Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[DrakeWurrum]

(^ lolninjaedit =P)

I'm talking about the end of 3 trees being a powerful combination. So the 30point strength + the 30 point arms + the 30 point discipline. And I'm not saying "Every possible combination is OP", I'm saying that the easiest way to balance the ones that ARE an overpowered combination without removing the traits is to remove the possibility of that combination.

I just really don't think those kinds of builds were really coming out of the wood-work that often.

[Delias]

I just really don't think those kinds of builds were really coming out of the wood-work that often.

.. how do you know, without seeing what is tiered? Every build had 10-20 points in a tree or two.

[DrakeWurrum]

.. how do you know, without seeing what is tiered? Every build had 10-20 points in a tree or two.

My point being that none of those builds were OP.

Example: If I can't get Combined Training, Combo Crit Chance, and Combined Tactics together, I'm going to be really annoyed. Those three together weren't THAT powerful, even though they were certainly a good build - it built you up around the idea of using your dual wield skills, which is just one of many fun ways to use the Thief.

[Delias]

My point being that none of those builds were OP.

My point is that you can't know that without seeing what is tiered, because you do not know what they're considering overpowered. But I'm sure in the 3 days you've played you can balanced their game better than they can.

I'm choosing to agree to disagree now, if you don't mind. I'm well aware that arguing with you is like arguing with a brick wall, as we've been over before.

[DrakeWurrum]

I'm not claiming to be better at balancing their game. I'm simply observing that they already had a balancing factors for those builds: the attributes in the trait lines, and to a lesser extent the minor traits. What they've added is, from what I can see right now, simply redundant. You could put 10 points into one and 10 points into another to grab 2 traits that meshed really well with a third in your main trait line, yes, but the cost was spreading around the attributes from those traits, and not grabbing certain minor traits.

I already said I'm not going to pass a final judgment on this without trying it out first, if it's even still there in BWE2, but I'm going into this with the mindset that it's not necessary for a fairly good reason. I'm not exactly inexperienced in video game design.

[Fencers]

I wonder why the change to a tiered utility/elite skill system. Change seems kinda odd.

Really dislike having to pick up filler skills or PVP skills.

[Kelesti]

I wonder why the change to a tiered utility/elite skill system. Change seems kinda odd.

Really dislike having to pick up filler skills or PVP skills.

From what we've seen, it's more that we unlock some along the way. If it gets people trying out some more utility skills as they level, rather than the ones they think they'll be using at max, it could pay off quite well. One of the major points of feedback was that there didn't seem to be strong enough teaching mechanics, especially for those new to the genre.

This helps.

Plus, it has the advantage of teaching "old" MMO players how to use some of these "PvP" skills in not so PvP environments.

[Fencers]

From what we've seen, it's more that we unlock some along the way.

Are you sure about this? Where can I read up on this if so. The info I gathered suggested a minimum # skills bought before the next tier unlock- AA style. No one made mention of gaining skills "along the way".

I might be misreading you. Clarify: "along the way"

[Jimusmc]

fencers any luck on a code?

[Loaf Lord]

They updated the GW2 wiki page again. Looks purdy.

[Exedore]

My initial reaction to tiered skills and traits was that tiered skills were good because it helps the newbies and tiered traits were bad because it kills customization. After I thought about it for a while and played with the calculator over at gw2.luna-atra.fr (has the major traits numbered), I changed my mind. I dislike the tiered skills and I'm okay with the tiered traits.

The argument against tiered traits is that reduces customization. But after looking at it, it looks like it will do the opposite and increase customization. Before, there were only a handful of good trait builds because you would pick a master (20 points) or grandmaster (30 points) major trait out of each line. You could get all or almost all of the major traits that you wanted. Now that you need to invest more to get the better traits, you can't get all the good ones that you want. You have to consider the trade-offs between picking one over the other. And for the grandmaster level traits, they seem to work well with other major traits in the trait line, so it's not like you're picking filler major traits along the way. Playing around with the calculator, I see 20/20/20/10 as viable as 30/30/10. Obviously some of the adept level major traits and minor traits throughout the trait lines need adjusted to be on-par with their peers, but that's part of ongoing development. And there are a few grandmaster level major traits that seem necessary for a certain weapon or set of utility skills that will need to be examined.

As a knowledgeable player, I don't like skills in tiers. I can do my research outside of the game and even play around in the mists to figure out which skills mesh well with the play styles which I enjoy. That means I may end up purchasing skills I don't like just to get to ones I do like and extra farming of skill points. For a primary character, this doesn't seem all that bad, as I'll be exploring a lot. But for an alternate character, having to do this seems to restrict freedom too much. In addition, from a perspective of training newbies, limiting selections can be bad. They're more apt to pick a bunch out of what they're allowed initially and stick to them for a while, rather than try and pick a good set of three from everything. I think a better approach would be to make the first utility slot available when you only have 2 or 3 points (so selection is not forced, just encouraged) and then give them time to accumulate another 6-7 points before the next slot is unlocked so that the full set is available for selection.

[Larynx]

They updated the GW2 wiki page again. Looks purdy.

It's like a whole new wiki.

[Kelesti]

Are you sure about this? Where can I read up on this if so. The info I gathered suggested a minimum # skills bought before the next tier unlock- AA style. No one made mention of gaining skills "along the way".

I might be misreading you. Clarify: "along the way"

Apologies, I was meaning this not as in respect to the actual automatic freebies, but more of a point of view of a new player as he gets skill points. Showing them "Okay, pick one from this smaller pool to play around with" and then later "Okay, you can pick one more from that". As they get levels and start finding familiarity, allowing them the secondary pool (and tertiary to follow) does zero hamper to PvP (as you're already 80), but it allows them room to expand into new territory. Minimum number of skill unlocks might not be the best way to do this, but it does get people playing around with some choices they might have little ideas with themselves.

As a main, not a problem. As a secondary, I can see the desire for "Elective Mode" making a come back, but then again as an alt you're almost guaranteed learning the new class from the ground up so it's not necessarily as bad a thing as people think(unless you're rolling one of each race of Mezzie, then we might need to have a chat).

[DrakeWurrum]

Playing around with the calculator, I see 20/20/20/10 as viable as 30/30/10.

I would appreciate it, after viewing your thoughts on this, that you give some thought to this question: Is the quoted portion really a bad thing?
And honestly want to know what you think of that. I want to know where's the harm in this.

I've come up with tons of builds in my free time. Some of them were spread out. Some (most) of them were condensed into 30/30/10 or 30/20/20. I was not discouraged or encouraged either way, but for one factor: Attributes. When I spread out my traits too much, so too do I spread out my attributes. While gear would usually play a bigger impact than the +300 you could get from attributes, those 1-300 points are not negligible.

The great thing is that though that encouraged me to focus my traits, it also didn't prevent me from building in a more unique way. This resulted in a trade-off. The more I grab for specific traits, the less focused my attributes from traits are. And I feel that kept it balanced.

This is all considering the minor traits as essentially a non-factor in this, but that would be a mistake. I came up with this build JUST because of the third minor traits in Critical Strikes and Trickery. I wanted the two together, regardless of which major traits I chose, because I thought they would lead to a really fun burst-build.

Not all minor traits are strong enough to encourage this kind of behavior, however, which is something they could have chosen to remedy rather than doing this tiered-trait system. If you want to encourage people to specialize more, you encourage it, you don't force it.

Could I be wrong? Maybe. We'll have to see in BWE2.

[terrahero]

I dont believe tiered traits automatically mean better balance. Lets look at other games that have "Tiered talents", and we see massive inbalance there aswell. So its not a recipe for instant succes, what it merely does is limit all possible combinations. And with less possible combinations there are less builds you have to balance.
They have to avoid the pittfall with this however, the risk of forcing people to pick BAD traits simply because they have to. Being forced to pick a filler, that you will never really use or benefit from just to advance deeper into the traitline. And then there is still the act of balancing these "tiered traits" in their appropriate slots. Maybe they give the Necro a really powerfull trait they used before at first go. But a Mesmer sees his powerfull trait bumped 30pts into a traitline. And it might, break certain builds that people enjoyed playing.

And then the tiered Utility-skills. I cant find a single redeeming argument for it. I am now forced to pick up utility skills i might not even like or use because they are bad/dont fit my playstyle. While utility skills i loved using are locked away deeper and unavailable to me untill later into the game. Example: As an Engineer i might really wanna get the Elixirgun. However, its locked away and first i have to spend my points on utility skills i dont use or dont like.

No idea how this will be done with the gaining of skillpoints, in the screenshot of the skilltree we can see Utility skills being considerably cheaper. Elites are all down to 6 (they were 15-20 before) and tier1 are all 1 point and tier 2 are all 3 points. Considerably less, so i wonder how our income of Skillpoints has changed. At this rate there would be so many skillpoints available to a player that after lv30 you wouldnt know what to do with them anymore.
Which would completely defeat the purpose of a tiered system functioning as a form of "progression", when you are now done with progressing much faster.

All this work put into these two changes, and im wondering if it was worth the hassle.

[Deleted]

I find it amusing how some people just assumes that trait tiers are about the power of traits, and compares it with WoW talent trees. If that were the case, it makes no sense to allow you to choose a tier 1 trait in your tier 3 slot.

What it looks like to me is that the tiers are about preventing excessive synergies, where a player could pick up the exact 7 traits that synergize the most. Just look at the builds people have been suggesting since before BWE1. It is all about how to best exploit the synergies between the different traits. Traits have been ignored, not because they were weak, but because they didn't provide synergy with the rest of the traits.

To make such traits useful in a free form system you have to make them so overpowered that it doesn't matter that they have no synergy. But if you do, then people will just switch to using 7 unrelated overpowered non-synergized traits instead, and start complaining about how the traits that require synergy are weak. And so on. Of course, if you want another balancing disaster like the GW1 skill system, then I guess that is exactly what you want.

[Maarius]

I find it amusing how some people just assumes that trait tiers are about the power of traits, and compares it with WoW talent trees. If that were the case, it makes no sense to allow you to choose a tier 1 trait in your tier 3 slot.

What it looks like to me is that the tiers are about preventing excessive synergies, where a player could pick up the exact 7 traits that synergize the most. Just look at the builds people have been suggesting since before BWE1. It is all about how to best exploit the synergies between the different traits. Traits have been ignored, not because they were weak, but because they didn't provide synergy with the rest of the traits.

To make such traits useful in a free form system you have to make them so overpowered that it doesn't matter that they have no synergy. But if you do, then people will just switch to using 7 unrelated overpowered non-synergized traits instead, and start complaining about how the traits that require synergy are weak. And so on. Of course, if you want another balancing disaster like the GW1 skill system, then I guess that is exactly what you want.

and why aren't they putting the 7 synergizing traits into one line? You could then only take 3 of 7 at most.

edit: was a quick thought, would be a bad idea I guess

---------- Post added 2012-06-03 at 09:46 AM ----------

until now it was quite fun to find synergies from different lines, now it's a trade off, if you want that trait 12 (e.g. +30% minion damage) from the spite-line but you haven't specced into it so far, you would have to take 20 filler-points (+2 major filler traits) in order to get that 1 trait. You could say: this is the trade-off you will have to make, but can't there be trade-offs that don't ruin half of your build with filler-stuff?

---------- Post added 2012-06-03 at 09:53 AM ----------

about taking the strongest trait from a line:

and why is this bad? You won't need any filler-traits/points and therefore are allowed to specialize on a second thing. For example: your focus as a guardian was burning. You found most of the burning-synergies and now you have still points left to focus on something different. Why not focus in blind next? This was fun!

The burning synergy won't be too OP anyway if you didn't spend points into a line which
a.) increases condition duration - radiance line
b.) increases condition damage - virtues line

(I have to say, the problem at the moment could be that gearstats are working against that theory, stats from the trait-lines should get more important I think)

[DrakeWurrum]

Traits have been ignored, not because they were weak, but because they didn't provide synergy with the rest of the traits.

Umm....
There was a LOT of great synergy, actually. Things like Fiery Embrace combined with Zephyr's Boon and Elemental Shielding. Or Venomous Aura combined with Venomous Strength. Or Combo Crit Chance with Combined Tactics and Opportunist.

There's TONS of great synergy out there.

What's going to be happening NOW, is that people will go 30 points into a line, and pick two "filler" traits that aren't really that amazing, because one in the final tier IS amazing. I don't want that.

[Squirrelbanes]

Maybe Anet just don't feel we should be able to master 3 different areas?
Kinda makes sense...

[DrakeWurrum]

Maybe Anet just don't feel we should be able to master 3 different areas?
Kinda makes sense...

But we can't master 3 different areas. We can, at best, master two.