Trait System

[perfect]

I think they are dealing with the total lord-of-the-flies style meltdown that the community is having over the traits system...so it may be a bit before we get any more news (or they might end up pushing back the beta to redo the system... AGAIN).

No system is ever going to make everyone happy, and I hope if nothing else that ArenaNet doesn't slow their schedule because of this. As usual, 90% of it is a few outspoken people on the boards endlessly arguing, I think in general people are willing to wait and see.

To me, it seems crazy that people would be willing to just give the benefit of the doubt and assume the best on something like the cash shop (which truly has the potential to break the game for a lot of people), but are totally unwilling to trust ArenaNet at all when it comes to something like the traits system...which the developers seem to feel is going to work well.

Personally, I think the traits system sounds okay, and I think I understand what they are trying to do with it.

I understand what they are trying to do with it, I just think it's a crappy way of going about it given what we know of their design philosophy: They don't want people to be in assigned roles (Holy Trinity). The current trait system makes it a Holy Trinity. Any time that I can make my Guardian *better* at tanking by assigning specific trees of traits to her, then that becomes the tank build and any Guardian not using that build is inferior. You aren't allowing for different playstyles, you are are narrowing the field of viable playstyles.

I like playing a dodgy, sneaky Thief. It's fun and I enjoy it. However, now I'm going to be 'forced' into a DPS role to keep up with the other Thieves (Thiefs?) in WvW. It will take away from my enjoyment because now it's not equal; now it's they have a 30/30/10 build and I have a 25/25/20 build and that's why I can not defeat them. I could change to 30/30/10 but now you have 'best builds' and that defeats the purpose of the system, doesn't it?

[AsheMan]

I haven't read up on the traits at all, but it sounds similar to what Rift did. You have three trees, and can assign your points accordingly, however, there will always be min/max builders who find the best possible build and then that's the (un)official requirement for all other players to go by. And ArenaNet plans to allow people to have several builds or to be able to respec? Is that the gist?

My question is simple. How could you possibly avoid it? If you're going to have a skill tree system then it's essentially unavoidable. Is the solution to not allow people to respec? Then you'll have people angry that they didn't build their characters certain ways. Do you allow them to respec? Then you have the situation you're in now where everyone is complaining there will be min/max builds. Do you get rid of skill-tree trait system altogether? Then what do you put in its place?

[Vordox]

I'm all for versatility. Will there be cookie cutter builds for Dungeon and PvP yeah I'm sure there will be certain set ups for each that will be kinda best for each situation on each profession. That will happen, it has in damn near every game set up even the holy trinity. I mean you had to put points in certain traits and if they weren't just so you could in fact gimp yourself. Some games you had to basically start over if that happened.

In GW2 it is kind of RIFT like with the traits but I thought this was something RIFT did a good job on actually. You could set up for solo,Dungeon,PvP,or just fiddle around with eccentric builds.Now unless GW2 makes traits impossible for respeccing that will be another story all together. I haven't heard that though.

I have to agree with Asheman. I mean how else should they make the system? Like Skyrim where you level everything individually? Then you will have the hardcore gobbling up noobs like a Pacman rampage.

I think GW2 system is fine as long as respeccing isn't a PITA.

[Fozzik]

It's worth reading about, Ashe. It's a lot different than what Rift did.

I think it does the exact opposite of what you're saying, perfect. I think a wide open class system where yu can change everything about your character anytime leads to the FoTM builds that everyone has to use, and forces players into rigid roles in groups ( I think Rift, with all it's wide array of useless and gimped abilities, is a great example). In short, having things be completely wide open just ends up giving players no real choice about how they want to play.

In contrast, I think the trait system in GW2 will act as kind of a foundation and provide some boundaries which will not only make player choices more meaningful (you'll have to give something up to get other things), but will also make balance much more do able for ArenaNet...so they can actually make several legit, viable options for each class.

That foundation, or framework, that you set up with your trait points is then very customizable on the fly using major traits, weapons, skills, and gear which you can adjust any time. All classes will maintain utility and flexibility...trying to build a character that does nothing but heal or tank is going to make you seriously deficient in other areas, and you still won't be able to tank or heal effectively enough to do only that role in a group (because encounters - the game's mechanics just aren't set up that way).

So anyway...no way to know for sure until we play, but I think having somewhat set paths to invest in will provide a bit of structure and allow more viable builds...which means more meaningful choices. When you are offered 100 skills to choose from, but there is a single best set...you really have no choice at all. When you four or so paths to invest in which lead to totally different strengths, and each of them are viable...then you have real choice.

[Fozzik]

ArenaNet description of their trait system...

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

More good reading...
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03/06/flameseeker-chronicles-how-do-trinities-work/

[mmorpeegee]

Yeah. It's just a balance issue, but it takes talent and work to make it right, and not every game manages. This is one of things that separate the men from the boys when it comes to developers I suppose.

WoW had major "cookie cutter" issues, and it was a massive let down for me. As a Druid for example, you could basically be a full on spell caster (Moonkin), a full on tank (Bear), or a full on healer (the tree thing). But whichever you chose, there was very little freedom in what you could do with your skill points. In other words, if you are going to be 'used' by everyone as the healer, then you really need to just put all your points towards being the best healer you can be. At that point there's no point really having skill points anyway, I may as well just be playing the Everquest Cleric.

Rift 'looked' the same with it's three talent tree branches, but it worked far better. You didn't need to go and get a "respec" and pay to get all your points back. In Rift you could make multiple builds however you want, and just switch between them almost any time you wanted. So each of the archetypes could have a build for different roles. So as a thief type, you join a group and they need a healer, so you just switch to Bard spec and you become a really good healer. Or if they need DPS then you switch to a traditional Rogue type. There was also a particular build which made them able to tank. A big thing with Rift though (imo), is that combat was generally so easy, it didn't really matter what you did with your builds anyway... I'm sure at the absolute min/max end game, either for serious PVP or serious PVE Raiding, there are probably some cookie cutter builds by now. But for general play and grouping, it didn't matter even if you had a very messy build that wasn't very focused on anything or was just basically bad...

If anything, my biggest fear for GW2 is that it will end up like that, and it's such an 'ez-mode' game in terms of combat, nobody really cares what build you are using anyway.

Anyway, as far as I know, most games suffer from this cookie cutter / holy trinity issue. (They are basically the same thing). There's only a few games I can think of which did a good job of it. One of them is Vanguard, and one if them is Shards of Dalaya. Their solution is to basically provide such varied situations that there is not one class that is "the best" overall. For example in SoD, even though it's basically a remade Everquest, there is not the issue of the holy trinity tanks / healers / CC. With the tanks, the Paladin, the Warrior, and the SK, are all pretty much good enough to be the main tank in even the most demanding raid. The Warrior had the best mitigation overall, but it had nothing else to offer. The Pally although slightly less mitigation, could constantly spam an AE heal over time spell which was a huge help, and Pallys also did some decent damage and reflected damage back I think too and they were also the best tanks by far against anything which is undead (which is a large portion of the game both raid and group). And then SK's, well they could feign death and lifetap and I think they had some kind of ability which made them shrug off mobs with damage shields. In other words, there wasn't really a "best". Same with healers, any of the healers could main heal a guild raid. Cleric was kind of the best... and had the biggest heals, but the Druid heals were faster and use less mana, so whether they could main heal or not, they were essential on raids anyway as padders. And shamen, similar deal to Druids but they also had the ability to hardly ever go out of mana. So on some of the insanely long raid encounters, everyone would go OOM and things would look bad... but the Shammy was still keeping key people alive.

As far as I know, Vanguard achieved a similar kind of success. Of course SOE have messed up some stuff I think, but generally their design was solid. In terms of grouping at least, the game is perfect. Any of the three tanks are equally welcome as tanks. Any of the healers are welcome as healers, and although some don't heal quite as well as others, they make up for it with far better DPS and the ability to charm mobs etc. Same with Mages, all of them can evac (so no more NEED WIZ/DRU! like EQ had), and most of them can play as Crowd Control too, the exception being Druid but they make up for it by being great secondary healers and having epic buffs and the highest burst DPS in the game.

So to bring this ramble to an end... my hope would be for them to build their traits in the same way. Have it so that all the classes can do any fundamental important stuff, but on top of that, anything goes. If someone wants to make the ultimate DPS rogue, then fine. But they need to have crappy defense and maybe AE magic fries them to a crisp. If you make a sneaky rogue, you have less dps, but you have a higher chance of not dying early in the fight. Or you can go with a balanced mixture of both. Ideally all classes should be like that. The only problem is that this is easier said than done. It's just a matter of a talented team being able to balance it. But they seem smart so hopefully it will turn out well.

Then you will have the hardcore gobbling up noobs like a Pacman rampage.

That made me lol :)

[ForestWhitakerEye]

I was extremely vocal about this trait system change. I still don't think it's perfect and there's things I would do to change it, but I think I understand it a lot better now. I'll try to give you my take on it.

Back in their first traits overview on gw2.com, they were talking about traits as on the fly enhancements to skills. Like you were about to kite a giant boar, you're going to take these skills to do that (sword, bow), now what traits help boar kiting specifically.

Where I think the uproar came from was there's a fundamental shift between what that system does and what the current system does. The current system is more about speccing more towards damage, support, or control, and/or power, crit, or conditions.

An example I kept using to argue with was that if a warrior specs to their Defense tree but then needs to use a Rifle, they no longer have points in Arms so their rifle is gimped. But the idea behind this change is that if you spec into defense, then you're a defensive warrior. So you can still use the rifle and then change majors traits to other defensive things.

The idea is that you can spec for one thing or another, but it's supposed to be minor compared to the impact that smart play, paying attention and reacting to the situation will have. Done right, it shouldn't bring back the holy trinity.

Again, I think this is a fundamental shift in philosophy and it just really wasn't explained well in the blog post. The blog was like "permanence is important" and everyone was like "WTF, this is a 180 degree shift."

Eric Flannum made 2 posts on GW2Guru which I think really made me understand this. I'll repost them here.

Players could make a build that resembles the trinity but it could never truly be the trinity. You cannot for example make a dedicated healer no matter how much you pump into your support trait lines. When you start getting to tougher encounters no matter how much armor and health you have you will never be able to stand toe to toe for long against most of the foes you'll face. Because of this even a 5 person group that has 3 dps focused characters, a support focused character, and a damage soaking character (which is a standard trinity setup) will not play anything like a standard trinity group. If those players insisted on playing like a standard trinity group they could succeed against the easier content in the game but probably couldn't finish a story mode dungeon let alone an explorable dungeon or some of the tougher events in the game.


To go a little bit more in depth with the answer I gave, it doesn't really matter which professions you bring. Over the beta weekend I played through the dungeon with several different journalists and getting through was never a matter of bringing particular professions or even changing the builds that people were using. When we hit a tough patch people would change which weapons or utilities they were using but nobody ever had to go respec their traits. I was in groups that wiped multiple times in story mode but I was also in groups that did not wipe at all in story mode and was in one group that made it through explorable mode (we wiped a lot in that one). It all came down to how well we coordinated and how well we responded to the situations we encountered.

For example, in the explorable run through I think it was two journalists who were both warriors (one may have been a guardian, I'm having trouble recalling), our producer Chris Whiteside with a ranger, Izzy playing an elementalist, and myself playing an engineer. At different times Izzy was our condition removal guy, our debuffer, and our "tank" (bait is a more appropriate term actually). He was our most important player because he was our best player but he was actually very support/healing specced. The important thing about that group was that we were all talking and coordinating our efforts and coming up with strategies together. Those strategies never really revolved around specific skills but rather things like "We need condition removal" or "we need to stack as much vulnerability on this guy as possible" or even "we need Izzy to run around attracting attention while the rest of us activate the traps built into the area to kill the hordes of incoming mobs". I hope that helps shed some light on how the game plays.

[mmorpeegee]

Sounds awesome to me :) Like everything it just sounds like total MMO rulebook ripping to me. They kicked the holy trinity in the nuts. Sounds kind of like every class is basically an EQ Bard :p You can do a bit of everything but you are never going to be a tank or a healer or a dps. Everyone has to kite and play smart and play evasively using their teleports and whatnot. Maybe I have the wrong impression, but it sounds like a fairly full on and frantic game in terms of combat.

But no matter what, this team seems WAY too smart to me to screw anything up like that. Maybe I should read the official forum before I judge... but from a distance they kind of seem like the MMO dev dream team to me.

[Vordox]

Guess we will see when we get in game. I got new peripherals set up for GW2 G13 logitech on my left and my Naga on my right . I'm Loaded for noobs! ;)

[mmorpeegee]

Well my Vanguard subscription expires on about the 13th, so I'm hoping one of us hears something by then! If not I will pay for another month I guess. But I'm really excited for this game now.

[perfect]

...My question is simple....

Says the guy who then goes on to ask a question consisting of five parts.

How could you possibly avoid it?

You can't.

Is the solution to not allow people to respec?

Lord no.


Do you allow them to respec?

Yes, totally. It should be 'hard' to do (require lots of money and/or rare components) but it should be doable.

Do you get rid of skill-tree trait system altogether?

Yes. Or make it completely customizable instead of 'these five pairings of traits and only these five'.

Then what do you put in its place?

Nothing. Why do we need a trait system? EQ was fine before AAs were put in: Every class had a role and you didn't have to ask if your Ranger was bow or sword spec'd (as if anyone played a Ranger in EQ before AAs).


***

This is not to say that I am against a trait system. But the advertisement of 'no holy trinity' is gone. I like skill trees and the ability to fine tune my character to my playstyle. My fear is that what I find fun won't be effective because I didn't take XYZ trait and the min/maxers have. Then I have to change my playstyle if I want to win. And that sucks.

Guess we will see when we get in game. I got new peripherals set up for GW2 G13 logitech on my left and my Naga on my right . I'm Loaded for noobs! ;)

Yeah, it's all speculation (much like the changes to the CS) and we won't know until we know. Still, I fear.

Also, I thought about getting a new mouse but with only 10 hotbuttons (and maybe 3 of them passives at that), a Naga seems like overkill. You have more buttons than skills to use them with (not that you don't have skill to use them but that your character doesn't have that many skills). 1-5 above my QWES (yes, I'm one of those), 6-0 on my G500 and I'm golden.

[mmorpeegee]

above my QWES (yes, I'm one of those)

Are you a :fishman: ?

:D That actually makes more sense than WASD now that I think about it..

[perfect]

Are you a :fishman: ?

:D That actually makes more sense than WASD now that I think about it..

It totally does. QWES with AD being strafe. Your fingers rest on Tab, Q, W, E. It's a simple hop to `, 1, 2, 3.

Started doing that in DAoC, haven't looked back. COX even defaults that way.

[AsheMan]

WASD is my way, and I always make A/D strafe. Turning is way more precise with mouselook.