Why do Signets of Capture cost skill points?

For signets of capture, leave the cost at one skill point but make them cost 5x gold. When you buy a "signet of capture", you get 5 instead of one. That way, skill points have 1/5 the impact.

Making you have to gain skill points is just another goal in GW, if it had no goals, no one would play it.

My personal Suggestion keep SoCs the way they are add an SoC skill trainer that sells Socs for 15k/no skill points in the fissure/underworld that needs to be activated via quests.

that way it is possible for skilled rich players to buy socs without skill points if they so chose so.

I'm not sure how you define goal but that's another debate. Still, is it a good "goal"? Seems like there are a lot of negative aspects to the game that accompany this "goal".

Skill points should have their place when it comes to buying skills from a trainer. However, just as they don't play a part in getting skills from quests, nor should they play a part in capturing them from bosses. Can we all see the logic and consistency in this or am I way off here?

It seems though that most of you want to trade in the xp grind for the gold grind and I don't understand this. ANet seems bent on reducing farming and forcing people to amass wealth is only going to pit the community against the developers even more.

There is no harm to the game by making SoC's skill-point free. Prove me wrong.

What Caco-Cola said. End of discussion!

There is a great harm to making them skill-point free. Prove me wrong.

CodeMonkey

So explain to me why you can do a quest and receive skills and it doesn't cost any skill points.

Wow, and yet discussion continues. Shame you're not a moderator and thus unable to enforce your emphatic conclusions.

Currently you can do a quest where all you have to do is kill one boss. You are rewarded with 2 or 3 skills. This quest costs you no skill points. This quest has not been deemed to cause the game any harm thus making Signets of Capture free of skill points would also not cause the game any harm. Transitive property of equality. Nice try though.

Hmm, if you just concentrate on you 2 chosen proffession at the start of the game, you have enough skill points and there is no "grind" to obtaining more as they are not needed.
If you chose to change proffession, it is simply not viable. The amount of xp required per skill point increases as though it was an actual level increase, so you do not gain skill points at a steady rate.
Having the SoC cost more, and add to you total skillpoint tally, but not require a skill point to purchase / use would help eliminate this issue.
Infact the cap of 200 skill points is simply the dummest idea, nobody is going to ever reach that, and if they do through PvP, they are just going to be sat on the skill points as they are of no use as they have all the skills for there character.
In an ideal world I would be able to play my one ranger and use the secondary proffession change quests in the desert to actually unlock all skills, whilest you could do it with the current system, it would just not be practical to do so. The game and technology that runs the game would be obsolete before it happened.

Post removed.

Saying that doing the work for a quest, regardless of how easy it might be, and being handed SoC's for free are the same is... senseless. You can get elite skills with SoC's, for which there are no quests, should elite skills cost you nothing?

How is it senseless? Please, if you're going to make claims like this, back it up.

Elite skills don't make or break the game. Regardless, I said before that I would be in favor of a SoC that cost skill points when capturing elites.

Try to look at this from a consistency standpoint and you'll see that I'm right....or at least that I haven't been proven wrong. Try this, if Signets of Capture were skill-point free as of tomorrow, why would you be upset?

Answer the following question first before you continue posting more nonsense. Can you do a quest over and over and get unlimited skills of anykind?

Elite skills are nice skills, they have to be found and earned in battle using a SoC, they cannot be purchased from a trainer, or through a quest. What difference would it make if the SoC added to you total skill points used rather than needed a spare skill point to capture? The would still be unique, one only per mission, and require exploration and work to get.

How do you even use the Signet of Capture i have one but am lost on how to use it. Someone please tell me. ALSO WHERE ARE THE WARRIOR BOSSES DOES ANYONE HAVE LIST OF THEM FOR ME

Well it would be fairly pointless as once you have the skills you wouldn't need them again. The quest themselves are story related and that is the main reason they cannot be repeated, as once you have completed quest the game world changes for you.(game engine / hardcoded and one of GW developers boast points in conjunction with live streaming tech)
SoC are not related to quest, and do not change the game world, neither would it effect the game world to have them foc and add to your total skill points used rather than skill points required.

Now if you can actually provide an instance where it would effect the gameplay, make it worse for the majority, I am all ears and more than willing to thrash it out over a reasoned discussion.

For anyone here who wants to learn as many junky skill as possible, there is a way. You can gain 5-10k of XP each time you finish a quest in fissure of woe and underworld, and you can do the quests again when you re-enter these 2 regions.

On average, gaining this 5-10k XP from FoW/UW quests is just as tough as gaining enough XP to gain 1 skill point from other places. If you have a good group in FoW/UW, then it's an easy 5k-10k XP. If you have a bad group, then it's from hard to impossible to earn this 5k-10k XP.

No, you can't. Much like you can't kill the same boss over and over again and capture unlimited skills of any kind. What's your point?

Talk about nonsense.....

Once a boss monster is dead, just click the SoC and select the skill you want to learn. The boss monster has to be one of your two profession however.

Right on this very site there is a list of bosses.

I would just like to mention that that question isn't really thought out. Quests do no cost any gold to accept, SoCs on the other hand will and higher than what the Skill merchants ask for.

If SoC doesn't require a skill, you can kill a boss over and over and capture all his skills without thinking. Think of all the bosses that you can kill and the skills that they have. If you are one of those people who like to fill their char with skills that are junk and trash, then I don't think GW is for you. I suggest you think a little before deciding to buy or capture a skill for your char. It's called spending your skill points wisely.

Well, allowing SoC's to cost no skill points would pretty much take away a PvE "goal" while not really adding that much to the PvP aspect.

Collecting all the skills is pretty much a exclusive PvE gaming aspect, as quite a few of the skills are not exactly usable in PvP. Even experimenting in PvP would not require everyone on the team to suddenly pick up 8 new skills. There are already ascension runs allowing people to become 20 in a matter of hours. If a PvP'er needs to unlock, they can just do this with a new character and spend maybe 5-6 (not actually sure how long it takes to do a ascension run) hours and unlock 20-30 new skills this way.

Getting every single skill for every character, aka "collect them all", is pretty much something for the PvE player to work towards, much like the 15k armors and underworld armors. Many PvE players want to have their game last, and pretty much eliminating leveling for skill points would just shorten that play time. A lot of PvE players are already complaining that the PvE content is short, and that they have nothing left to do.

Ok, I have. Bosses carry on average, 3 skills. Of these 3, one is usually a self-heal that almost every character is given pre-searing. Of the remaining two, one is usually pretty common and the other is somewhat unique.

It's pretty rare that you find a boss of your primary or secondary profession that has even one skill you want, let alone more than one. It's rarer still that you have your SoC equipped at the time. If someone wanted to hunt every boss in every explorable area in an effort to capture all his skills, this would take quite some time even if the SoC were skill-point free. I have no problem with someone doing this......the question is, why do you?

Collecting skills and money for armours is the only PvE goal left after completing the fire isle chain missions, but you reasoning is only short term, having spent the 46 skill points you gain in game and used the SoC to capture elites for my primary and secondary it leaves me with nothing to do with my main character, it is not feasable to change secondary proffession as the skill points take so long to earn, and fussure of woe is not always an option. Making them add to skill points used rather than require a skill point makes taking a different secondary proffession a viable option, then the goal for PvE would not just be unlock what skills I can before I have to make a new character as it is "becoming a boring grind", but find and unlock all skills and classes, then I can logg on with my primary go to the desert and choose which secondary I want to play with a good selection of skills. It would actually increase the PvE gameplay duration rather than shorten it.

Whilest I agree with you PvE gameplay goals, I would argue that the SoC changes posted would actually improve its gameplay in the longterm.

How so? You complain about a grind...won't making Signets of Capture cost no skill points only encourage people to grind more in skill hunting?

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I'll never understand the skill point "problems" that people have. I'm level 20, beat the game, and I have ALWAYS had way too many skill points. More than I need really. And, yes, I've been getting skills from skill trainers whenever I see them. A lot of the time I already have the skill though (I assume from quests). I really don't see why people are in such dire need of skill points.

You have to understand that there are those people who like to collect junks, and they want free junks that don't cost them any skill point. They don't like to think and be selective about which skill they really need.

Well, first off, you're getting a skill out of it...

Second of all, be glad they don't cost more, you can capture ELITE skills with them... i mean... come on now...

If elite skills were free + getting all those other normal skills, well, it'd be pointless, i think you get what we're saying.

There is no need for this thread, nor an arguement for/against it... it's a closed case.

I'm not sure what you mean by "junks". I'll assume you've devised some obscure term to mean a skill you find useless. While you may go through the game with the same 8 skills every time, rest assured there are plenty of thinking people that don't.

I change my skillbar up a fair amount and I would think ANet would like to encourage experimentation as much as they'd like to encourage capturing vs buying or even quest repeating. My way does this and doesn't harm the game. Taking the close-minded approach you've defined to its logical end, we should all only be given 8 skill points. I don't see a lot of thought going into your statement.

Wow, air-tight argument there. Obviously I don't get what you mean and I have serious doubts that you understand what you're saying if the sum total of your argument is "i mean...come on now".

And yet, it still remains open. Will wonders never cease!? What a perfect way to follow up such a landmark in debating history: the un-enforceable attempt to end discussion.

Here's another point to ponder. Every other skill learned from a skill trainer is learned FOREVER. Somehow the Signet of Capture skill is instantly forgotten. If I'm truly getting a skill when I buy a Signet of Capture, shouldn't it always be known from that point forward?

To increase your PvE experience and make the game a lot funner for everyone.

It is, unless you replace it with another. Either way, you're getting one skill or another forever. No matter how you slice it, when you buy SoC, you're buying a skill.

SoC is really just a permanent (and non-random) form of Arcane Thievery. Why do you need to rebuy it? Because it's been permanently replaced by the skill you stole from the monster. You don't have the skill anymore, since it's been permamently replaced, so you need to buy it again.

uhhh... Maybe that SoC is replaced by the skill you captured? Instead of going around capturing useless skills and wasting all your skill points, I suggest you should check your skill bars sometimes.

Maybe the followings will help smoothened the flow of your thought process which was blocked since birth or whatever:

1. Think of buying SoC as buying an elite skill.
2. If you use SoC to capture non-elite skill, then you should stop smoking because you have found a way to generate negative gold.
3. If you have no problem with spending one skill point buying a non-elite skill from trader, then why do you have a problem spending one skill point buying an elite skill?

Instead of slathering yourself with sarcasm, you could have just assumed by virtue of the grammatical problems in his reply, that English isn't his first language. I'll put it another way you may understand:

Some people look at skills like a Pokemon collection. They gotta catch 'em all! It doesn't matter to them whether they will *ever* use a skill or not. All that matters is they unlock every skill for every class! These people of course would like an Unlock All Skills button or an easier (even though Signet of Capture is some sort of joke now) SoC system.

Nor your interpretation of it. What he's suggesting is that you can browse skills (on this site even) and logically come up with combinations you want to try. You don't *need* every skill. People just *want* every skill. Why? So they can say they *have* every skill or can build *any* combination they want. Hooray for them! Easier isn't always better.

Guild Wars already encourages experimentation by allowing you to change your build an infinite number of times. They've put limiters (like refund points) in place so 1) you have to play the game to continue to experiment and 2) so you can't just indiscriminantly create builds without thinking about it a fair bit. Removing one limiter (skill points) only begs for the other limiter to be removed as well. After all, you're preaching consistancy here aren't you?

Your statement is wholly unfair; many players change their skills but not their attributes. Many players don't *need* to change their skillbar much because they've found combinations they like. I don't see how the current system stops you from playing however you want, except to ensure you play the game which clearly ANet would want.

Two reasons. First, I would have wasted dozens of skillpoints on signets. I won't get refunds. Second, players would burn out on Guild Wars far too quickly. Right now you can get all skills for a pair of classes, then PvP to get PvE out of your system, then decide you want to experiment some and PvE a bit before you burn out on PvP.

If there's no limit to capturing or using skills (and frankly, your argument opens the door for abolishing refund points as well, which is the biggest reason I'm against this idea) people will become terminally bored with Guild Wars far more quickly. Why would you want that? So it would be easier for you to build a conceptual art character? Everyone would have fun for a week, then interest would taper off since there is no challenge or effort involved in aquiring skills. People would unlock everything for their characters (and let's face it, a smart guild would stock up five people with eight sigs of capture and have one level 20 run them through some missions) then have nothing more to do until an expansion came out. Would they wait for that? Not likely.

So here's your argument against Signets of Capture not costing skill points.

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It would not effect the refund point system, the refund point system is actually very good and contributes to gameplay.
There comes a point when you either PvP or Delete you character because there is nothing else you can do with your character development wise.Opening up the SoC system would give atleast option.
There are actually very few so called "junks", there are skills which are suited to PvP and skills that are suited to PvE.
Elite skills would still be elite, as it stands 99% of players would have elites for their current chosen class.
What exactly would be the long term effect, it would enable players to change proffesions and capture a good variety of skills, without having to spend forever farming xp. You gain approx 50 skill points through out the game, 20 of which will be used to gain elites for current classes, then a further 20 will be used to learn new skills not found from quests, that leaves 10 for you to use if you change proffession. 10 skills out of 75. This is on a singlar proffession change, the ability to have multiple proffession changes is in game but the current system doesn't cater for any PvE players who may wish to use it.
This is not a personal opinion, but a logical argument, many arguements here against are personal and non constructive, and they do not hold up when assessed.

My arguement is that it will open up the secondary proffession changes after ascention, and in the long run have no harmful effects on gamesplay.
Players who burn out will burn out reguardless, it will not encourage people to play more and therefore burn out quicker. If anything the lack of quest past ascention will cause this. PvP is not what everyone conciders fun and certainly does not contribute to slowing down player burn out. Playing a different game and returning to GW a few days / weeks later does this.

Yes but going skill hunting and having a reward at the end is by far more rewarding than going out hunting for 1-3 hours to gain enough xp to gain a skill point and then go out and capture a skill, which is your reward.
Not everyone has access to Fussure of woe missions due to american / european / asian server setup and not everyone can form a decent enough group to actually survive there. With out spirit of protection the first creatures you meet hit for 250 damage, only well organised groups with skills planned out will survive.
In effect it would be a simple update that could extend the gameplay without having to wait months for new quests.

You're making no sense here. You claim having to "grind" exp for skill points is bad, but having to "grind" exp for attribute refund points is good? How is this in any way consistant?

That's pretty presumptuous of you. That's why there are expansions. That's why there is Fissure armor. That's why it is hard to get all skills for one character. I'd say your argument is at least one reason why the skill point system works and will stay.

I don't understand this argument at all. With the same effort it would take to capture every skill for every subclass you could have run three characters through the game to unlock all skills for your PvP chars. Since "logically" by your argument (assumption) there is nothing to do but PvP once you have all skills, why bother dicking around with capping everything when you can quest for it? You never have to run for skill points this way, right? You only have to capture elites, which means never needing to take more than one or two signets into an explorable area or mission. So no, I don't see any benefit - long-term or otherwise - to your proposal.

Like yours.

By your own argument, this is irrelevant. Why would you need to change subclasses at all if you're going to burn out and just want to PvP? You can make fresh PvP chars any time you want and never regret their appearance, etc. It seems to me all of us ADD players who will have nothing to do would be more inclined to create new characters when the spirit moved us rather than go ALLLLL the way to Destiny's Gorge to change our subclass then go AAAALLL the way back to the Tombs. We are, after all, interested in being lazy and efficient.

This seems more like what an expansion is for, but whatever. This is all speculative and has no backing, so I don't see why you bothered to say it. Making things easier doesn't make them more interesting. I have yet to see you actually draw that parallel and welcome you to do so. You've danced around it, but please...show us how making the game easier will actually make it more intriguing and likely to stand the test of time.

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For those who are against spending a skill point for buying each SoC, 1 question for you: Are you against spending 1 skill point to buy a skilll from skill trainer?

If your answer is YES, then your problem is too deep to fix. If your answer is NO, then answer this next question: Why do you have a problem with spending 1 skill point to buy SoC to capture an elite skill?

Be to the point here. Don't make another post until you've answered my questions.

Exactly.

SoC's cost skill points because they are used to capture the Sweet..Sweet... Elite skills.

I do agree that they should somehow make it easier to get skill points, but I have a reason (which is very stupid I know) that they made it impossible to gather all the skills in a decent amount of time for at least two professions.

The reason is that once everyone has all of the skills, it would cause a huge inflation in the tombs arena which I personally think ANet isn't ready for. Imagine if everyone was able to go into tombs at once.... it would cause a huge ass waiting time in the Vault which may last for hours.... They may even have to add one or two more tombs challenges later on before you get to the halls in order to compensate, which is probably what they are working on now: more tombs maps you have to play on before you get to the Hall of Heroes.

Okay, i apologize for confusing those who read my post. I was kind of confused/angry and just read every single post twice so I kind of forgot some stuff people mentioned.

As reply to this quote, it's actually quite simple. Skill quests can be done once and only certain skills can be obtained from this quest. That also means there's a limit to how much/what skills you can get. The only limit currently on the Signet Of Capture is the skill point consumption. If you remove the limit then everybody would run around with all of the skills, which lead's me to another question about my previous post.

Somebody was confused by my statements and I believe i've already apologized if I may have caused grief, I'll try my best to re-state it/better explain it.

I never explained the "Same Build" subject very well so I would understand why somebody would also incorporate it as an "Uber Build". I'll try comparing it to another subject currently out there that's very commonly used, by this I mean the Pre-Made PVP Palette, Paladin. A few people know this build isn't very effective but people still use it because it's easily accessible and they know of it. It's easily accessible because it is showed in the Pre-Made Palette section and the skills are already availible to them. A simple build that becomes posted will be found and distributed throughout the game. If people could simply buy a SOC for 500 gold then a similar effect could happen. This time it could start from a build post on a fourm and more people copy it as the game progresses.

(Please note that i'm not stating it is bound to happen, or happen in such a way that would make the idea seem horrible. However, if you look at every bright side to making SOC's free, then you'd have to note every nook and cranny of the side-effects it may cause)

There is a huge difference between 250xp for a refund point and 20000 for a skill point, 250 doesnot take me 1 hour to earn. Simple as that.

Ok so you have the armour then what?? And it is not hard to get all skills for one class, even two classes it is actually hard to get all skills if you change your secondary proffession. A.net has acepted this as an issue and has actually taken steps to make it easier. (see new patch)

The point is I don't want to have to re run the game to unlock all the skills / class's, I like my Necro primary and my Ranger primary characters, and I would like the option to change secondary classes, without being punished for doing so. The figures used where examples why it is not practical to change proffessions after ascention as you don't have enough skill points to make the secondary proffession a flexable option with more than 10 skills to pick from.

Hardly, my views are not biased on this occation as I am actually playing the new GTA, and as such have taken a step back, my post was / is based on observations from playing GW for 200+ hours and from playing arcade, console and computer games for 20 years.

I like this bit, ALLL the way to Destiny's Gorge, you mean open map, click on area, TP there and speak to on of the proffession changers, hmm this takes ages.
Actually from a PvP stand point, A.nets direction indicated that PvP characters created in the PvE world will be actually better than insta lvl 20 pvp builds. If this is to be true, unlocking all the proffessions for your fav PvE character would actually make that character a better option for PvP.

And your point was??? My reply was to how altering SoC will not effect the amount of player burn out nothing more, nothing less, If you have read more into this please explain, or maybe start a new topic.
That one as already been done, hmm this game is getting too easy now, I posted in that topic also, perhaps if you wanted to see what my opinion was you should read the post.