From ANet: Most skills will have to be purchased or captured in Factions

I couldn't give a damn how easy skill points are to attain if i have to pay 1k for each frigging skill i want!

Just because i have 1.1mil in the bank doesn't mean i'm happy about spending it on skills to progress my character. I spend money on skills to farm, mess around, test builds, make new utterly pointless builds, etc.
My 55 ele build didn't just appear using a collection of skills i had, i had to do the quest to become E/Mo then go buy a few skills. This i did by choice, it was bad enough having to go buy Apply Poison on my ranger (first char) then finding out the skill was utterly f*cking useless against all the undead around!

Hmmm how about you read his location, its belgium.

I spent a ton of money to buy all the War skills (my primary sub) that I could not get via quest in C1 for my sub and used a bunch of skill points.

The reason for this I was assuming that the system of going through factions the "traditional" way aka no running, fighting to the next zone + quest's would get me at least 50-75% of the new skills or be similiar to C1. If it doesn't.. going to have to farm some more .. but will see what happens when it actually comes out.

^^ this what right here

K... I play mostly PvP. Will do the PvE section just to see how "elaborate" the plot is this time (in other words, have something to joke about) and to cap some skills (always enjoyed that one a lot). Still bottom line is: how fast will I get faction?

I definitely have no patience to obtain the gazillions of faction required to unlock all the new skills (good news is half of the elites suck, so I'm not unlocking anyway). A simple calculation reveals that there is, what, like 10 new elites per profession-> 60 for the old professions. Thats like 60x3k= 180k faction... i'd say i maybe need 100k faction just for the new core class useful elites... then u got 2 new professions of course... thats 150 new skills including bout 30 new elites or so... that's 90k faction in elites only. total is about 270k faction for all new elites or about 160-180k for the useful ones. now of course this doesn't include the other skills to unlock...

Well, I, for one, am going to hope ANet find a way to give us faction EN MASSE. Or I'm going to find me another game. Simple as that.

The option to merge accounts was made available so that new characters had access to tryia and existing tryia characters have access to cantha.

if I am wrong... then I'm going to seriously be upset

Making skills harder to get won't do a thing to stop cookie cutter builds. If at Anet they really believe this i suggest they start taking there medication. It just makes the richer able to get them faster and for the builds to take slightly longer to get up and running.

Seriously, are you gonna decide 'Nah on 2nd thoughts i'm not gonna bother capping these skills which will make me lots of money' just because they'll take you slightly longer to get hold of?

And if you think capturing the skills is cheaper, remember how much your paying for that signet of capture? Unless they make them free of charge and have plenty more bosses around that you can readily get hold of decent skills off, theres no way that this will work.

Sig of capture is 1k or buying the skill is 1k... same thing lol

It's looking like there will be an point similiar to ascension as in C1 in C2. Once it reaches that point, you can take Asa/Rit over to C1. But not sure untill the game actually released.

How about :

Oh my God. Read Gaile's post. In fact, why doesn't everyone just go read Gaile's post.


English is not always everyone's first language. However, I do like correcting some sentences at times. Common mistakes amuse me.

Back on topic, I would love to be able to purchase skills from vendors, as questing through that same area over and over seems a bit tedious to me.

edit : ok, somewhat back on topic >_>

Quoted for the 5th page, and bolded for importance and to silence the idiots who have the inability to look through the thread and actually read posts before posting.

Gaile's post doesn't answer how PvP players are going to cut through the factions bs, does it? Aside for some minor questing/capping on 1 char, I will not, and I MEAN I will NOT, waste my time going through dumb PvE to get my skills unlocked. Now, how does ANet solve the PvP issue I'm asking???

There's a PvP issue? People have used faction to unlock PvP skills before, and will continue to do so. If you didn't like it before, you won't like it now, but everyone else is fine with it. The issue at hand has nothing to do with PvP at all. Hell, you might even get skills faster this way if you PvP, because you're not stuck getting the same skills through quests, but can immediately get what you want.

I see what Gaile is saying like this:

Before:
Quest: Do x.
Reward: Skill A, skill B.

Now:
Quest: Do x.
Reward: Mucho EXP for skill points, lots of gold to buy skill. Choose the skill(s) you want from NPC.

As much as selecting the skills I want is nice, though, I can't help but feel that the new system will still be inexorably slower than before. Unless, of course, the quests meant for skills give enough EXP for 2 levels and 2k gold, progress will inevitably be slower.

There is a PvP issue? Hell, yea, there is! The total worth of all new skills in Factions is roughly 500k faction. Do you realize how much that is??? Let me explain. I have been playing for over hmm... 1 year and I have like 300k faction total used. Mind you, I unlocked every single skill on 3 classes through PvE. Now... do the maths... If I am expected to do the same thing I did with last game just to be able to get my UAS, I'm simply going to find a better use of my time. Faction should come at much larger quantities to allow for PvP players to actually be able to enjoy the game rite away and not waste their time unlocking 300 skills the way it used to be be4. Kthx. Everyone else is fine? Wake up and smell the coffee... PvP players have been talking about this crippled faction system for ages.

I haven't done PvP all that much and even i can agree with Hella Good that faction sucks. 1k for a normal skill, 3k for an elite. Seems fair, now the fact that it takes me 2hours to get this 1k faction... or longer if i have a bad PvP run.

I like doing PvE, plus when i deleted my monk i used his remaining skill points (along with 60k) to buy a shed load of mesmer and necro skills (then deleted him of course). In total i have somet like 50k faction, but im only about 10 skills away from getting them all and even now its taking me frigging ages!

To be fair though, Faction does come in larger quantities. The 12v12 battles give you a fair bit of faction, oh wait a moment, they last about 30 minutes each. Never mind then back to the drawing board.

I kinda like the enjoyment of capping a skill after a hard fought battle or a few hours of grinding. It sort of seperates dedicated players from one who aren't.

In Factions, there better be enough quests that rewards:
- skill points
- gold
- both

Otherwise its gonna be a grind.
1,000 gold for a new skill ain't cheap.

We'll just have to wait and see how rewarding that "amount of gold" from the quest rewards will be, as well as the "skill points acquired more quickly".

And for those interested in unlocking, each character can choose skills that were not unlocked on the last character, expanding options for the account as a whole.

Hmm, Gaile, if you ever come back to this thread, could you explain this a bit further? I'm confused by it and so are a few others. A few people have speculated on what it means, but it's just...speculation until you clarify it for us.

I'm hoping that there's a typo in that statement and that you mean to have said that PVE characters would have access to unlocked skills on the account.

Sorry, didn't realize you didn't like the original (and new, I suppose) PvP system either. But the point remains, however: The new system will let you choose the skills you want as a reward, while boosting your EXP gain and gold gain so you can actually buy those skills. This should be good for your PvP, because you can quickly get the resources to buy the skills you want, instead of getting stuck with the same old set every time.

On the other hand, people like me who like to unlock as many skills as possible will find a hard time doing so. The fact remains that so many skills were available through questing, so inevitably the new system would still lengthen the process significantly. I suppose Anet is letting us get a good build faster, at the expense of collecting skills - which, I suppose, I don't really like, though it might make the game last longer.

Still, I'm curious as to how this affects PvP so much. If you have a PvP build, you'll need 8 skills. Surely that's much faster to acquire in the new system, when those 8 skills can be the first 8 skills you get?

I've very disappointed to see this news. Skills are already too expensive. Before the change the increase was anywhere between 2-8g now after 300g its a 50g increase and caps at 1k. Before the change I had unlocked 3 proffesions for my monk and I was still at 700g a skill.

1k per skill was way too much. I understand some unlocked all the skills and they were above that cap but majority of GW players the cost for skills increased even more. To see that I must buy the majority of skills is probly a bad decision. They say they are going to make Skill points easier to aquire but the price of skills is going up because now we have to buy the majority of skills.

Faction is fine the way it is. Elite 3k non elite 1k. So for 10k I can buy an entire skill bar. That is not unreasonable. Especially since I'm gaining 800 faction per gvg battle.

It really hurts new exclusive PvE players the most, because now people will have to farm and grind more for enough gold to buy new skills. Remember that using faction pts for skills and the like will only go for future PvP builds, not PvE builds.

I did kinda like the questing system from Prophecies because if there was a particular skill available as a reward, then you surely want to complete it. But then, we'll have to see how the new system is implemented in FActions.

PvP is immediate, unlike PvE which is a delayed progression of skill. If you don't have a large skill pool in the first few weeks of release, it is very likely that you will be missing on new builds that are gaining popularity. In PvP if you can't play a certain build because you don't have the skills, it's very likely you won't play at all.

Which brings us to the cumbersome faction system that needs to be either reworked or the cost of skills severely reduced. I know quite a few PvP players who said they will wait and see what the skill acquisition system is when Factions comes out, before they decide to buy the game or not.

With a 10K faction pool ANet didn't even allow us to prepare for factions release. If I had the option to accumulate about 50K faction be4 the game comes out, I would've felt more prepared.

they better add more quest with high exp rewards or skill points/gold as rewards

If you bothered reading Gaile's post, you would know that's what they plan.

I'm sick to death of people complaining on threads they don't even bother to read. I mean, the quote is repeated on practically every page! Here it is again:

It's precisely this combination of problems that makes me worried that using my new Canthan characters will not be fun. It sucks for everyone, but especially for new characters that are created as Canthan characters. I only have 30k total and I worry about wasting money on the wrong skill, imagine how the skill sysetm would affect Factions-only players who have no money at all. Grind = BAD!!!! I hope ANet is quite generous in handing out gold and EXP for quests

Just how much the
- gold reward
- exp reward
- skill points reward (if such thing exist, I know they existed in pre-searin)
will be, we don't really know unless Factions is released.

As for Gaile Gray stated that
"by rewarding you with an amount of gold that will help you towards the cost of acquiring the skills."

Let's just hope that the "amount of gold" would be sufficient enough.


I'm gonna be quite dissapointed if the so called "amount of gold" is just a measly 1,000 gold reward.

From my experience in Prophesies, gold rewards from quests ceased to exist after we left pre-searing.

1000 gold IS A SKILL so dont expext them to give you the gold for 5/10/100 skills at once.

Why? Skills don't cost 1,000 until you've bought several already.

1,000 gold instead of two crappy skills seems like a good trade off to me...

I would say that this time its going to be harder to unlock every skill, if you want to do that.

But unlocking the skills you actually want, will be alot easier. I just hope that because of this fact, there are alot more quests than there were in Prophecies. You basically will need enough to fit the ratio 1 quest per 1 skill you want X 2 Proffessions

buy skillcaps for all the prophecy eliteskills of the 2 professions, then add a couple of the skills that aren't reachable through a quest and you'll see how fast you are at 1 k a skill... then we are'nt even speaking about any of the factions skills yet...

unless those quests can be repeated ad nauseum, i will prefer 2 skills... since the ramp up to 1k for each skill is quite fast (around 40 - 50 skills)

Maybe Anet will lower the price of skills?

Look, I think people are arguing over how this will be implemented. I think the basic idea of people choosing what skills they want is a good one, as long as it's affordable.

Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But I hope they at least notice it and will do so. Although I kinda liked beingrewarded with skills, it was something else then always the same rewards like money, or skillpoints or... it is diversification and options make the world go round.

I think this idea might turn out somewhat interesting for old players since we have a serious advantage in terms of skill points and money. I got almost 2.5 million in exp between my 3 characters (most of it concentrated on 2, 3rd I don't play as much)... so.

The one guy saying how everyone had to start as a fire elemental makes a very good point. Imagine how different the builds would have developed if people were allowed to go air or water if they wanted to.. (well, I guess that would mean Air spike would have came even faster in Tombs then...)

PvP'rs require UAX asap usually. that way they can quickly adapt to new builds and stay competitive, this is by and large the definition of fun/enjoyment for PvP'rs in this game. while you can argue that a good build just requires 8 skills not the whole lot, a PvP'r usually feels very handicapped with restricted choice, and a PvP'rs perspective of their own enjoyment counts for more than anyone elses.

now the worry i have is regarding just how much xp and g we will get per quest run (you can guarantee there will be quest "running").

assuming a skillpt is 15k xp and 1k g, a single quest run would have to yield 30k xp and 2k g, to provide the equivalent of a single prophecies quest with a 2 skill reward.

i very much doubt this will happen.

further, some of the quests for skills were really short and easy in prophecies. in factions im not so sure the 'skillpt' quests will be quite so easy - my reasoning is based on the fact that any quest with a really short completion time will farmed hugely, and would detract from higher level areas like UW and FoW and faction equivalents.

im expecting any given quest to be scaled according to completion time, so that rewards per minute spent will climb towards the pve-endgame.

and i also suspect that quest rewards will range from 2k-5k xp with 500-1k g tops.

i mean, theyre basically turning skills into a moneysink, meanwhile, once a lot of people have gotten UAX, suddenly these quests are pumping large sums of money into the economy - making stuff more expensive - making those without UAX have a lot less opportunity to get 'cool' stuff while trying to unlock.

in principle - yeah i can see the good intentions... hell i can kinda understand where they pull this 'diversity' crap from (short term YES - long term NO). but honestly all theyre doing is encouraging cookie cutter guildwiki research type stuff leading to a few 'farming' builds for those skillpt quests that earn the fastest (solo ofcourse), so that people can get unlocks, so that people can actually try a variety of ideas and achieve REAL diversity.

IFF they change the rewards to 1 skillpt + a 1-2k xp reward + no gold reward, and they change the skill buying system to cap at about 100g, then the CASUAL players can have a decent chance both obtaining skills, and getting good gear at non-inflated prices.

and yes im damn well trying to provoke some answers from anet, and yes i will exercise my right to get answers via speculation. because dammit if im gonna pay AU$80 for the game, i wanna know im not paying for something that will give me more frustration than fun.

skill > time spent is the mantra of this game right???
grind > skill > time spent > casual player is the reality right now

hell i play fair amount, ive got ~400k in the bank for skills, honestly im not gonna be too screwed here. but if anet keep screwing around and trying to emulate wow grind (just think of skillpts as levels and you can compare the two), and drift further away from the original idealogy of starting new and being able to have fun in both pve/pvp, then really theyre just killing off new and existing players that i could be enjoying the game with.

Maybe?

Thats not good enough to convince someone to buy it though is it, maybe......

People are worried about extra grind, its not weather they are right or wrong, but that we dont even know if they are right or wrong. For some people its a deciding factor if they will buy the game, and the best people can come up with is "maybe" its going to be ok so give it a go, ermmm no Anet are supposed to be convincing these people to buy the game and all they "seem" to do (as in the impression and it could be wrong), is say give it a go and trust us, not good enough.

Gails post answeres some questions but raises more as well.

They will "help" with gold rewards, why be so unspecific. Why not just tell us if youll give us enough for a skill, several skills, or if you take the words litrally just help and provide say 75%/50%25% of the cost of a skill. Remember they said they will help offset the cost this is not a promise to pay for it fully, if it is then it needs to be confirmed or denied.


Also for people buying Guild wars 1&2, they are facing a huge HUGE grind if they want to fully unlock, dont tell me they dont need to, its a game you dont even need to play it, so need is a stupid word to use in a game. Why are these people not being given a straight answere as to what measures will be taken to alliviate the HUGE amount of time to unlock all skills?


FACT = People will not buy guild wars if these concerns are not addressed first

FACT = the only thing you can argue about that fact is weather it will be 1 person or 1 million people.

I don't mind ppl correcting me, but I do mind when they just want to irritate the other person.

You think you'r smart? It's easy over the internet isn't it?

/words in my head *ignore it, just ignore it...*

QFT. UAX is a necessity in PvP. UAS is more of a prestige thing, I agree. Still doesn't mean you should spend gazillions of hours playing just to get your skills unlocked.

What a load of crap. I'm sorry, your perspective (or anyone elses, for that matter) does NOT count more.

And who do think is the majority who buys and plays this game, anyway? Casual gamers, those that don't want to fork out a monthly fee, and therefore do not feel compelled to play every second of the day. Casual gamers don't require UAX.

You can't even currently earn all the skills through quests, so how giving people more gold and more skill points from quests instead of free skills will somehow hurt GW, I don't get. It shouldn't make a difference. If anything, those that want a "specific" build, can make it much quicker.

ie, LESS grind. ie, WIN WIN.

the super hardcore UAS button people left long ago when they saw Anet was not going to give in on UAS.

if a few more leave they will be replaced with people who are happy with the game as presented.

find a game that suits you better and in all honesty good luck

The unlock rate is an issue, just look at the threads created WEEKLY to prove this. Your response to ignor the issue seems to be anets attitude as well, basicly like it or sod off.

Give me 1 good reason to not increase the unlock rate for PVP players.

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