Streamlining the SoC system adding other ways to unlock.

Originally Posted by Bamelin

At last some sense! This is exactly what people have been asking for ... the option to buy elites of vendors the same as we can normal skills. Those that enjoy questing and PvE stuff can do so ... those that do not enjoy those things can just buy what they need off the vendors. Sounds fair to me.

Originally Posted by Siren

What "people?" I count two. As far as I've seen, very few people (PvPers included) want the ability to just buy Elites off of vendors, at whatever price. There's a fundamental difference between walking up to Vendor X and snapping up a handful of Elite skills because you just cash-grinded for the 7.5k the five skills costed, and going to a Quest-giver (I hate that term...), paying an "entry fee" of sorts, getting a Signet, getting your target, then heading out to complete the Quest.

So far, I've seen maybe two people who want Elite skills being sold at vendors. All the rest (PvE or PvPers) don't seem to like that idea.

Okay, so there may be a similar time investment for either, but I don't consider cash-grinding to be on the same level as a meaningful (as meaningful as a game can be, of course) Quest.

What we're trying to do here is figure out a system that minimizes the grind--or at least disguises it enough so that it doesn't feel tedius. Selling Elites on vendors for gold isn't disguising a grind at all. It's pure cash-grind.

"(1 skill point, then either 100 gold + quest), or (the gold cost of the vendor)."

These are nowhere near similar ideas. The former is actual gameplay. The latter is total cash-grind.

Originally Posted by Siren

What "people?" I count two. As far as I've seen, very few people (PvPers included) want the ability to just buy Elites off of vendors, at whatever price. There's a fundamental difference between walking up to Vendor X and snapping up a handful of Elite skills because you just cash-grinded for the 7.5k the five skills costed, and going to a Quest-giver (I hate that term...), paying an "entry fee" of sorts, getting a Signet, getting your target, then heading out to complete the Quest.

So far, I've seen maybe two people who want Elite skills being sold at vendors. All the rest (PvE or PvPers) don't seem to like that idea.

Okay, so there may be a similar time investment for either, but I don't consider cash-grinding to be on the same level as a meaningful (as meaningful as a game can be, of course) Quest.

What we're trying to do here is figure out a system that minimizes the grind--or at least disguises it enough so that it doesn't feel tedius. Selling Elites on vendors for gold isn't disguising a grind at all. It's pure cash-grind.

"(1 skill point, then either 100 gold + quest), or (the gold cost of the vendor)."

These are nowhere near similar ideas. The former is actual gameplay. The latter is total cash-grind.

Originally Posted by goku19123

This is not the thread to debate whether or not grind (a subjective notion) exists.

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

The answer is simple, yet apparently profound, and it's already in the game. It's just been abused and neglected for so long we almost ignore it today. The skill point. Learning a skill costs your character a skill point which is earned through adventuring. But it's you and you alone who's deciding how to spend that skill point and, all things being equal, skillfully spending that limited resource can gain you an advantage. Unlocking *everything* requires a large amount of skill points. But to unlock a small section doesn't require that many and since you can pick and choose which skills on which to spend you can unlock the *right* skills - the ones you need to come up with a build or two to be competitive. The problem, though, is that skill points have been marginalized. You don't need to spend them at all to earn a skill from a quest reward, for one. You'll eventually be required to earn massive amounts of XP in order to earn more skill points once you've "finished" leveling. And, most damning of all, the selection and availability of skills on which to spend your points is extremely limited, especially as most skills you can spend a skill point on can be obtained through other means. Why would you ever buy the Resurrection Signet, for example, and waste a skill point on it when you could get it for free from a quest? Most skill trainers offer a handful of skills and while as you go along you'll encounter more trainers with more skills that requires yet more time and yet more effort as you chase the carrot of better skills. And to find the right boss for a skill you want to capture is likewise an arduous and random process.

And it's that limitation - either the poor selection or the random, out-of-your-hands availability - of things that's causing the trouble. It's out of your control. It's not a matter of skill to reach the area with the right trainer or the right quest or to luck out and find the right boss, it's a matter of time invested (And yes, missions and questing take some skill to get through, sure, but by and large simply plugging away at things will get you through most of the PvE content). All as you chase after improving yourself. There shouldn't *be* better skills (And we'll leave aside the argument about elite skills and just how they break this paradigm for the moment). Just more diversity. It's not power you're chasing, it's options.

So, here's why skill points are the solution. You make them matter once again. You make it so that there's no way to get around having to spend one to gain a skill. At the same time you make it so that you *can* spend one on a diverse assortment of skills at any given time. Expand skill trainer lists not by adding a few skills but by orders of magnitude. They had four skills? Let them have forty. But let us decide which ones we want from them. Quest rewards shouldn't be static. Instead, let every quest award a character not two or three skills but two or three skill points and let them select from eight or ten skills or a player could choose none at all and head to the trainer with the skills they *do* want. Any skill you can capture should be available somewhere else including elites. And "leveling" past 20 should be drastically reduced. Instead of taking tens of thousands of XP for each additional skill point it could take merely a few thousand.

Then anyone can gather ten or twenty good, solid skills in short order and then head off to PvP. If they need more skills, if they need more option they can come back and earn more skill points in whatever way possible to aquire them. Skill points would matter. Progressing to earn them would matter. And because skill points would be an accomplishment what you buy with them would be an accomplishment, too, keeping skills as a valuable resource. But what matters more is how you, the player, make use of them. It's your intelligence, your understanding, and your ability - your skill - that lets you find the best skills for you. Gathering that selection of good skills become an easy matter, a quick matter, and a non-repitious matter yet to gather every last skill would be a time intensive and rewarding but still optional undertaking. People don't need 150 skills to be competitive, after all. They just need the right 20 or 30, if that. Make it easier for people to find *a* skill and harder for them to have *every* skill and I think the complaints about grinding for skills would evaporate.

As for item grinding, I'd give out runes and upgrades as quest rewards instead of foci and swords and other items. Again, it's the randomness of it that leads to grind. If people can control things, if they can select their own rewards and work to find them, then it's not a repetitive grind with an uncertain payout, it's a task with a well-earned reward. Will it take time? Will it take effort? Sure, but at least you'll know what you're getting.

Originally Posted by goku19123

the elite skills more ACCESSIBLE, just because they are there does not mean you need all of them at that point in time.

Originally Posted by Siren

And do you think that's how the playerbase would react? If you're making them more accessible immediately because players want them--PvPers essentially need them--what do you think is going to happen?

I mean, are players going to think to themselves, "Well, I don't have enough gold to buy those three Elite skills right now, so I'll just go play through the game and then come back."

Or are they going to think "Wow! Elite skills at a vendor! I need those skills ASAP! 'LFG to Farm [insert mob here]!'"

Remember that the majority of the playerbase is tragically stupid, goku.

Originally Posted by goku19123

Well, you get gold gradually as you play the game anyway, and as vast as the drops are, I don't really consider the cost an issue. Most people only get what they consider "good" skills as well, or enough skills to be flexible.

What floats around in my head, when I think of accessibility is: Okay, say you are PvP'ing in guild vs. guild, your team just gets wiped horribly, someone suggests a minute skill change, but you don't have that particular skill (elite that is), but you know what vendor has it, and you know what quest coughs it up. So really, it boils down to wanting/needing something in particular, then it is merely a preference issue as to how to get it - for the sake of time you choose to purchase it real quick. People who want to unlock EVERY skill, of course, are going to have time demands, that is to be expected.

Originally Posted by goku19123

This is not the thread to debate whether or not grind (a subjective notion) exists.

Originally Posted by goku19123

I am very sorry if my first post was not clear.

I was talking about implementing a quest based SoC system AND elites on vendors conjointly. That means that for the vendors to carry elites, means you already passed quests that offer those same elites - in the same fashion as regular skills. If they don't want to pay (I believe I said to start at 1000 gold for the first elite purchase and scale up by either 500 or 1000 gold for the next - I think you are getting 3000 from the first version of my suggestion in another thread) they can quest it. It's all about choices and accessibility - making elites gatherable in more than one way means they are more accessible. It is not forcing a grind when more than one way exists to get to the same end.

Originally Posted by Lazarous

Recount your census, or state it as a % of people posting in the relevant threads. These 'debates' - i use the term loosely - are not between large numbers.

Originally Posted by goku19123

If they don't have the gold to get the elite right then and there, they simply do a quest for it, it's that easy.

Originally Posted by Lazarous

Mobs are stupid, people are not. The success rate for victories vs people is gonna be a lot lower than that vs mobs, so you have to take that into consideration when doling out rewards.

As to pvers getting rewards for dying - all they need to do is get to the boss and use signet of capture - they don't need to survive the encounter.

Laz

Originally Posted by goku19123

Okay, my bottom line reasoning is a time factor (and of course more accessibility, more is never a bad thing lol): "Don't have time for the quest, nor the bonus - damn, only got 5 minutes before work! I'll just buy the thing from this dude." <insert any other time crunching situations here lol>

O, and waiting is never an option, since Guild Wars is very addicting lol.

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

I like both PvE and PvP...but I don't see why PvP should be super-rewarding in and of itself. It's already fun.

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

Why not? PvE character can get everything they want without having to bother with PvP? Of course, that's a fallacy because, as you say, we're playing one single game not a bunch of mini-games connected by a graphical UI. It all has to hang together or the whole is weakened. That's partly the reason that an "unlock all skills/item" button would be just as detrimental as what we have now. It devalues and detracts from the idea that you can et better through work and through progression. And relegates a RP character in PvP to second-class status. When, in fact, they should be equivalent. If I've taken the time and effort to level up my character and find the best items and skills I should be able to head to PvP adn stand alongside someone who's taken the PvP shortcut. Not be better than them. Not be worse. But to be able to be confident that our playing field is level and we'll have a good time because the matches are going to be decided not by some external force but by the people at the keyboards.

Part of the problem we have now is that there's little reason to PvP. The rewards are too shallow to attract people and worthless to those who've already become "competitive". Take the Sigil for example. You can win one in the Hall of Heros and that lets you get a guild hall for more PvP options or you can sell it so you can avoid farming for money and loot and the rest. But a PvE focused guild can just farm the money to buy it, too. They never have to touch PvP if they don't want to. While to field a team capable of taking the Hall you're going to have to spend a lot of time in PvE finding the skills and unlocking the things you'll want to have. PvP is optional, PvE is mandatory. That's not the way an organic, cohesive game experience should be working. What's optional should be secondary and forgettable but to those of us who enjoy the combat PvP play is anything but while it's the PvE you want to ignore as much as possible. What does doing well at PvP get your character? GvG gets you ladder position which doesn't do anything for you. Tombs will get you fame and with fame you'll earn skill points (And a fancy emote which is meaningless. That's a PvE type reward not a reward for people who don't care about the looks, they care about the effectiveness.) but to earn that fame you'll have already been leveling and earning far more from PvE than you ever would in PvP. Skill points earned through fame are also limited to the character that earns that fame so you can't earn them with PvP characters. And holding that hall will get you a chance at a sigil and a rare item. And you get XP for fighting in PvP, too, which can lead to more skill points but that's inconsequential unless you're using your RP character and the amount of XP you get isn't enough to level a high-end character all that frequently.. That's it, the rest is bragging rights. There's no meaningful reward for playing in PvP that you can't earn through PvE while the opposite is far from true.




Yes, it's choices that are the important thing. And not just anyone's choices, player choices. What should be the most important thing when playing a game based on skill and strategy? The gray matter between your ears. It's your choices and your decisions that should have the greatest impact on your outcome. What we have now is limited choice, arbitrary decisions. Our skill lists are selected by the developers and as we go along and progress we can unlock more and more of them. But it's like a quest reward. Do you care what skills you unlock? No, you just do the quest and unlock the skills because they're free and won't cost you a point. Maybe a quest has a skill you want and that's great but most of the time it's just, "Well, that's one less skill to unlock with a skill point, I guess. Don't see how I'm ever going to use that one." You rush through them and you skill list fills up. Or you go to a website like this one and find out which ones are the one you want to do. Or you rush to the trainers. It's mostly out of your hands. There's no control, there's no choice, and so you just have to plug along and hope the random roll goes your way or that the next trainer has what you need.

But power, in Guild Wars, does not come down to having "better", it comes down to having options. To choice. The more options you have, the better off you'll be. You're limited in what you can have from all those options, though, so someone who's smart enough to take better advantage of possibilities has a fighting chance even if they don't have your options. Advantages can be made and overcome, that's how the game stays based on player skill and strategic play.




That's true. And there is something to be said for providing people with skills they'd never have considered, with options they hadn't explored. By leaving everyone to their own devices there's always a danger that things will blow up in their own faces. Say you have your pick of Mesmer skills. Someone could pick up Signet of Midnight, Cry of Frustration, and Mantra of Earth or something along those lines an have a very hard time of it. While someone else could buy Power Leak, Shame, and Migraine because they *know*. Populating skill lists with pre-determined skills means that there's less of a chance of people coming up with a bad build and that they'll have an introduction and some familiarity with what's been decided on as good things for them to have and know. So the current system can be very well used for holding someone's hand and slowly but surely introducing them to the idea of deciding for themselves, for sampling and experimenting with their options, and for the very concept of strategic flexibility that comes with being able to respec a character on a whim. And some of that would be lost by expanding skill availability in earlier areas.

However, I'm willing to live with that. Yes, people can come up with lousy stuff. They can come up with lousy stuff when you hand them things, too. Part of the game is learning how to think for yourself, how to make your own build, your own plan, and, for me, the sooner people are thrown into those waters the better. I'm much more comfortable letting people decide for themselves how they want to play and letting them recover from the inevitable mistakes quickly and easily than I am with having someone somewhere sit in judgement and manage their experience for them by deciding this skill is a starter skill and that skill is too advanced for new players so you need to reach the end game to get it. Let *us* decide because chance are we know what we want a lot better than anyone else. Structure things so that it's easy, that it's comfortable, and that mistakes and misassumptions aren't deadly, but if this is to be a game where the players are going to churn through strategy and plans and builds then we have to be trusted enough to be allowed to do so.

As for underused skills or skills people wouldn't have considered, well, that's why I'd like to see some way - any way - of testing skills before you have to spend a point on them. Or, failing that a way of refunding skills, relocking them, perhaps as there is with attributes. Skills are one of the few irrevocable decisions you'll make in the game and thee's no way of telling what you're getting unless you delve into a site like this one or otherwise have a lot of knowledge about the game. Just seeing a skill's description isn't enough, you need to be able to use it in a fight, to see what the range is, what the effect is, how it's timed and everything else. This is something that the gem and skill ring systems did but that we've lost (They also let players trade skills which is another absence in the current system. If established PvP guilds could quickly deceminate a critical elite, even temporarily, then a lot of their concerns about grinding vanish. And if someone could take a shortcut to tracking down a skill by buying it a lot of other grinding concerns similarly evaporate) and it's of detriment to the game. But for now I'll settle for just having some sanity brought back to skill acquisition and leave the problem of testing out skills to the future. Sure, if you give everyone more choice and less guidance some skills are going to be overused and some underutilized. So be it. If the skills are in balance then the ones overly popular or ignored need to be looked at to see if they're imbalanced in some way. Why are people flocking to this skill or that skill? Why's this one gathering dust? From a developer's standpoint allowing greater choice gives better feedback on their design. And, as well, part of the game is discovering a gem in the middle of a heap of trash. A skill might be overlooked and you could figure out a way of using it that makes it the Flavor of the Moment. That's all part of the meta-game, the constantly swirling and shifting overarching strategy that's driven by the player base. Giving people more choices to play with means more strategies and more skills will inevitably be thrown into that cruicible and the meta-game will be better off for it as threats and answers arise and are dealt with.




Well, you're already going to be getting that 124th skill point as things stand, if you want to unlock things. And what placing the emphasis on skill points does is to move the point of "Yay! New skill!" from completing that quest to when you actually select your skill. It's not your 124th skill point. It's, say, Doylak Signet. Or Peace and Harmony. Or whatever skill you want to find next. It's the difference between someone giving you a gift and a gift certificate. If they know you, a gift's going ot be nice because it's something you really want and they know that. If they'd don't then you're getting a box of socks or something else you're going to have to smile and pretend you're thrilled with. But if they give you a certificate or just a wad of cash then you can go out and get your own gift. And that's my point. It's you that's important and it's you that needs to make the choices.

What I would do, and I'll admit this needs some tweaking and adjusting to see what's optimal, would be to have the initial flurry of skill points come quick and easy, just as it is with leveling. But as you go along it becomes more of an accomplishment. Not so much of a struggle that it's easier to just start up a new character and blitz through things for more skill points to unlock more but enough of one that skill points have some meaning. There's a curve there but by making the initial runnup fast and providing options at the lower points someone can ride it just as far as they want. If you're going to be PvEing to your heart's content then you don't care because you'll eventually unlock everything anyway. But if you see PvE as an annoyance standing in the way of the real fun then you're going to get just what you need out of it and move on. And if you ever need more you can dip back into things. It allows the completists the time to advance and rewards them for sticking to things but it also allows those who think they know what they want to just get their feet wet and move on. PvE becomes not mandatory but necessecary but it's up to the player to decide when they've had enough. It moves the point at which diversity explodes and overwhelms rarity from somewhere near the end-game of PvE to near the beginning but by limiting things it still preserves rarity as a whole. If it's borring to you to find that 124th skill point, you don't have to. You can live with 123 or 100 or 50 or whatever it is you think you need.




That's not a bad idea. I'd rather see 10~20 new premades and a wide variety of skills between them (None of this, "Every Ele gets GLE", or "the reason you take Mes is for Energy Drain" stuff) including a unique assortment of elites and a representative of every profession combination so that you could tweak and twist things as you want. But including a "sideboard" of skills for premades has some merit, too.




I agree with you that most collectors are junk. However, I'd like to see them serve the same purpose that a skill trainer might serve for skills. Have them sell upgrade components and/or runes rather than that five thousandth protective icon. Then you can, as with skills, find them randomly (SoC versus IDing), obtain them through a set sequence (questing), and pay a premium to acquire them in a known location (trainers versus collectors). The more ways of obtaining something the easier it will be for everyone to find it and the less random and difficult it will be seen to be. So, if you need, say, a Major Healing Rune you'd know you needed, say, 5 Minotaur Horns and you could travel to Ventari's Refugee to get one. Maybe it would unlock, maybe it wouldn't, I'm not sure, but the point being you have a place where you *know* you're going to find it.

Lastly the game NEEDS grinds and highbie money sinks (not crappy lowbie money sinks such as kits/bags). Quite a lot of people are happy grinders, enjoying 'it3m runz for the ubb3r l00t. There is already a solution to this PvP/PvE conflictual situation: dragon swords and black dye. Mostly identical to regular items, they are sought after and valuable. Why? Because people think they look cool, and you can show off those. That's where item grind can be used to its full extent. Make more items like these and people will have something to grind for. Useless in PvP but stylish enough to make players happy with a lucky find.




Right. It's the ascetic rewards that are the best sort of PvE rewards. Like the 15k a piece armor. It doesn't offer anything over the 1.5k sets to someone just interested in stats and finding that last little edge. But it looks different and it's special because not everyone has it so it's an accomplishment to be proud of. It's just optional. You don't *need* it to be competitive or to survive, it's just a nice little bonus. Items that are scare are valuable simply by dint of being hard to find. If there was a sword that only 1 out of every 100 people in game could have, that sword would be a hot commodity because it was rare (And we have such a sword already, the dragon sword). It doesn't matter what that sword is or does exactly, as long as it's not trash, because just because I can have it and you can't that makes it important, that makes it valuable, and that makes it desirable. It doesn't imbalance things because it's not more powerful than anything else. It doesn't degenerate things because although a lot of people want it, not everyone can have it. And such ascetic bonuses are the right way of going about rewarding those who want to spend their time "grinding" away.

So, black dye, the dragon sword, the etherial weapons, the 60k sets of armor, those are all excellent ways of serving those who want to acquire loot. Things like elite skills, runes, and hard to find skills, though, are not, because rather than simply being ascetic they offer significant amounts of power to those who can find them. It's better to have them easy to find (although not brainless) for the purposes of having a diverse and balanced environment.