Pick any profession in any campaign

When making a new character, we are limited to the 6 core for the Prophecies campaign, or the 6 core + 2 campaign-specific for the Factions or Nightfall campaigns. So I can't for example start with a Dervish in the Prophecies campaign. More dramatic, if I want a Dervish/Ritualist (which I do want), I have to first do the Nightfall campaign until I can switch over to the Factions campaign, and only then I can get the secondary I wanted.

Instead, I vote that you can pick any of the professions you paid for.

Some problems associated with this can easily be solved:
1) Profession-specific quests and rewards: add a few quests for campaign-unrelated professions. These quests can only be activated if you have a profession not included in the campaign, independently of which profession that is.
2) Skills: have regular skills available at trainers. Leave elite skills where they are, and have players fetch them themselves. By the time the "signet of capture" becomes available, you usually have access to other campaigns anyway.

/notsigned

I'm sorry, but my reason for this is as follows:
Each campaign is themed around an original culture, and the additional professions are tailored to that culture. The mechanics of GW are in accordance with the GW canon, so it makes no sense for a dervish to be available in Factions character creation.

Furthermore, as an RPer, I'd find this doubly difficult to accept. Apologies again.

~Mitsuki~

I wish that this could happen, (simply because I like lots of choices ) but with all that ANet does maintaining, and adding new things, and making real improvements, they should not be expected to backtrack and make what could be very costly (in time and effort) changes to the game/s.

You know what would happen next: there would be huge demand for 15k Grotto/Citadel Derv/Sin/Rit/Para armor, and ANet would have to expend that much more energy on a game which is already complete as is.

Add to that, future chapters, and you've got an exponential problem. :/

if u want a derv/rit finish the nightfall quest hunted! thats the NF version of ascention then go to temple of balth and pay 500g to change prof to rit

/notsigned

This would be a fun idea, but I still don't like it. Campaign specific professions are just what they are. It would completely spoil their idea to have them available in all the campaigns right from the start, even if it's only for those who have the games. For example, dervish and paragon are a completely Nightfall class; their history, their skills and the society they belong to just wouldn't work anywhere else. Anet would have a helluva time explaining what a paragon (an Elonan special soldier, meant to keep peace in Elona) is doing in Cantha, training in Shing Jea Monastery. How would it possible for them to even offer that type of training to a class who is generally supposed to be the elite protector of another country? Same goes for Paragon being a secondary class in Pre-Sear. It just sounds... silly....

If you really want to have a Dervish Ritualist, it doesn't take you long to play yourself to the Profession Changer.

Perynne, if every culture is unique, then why are there sassi and rit mobs/bosses in NF? And who's to say ascalon/ shing jea/kamadean can't bring in instructors from other areas?

I do believe this has been mentioned before. The counter argument was that the lore(vague as it can be about time lines) wouldn't support it. As in:before the civil war/plague, what possible reason would there be for an influx of Canthan's to presearing ascalon?
Also this would involve a fair bit of work meshing new quests in to pre(with new trainers, etc.). If they were going to add stuff anyway(I know there is another thread around here about expanding pre), then I'd feel more inclined to support this. As it stands it would simple be a fair bit of work to add skills for 2/4/6 new professions all the way up to LA(at the least). And that time could instead be spent on the next chapter, skill balances, tweaks, new items, etc.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but as somebody already mentioned: the more chapters we get the tougher this idea would become to implement.

But that's just my two cents

Probably because if there weren't, people would start complaining that their campaign specific classes are useless and get nothing from the new campaigns. It also creates more versatile enemies.
Right now, Paragons and Dervishes get the short end of the stick as they don't have any skills for them in Factions or Prophecies. In fact, Factions and Prophecies cultures are so unique that there are no Paragon or Dervish mobs/bosses there either.

Don't get me wrong, I do think that all campaign specific classes would fit in in other campaigns, at least skill wise with a few modifications. A Paragon is basically just a leader, someone who supports the group. Most cultures have their own version of assassin as well, and a ritualist is nothing more than a shaman working with spirits.
Still, making all professions available to every campaign would completely spoil part of each campaign's uniqueness. If Anet wanted to have all professions available to players in every campaign, they would have had this implemented right from the start.

Why would they want to do that? The instructors they have are based on professions that have been with them hundreds of years. Their own professions have evolved to work in their surroundings and work fine for any emergency they might have. A warrior can choose to specialize later, but I think in an actual training academy they wouldn't want to teach young students an exotic new fighting style just in from overseas. I think that a hardened warrior of Ascalon wouldn't want any "crazy foreign class messin' about", let alone try to save their entire nation. Didn't you see how unfriendly they were towards Krytans (who were effectively foreign too)? Oh, and don't even get me started on how to fit tons of melee-ninjas (or assassins, as they're known in canthan) into a culture so intent on full-blown warrior-against-warrior warfare. I think both Charr and Ascalonian warriors would laugh at the concept of a canthan-type assassin,simply because it doesn't fit in their history. Now, a suicidal lone wolf poisoner-type assassin would probably be more their type.

I know already that I might be sticking too much to vague lore, inviting flaming, and looking at things from a more roleplayish/real-life culture perspective. Implementing the campaign specific professions to each game really would be possible by subtly changing their meaning. But as Sli Ander said, it would take a ton of work on Anet's side to implement something like this and make it work. They would need to make new quests, new armor, new skills... they would need to tweak some background stories and generally try to explain how a dervish would believably fit in Pre-Searing Ascalon. The workload for them would be enormous, and I'd rather they put that energy into making the next game.
And if they can't make a change like this work... well, people who are truly interested in the game and the lore behind it would most likely lose interest in some aspects of the game. If a world isn't believable in it's history and background, it quickly becomes too confusing and uninteresting for many players.

This idea would be too much hassle to implement when compared to the fact that you can just get your character's secondary changed quite quickly in Factions and Nightfall. Anet would take many, many months to make a change like this (time which would be taken away from developing the next game, or coming up with solutions for, say, the storage problem), and it would only take a player a week or two to play themselves to the Profession Changer.

/mostly notsigned

Because as already mentioned by one/some, unique professions are unique for a reason. Other then being a selling point for each game, those characters are unique to that campaign and that island/continent.

It wouldnt make sense to create an Assassin in pre-ascalon or Elona.

It wouldnt make sense to create a Dervish in Cantha.

The reason being that they dont exist as a profession on those islands. However iIt makes sense to have them "travel" to those islands or continents, because thats feasible.

But...

[i]If you've paid for a second or third campaign[./i], and youve joined all your accounts together. I can appreciate your point about wanting to be able to create any profession you've paid for on any campaign.

Technically you've paid for those professions, so its no longer a question of it being a "sales point" as you've already bought it.

But again...

How ever I have to sway more still towards my original statement. You are more then capable of taking a pre-created character of any profession from one campaign and to another.

So we dont really need anything different.

Side note...

You can explain the fact that you have Rit enemies in Tyria and Elona simply because those are not human. Thats their cultural version of the Ritual, not the human one. Culturally we dont have human Rit's in Tyria and Cantha.

And the Margonites in Elona existed in the GWs world long before humans or chars. They can any profession they like. You could even argue they influenced the other non-human creatures and the humans into making Ritualist. But on different continents.

But thats probably a load of rubbish.

Well I could be wrong.. but wouldn't anet then have to add in say assasin/rit cut scene voices into nightfall? If so big notsigned.

What do you mean? I'm not quite sure if I understood right, but assassins and ritualists already have cut scene voices in Nightfall. It's the same voices as all the other professions (I think they have the same voice actor for all male players, and the same one for all female players regardless of profession).

To my knowledge most female and male voices are identical, so the voice overs wouldnt be an issue. They could use sound bites which already exist and map them onto those models.

How ever, they might need to create new animations for the professions to combine them with cut-scenes from other campaigns.

Consider that an Assassin wont have the animations to speak to Ruric in most of the first missions in Tyria.

And they would need to new skill trainers for new primary and secondary professions to the other two campaigns. That would be adding alot new quests into Tyria, as alot are focussed around your profession.

Anet has said they dont wish to go back and change past campaigns after a certain amount of time. Which is right, they shouldnt in order to focus on new ones.

Having unique professions in each game, saves Anet having to go back and change every previous campaign to add new profession trainers. It would double or tripple the work load.

Because enough players whined that much, that ANet decided to put 50 more skills in Nightfall.
Now I feel sorry for NF-only players, since they're encountering bosses with skills that they won't be able to use, unless they get Factions. Razah was an even bigger mistake. A Ritualist Hero that will only have 25 skills if you're NF-only.

/notsigned. Not because of the RP 'problem' (this is a game, not an escape from reality. there is a difference) but because it would require a significant amount of work in terms of quest rewards, balancing etc. which would be much better spent on other things.

/notsigned

much as i'd like to start a paragon without having to trawl through noob island again (why oh why anet did you make it so darn long!) i can't sign this. having a new class on a new campaign only makes you go through and play the new campaign. no-one would plow through all the fiddly little quests in nf, or the sunspear grinding when they can start off in cantha and get to level 20 in 4 or 5 hours and get to all the other campaigns two missions after beginning. it's contrived, but i think it's there for a good reason so i can't sign it.