper version because it locks me out of playing with my (future) revenant, which I find it to be quite insulting.

What about the people that will need to churn an extra $10 to gain access to a key expansion feature (the revenant)?

Don’t delete anything yet. Anet still has time to correct their silly mistake.

I don’t think you’ll need to worry about deleting them anymore

PS (please check your mail before deleting them!)

How so?

The best solution is the simplest one: add a character slot to the standard edition as well for all players that have already purchased the core game.

This would solve two of the biggest problems with the current situation:

• Players who won’t get what they paid for (revenant) because they have no character slots left;
• Veteran players who will get less for their money than new players;

It won’t solve the price issue, but I’m fine with that.

Just to be clear, you do NOT get free access to the revenant by buying the expansion. You either have to buy additional character slots, or use one of the five slots you have paid for the core game in case you haven’t filled them all.

Get on expansion’s purchase:

• Elite Specs;
• Mastery System;
• Guild Halls;
• Heart of Magumma Content (maps and story);

Requires expansion and an ADDITIONAL COST:

• Revenant;

1. You won’t be able to play with the revenant if you have all your character slots filled, unless you delete characters, pay $10 more or farm.
2. You won’t get a “free” core account if you’re not a new player (even though you’re probably paying for it).
3. If you bought a core account recently, and want to buy the expansion now, you’re basically churning more money than you should.

Yes, the players are so greedy. Praise Anet’s marketing team, for they are full of saints.

CureForLiving.5360:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Evans.6347:

The problem isn’t that we don’t have any options, the problem is that we have to consider them.

Paying €45 and not even getting access to the new class is terrible marketing no matter what.

Do you have to pay for the revenant separately?

To get a character slot for it, yes, I’ll either have to pay, or else I’ll have to delete a character or farm more and stop investing on my personal objectives. Considering that revenant is one of the features that I should get for buying HoT, not getting it will feel like a scam.

Evans.6347:

The problem isn’t that we don’t have any options, the problem is that we have to consider them.

Paying €45 and not even getting access to the new class is terrible marketing no matter what. Sneaky, shady and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I’m sad of all those normal, less informed players that will buy HoT to play with the revenant, only to find out that they can’t because they have used all of their original character slots.

Seriously,

I do not mind the high price that much. I’m willing to buy the expansion at €40-50 anyway, even if it seems to be a bit short on content to justify that cost. It does seems a stretch to buy it that high, but I’m willing to do it. And to be honest, I even think that for non-gw2 players, the expansion happens to be a great deal as well.

But having to eat that price, and still get NO character slot? Am I understanding this right? That I’ll have to spend 40-50 to buy revenant, only to not be able to play with him at all, unless I delete one of my characters? Unless I pay 800 gems more, which is about €10 added into the original price in a sneaky, schemy sort of way? Unless I mindless farm chest farming and cease to play the normal game in a normal way, and cease to seek my personal objectives and rewards, so I can get the “privilege” to play a revenant after spending kittening €40-50? Why would I even bother doing all that after this expansion’s pack basically being a huge middlefinger to the existing playerbase?

The fact that they included a character slot in their $99 bundle is nothing more but some sort of unitentional trolling that leaves an incredibly bad taste to my mouth. When a MMORPG expansion comes out with a new race or class and a new character slot, the purpose of that character slot is to give purchasers garanteed access to that race/ class that they have paid for. This is common sense. This is pure, basic common sense. That’s even how GW1’s campaigns worked.

If a player is already mad at the price, if a player is already mad at having no free access to the revenant in addition to that price, if a player already feels cheated by all that, then what will that player’s reactions be when they read that the character slot is included in the ultimate edition? “Oh, the marketing team wants us to churn $99 for the revenant. Right.”

I could spend my time chest farming for 800 gems. I could cease all my current in-game objectives for this “oh so amazing” privilege of gaining access to the revenant, because, apparently, churning €40-50 won’t be enough. I could, but I won’t waste my time in a game that treats me as an exploitable idiot.

phys.7689:

changes coming next week, we ll see if they have any type of grandfathering planned.

Grandfathering makes absolutely no sense in the new system. It’s just an impossible thing to do, unless the game retroactively gives you completed hero challenges for hero challenges that you haven’t done yet, which seems rather unlikely.

I had the same thought. They could simply revamp the medi heal to be a consecration, and categorize shelter as medi instead. If shelter was ever to get too powerful this way, they could tone down the blocking to X amount of hits (3?).

Is it just me or, out of all professions, guardian’s fan feedback was the most ignored? Most (all?) of the issues are still there. Honor’s restricting adept line, shield’s boring trait, greatsword’s meaningless heal, underwhelming party might stacking, underwhelming retaliation traits (well, the boon itself is questionale), condi-retaliation directly competing with condi traits…

The damage nerfs were expected, and I did like some other changes (glacial hammer trait is back). I’m just disappointed that some of the most glaring issues were ignored, especially after how awesome they were at handling elementalist’s feedback.

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.

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.

Raziel.4216:

In the context of GW2 “play how you want” means you can reach your goal thru different means, that’s something that Anet did well by providing progression thru WvW and SPVP. I don’t see how that justifies a mediocre design choice.

The “play how you want” philosophy is interesting, it just does not always works well in practice, especially when it comes to estabilishing a good reward structure. Generic you-can-get-everything-anywhere rewards have not been very successful, while unique rewards for dungeons, unique rewards for specific maps, unique rewards for pvp, etc, are a lot more satisfying to obtain. Also, if you can get all your skill points by spamming consumables, then hunting for skill challenges in the world map will feel unrewarding – why would you bother to do them when you already have all the skill points you need?

The new change is following a more traditional RPG model: you explore the world, battle, unlock skills, and while you experiment with those new skills you have just obtained, you keep unlocking more of them.

nexxe.7081:

Players expected new elite skills to be earned, but Anet decided to lock all the traits. One of the worst decisions of this game.

I think that wouldn’t be a problem if the system was any fun. But it wasn’t. Trait locations were very arbitrary, tasks varied radically, and none of them were profession-bound. There was no flavor behind it. There was little UI support, and no clarity on how to obtain them. Trait distribution was also poorly balanced, requiring too much work for too little gain.

The only way to fix that system would be with a much higher budget. Anet would need to design bosses just for the sake of trait unlocking, mark those bosses in the map, perhaps make them count for world exploration too (or not), etc. But then it would create new problems. For example, if a boss was flavored around a specific trait, and then the balance team were to decide to revamp that trait completely to something else, would they also change the boss’s themed flavor every time they did that? No way, that would be massive work.

GW1 was designed from the ground up with elite capturing. It was simple, elegant, and players always knew the boss would have something based on their boss aura.

“Play how you want” has got to be the most abused argument by the fanbase. More often than not, “play how you want” is used to defend and justify mediocre or bland game design with no satisfying sense of progression.

But the reality is that GW2 is a RPG, and it is expected to be played like a RPG. One of the core pillars of the entire RPG genre is personal progression. You create a character and then make him grow as you play. In fact, one of the reasons for playing alts or replaying any RPG is exactly that: to take a lv1 new fighter and make him grow into a legendary fighter by going through adventures, challenges and exploration. It’s the reason why the story progression is character-bound, why crafting is character-bound, why world exploration is character-bound and why personal progression is, well, personal.

Bobby.3721:

After all this time has passed, and looking back on the updates, tweaks, buffs, nerfs, and reworking of existing systems from day one of this game being released. I will never understand why they felt the need to rework traits in the game. What was so wrong about it? What was so difficult about buying three different books that unlocked all your traits in different tiers? Why fix something that isn’t broken, or hard to understand? I just don’t know.

Both anet and the playerbase wanted a scavenger hunt system tied to progression, kind of like GW1’s elite skill capturing, so anet added that into their trait system. The idea was good, but it was not well executed, and the game got worse for it. Now, they are changing traits to make them simpler to get again (in fact, simpler than the first system), while also making them easier to understand and that would make sense with the new specialization system.

Iason Evan.3806:

If ArenaNet wanted to do right by the veteran community that has spent countless hours earning progression via earning skill point scrolls and myriad other forms of progression they would give us a way to convert skill point scrolls to hero points.

This goes against their intention, because they want skill points to be limtied by a finite number, with the sole purpose of unlocking skills/ specs and nothing else. If players were able to transform skill scrolls into hero points, then they would be left with leftover HPs with no use after all skills/ specs were unlocked.

The thing is, I don’t have faith this system will be any better than the Trait system debacle. And why should I? They want to limit progression and arbitrarily gate content. It’s disheartening to see a game I adore go the way of cookie cutter MMO mechanics in the form of playing how they want me to play as opposed to how this game was when it came out and allowing me to play the way I want.

The previous trait system changes were a good idea in practice, but poor at execution. For it to have worked, anet would need a higher budget to implement it in a satisfying manner, which they hadn’t. So, what we have gotten was a very generic and broad “trait X unlocked after doing Y”, with no clear UI information/ guiding and with no unique boss or explorable scenario to give flavor to it, etc. GW1 was much better in this regard because it was designed around skill capture in mind from the ground up. In contrast, the new spec system does not demand such a high budget, resources and time to implement correctly, because it is simpler to unlock, simpler to understand and has better UI support. It is, in this regard, much closer to the original system, but improved upon.

Also “play how I want” can be a good or a bad philosophy in game design. It’s important that there’s enough content diversity for different players, but that should not come at the cost of unique and thematically-fitting reward systems. If all rewards are generic, then we get to deal with the much bigger problem in GW2: how unrewarding it feels like. With the new change, hero challenges will give you hero points, and outside of levels, nothing else will. And that’s as it should be, because that’s the entire point of hero/ skill challenges in the first place. If a player can simply get all skills unlocked with consumables, then skill/ hero challenges will no longer feel rewarding.

You are taking away tons of progression and only allowing me to turn it into a currency for the Mystic Forge?

Actually, progression is not changing with this update. You either use skill points to unlock skills or to buy mystic forge materials. After the patch, skill points for skills will be called hero points, and skill points for the mystic forge will be called spirit shards. It’s kind of the same thing, really, but with a clearer division between both.

On a final note, you’ll still be able to use tomes and writes of experience for your revenant, so you should save those.

After the patch, you’ll gain hero points based on your level (lv 80 = 400 HPs) and the skill challenges you have completed in the map. You’ll have to spend HPs to unlock all your skills and traits again.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I was wondering whether slow would affect movement skills. If so, then it’s likely Anet’s “let’s make a new condition that has enormous overlap with current conditions” forced them into this in order to make the new condition more unique (and to push people to get HoT).

Slow is quite different to chill/ cripple, though. It affects skill animations and not movement. They only overlap on leap skills.

MyPuppy.8970:

PlatinumMember.5274:

They better RLT all movement skills. Or at least require them to have a target or long CD.

Approved.

It’s the only change that makes sense after the announced one. Leap skills will literaly change from being counterplayed by – to be able to counterplay cripple/ chill. Roles were reverted, which will potentially make chill and especially cripple too weak in situations where they should have been strong at, and make leaps skills too strong when they should be weak at. The only way to preserve their balance is to make leap skills rarer by giving them higher cooldowns, or just downright nerfing their effect.

But what is more satisfying for a game? Stronger tools that can be counterplayed, or weaker tools that can not be counterplayed? The former is far more exciting, rewarding and satisfying. A game where there is a lack of counterplay and where everything feels weak is a boring game. A game where good plays give you good results is an exciting game because it creates exciting, high tension moments, and a satifying game because it rewards player mastery.

Just to avoid confusion:

Core specializations = current trait lines revamped.

This change will only be positive/ neutral if Anet nerfs how efficient leap skills are in this game. Give them higher cooldowns, lower range, target requirement, etc. If leap skills are meant not to be counterplayed by – but to counterplay chill/ cripple, then they need to be more precious. But if leap skills remain as they are, this change is basically just making GW2’s combat shallower, leaping builds more annoying to deal with, and chill/ cripple unnecessarily weaker.