http://www.arena.net/blog/play-your-way-jon-peters-on-traits-and-attributes

Hey everybody, Jon Peters here with a look at how traits and attributes provide a deep level of customization to your Guild Wars 2 character. Put simply, attributes are characteristics that players can invest points into in order to increase their effectiveness. We have four basic attributes – power, vitality, precision, and toughness.

Was about to post this... oh well.

EDIT: Okay, WTF! ArenaNet iterated on the Attributes... yet again. They never seem to be happy with a part of the game. Loving all the new options though, especially professions specific attirbutes.

Just read that and got real happy. Seems like a really great idea. Cant wait to mess with it.

edit for Masters edit- at least it means they really really really want it to be fun, and not gonna just throw something together in the hopes that it works and we like it. shows a bit of game design pride to me.

Now were starting to see some build complexity.  Great information.

I didn't even expect them to attempt this...yet they did lol I swear to God man already feelin overwhelmed but in a good way.

Wow.  It's nice to know the character of the same class I'm standing next to might be quite different than I am not only in appearance, but in how they play ;)

I really really dislike this change for two reasons.

First:

We realized that an important part of building a character is some sense of permanence. With this new system, you are flexible enough to change if you really want to, but you should still feel like the choices you made matter while you are out adventuring or slogging your way through a dungeon. In competitive PvP, you have a separately saved trait build and can respec free of charge.

I don't get this, it doesn't seem like it fits at all.  Combat is supposed to be fluid with people able to build towards different roles based on the encounter.  In some other game yeah I can kind of see the idea of having a tankish build of skills and then locking in traits to support that, but what if in GW2 you need to be controlling for one encounter and support for the next?  You can totally change your skills but now you have traits that don't support this change at all.

And in a game full of instant teleportation (and one person can leave a dungeon as long as they all don't) then what is the point of making people go back to town to pay a fee and make everyone wait?

The only way this makes sense to me is if traits are so complicated compared to skills that you want to actively discourage their respecing so people don't have to wait for people to keep allocating points before every boss battle.

And if that wasn't bad enough, we have this.

Major Traits (For each of the three unlocked slots, the warrior may choose any of these):

• Gain adrenaline whenever killing an enemy.
• Reduced signet-recharge time.
• Movement skills break out of the Immobilize condition.
• Reduced burst-skill recharge time.
• Gain adrenaline when inflicting a critical hit with an axe skill.
• Increased movement speed while wielding a melee weapon.
• Reduced burst-skill adrenaline cost.
• Chance to rally whenever killing an enemy while under the effects of Vengeance.
• Improved critical chance for each full level of adrenaline.

Traits that depend on specific things I think are particularly bad, but not so much when you can freely change them and your skills.  You just have to make a judgement call whether it's worth taking the trait when you have X number of Signets or certain weapons.  Now, if you switch your weapons/skills due to a different boss, you're now going to have 100% worthless major traits if you took these.

I really hope guildwars2guru is going ballistic over this.

edit: someone on GW2Guru is saying you need to go to a trainer to respec the points, but you can freely swap the major traits.  That's better but still not awesome to me.  Also I don't know if that's confirmed.

traits = talents pretty much

I prefer the way Guild Wars did with respecing the attribute points. Right now in GW2 it seems like a pretty standard mmo way of respecing.

Not sure I like this... I liked the last system with 4 attributes much better, it was clean and elegant and did the job well..

And grouping traits... Isn't that just like having 5 skill trees? I had a feeling that choosing traits would be much more free than having 5 trees....

/facepalm

not again!

Originally posted by cali59

I really really dislike this change for two reasons.

 

First:

We realized that an important part of building a character is some sense of permanence. With this new system, you are flexible enough to change if you really want to, but you should still feel like the choices you made matter while you are out adventuring or slogging your way through a dungeon. In competitive PvP, you have a separately saved trait build and can respec free of charge.

 [...]

Traits that depend on specific things I think are particularly bad, but not so much when you can freely change them and your skills.  You just have to make a judgement call whether it's worth taking the trait when you have X number of Signets or certain weapons.  Now, if you switch your weapons/skills due to a different boss, you're now going to have 100% worthless major traits if you took these.

 

I really hope guildwars2guru is going ballistic over this.

 

edit: someone on GW2Guru is saying you need to go to a trainer to respec the points, but you can freely swap the major traits.  That's better but still not awesome to me.  Also I don't know if that's confirmed.

Yeah, I also dislike that permanent factor of it, as it would mean I am less likely to switch out my weapon set to something else, if I am specced in a certain way. I wish ArenaNet does what Rift did and allow you to buy (in this case) Build Slots. Where you can purchase the increasingly expensive slots, for your various saved builds and then switch between them out of combat. I really hope they do something like this.

EDIT: Just as I predicted some time ago, the GW2guru community is in uproar about the change.

So does this mean we won't have templates that we can change to and from like we had in GW? Since we have to pay to respec now it seems to prohibit any on the fly change.

I'm seeing mixed results on Guru.

Some dislike it

Some like it

Some are awaiting

Question if you can switch major traits around for free what does that mean?

I'm cool with the attribute changes, but traits...scare me.

Let me be clear, that nothing about their specific implementation scared me, on the contrary, I loved all the trait examples they gave.  But traits are essentially an analog to talent trees, and talent trees have had a singular purpose in every MMORPG they are in.  And that purpose is to pigeonhole you into one role.

I hope that GW2's traits will not be like this, but will instead allow you to customize your character while remaining versatile.  But I can't really be sure until I can look at what they all do and see a bunch of different "builds" interacting together.  So for now, I will remain cautiously optimistic that ANet doesn't create "pigeonhole" trait builds with their system.

...Seriously? why do we have to pay a fee for trainer to respec?....I was hoping to respec at will and enjoy my builds as I see fit. 

I don't like this, I understand they need to find some stuff for gold sinking but...this?!...*sigh* well let's hope they comment back on the reason behind the respecing fee. 

I like the old trait system from GC 2010 it was great easy to understand, interesting and you can respec without paying. 

I know that there aren't actual tanks or healers, but with this trait system it seems like you can spec to be more tanky or more of a healer, which combined with having to go to town to reset, might start to create the same problem trinity MMOs have, with a warrior or guardian being asked to have invested in their tanky traits when going to a dungeon.

Originally posted by DJJazzy

So does this mean we won't have templates that we can change to and from like we had in GW? Since we have to pay to respec now it seems to prohibit any on the fly change.

you can have templates for pvp, and respec is free. in pve the major traits can be changed any time...you only spend point to unlock the trait line.

This is kind of lame. I would like it if we could respec for free as long as we are not in combat.

Originally posted by AvatarBlade

I know that there aren't actual tanks or healers, but with this trait system it seems like you can spec to be more tanky or more of a healer, which combined with having to go to town to reset, might start to create the same problem trinity MMOs have, with a warrior or guardian being asked to have invested in their tanky traits when going to a dungeon.

 That's my fear as well.

If traits are made to be too impactful, we may start seeing people asking for a specific Guardian build suited to healing or tanking in chat.  But once again, this is just conjecture.  I'm hoping that ANet doesn't make traits too impactful.

I like the depth of the new system but I don't like the potential for restriction, there are too many unanswered questions right now. Cost needs to be cheap and any scaling not prohibitive and respeccing needs to be more accessible than teleporting off to find an NPC. Portable items at a cheap cost would save this system from being restrictive, I hope that is the case.