Ack! The disappointments! >.<

Actually, I believe those duplicates are in addition to the 300 skills. So like 330 skills total or whatever is duplicated (assuming 30).

The whole idea of putting duplicate skills just to reach a desired number of 300 new skills to market to the public is something I would expect from a 3rd grade company, not Anet. Aparently, not anymore. And I really really really do not see any reason whatsoever not to include them in the core skills if what they wanted to achieve with this duplication is give the skills to both vet and new players. What now, are they gonna be doing this for future chapters? 800 new skills! Yea rite... I mean seriously... it's a dumb move.

Of course she doesn't, why else would this thread be created.

But if she does and she doesn't realise what it actually means...

The skills are in for one reasona nd one reason only:

Anet feels that doubling them up adds some strategic relevence.


It has nothing to do with "people who only buy prophecies"

Get over it, if they wanted that, they'd use a feature already in game: Core skills. Stop chewing out people who are simultaneously trying to critique Anet for vapid features masked as "strategy" and explain to you that the reason you are giving is false.

When someone says "the skills are in for people who don't buy prophecies" and Hella Good replies with "if that were true,t hey would use core skills" do not quote him and take his words out of context and revert back to the original, much more valid argument of strategy.

Magic The Gathering, to have more then 4 of the same type of card in your deck , you get the same spell with the differnet name and it does have advantages. Same thing here applies.

I understand where it comes from. A brand new game can become very boring when one finds to many similarities of a game you have played already thoroughly.
Some overreact, but still a new game should be a new game and not a rip off.

Guild Wars stands or falls with the skills. It's the very core of the game. Of course people are going to be dissapointed if there's duplicate skills, because the new skills are for a lot of people the main reason to buy factions. And to be honest it's rather lame because we already have the core skills to give people overlapping skills, adding these duplicates really takes away from the initial enthousiasm a lot of people, including me, would have had.

If you take balancing issues into consideration, there can only be a limited amount of skills available in the game, expansion or not. However IMO it is quite likely that some duplicate skills will cause imbalances.

i think too many people are caught up in the excitement and hype and have yet to see that factions just doesnt seem that good.

i got bored of gw a long time ago and only play with friends so the thought of mre of exactly the same doesnt fill me with excitement, especially the leaning towards pvp, no thanks

Sprint
Healing Touch
Charm Animal

etc etc etc etc Prophecy skills considered CORE are available to Factions owners.

So Factions owners get sprint and you know etc etc core Proph. skills. So duplicating isn't ANET's method of addressing this issue.

I'd rather this duplicate skills be different in some way, say change adrenaline to energy, or marksmanhip as an attrib to expertise etc to actually make the duplicates at least unique stat wise.

I wont go so far as to say duplicating is a rip off or that theyre being lazy or etc, if they really didnt want to create anything different they would have left it at 270 (noone would be crying right now if there were 270 unique skills and no copies).

That being said though, I believe duplicates are a HUGE mistake. When you allow people to make multiples of various skills one of two things happen:

1. One of the skills becomes worthless (such a waste)
2. You detract from real strategy.

Allow me to explain:

When you begin to introduce duplicates, you begin total skill spam wars. No longer is it all about who can out think the other with various skills, its more about who can spam those duplicate skills quicker. Imagine how many skills wouldnt even get consideration when you can spam duplicate cheap skills twice as fast as before, people can only output so many skills in a set amount of time so in a 30 second interval instead of getting:

(skill 1, skill 2, skill 3, skill 4, skill 1, skill 5, skill 2, skill 6)

you get

(skill 1, copy of skill 1, skill 2, skill 3, skill 1, copy of skill 1, etc.)

Guess what just happened? You just basically convinced people that spamming is the new name of the game and you need fewer (real) skills to make an effective build. Those skills that had some marginal use before as time fillers are now useless.

And before people go to say, well the new duplicates arent spammable, then refer to problem number 1.

Anet, take them out. Please. I dont care if you come up with new ones or not, just dont turn pvp into a double skill spam fest.

-Ex0dus

Does the new skills stay without buying factions and after betaweekend?

I feel Triamm's post is worth backing up .. gailes quote reads to me that there are 300 unique skills .. plus 30 duplicates.

i think it's nice to have a copy of dodge up..good for flag runners ^^

Its a MMORPG - They'll change a lot so chill out.

from what I understand, Anet promised 25 new skills for each profession, and there are indeed 25 new skills for each profession -- the repeats thus can be thought of as free bonuses.

as for the the question of why repeats... i think the main reason is to allow two copies of these skills in your skillbar... after all, otherwise, Anet could have just put skills in both prophecies as well as factions without renaming (but not in the core set because they may not want the same skill in ch 3)

They did this so if people who purchase only factions will get some of the same skillz. geez stop throwing dirt at anet.

No. Sprint is still sprint, they have given factions players some prophecy skills without renaming them. And then they have given them some renamed prophecy skills.

I personally, am not crying or whinging of a boycott, im getting Factions. What I am annoyed with, is this is kinda lazy attitude towards skills. Many skills in factions and prophecies outright SUCK! they are just gimmicks. It was only in recent updates some prophecy skills got boosted.

And the whole fleeing issue also makes many skills useless.

With fan forums churning out hundreds of well planned well balanced and much needed skill ideas its a bit surprising to see the lack of skill diversity.

Axe gets bugger all good skills in factions, the only good one is an elite. And some skills are listed under a certain attrib when you cannot improve/worsen them by changing that attrib so they should be under no attrib.

HI PEOPLE

HAVE YOU HEARD OF SKILLS CALLED

*ECHO*
AND
*ARCANE ECHO*

OMG DUPLICATE SKILLS EXIST ALREADY.

YOU HAVE ALL THE NEW SKILLS THEY SAID YOU WOULD GET AND TOSSED IN A FEW EXTRAS TO USE AS WELL.

WHY THE COMPLAINTS?

No, no, no. Gaile said there were 300 new skills. 300. And 30 repeats. That means they added in 330 skills, NOT 300. Or at least that's how I read it. Anyone have an exact skill list from this weekend yet?

Well... just when i thought factions couln't get any worse...

Repeat of skills is PURE laziness on Anet's part. Double skills, ROFL.
Who needs double spinal shivers on ur bar?
Or double desperation blows??

What they are doing is giving factions players access to core skills. wtf man.
Full price as well.. hahaha.

New players seems to be gettin the sweeter end of the deal more and more.
Current players are being screwed.

FOR THE REPEAT


300 NEW
30 EXTRA DUPLICATE

I'm quite happy with the "double up" on skills. Hopefully the prophecies skills will be mixed in and distributed through cantha...if not just have a "core skill" trainer somewhere. Then if you're not happy and would rather whine about the new skills, you could just go get all the old ones, stating that yer not willing to try anything new.

If people want to spam the same spell over and over again, by all means, why not? Hell, you can spam Flare as much as you want, and it only takes one skill slot! Fact of the matter is, just because you can use the skill twice as much doesn't make your build twice as effective. So what if someone can do 2 Penetrating Blows in a row? Sure, it may do more damage, but it also costs twice as much adrenaline, and takes up an extra skill slot. Just because the opportunity exists for double skills doesn't mean everyone will flock to use it.

There's a reason why only a few skills have been doubled up. These are the skills that some might find use for to use more often, but won't be too overpowered. And if there are balancing issues, those will inevitably be resolved. Thus, I don't see any cause for concern.

And for heaven's sake people! If you're not happy with 30 repeated skills, no one's stopping you from leaving. It's not as if Anet didn't add anything new.

To respond about echo builds, indeed dupes have been around, but they cost your something in terms of mana. Thus it isnt the same thing.

Flare spamming is the kind of thing id like to get away from in this game, but flare itself is more of a time filler skill. Not great damamge, just something to do waiting for recharge.

As for balancing issues, as soon as they find one (whch they inevitably will) how do you think they will correct the problem? Oh wait, by hitting it with the nerf stick. So now in order to the spam skill to be marginally effective you now need both instances and due to the fact that it would only be effective if you had 2 skill slots to devote to it. This causes another set of problems:

1. You still have the spamming problem of before (in the case it wasnt nerfed enough)

2. People have to think less and less about builds since now people can think in a one track mind (i thought this was to expand thought possibilities?)

3. You have now rendered 2 skills (the original and its counterpart) basically useless.

If you want to make a counterpart to echo for weapon attacks or something to make your next adrenal attack cost less in return for some energy, then fine. But as its setup, its only going to cause nerfing or spam wars. Something most people dont want to see.

-Ex0dus