With all the hoolabaloo about traits, I thought I'd make a pool to see how many people actually think the new system needs a revamp or just a slight tweak.

Where's the option for "Totally unnecessary to begin with, just don't have one"?

Didn't think about that... heheheh

it's fine. this is another case of a vocal minority stirring up trouble as far as i can tell. also, it's the MMORPG.com forums. you can't say "i like air" without someone jumping down your throat about how it's a WoW clone, or it will flop, or it needs to be revamped (oh and it's definitely OPed).

I never really did anything with it and haven't researched it enough to know if it needs to be changed. I am sure it will be about as complex as Guild Wars 1 and take as much theorycraft, but I don't know hardly anything about it.
What's the problem with it?

I think it's mostly fine... how fine depends on balance (both PvP and PvE.. I want dungeons to be challenging, and not even a hint of the holy trinity), but I do think they need to let people switch their build (and save them) anywhere though, or at least have a 'trail period' for new builds before they are locked in.

Either that or just have major traits and leave stats and minor traits to gear and sets (symbols you stick on gear) respectively.

"Not fine" doesn't even begin to address how bad I think this change is.

I will try to list all my objections to it.

Traits have synergy with certain skills but the synergy goes away when you swap skills, which you're supposed to do before combat...

This wouldn't be a problem if traits were only minor customization bonuses but they appear to be flexible enough to lead to great differences in performance...

Which if you're struggling with a boss would lead you to want to respec just for that boss when you go back to repair your armor...

Which makes me think traits are sitting in this weird middle ground.  It's like they don't want you to respec them, but you can for a small fee in a game with teleportation, which would just make people in your party wait in a dungeon.  It's a small inconvenience in a game which seems determined to get rid of small inconveniences (easy changing skills, everyone has every gathering profession, mail is delivered to you by bird, overflow server)

The system is a big leap in complexity with 4 attributes jumping up to 10, which all have undescriptive names.  Guardian Radiance buffs Precision and Expertise.  Valor buffs Toughness and Prowess.  Which is which again?

It's possible to completely misappropriate trait points, ending up with a 19/19/14/9/9 build with 3 Majors instead of 7.  It's also possible to pick completely unhelpful Majors.  This is in a game where the skill system is designed to make it practically impossible to make a bad skill build.

It's possible that I'm still just unfamiliar with the game, but I find trying to look at a trait build to be incredibly difficult to follow.  For example, Fion posted on the build creator thread an elementalist build.  They put 30 points in Air.  I find myself trying to see what all the minor traits do in that tree and compare them to all the minors in other trees.  Then I need to see if the Majors they picked make sense for the skills they took, as well as see not only if the other 9 Majors in that tree would be better, but also the 48 Majors in other trees to see what they would do, as well as weigh the contributions to attributes.  And as soon as they switch skills, the majors will have to be adjusted again to see if they can be improved.

There might even be other ones I can't think of at the moment.  I've been a loyal supporter of ArenaNet and GW2 for a year and half now and have always given them the benefit of the doubt.  This system though I think just does not work well and does not fit with the rest of what they're trying to do with this game.

Originally posted by Thrage

Where's the option for "Totally unnecessary to begin with, just don't have one"?

I Disagree there has to be "some" sembelance of Differentiation within the profressions or it becomes to stagnate and stale.  I am looking forward to these changes regardless of the naysayers.

Originally posted by Leodious

I never really did anything with it and haven't researched it enough to know if it needs to be changed. I am sure it will be about as complex as Guild Wars 1 and take as much theorycraft, but I don't know hardly anything about it.
What's the problem with it?

Main problem is that the way the system is now it basically defines a role for you, well technacially you define the role, but anyway, it's kind of like talent trees... so if you speck into the +healing stat branches you will be better at that, but don't expect to be able to DPS near as well as someone specced for DPS... it also seems to be leading back to the holy trinity, how far depends on values and balance (which are unknown at this stage), but if you had someone specced for defense and someone specced for healing you are a lot closer to your typical 'Healer' and 'Tank' than I think most people looking forward to GW2 are comfortable with.

Note: This is compared with the old system where you couldn't really be 'great' at any one thing, but you would still be good at everything regardless of your spec (skills still make a big difference of course, but they can be changed out / swapped with weapons).

This sums up how I feel about it.

So far it's just jibberish until I'm actually playing. It's close enough to some systems to have an idea, sure. I just don't know if I'd like it or hate it.

I just wish I was clear if it was sorta like DCUO's stupid split of PVE / PVP stats. It seems like it, and I dunno if I like that. I don't like it in DCUO.

Basically I don't know yet. If the banter didn't help to conclude that.

Originally posted by cali59

 

Which if you're struggling with a boss would lead you to want to respec just for that boss when you go back to repair your armor...

just thought I would let you know once you leave you cant get back in

so no repair armor for boss fights

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMVe2PPOjwo&feature=player_detailpage watch minutes 15:00 to 18:00 and read dialogue from players

As for the traits im in the "wait and see" boat

Originally posted by mightyjoxer

Originally posted by cali59

 

Which if you're struggling with a boss would lead you to want to respec just for that boss when you go back to repair your armor...

just thought I would let you know once you leave you cant get back in

so no repair armor for boss fights

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMVe2PPOjwo&feature=player_detailpage watch minutes 15:00 to 18:00 and read dialogue from players

As for the traits im in the "wait and see" boat

 

Apparently there was a bug where the leader of a party couldn't leave the dungeon, but it's been fixed.  Now people can leave and come back as long as one person stays.

Originally posted by Zederok

Originally posted by Thrage

Where's the option for "Totally unnecessary to begin with, just don't have one"?

I Disagree there has to be "some" sembelance of Differentiation within the profressions or it becomes to stagnate and stale.  I am looking forward to these changes regardless of the naysayers.

All talent trees have ever done (And these are talent trees, don't kid yourself) is allow people to make mistakes in regards to their character's power.  I honestly do not believe they would actually be missed.  Just don't put them in the game.

My issue with this current system is that in a game that wants to be flexible, this setup is more like something you expect to find in one of those other games. 

I can´t exactly say that it works when playing, but it looks fine to me. A lot better then last build.

Originally posted by Thrage

All talent trees have ever done (And these are talent trees, don't kid yourself) is allow people to make mistakes in regards to their character's power.  I honestly do not believe they would actually be missed.  Just don't put them in the game.

I dunno, they are more like when you place your attributes and feats in NWN then Wows talent trees.

And I want to b able to make misstakes, I don´t want a cookie cutting "everybody wins" system. If you have problems you can always copy a build on the net.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Thrage

All talent trees have ever done (And these are talent trees, don't kid yourself) is allow people to make mistakes in regards to their character's power.  I honestly do not believe they would actually be missed.  Just don't put them in the game.

I dunno, they are more like when you place your attributes and feats in NWN then Wows talent trees.

And I want to b able to make misstakes, I don´t want a cookie cutting "everybody wins" system. If you have problems you can always copy a build on the net.

Exactly.  I dunno call me what ever you like but I honestly think this does 2 things:

1. First it appears that this system is designed to be much better then a Talent system in any other game because there are no +5% crit talents, in a way I think this is one step better then the new proposed WoW MoP Talent system but instead of 15 in that game you get 70.

2. I dislike greatly that as an example One Warrior is completely carbon copy of another Warrior, Differentiation and customization is "HUGE" reason why people play mmoRPG's.    If I wanted to be a copy of another character I would play FPS where that sort of thing is the norm, but customization and differentiation is and always will be the main reason why I play MMO's and not FPS.

Guildwars 2, is build to give people as much freedom building their characters. Not being able to switch builds in PvE is a disadvantage for the good players, as they can make the tactical dessigins to choose a right build for certain situations, if they get in a PUG, they need to be able to change to a build that will work in that group.

A build consists out of

-Armor (for stats)

-Skills

-Traits. (traits are there to enhance a certain skillsets)

So people should be allowed to have several different builds...... (with a Maximum of about 5 or 7) and allowing people to switch between builds (including armor and weapons) out of combat.

Paying for every change would be a huge disadvantage for those people that like to switch tactics, which was one of the  best parts of GW, changing builds. But there should be some costs for people that want to use them... So maybe they should pay an innitial costprice for having extra slots and on top of that a daily rent price the first time they decide to use that skill on that day.

This sounds much fairer then paying for every change, as paying for every change definately is against Anets pollicy that all things in the game should be fun.

I am hesitant to say "fine" but people jumping on ArenaNet and trying to beat them up for the change are really jumping the gun here. We need to see more how it plays out to really get a feel for it, as it's a fairly complicated system.

You have:

lines - different lines of customization
attributes - putting points into a line ups those attributes, these can be useful to tweak certain playstyles
minor traits - small bonuses that pop up when you level an attribute high enough. usually related to the attributes but not always! You can get attribute bonuses from one line that really help a trait from another
major trait slots - these slots open up and give you even more customization

You are able to swap major traits into those slots as you wish as you play. If you want to change what lines you put points into you need to go train+pay for it.

Many of the major traits are tied to weapons or specific skills or skill sets. Wanting to change them when you change weapon sets is reasonable.
Most of the minor traits are helpful in many situations. Wanting to change them very often is probably only important to a small subset of the game population.

Also to be considered: How content will be balanced. They are towing the line here. If mobs are balanced only for well-specced, then needing to go respec all the time for fights becomes a major part of the game - and really annoying. However, if mobs are balanced for the lowest common denominator, why bother with traits at all?

Wanting to make two Guardians somewhat unique, and tying that to player choices and having some permanence is a noble goal. Not wanting players to feel like they should be micro managing and switching traits constantly is also something I can get behind. But I'm not quite sure where they have the balance here, and whether they are actually hitting their design goals with this system.

It's impossible to say if the system is good or bad without really getting a feel for what content is like or how much of an effect traits actually have, or how important they are for changing your weapon sets, etc etc etc. I can see people's concerns, as well as other people's approval of the system, but it's such a fine line here between good and bad there is no way we can reach a consensus on pure speculation alone.

As said earlier, this trait system is exactly what I loved back when you had to do some math to figure out the best possible combination for your type of gameplay. ANet is plainly assuming that this mathy system won't please casual players, and it doesn't prevent them to focus on real technicity. So I'm loving ANet even more now, they know what's good in MMOs, period.

Plus I'm super excited, 70 points lets us try a ton of stuff.

(and I don't give a damn about min-maxers & min-max copycats,  but in my way of min-maxing)

/bow ANet