Debates and Dilemmas: Tiered Traits

During the last BWE there was a profound change in design to traits.  They are now tiered, and there are many differing opinions in the community over whether this was a positive move for the game.  During the Reddit AMA, ArenaNet provided 3 main reasons for the change and advantages of the new system: ease of understanding by new players, expanse of diversity of viable builds, and facilitation of overall balance.  Is this new system better for the game?

Many members of the community seem to be split, and unsurprisingly even the authors of this blog are divided.  For the interest of constructive debate, Aly and I have arranged a joint article discussing our opposing views.  We hope this article encourages thoughtful discussion, and have provided strong, valid arguments in support or against the new model.

Aly- In Support of the New Model

ANet aggressively marketed Guild Wars 2 toward casual players and newcomers from the beginning. While many players appreciated the freedom of the game’s design, others found themselves overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choices players had early on. Players previously had to consider 60 different major traits. Additionally, we had to do so with no basis of comparison, or at least we had to compare each trait against every other trait, as well as take into account the stat boosts and minor traits provided by each trait line. Even after honing in on a preferred play style, there were a number of ways to enhance the play style via traits. Those players leveling up through PvP had the advantage of knowing what weapons and skills they preferred by the time they had to begin making these decisions. However, a player heading straight for PvP has greater difficulty.
No matter your level of familiarity with the game, build a character took more time prior to the introduction of tiers. Theory crafters may not mind but the system wasn’t particularly friendly to casuals or altoholics who may consider creating builds preparing to have fun rather than having fun. Even some hardcore gamers complained, not because of the difficulty or time, but because they felt their decisions lacked weight. Now we have smaller groups of traits to measure against each other at a time. Not only do our decisions carry greater weight, but we can also pick out those traits that enhance our preferred play styles more easily without having to cross-reference as many traits at a time. The new system draws more attention to existing synergies many of us already recognized, and we no longer have to look as hard for them when creating other builds or characters. While the system may be more restrictive, it still encourages more experimentation precisely because it is less time-consuming.

A big selling point of Guild Wars 2 is that you can play how you want, in reference to the removal of the holy trinity. It’s an appeal to hybrid fans that had to forgo their preferred play styles in order to find a group in other MMOs. Sadly, some players were determined to squeeze Guild Wars 2 into the typical MMO box anyway. When traits became tiered, ANet confirmed what many of us already feared: previously there were many good builds, and only a few great builds. The intent of tiers is not to reduce the variety of play styles, but to ensure their viability. A non-viable choice is no choice at all. ANet has even assured us that they will make sure to support all play styles, and they requested player feedback in the event a play style was no longer possible. It’s important to note that play style is determined less by traits than by weapon and skill selection. Traits merely allow us to enhance our preferred play styles. There may be fewer variations of how to enhance a particular play style, but that play style is still possible – even more so due to greater viability.

ANet promised us long ago that they would not punish us for our personal preferences nor would they allow for the creation of poor builds. That was a big problem with the original and part why they nixed secondary professions in the sequel. However, the sheer volume of possible builds threatened to turn the game into Build Wars 2 anyway. There are also expansions to consider, and the risk of adding new content while playing catch up on balancing the existing game.

Some players believe all traits should be equally useful, but usually the most useful traits are the least interesting and vice versa. Mind you, the trait tiers don’t necessarily range in usefulness. While the third tier may include some very powerful traits, they are also the most specific, whereas the more general skills that support a larger variety of builds are in the first tier. The first tier also includes some of those fun, niche skills players want to use but ultimately bypass because usefulness trumps novelty. The tiers mean we may actually get away with taking some of those “fun” traits instead of simply stacking the “better” traits, thus allowing ANet to balance the game while still allowing for more personalization and creativity.

Conclusion:

Love it or hate it, the tiered skills and traits were developed with the target audience in mind and that audience is not limited to the minority of players who blog or post in forums. Perhaps the big selling point of Guild Wars 2 is the emphasis on promoting a friendly, thoughtful and – perhaps most importantly – inclusive community.

Entombed- Against the New Model

I fundamentally disagree with the change and contest, in order, each of the three major points; ease of understanding, diversity of builds, and overall balance.  

Ease of use by new players.  Theoretically yes. Anyone would tell you that making a choice between 6 choices and 12 is considerably easier for a new player.  However, in practice this concept just doesn’t pan out.  Think about it, what will a new player do?  They will open up the trait system, and be overwhelmed by 5 trees.  This happens with or without the new or old system. However, a person isn’t just going to look at the six traits in the first tier, I argue that everyone will still look ahead.  Yes, whether they are jumping into structured PvP as a new player or simply turn level 11, they will have some formulation of a future path to take. They aren’t just going to stop after looking at the first tier.  To do this in the old system, they simply could click one of the major tiers and see all 12 choices for one tree pop up.  Now, for each tree they have to click to see a new set of traits per tier per tree.  If you are counting, they can either see all of the traits for a given profession in 5 clicks with the old system or 15 with the new system. Not only that, but they now have to remember all the varying pools of traits per click, because each click offers new, unique traits.  In the old system, I could easily see the entire selection of traits I want.  A player now needs to remember traits and the tier of each trait, where before they only had to remember traits. Sixty traits broken into 5 different groups are hard enough to keep track of, now you have to keep track of sixty traits broken into 15 different subgroups to plan a build.  Does that sound welcoming to new players?

The second major reason for the change is diversity.  I challenge that this ultimately decreases both the number of viable builds and the number of total builds.  It’s inarguable that the introduction of tiers decreases total builds, but many have tried to argue that it increases the number of viable builds.  I’ve seen people compare this to two ice cream shops.  One ice cream shop has 100 flavors, but only 2-3 are really good, the rest are just alright.  Another has only 10 flavors, but all 10 are equally good.  Thus the second shop while having less overall number of flavors, they have more diversity in viable flavor options.  A unique analogy, and at first glance I contended that it at least was decently comparable to the trait systems.  However, when you start to take a deeper look, you realize you cannot use this analogy when comparing the old and new systems.  The old system, theoretically, is supposed to have equal traits. (Yes, that may be impossible, but I will deal with this point later, just grant me this for now) All 12 traits per tree are equal, or at least were supposed to be.  ArenaNet during the AMA even went as far as saying the best builds were 30, 10, 10, 10, 10.   As a person who worked extensively on my builds, friends builds, and builds on forums with many other competitive PvPers, I did not see this to be the case.  Don’t get me wrong, I cannot prove this point, but I have a feeling that this was a fictitious point that was used to try to sway the community. Regardless, even if I grant that many builds were 30, 10, 10, 10, 10, that wasn’t the fault of the system.  It was the fault of bad, unequal, traits created by designers, not the system.  The new system will now create far more 30, 30, 10 builds than 30, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 builds because of the use of tiers.  This will attribute even less diversity to a system that already constricts player choice.

The one greatest strength of Guild Wars 2 is player choice.  Every part of the game is built around this central philosophy;  level and gain XP the way you want, play the way you want to play, destruction of the “grind” that has plagued MMOs since their invention.  This new system goes against every main design philosophy of the game.  It irrevocably restricts player choice, and even worse, you now have to slog through traits that you do not want to get to the trait that you ultimately want.

Finally, I have heard many responses in agreement with ArenaNet, specifically around the balance issue.  “The old system was simply unreasonable.  You cannot expect to have 12 equal traits per tree, and have them balanced.” Balance is extremely important, even more so if Guild Wars 2 is to become an e-sport.

However, the above point, in my opinion the strongest argument for the new system, is flawed. We simply cannot tell if the above point is true. If the venture of the old system is truly impossible, one would reasonably make an argument that it must be reasonably attempted first.  You cannot accurately say something is impossible until you have seen it attempted or can be discounted from personal experience.  

Even ArenaNet cannot tell us if this was balanceable or not, every iteration of traits for nearly every profession had useless to extremely strong traits. The breadth of strength of the traits was so great were so laughable that you could almost tell they hadn’t adequately attempted to balance traits yet.  Many of the traits were so niche, specifically the falling damage ones, that were either overpowered in certain situations or going to be so rarely utilized that they just weren’t worth it.  That is not the fault of the system, but the fault of poor trait design.  If you really are so concerned about balance, just lower the number of traits per tree from 12.  There was and still is too much bloat in the trees, and many of the traits will still rarely be used.  Well designed traits are often inherently balanceable because of numbers, you can easily buff or nerf as needed without affecting other builds. Traits that provide additional effects are extremely fun and interesting, but you must take specific care to create them well.

I argue that ArenaNet did not adequately attempt to balance traits, and thus the “balance” issue is negligible.  The new system now forces ArenaNet to balance among three different tiers per tree, instead of an equal plateau of power per tree, you now have fifteen different standards to match, and even more people are going to complain when traits are incorrectly placed in the wrong tier.  People are going to outsmart the system and create new, unexpected, and frankly, overpowered builds.  The new system and old system were equally capable of handling this effect.

In conclusion, the new system really represents the opposite of so many of the design philosophies that have made Guild Wars 2 great under the sole guise of balance.  I argue that the new system solves nothing that the old system could not have solved.  ArenaNet is now able keep poorly designed traits without fixing them and now have a reasonable defense for them.  “Well they are tier one, they are supposed to be less powerful.  They provided a band-aid when there should have been a full amputation.  Fix the traits, and if needed the total number of them, stop ruining the initial great design.   Furthermore, ArenaNet’s new system restricts player choice beyond reason and in effect becomes nothing more than the regular, overused, World of Warcraft’s talent trees. 

The new motto:  “Play the way you want to play, well at least when you get past tier one.”