Play your way - John Peters on traits and attributes

[Karuro]

Consider this to be the equivalent exchange from having free dye.

[The King of Dust]

Dye is cosmetic. Build affects gameplay and how good you do. And now they've got attributes for support, which means people will be looking for characters with support builds when tackling dungeons or forming organized WvW groups.

Here's what happens if a guildie asks me to be the support guy for a dungeon in a free respec system : "Well, I'm not that great at playing support, but if you don't have anybody else, I guess I can try" *loads support build from list of saved builds*.

Here's what happens when I have to pay for respec : "Are you going to pay for my respec as support, and then pay again after we're done and I want to respec back to my balanced/offensive build? No? Then find someone else."

It also encourages people to stick even more to cookie-cutter builds, so we'll end up with most people just using the same old predictable builds, because they work well and nobody wants to waste money experimenting to end up with something that just isn't as efficient.

[shawn]

If you're going to need to ask them for a few copper, I think you're doing it wrong.
"Small fee" actually means small. Waypoint travel is in the order of 50 copper. That's like 10g in gw1 terms.


Oh, and they won't be asking for support, or else they don't know how to play. See, that's kind of how the whole premise of the game works - you just bring whatever you want.

[The King of Dust]

I'm pretty sure the simple fact that there's support attributes increasing the efficiency of support skills means that people will be looking for support chars, even if they're not really needed. And if the price is so low that it's insignificant, then it serves no purpose and Anet should get rid of it. But basically I think Anet should get rid of it no matter what. The ability to freely save and load builds outside of combat should apply to the whole game, not just conquest PvP.

[Alaris]

Play your way!!! (for a fee)

Reading back the article, it looks like it should be possible to spec so that any play style gets a fair bonus. But yeah, there will be specs better for damage or for support, so I'm firmly against the fee, out of principle. I don't actually care if the fee is small.

GW2 will still be an awesome game though.

[Erring Ryft]

If the fee is large, or scales to level it'll be cumbersome.

If it isn't, as all evidence suggests, and the fee is trivial, why bother having it at all?

I hear all this nattering about "needing gold sinks" - are they building a world in which there's nothing interesting to buy? I highly doubt it, so why bother with needless trivial nickel and diming? It was silly in Prophecies and it's as silly now. If you need a gold sink, put it on something people want to buy...like entry to the Underworld...

[Cyberman]

I don't mind if I need to go to town to change it. Just let me experiment.

Seconded.
A fee means the devs don't want you to experiment. "Pick your build and know in advance what you meant to do! Mistakes are punished!" That's the message a fee delivers, it doesn't matter how big or small the fee actually is.

[Egg Shennn]

Seconded.
A fee means the devs don't want you to experiment. "Pick your build and know in advance what you meant to do! Mistakes are punished!" That's the message a fee delivers, it doesn't matter how big or small the fee actually is.

Or, actually learn how to play a build before randomly changing?

[Alaris]

If my experimentation method requires me to change builds often, then so be it.

The thing about experimentation is... everyone has his preferred method. It's not up to game devs to tell us how to play. Punishing bad play (i.e. death) may be a good thing, but telling us how to experiment? I don't think so.

I am a big fan of theirs. But I still don't like this.

[Wisley]

I agree with Alaris if you have to pay to experiment then that is wrong. If the fees is so small to be insignificant then why have it at all. It just seems like a step backwards in a game where they appear to have made leaps forward.