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

Mordokai, the point he was trying to convey was that now you have quests that give you 2 free skills and which in some if not most cases are finishable in 20 minutes or less. So again he was trying to convey that if you want the same ease of unlocking (or acquisition) they will have to reward higher, much higher. And even in such a disproportional way that fow, uw or sf's quest would look like peanuts compaired to these new farmable quests. What he is stating that in stead of less grind, there will be more grind. Since in stead of the normal 2 skillpts and 2k gold rewards (that free skills would mean) you to keep the rewards in line with the high pve areas, these rewards will be around 5kxp (1/3th skillpoint) and a bit of gold (500) if it is easy completeable. Compare with the reward for the villainy of galrath...

and please loviatar, it is easy to simply state if x leave y will replace them. But it is not that simple... new people are a finite resource. Then you have the bad word of mouth advertising, meaning 1 person that is disgruntled will inform +-10 people of its disgruntlement while 1 person that is happy will only inform 2 other people from it. On top of that, you establish your biggest customerbase from the start, after that the additional customers coming in are icing on the cake not the proverbial patchwork to patch up losing customers because of misunderstandings or lacking communication or marketing. If the product would have had a lifetime of 3 - 4 years then ay losing customers is normal since there will be the next best thing, but it is only 1 year old... and then talking about it as simply as oh wel don't let the door hit you on the way out is somewhat optimistic.

ok.

it is their game and their rules.

have you noticed perhaps that faction can unlock for PVE?

1k faction and i have that nice skill from the copperhammer vendor at the skill trainer early.

it would cut the PVE side very short.

reason?

account wide remember

EDIT FOR RIP

note that Anet has the traffic logs and unless they are lying the hardcore/bad word of mouth has not affected sales or usage which is increasing not decreasing.

there was also an article that tracks game sales which put GW in overall 4th place in spite of a late start and only 8 months for sales.

Look at the "Kill all the _____" quests. Or the Romeo and Juliet quests. Practically free XP.

FACT: This is all pointless speculation. Since we don't know the details, it's senseless to start comparisons. We have nothing to compare to at the moment!

We can only look at this in an abstract way:

IF the Gold and Skill point awards are equal to being able to get two skills, then this is a better system. No question about it.

But, I agree, that's a lot of "ifs" in there!

Casual gamers need it far more than the "hardcore". I can't get a single friend (and I have some very nerdy friends) to player Guild Wars because from the trial keys I gave them, they didn't like the PvE, and the PvPers in the bunch were downright disgusted with the amount of time they had to play to make a single damn build.

Casual players are only allowed to play FOTM builds because casual gamers aren't going to grind 600+ hours for UAX like hardcore ones. This is a game flaw. An error in the code. It should be fixed as soon as possible.


We stopped asking for a UAS "button" months ago because it was clear that even though A.Net never explained why there wouldn't be one, there simply wouldn't be one ("because"). Are we to stop asking for faster unlocks? Are we to stop begging for the system to stay at the same slow snail-paced unlock speed? Why not just remove PvP characters altogether. Hell, make Hero's Ascent another PvE tombs outpost, and make the Guild Halls various dungeons. You can make the Team Arenas another trading outpost. But please, for the love of god, don't remove the Random Arenas. That's where people go when they want to feel 1337 and say they have "PvP experience" on their Wammo's.

Assuming in Prophecies you get 4 skills per skill quest, each quest in Factions needs to reward you with 60,000 Experience and 4,000 gold to even keep pace. You can say we're making unbased assumptions, but to think that we'll be raking in 4 skillpoints worth of experience from a single quest is incredibly ignorant and far too trusting in A.net to actually help the situation.

jup, still the rewards are scaled at how much? 3k xp and a bit of faction if I remember correct. While most of the quests I did that involved skills as reward where just as easy if not easier to finish and there the reward was 30k xp and at least 2kgold(ergo 2 skills). But you still haven't gotten even 1 skill with this reward...

And yes I know that it is still all provisional, but we do have to compae with what we have at hand to make sure that anet understands the debacle or the can of worms they might be opening up. Although I still odn't understand why they need money or skillpoints as a reward, they could just let them pick a skill from a group of options if they finished a quest. And they wouldn't end up with that can of wurms.

I thought it was 7,500 xp (2,500 for each, but you can only do one of the "Kill all ___" quests). Could be wrong, though.

If they give 2k gold and 2 skill points (not XP), then you've got enough.

Well, that's a good point. All I can say is you could buy other things than skills with the gold...

Wow, your friends are pretty sophisticated to already know what skills they needed to make a "single build" without using the skills provided in the FPE. I made some nice builds without having to buy skills, but maybe I'm just a noob.

Thankfully, Anet doesn't have to give out 60k XP. They just need to give out skill points. And most quests in prophecy gave you 2 skills, not 4. And how many times were you happy with the skills you got?

Basically, we have more choices now. Hell, you don't even have to buy skills if you don't want, you can use the extra gold to buy something else you want more.

More options and choices is BETTER, not worse.

Now, I could be totally wrong, and this could be the worse idea ever. If it turns out that way, believe me, I'll join you guys in signing a petition.

Hmm.. I don't think it's a problem.
I like to think of PVE and PVP as completely seperate entities. Sure, you can PVP with your RP character, but a lot of people don't, because you can easily make a PVP character with some great items and any of the skills you could possibly want to PVP.
Since PVP skills are so easy to acquire with Balthazar faction, the only thing to look at is how it affects PVE.

All it really does it makes it more difficult to acquire lots of skills in PVE. This is a good thing in my opinion. I think "maxing" your character in PVE SHOULD take a considerable amount of time and effort. They shouldn't just let you get everything easily. Not having every skill you want because of a lack of money makes PVE more difficult, but I don't think that makes it less interesting.
PVP remains balanced and PVE becomes more difficult... I can't say that would disappoint me.

That would be nice, perhaps have one skill from each line [Sword, Hammer, Axe, Tactics; Air, Earth, Fire, Water; Blood, Curses, Death, etc] as a reward for each quest, and let us choose which skill we want. So that way if you are E/Mo and you finish a quest, it says "Choose your Skill reward" and you can choose one Air, Earth, Fire or Water skill; and then you can choose one Healing, Protecting, Smiting, or Divine Favor skill. Then you just picked up a skill from each of your 2 professions and you got to choose which attribute you wanted to grab more skills for. No skill points wasted, no money lost. And if you find your new skill sucks and you wish you had chosen a different one, you can still buy something with a precious skill point and gold, or find the next quest that gives skill rewards and pick a better skill when you finish it.

It does sound like they are not likely to do that, but then again, if they do anything other than that it is adding grind to the game. Let's hope they give the amount of gold and EXP (EDIT: make that gold and skill points) we would need to purchase the skills we would normally have gotten for free.

Guys, they don't need to give XP at all! Just skill points directly.

It's not like that's without precedence...

Actually, you're right, it would be better to hand out skill points and gold than enough XP to level & gain a point. Otherwise the path to level 20 would be super-short.

And you think thats a GOOD reason to not speed up unlocks for PVP people?

I’ve yet to see a good reason why PVP toons can not unlock faster and for PVE to remain the same, the above is so easily overcome its ridiculous.

simplest answer

it is their game and they (Anet/NCsoft) are aiming for a specific target market.

the further off you are from dead center of that target the less the game will appeal to you.

they have already shaken out the hardest hardcore

UAS/LEVEL GRINDMONKEYS/UBER STAT ITEM FARMERS/SUBCLASSES THERE OF

the shakeout continues but more keep coming in as they siscover this is my game.

also count on this

THERE WILL BE ADJUSTMENTS AFTER RELEASE.

Precisely

Go get your box, look at what they advertise, then look at the skill grind for pvp.

(fyi, I am a pve player, but I can see the huge barrier skill unlocking creates in pvp for variety and experimentation, and I see no need for it).

Handing out skill points for quests+some gold to help pay for buying the skills is a much better system than the GW:P system, at least IMO.

The GW:P system funnelled PvE characters into certain builds early on into the game. It wasn't until Lion's Arch that your skill selection really started to have any variety.

What they're trying to do is encourage more skill variety early in the game. A combination of a new skill earning system and opening up previously unlocked skills at the vendor should help greatly with this.

I'm a PvP player, who doens't have "everything" unlocked, and it's not so much a problem to be honest.

As long as I have the faction to unlock things when I need them, I for all intensive purposes have UAX. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I blew 7k faction the other night on a build unlocking runes and skills. But I have them now. They're mine. Bwahahahahaha.

One thing that I hope changes between FPE and release, is that I think we should get some Balth's Faction for 12v12 play. It IS a PvP format afterall. Same rate as other formats. 20 faction per initial kill. Maybe 100 or so for team win.

I don't tend to introduce my friends to a game and then ditch them. I asked them what sort of thing they wanted to play and then helped them make a build. It costs 26,500 Faction to make a build: Superior, Major, Minor, 4 Weapon Mods, 7 Normal Skills, 1 Elite Skill, Superior Vigor, and possibly a Superior Absorbtion. Anything less means you're gimped, and to competitive gamers accustomed to FPS's and RTS's and any genre except the RPG, this is really annoying. If it takes a newbie 20 minutes to get that amount of faction from the Random Arenas (they only place someone without skills can find a "group"), then it takes approx. 10 hours to make a single build that won't be sub-par and at a dissadvantage...
... The 2 week preview key cuts off at 10 hours.



A lot of quests give you 2, or even 3 quests for each (primary + secondary) profession. But even with your example of 2 skills per quest, that still amounts to 30,000 experience and 2k faction. A.net's going to do that? Doubtful.

... And online petitions are worthless.

This was mentioned earlier, but ignored
In GW:P, there were no more (or an insignificant amount) of skill reward quests after ascention. Also, I can only remember 3 storyline relevant quests offered after ascention: the 15 attribute one, the one to ice caves, and the one to ring of fire, and the latter two offered a measly amount of xp.
From the factions preview, an explorable area would have more quests (with better rewards per quest) than all the level 20 storyline content in the game combined. Without repeating any quests, I managed to get a very satisfactory amount of skill points in a weekend, enough to try out many new skills I wanted to try. The nonrepeatable quests used the explorable areas very efficiently, for the most part requiring you to visit areas that would normally go unoticed by most players (think about how little incentive people have in exploring the southern shiverpeaks).
Even if they lower the experience rewards a bit, I believe that this change isn't going to significantly increase the amount of grind involved in this game

95% of the posts in here wouldn't need to exist if people just read the thread. Half of Mordakai's posts are just Gaile's post with highlighted areas to answer/refute other peoples' posts. If you're taking the time to post, then take the time to read. Of course, they won't read this either :P

It's already very fast. My only problem with the rate is the fact that faction is capped. I would tolerate that better if skill points had a cap too. Since they don't, I'll have 350 skill pts ready to use when factions comes out.. but I would have much preferred to have a million faction saved up.

The good reason you've been asking for is pretty simple. If Anet plans on releasing a game every 6 months, they want people to have a reason to play for roughly that amount of time. Continuing to unlock new content is something that can keep people interested. That doesn't mean it takes 6 months to unlock everything through pvp, but they want people to play for a decent amount of time to remain interested in the next game. If you unlocked everything in a week.. you might stop playing earlier and forget about the game. While Anet doesn't want you to grind at a pay-per-month snail pace, they do want you to have a reason to play for a decent amount of time.

Exactly. I think pvpers are under the impression they're the majority because it's a more vocal group. The people are generally more educated about the game and much more likely to post on forums and the like. However, we're certainly the minority and while I think we're catered to pretty well, we have to remember that. Just because we play and post more, doesn't mean we're putting more money into their pockets and that's the bottom line, literally and figuratively.

And on the casual gamers not needing UAX, I'll reiterate that I agree here. I think the unlock rate is very generous and any regular pvper will have no problem unlocking what's needed. Any avid pve'er interested in unlocking a lot can do that as well. Farming is available if you're interested, and it's an extremely fast way to unlock content in this game. I understand completely people not wanting to do it, but I don't understand people thinking that they should still have everything unlocked just by playing through the game once. There has to be a middle ground where things are unlocked quick enough for casual players to still get a decent amount, and unlocked slow enough so that hardcore players aren't bored out of their mind too quickly. I think this happy medium is reached pretty well, and I fully expect factions to be even better in this way. Again, the only thing I think is out of wack is the capped faction w/o capped skill pts.

This is an mmorpg. GW unlock rate is much faster than you'd find in say WOW or COH or whatever. If your friends think the grind is horrible in this game, then I'd say the whole genre wouldn't appeal to them. It's certainly not a design flaw however, and there does have to be a small grind factor involved for the reasons previously mentioned.

Yah, that's the reason I started some light farming to have a pve character ready to go through and unlock a crap load of content. While I think the rate of unlocking things through pvp is high (maybe even too high), the fact that we can't prepare for a next chapter the way a pve character can bothers me. I farmed for a few weeks and I have enough gold/skill points to unlock everything in factions. I would have preferred to do that with faction, and I would have had enough from the faction I already earned (if it wasn't capped). I would think anet would prefer us to 'prepare' by doing something more social like pvp, than farm by ourselves. What's more likely to keep us playing? I wish someone from anet would comment on that choice, it doesn't seem to benefit their business model at all.

This genre probably isn't for you. Not every game appeals to everyone. I agree with you though, and I hope you're right. I hope one person doesn't buy factions.. and I hope they don't post here any more either.

Unless there's an UAS button, SOME people will think the faction is too slow regardless of what it is. You can't make everyone happy.. but don't confuse that with a problem.

Well, there wasn't really a way around that. The preview event involved level 20 players, so you couldn't let those characters remain when the game was released. Pvpers were able to unload their 10K, and spend whatever they earned, but they'll still start out with a max pool of 10k. A pve character can start out with all the gold/skill pts they want and unlock a lot more content quicker.

I'm pretty sure this is a main philosophy that anet has about their game. They don't want the game to be focused on reaching the max level, and want more content to take place after you're already level 20. If you have more fun on the way up to your max level, again.. this might not be the game for you. I don't think they're looking to have less pve, just less content that involves pre-ascension/level 20 characters.

I think theres an old saying in the gaming industry which goes like this:

"Why fix something that isnt broken?"

PvPers: Its true in a way early PvP metagame evolved around the only few skills that they only unlocked in early PvE gameplay, but keep in mind that with 3 PvE toons of all different profession you will be able to unlock all the skills that are quest obtainable and can focus on unlocking those that cost gold in PvE through PvP faction point. Doing so will even allow you to have a free slot for PvP giving you the best of both worlds. This is my personal perpective as the ideal gameplay option, you are free to disagree. If GW:F follow the same system as GW:P in skills aqquistion, early PvP metagame maybe limited somewhat for a week or so for new players but overall it will be offset by ease of getting skills directly from non time consuming skill quest and allow players to enjoy some of the PvE content in the meanwhile before devoting themselves to the rest of their game life to playing a few maps in PvP.

PvErs: My main beef with the proposed system from Gaile's post would be:

1) level progression would be much quicker to balance players who link both chapters and have high level characters in the start of GW:F. This is understandable but there exist players who like to develop their characters slowly watching them grow and enjoy the story in the PvE (i am assume it will be better then GW:P this time).

2) By Linking Factions, Gaile and others had boasted that being able to have our ascended characters from different lands travelling to the other would provide overall more content to enjoy. However should the skill quests for either chapters be non accessible to the other chapters form different lands (apart from the attribute point quest) then the only option for players to aquire those skills would be to buy them from the skill trader.

3) The main topic of debate: Skill. When skills are unlocked for PvP it is logically present for all future use in PvP. However in PvE logically even if you unlocked a skill before, should you like to have it again on a different character you will need to buy it if it is non skill quest obtainable. The current model is of capping skill or cap sig at 1k is an "improvement" over the last system where cost of skills would still continue to increase in price over the 1k limit should you like to have more skills for that single character from different professions. Even at the 1k limit, current players are still having problems finding skill points or gold they need to get skills they require to adpat to certain PvE build for higher end levels or missions. The problem will become worse should those characters who had hit the 1k skill buying limit want to get Factions skills but am forced only to buy them. Same for GWF to GWP.

4) Quest rewards. Despite the assurance that was given that skill points will be gained much faster and there will be gold rewards to offset the cost of buying skills. Realistically comparing to the current system of skill aqusition via non time consuming skill quest by normal PvE play no amount of realistic award in experience point or gold will come close to replacing the current system in place.

My plea as a player of the game is please dont try to fix something that isnt broken (at least not too badly) but add the good stuff only.

peace

Edit for spelling

Wow. I don't usually make things personal in my posts, but Weezer_Blue, why in the name of Heaven are you STILL around? I don't think I have ever seen you say one, single positive thing about this game. I can only assume that you enjoy bitching on a forum far more than playing Guild Wars, but sadly, that means we have to listen to you.

I'm not saying you don't have a right to an opinion. You do. I'm just worried about your personal happiness. All this complaining about GW can't be good for your heart, man!

/personal attack

Now, let's discuss your predictions of doom...

Firstly, the ONLY skill quests in Prophesies that gives more than ONE skill for a class are pre-Searing quests, made to set your character up with a minimal handful of skills. These give out more than one skill, but only for ONE class, not both the primary and secondary.

To reiterate: There are NO skill quests in Prophesies that hand out more than one primary and one secondary skill for a total of two skills.

Now that we've got that straight, to allow the unlocking of two skills, why do they have to give you 30k XP AND 2k faction? Why?

How about, and this may seem silly, they do what everyone's been saying, and give you 2 skill points? Then, they give you an amount of gold that should buy you those skills AT THE POINT YOU'RE AT. It doesn't have to be 2k gold for your first two skills, does it? The gold increases as you get further in the game.

I'm not even going to mention how sick I get of hearing certain people say you need EVERY skill to be marginally competitive in PvP. Man, what crap. I guess it gives you something to tell yourself when you get whipped. "I would'a won if I'd had those last two Blood Magic spells... even though I'm a R/Mo..."

Can you tell me the difference between 30k xp or 2 skillpoints? Last I checked once you are level 20 experience means squatt. However rewarding with 30kxp is however in essence equivalent with 2 skillpoints. So this to me looks more to semantics discussions then anything else...

Our point was that this reward would be out of tune with the elite missionscontent that in most cases only gives you 5 - 20k xp for a moderately challenging quest (in fow or uw or sf). Meaning you can't just finish those in 5 mins like I used to do with some of the skillquests.

And yes in pvp it can on occasion break down to not having an appropiate secondary and therebye lacking 1 severe needed skill. If you encounter the lately popular 5 e/mo 3 mo/x holdinghall build which has enough spiking to kill a normal ghost, and once it has halls it will go over to healing seed and heal party spamming good luck capping halls when your necro forgot well of the profane to counter the constant healing seeds that would be hard as hell to consistently shatter.

Actually, as a matter of fact, I can explain the difference between 30k XP and 2 skill points.

*2 Skill Points awarded: Character is allowed to choose two new skills.

*30,000 XP awarded: Character increases in level a number of levels based on what level he currently is, gaining hit points, skill points, ability points, etc. A number of XP awarded to a starting character is far more valuable than the same number awarded to a higher-level character, thus confusing the entire 1-20th level progression and generally making a mess.

Remember, this is for new characters starting Factions. For old Prophesies characters that are already 20th level, it doesn't make any difference what system is used. So, if the entire universe revolved around them alone, it would be a mere matter of semantics... but you know, that just isn't the case.

No, I don't expect A-net to give people 30k XP for little quests. That's game-breaking stuff, there. Two Skill Points, however, seems harmless, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see it awarded.

Yes, many PvP matches are certainly lost by not having the correct skill on-hand for the situation. That hardly has anything to do with whether or not that skill is unlocked on the player's account.

Interestingly, I personally don't see why A-net doesn't give PvP characters all the skills. I really don't. Heck, I'd do it just to shut everyone up, if it were me.

On the other hand, I think that anyone that takes the PvP so seriously that they can't stand to unlock things by using the faction method deserves to suffer. Really, you can unlock things by playing the game you want to. How hard is that? Okay, so you aren't at full-potential until you've unlocked every skill. Ever think that everyone else out there is in the same boat? Evens things out a bit, I'd say.

If you think you'd win every time if you just had the perfect collection of skills, you're wrong.

Besides, unlocking is CHEESE, guys. If you found that you couldn't play Halls without that one, terribly necessary skill, a few minutes in the bloody random arena would get you enough faction to unlock it. No PvE necessary!

Yes, this is different than the way it works in an FPS. Funny, that's probably because this isn't an FPS, huh?

I just don't see any reason to be crying wolf about this new system quite yet. Sure, it might be worse, but there's no indication that it has to be. I personally think they'd have to work hard to keep it from being much, much better than the old system.

Try playing Prophesies PvE sometime, and being an Elementalist that isn't fire-based... or a hammer Warrior. Good luck with that.

Choice is good.

My point was that seeing that:

1) anet stated that the ramp up to level 20 would be way faster. And that the progression to level 20 was not their intent. Their intent however was to bring more gameplay to the level 20 dude. Becaue of this I presumed that these skillquests would be takeable by level 20s as well. For which i stated what would be the difference in the end
2) 30k is equivalent to 2skillpoints for this level 20 person.
3) factions was existing for +-80 content for ascended characters (ergo level 20)
4) these level 20 chars want the new skills as well.

all this would make it seem that it wouldn't be a big deal to give 30k xp. Although like I suggested it would be much easier to just let a person choose a skill in stead of start with something as dumb as skillpoints, or xp points or gold if the sole intent of the system was to hand out the skills to your own choice. If that wasn't the sole intent, then you can be sure that the rewards obtainable by these new quests will not be up to par with the rewards handed out now as free skills. This is logical reasoning to me. Therefore the only extra reasoning i can think of is to reduce the speed of unlocking of skills to a slower halt as to correlate the speed more with a pvp toon gaining faction. In the end making it take longer, in stead of faster as pvp always wanted.

The point concerning the build was simply that you might not have taken along because you hadn't gotten it unlocked, thereby making you take another skill that sorta works mildly the same, as redn enchantment because that one you had equipped. Even though its less usefull agaisnt the situation depicted before. In any case, i never really cared if there was UAS or not seeing that i'm a pve person, but in all honesty i can see the reasoning for it. It is already dumb enough to ocnsider something skill for not having a counter agaisnt every fotm available. The game would have been skill if you had every skill available in the game and had to decide on the spot what skill to use. The adaptations that would have went on and the entire dynamics would have favored the most skilled people in stead ofthe people running the correct counterbuild. Ergo see a rangerspike, take out a shield up. etc... but meh thats offtopic anyway.

I prefer crying wold ahead of time and see the small inadequacies getting taken out then see them deliver a game with all these flaws in. Since that would hurt them more in hte long run.

My elementalist is ward and icebased, and my warrior is a hammerwarrior and it goes way better then if you should try getting into pvp with a stancewarrior or smitingmonk or a AoE firenuker or a ...

FAST?

whaaaat, it takes a good 200 hours minimun to unlock everything if you are good. If they want to do that fine, but thats inconsistant with the way they advertised it, which is why so many people complain all the time.

Nice way to dodge the point.

People have been viocing the same concerns for ages, Anet have never answered them, some people are getting a little fed up with the fact no reasons are given as to why it wont be substantianly increased.

Again the only reason people moan so much is the way the game was advertised is not quite in-line with what you get.

Also i hope you also never post here again

So basically this thread has turned into a Universal Unlock debate.

Well, that's not going to happen, and if anyone thought Factions was going to do that, I have a bridge to sell you.

The question at hand is relatively simple: Will the new system increase skill grind, lower skill grind or will skill grind remain the same.

The answer: No one knows. Not even me, since all the crap I've been spewing out is totally hypothetical. Either Gaile is lying about the Gold and skill points being the same as two free skills, or she's telling the truth. We won't know until release.

If your refering to my post i did not ask for UAS but faster unlocks for PVP players, as i see no reason for a 200+ hour unlock rate for all skills ect.

(and 200 hours is optamistic)

Which is exactly the point of all this i thought, even after gaile posted people dont know.

Will it be faster or slower or the same?

Gaile said they will help offset the cost of skills, that could mean anything from 25% of the cost to enough gold per mission for 2-3 skills, it could mean ANYTHING.

Im a pessamist, i can only assume no specifics were given, because people wouldnt like what they hear.

People dont want extra grind, there concerned thats whats happening, and Gails post dosnt DIRECTLY answere that.

I was referring to the thread as a whole, but I'll be glad to address your particular point.

As a casual player, I've never worried about unlocking every single skill. Hell, I don't even have every skill unlocked for my main character. (Who needs all those Glyphs and Mantra's anyway?)

I unlock what I need when I need it, and it's suited me well so far. The idea of choosing what skills I get earlier in the game makes me optimistic. While I'm not sure such a feature will speed up UAS, but it will satisfy my desire to get particular skills faster (I already have some ideas for my Ritualist, and the faster I get those skills, the happier I will be).

I guess I see the glass half full...

i actually read the box just now down to the trademark.

nowhere does it say anything about time to unlock anything or imply it will be rapid.

you have given the impression that you are at least a competent (maybe even better) player.

i saw a 2 page ad for GW at the start which quoted the box on skill over time played.

it had a victorious x female with about 50 hours labeled standing over a huge warrior with 400 hours lying on the ground.

do you think you could put together a decent build in 50 hours play that would defeat a player of less skill with 400 hours of play?

since they didnt mention anything whatsoever about actual time spent only skill of player trumps grind time assures victory i dont see misleading statements.

possibly people reading the box might look at whatever is said through rose tinted glasses and be disappointed but i dont see misleading information on skill over time.

I still can't understand the whining.

Old way... quest gives one or two skills, which may or may not be in the line that your character is being built.

New way... quest gives what you need to purchase one or two new skills from the trader which has a battery to select from.

It's better. Period.

Its good for PVE as it does expand options early on.

But it dosnt address any of the PVP complaints about unlocking, it dosnt say if its faster slower or the same, from what i gather its not wholly different but the sheer number of skills to be obtianed from both chapters does present an issue.

Im also not talking about unlocking every single skill, but there are 400ish + runes + weopon mods, in GW 1 alone. Not having the right skills can effect your PVP performance to the point where you can play well, but some builds need x skills to counter them, if you dont have the skills available to counter a build then the time youve spent unlocking effects your performance, which is what Anet said they didnt want when they sold it to us. If they want to carry on down the road the game has gone, thats fine its their decision, but i find it unethical to still quote "skill not time played" on the box.

Another thing of interest, you look at skills that seem useless and decide to not unlock them. Individual skills can be useless, but combined with otheres they can create interesting builds, limiting the amount of skills you have available limits creativity.


Anet can look at their database and tell us the average player has 20k like they have done in the past.

I would be interested if they could look at all the accounts and see the general % of unlocks, im sure they have or can get this info.

It has nothing to do with PvP unlocking, so quit mixing unrelated topics. This is solely a change to how PvE players acquire skills early in the game. This isn't a PvP related change, but does allow for PvE/PvP players to unlock skills via PvE play of greater variety early in the game.

For pure PvPers, this doesn't appear to change anything.

Are they gonna reset the skill prices? I mean at 1k a pop per skill is messed up, grind not skill indeed, I hope you can get all the non elite skills through quest, then I'll actually do it(all the new skills, no prophecy skills) all the quest.

Skill prices are reset for all new characters.

You can only have 8 skills at a time. Compare this game to say Diablo or something, where time played is vastly important. Your loot can just overpower someone else with inferior loot and skill won't play much of a factor. This game isn't like that at all and time played is not as much of an advantage. Is UAX a helpful thing? Well duh, of course it is. If you've put in less than 200 hours into the game, I seriously doubt it's the lack of skills keeping you down anyway, it is the lack of skill.

Ummm ok ?

So what are you suggesting with that point?

Replace loot with skills, a better selection of skills gives you an advantage over someone who dosnt.

And why do you think that anyone needs more than 200 hours to be skillfull at a game, i dont get your point mentioning that. It shouldnt take most people more than half an hour to master the basic controls, after that its just learning what skills do what. Again what is your point, are you suggesting people actually need 200 hours to learn how to play~?

I think the idea you need all skills unlocked in order to compete is completely wrong.

In fact, I would argue you don't even need to have all skills to have an advantage. Look at the best builds out right now... ANYONE can make those builds.

Now, if you want to be the first on the block to find a use for a "crappy" skill, more power to you, but even if that crappy skill is now uber with this new build you've created, it's not hard for everyone to duplicate. Thus is the genius of Guild Wars...

Of course you can compete with less skills than someone who has played for 300 or so hours more than you. But it would put you at a disadvantage as they will have a better selection of mods and skills available to them. Weather its a small or big advantage it completly poops on the skill not time spent mantra.



So your vision for guild wars is that people should aim to unlock skills to use the latest build, rather than be given a large selection of skills and left to experiment, learn and have fun with.

what vision.

Well then you should be happy as thats what we have right now, people with limited skills unlocked to play the latest best build made by the more hardcore players. And its a "factor" as to why builds like IWAY, never seem to die.

Again im not arguing for UAS, thats not going to happen, though no reason has been given other than it was never inteded.

But i should be able to unlock skills at my learning rate, not have to be held back by the rate at which i can unlock.

I bet you guys also think you can't be truly competitive in basketball without $600 shoes. ^_^

Because it isn't in an mmorpg business model to do so. GW certainly 'less' of a grind than the standard and it is advertised as such, but unlocking things and having a feeling of advancement is part of the fun of the genre, and might be the main one. If you've played other games in the genre, you'd see that there is indeed a vast difference in the grind and GW is as advertised in that way. The loot factor is also pretty much eliminated. Loot is unimportant for competitive play, and unlike having luck play a factor in finding that super game breaking item that makes you a powerful character, you simply plan on what you want to unlock here. Loot as a whole is just for aesthetics in this game and while there are certain items out there that can give a marginal advantage, this is largely unimportant in the greater scheme.

My point being that skills are really the basis of this game, but you can only have 8 at a time. While you have more options, you still only have a bar of 8 at any given time. So you may have unlocked 10 skills, some other person might have 900, but your bars might be exactly the same and no advantage is given. Unlike other games where loot is largely in place of skills, the loot can be 'stacked' (like good armor, good weapons, shield, etc). But in this game, you still only have 8 skills at a time, and those other 900 skills aren't going to help you.. they just give you options.. and only options beforehand.. stuff you can plan for. You also choose which skills you want, which largely eliminates the grind. You don't have to spend hundreds of hours of farming hoping to unlock that one skill.. you can simple pick it first. And the changes in factions will apparently make this even better, both for pve'ers, and for pvpers who are playing pve to unlock content.

I'm not arguing that you don't want more options and UAX is certainly a priority for me too, but I also don't think it's required to play pvp. You can concentrate on certain classes and as you continue to play, you can unlock more content and be able to play more and more profs as you keep playing. Since pvp takes experience to be good at, I don't see this as a problem at all. People need to play to get better, and I think the rate of content being unlocked in pvp is actually higher than the learning curve. By the time people are skillful and knowledgable enough to play 8 profs, they'll have unlocked the content by then too.

I think people starting from scratch and playing pvp are at a disadvantage and can see them not liking this game much. People are much better off going through the pve at least once to get a working knowledge of a game, and at least moderate knowledge of one prof. Trying to learn the game in random arena from scratch is probably one of the worst ways to learn this game. Somone else mentioned they had friends trying to do that, and I can see how that would fail. But that's kind of common sense there. I mean any game you get, you usually go through the non-pvp content a little first before expecting to be at all competitive in pvp.

Actually that's wrong. Each profession has a quest in early post-Searing that gives 4 skills for that class. Now, these skills are the quest skills from pre-searing, but that's beside the point.

Now, I agree with everything else you've said. Just wanted to correct this point .

And yeah. 30k experience would be bad, because it would encourage rushing to an even more degree than it is now. But giving skill points out like candy+gold rewards to soften the blow of getting new skills.

Yeah. That's sweet.

1k gold+a skill point=any non-elite skill in the game for a fully explored character.

If you've played through the game with a character class to unlock stuff, a few k faction for runes and elites skills, and a fully explored character with some gold and a few skill points==UAX