Trading Skill Point for Awards -> Consumable Items that Grant Title Progress

I introduce a new use for skill points. Awards.

Awards are consumable items that can be purchased from traders for an amount of Skill Points, materials, and gold. When consumed, they grant an amount of progress towards titles. They are not able to be used to progress titles beyond the Normal Mode / Hard Mode boundary.

When developing a new method of spending skill points, it's important to note that thousands of accounts have hundreds of spare skill points that may never be spent. Also, the introduction of tomes saves the need for spending skill points in most cases, giving people the ability to stockpile even more skill points.

Giving the opportunity to spend these points directly on items with cash value would be a mistake. The sudden influx of free cash to all accounts would cause some undesireable effects on the game as a whole, especially considering how easily skill points can be earned in solo farming. This is why current methods of spending skill points are bundled heavily with gold and material expenditures. Unfortunately, these extra costs are a little bit prohibitive when set too high, and skill points are still left unspent.

There are several objectives in this proposal:

1) Reduce total amount grind by giving a new option of title progression.
2) Help alternate / secondary characters make better use of PvE skills.
3) Find an extra use for spare skill points.
4) Add a new high-demand item for trading between players.
5) Normalize the prices of normal materials.
6) Increase the prices of certain rare materials to create new farming run types.

The values presented regarding the cost of an Award are estimated on the value of a skill points, and the materials used. In general, when spending a skill point on an Award, no more than 1k worth of cash and materials should be spent with it. For all of these, you only need a set amount of one type of material to create an Award. Not all material prices are same at the trader, however this is intentional. The idea is that if an item can be earned with one material that is less expensive than all other materials, then the demand (and in turn the price) for that material will increase. Specifically, I'm aiming to increase the price of bone, wood, and cloth (materials that are extremely common, and have few common uses).

Here are the details:


EotN Title Progression Awards - Cannot be used above Rank 8

Norn Trophy, Ebon Vangaurd Medal, Asuran Widget, Dwarven Badge -
Use to progress faction's title by 2,000 reputation points.

Aquisition: Awards NPC (Eye of the North, Gunnar's Hold, Rata Sum, or Central Transfer Chanter, respectively).
Cost: 1 Skill point, 25 of any one listed material, 250g gold.

Materials accepted include the current lowest priced common trading material: bone, wood, cloth, tanned hide squares, and chitin fragments.


Faction Title Progression Awards - Cannot be used until completing the "Befriending" quests, otherwise, cannot be used past rank 10.

Luxon Bounty, Kurzick Treasure -
Use to progress faction's title by 5,000 faction transferred.

Aquisition: Awards NPC (Cavalon or House Zu Heltzer, respectively)
Cost: 1 Skill point, 1 Jadeite or Amber, 100g

It's important to note here that you are given title progression, NOT faction. So, you can trade 5,000 faction in for a Amber chunk and get 5,000 progress on your Kurzick title, then trade that in plus a skill point and 250g for another 5,000 progress on your Kurzick title. If you are only interested in the title, you save the skill point and the gold just by donating to your Allience, but it gives you the option to get extra title progression when not in an alliance, or in an opposing alliance. Also, you can buy Amber and Jade directly from the trade for whatever the cost is, and exchange that into title progress at the cost of gold and Skill Points.


NightFall Title Progression Awards - Sunspear and Lightbringer

Sunspear Blessing - Cannot be used below rank 3, or above rank 8.
Use to progress faction's title by 500 reputation points.
Cost: 1 Skill point, 3 of one type of listed rare material, 100g

Rare Material for this trader includes: Silk, Fur, Steel, Monstrous Eyes, or Spiritwood Planks.

Lightbringer Essence - Cannot be used below rank 1, or above rank 7.
Use to progress your Lightbringer title by 500 reputation points.
Cost: 1 skill point, 3 of one type of listed rare material, 100g

Rare Material for this trader includes: Leather, Parchment, Charcoal, Diamonds, or Onyx Gemstones.

make the majority of titles Buyable?

lol

I actually like this idea, tho i think they shouldnt be tradeable (unless i miss read this)

I actually like this idea. I do believe you need to drop the reward quite a bit. 2k for EOTN 5k for luxon etc. now that i reflect further maybe its not that far out of line. HOWEVER, it needs further scrutiny. I think the requirements to obtain a reward needs to be a little steeper. maybe 1 skill point 10 trader items like moon shells, warden horns, summit badges. these are just items that popped into my head.

If the requirement is to low this will be a fast track for titles like none other. on my ele i have well over 2000 skill pts. my math sucks but you can imagine the total rewards you could receive on that premise alone.

I still think its a good idea though. just needs a little tweaking.



Cronk

I totally agree that there needs to be another use for skill points.

I /notsigned your suggestions for their use. Grind them like everyone else.

My suggestions is allow them to be turned in for Z-coins, or for consumables.

I like the idea of them costing skill points (I have loads of skill points that I cannot use for anything because I lack the platinum to do so) but not to cost materials and gold as well - completely defeats the purpose.

Make it a simple skill points to title conversion and I'll sign.

ZCoins is a good idea.

I'm not sure on the Rep title progress though, I'd like them to not be grind focused, or relieve some grind, but IDK if thats the right way to do it.

Note that these Awards can, at most, get you half way through a title progression-wise, or less. You can be rank 8 / 10, but you still have twice the way to go with hardmode dungeon grinds and vanqs. Those who want to max them still have quite the way to go with vanqs, dungeons, and books. I idea is to give PvE skill power to alts, mostly. If people want to buy them from other people, that's cool too. There are some people with tons of skill points, and some people with not quite so many.

Z-coins is really not a good idea.

Let's say, 1 skill point = 25 bronze.

40 bronze = Hunter's insight scroll = 150g - 10g to trade.

Doing some math...

2000 skill points = 175k for free of thousands of active accounts.

Want to do it with selling lockpicks to the merch?

300k for free.

That would inflate prices for all 100k+e items and be very bad for the game as a whole. Thousands of people instantly have the spare cash to buy a Kunna, the price of Kunna will go up!

This idea (or at least what numbers you suggest) is absolute rubbish.

for ANY max EoTN title at those numbers, it'd be a mere 80 skill points and 20k (plus materials) to max the title.

for the kurzick or luxon title, it'd be 200k plus materials, but even adding in material cost it would be FAR CHEAPER to max kurzick or luxon that way than it would for sweet tooth. Which means you'd get 2 maxed account-wide titles (kurzick and luxon) for the cost of Party animal.

I'm all for lowering grind, but this is absolute idiocy. (and before you say... well you'd need lots of skill points, blah blah blah, I have well over 1,500 skill points on my assassin alone, plus ~800 on my ranger and so on and so forth, so skill points isn't going to be an issue, and the cost is so nominal it's pathetic)

If ANET were going to introduce anything as dumb as this, they'd have to calculate it to make kurz/lux cost roughly 3 mil each, and make each EoTN rep title cost around 80~120k. Grind reduction is good, entirely removing the point of a title is another thing.

Plus, all that would happen is that the first few people would max kurz/luxon quickly, easily, and cheaply... and by then people would hoard all the jade and amber and sell for a ridiculous premium.

None of these are able to obtain the maximum rank. Notice how the OP put a "cannot be used above: X" rank for everything?

Remember though, the post said the benefits stop at like rank 8
I like it

You fail at reading comprehension and math.

First of all, the titles cannot be maxed. I mentioned that at least 3 times.

Materials cost more than gold, so your "only" amounts are not correct.

Progressing Kurzick halfway takes (Skill Point + Amber + 100g) x 1000, which at the current market price is 2000 skill points, and 700k gold. You better believe that once people start buying Amber, the price won't stay at 600g each. That's intentional.

Anything above 900g each jumps the halfway progression cost to over a million. The extra benefit is that folks can trade faction for cash from other players via material market price.

For any leftover points left on your account, you can sell in a bundle to other folks who want them.

Considering the last two ranks of these titles account for 50% (K/L) to 85% (Sunspear) of the points required to max the title, I don't think this would really qualify as making these titles "buyable".

I think some of the numbers may need tweaking, but the overall idea is sound.

I really like the idea, though the rewards seem a little too high for the low cost. (But that's without me doing the math.) Maybe double or triple the skill point cost, since the materials/gold seem fine to me, or lower the rewards? Also, ZCoins is a *great* idea as long as it's balanced so it doesn't steer people away from the daily quests.

this won't happen
skill points are already in-game and this would reward farming that provide huge amounts of skill points.

And if that is why OP suggested some restrictions like "reputation title<r8", just remember that reputation titles and skill points/XP are absolutely not related.

I understand we get useless skill points when we start to have them more than needed... well at least not everything is monetizable IG

this. yes. yes. yes.

WHAT?????????

You think 1 skill point is worth 25 coins? No way. (btw: there copper not bronze) Maybe 1 for 1 or 5 SP for 1 copper zcoin at most.

So... 2000 skill points is worth 12k to you? That doesn't make much sense to me.

That's the best part about them being tied to materials.

Demand for the materials will tweak the numbers automatically. Spreading it out over several options for materials will help prevent sharp price increase.

Oh yeah !! that way farming chars can get gwamm in a ridiculous amount of time while other chars that aren't as good farmer (P anyone ?) would still have a lot more grind !! /sarcasm off

Skills points are just useless after reaching a certain amount of time on your character, just live with it.

/notsigned

My suggestion is that after you have 3 toons with a town or outpost on your account you can unlock that place using your skill points so your other toons on your account may go there as well ....

make it 10 skill points for low level areas 50 for advanced and 100 for elite areas....(the skill point allocation is debatable)certain areas may have to be not accessed this way (not gonna name them but you know which ones)and your toon still has to do all the stuff that would make a place accessible in the first place (debatable also)

I mean after you have gone there on 3 or more toons what difference does it make if you unlock it for other toons on your account.....???