Buying Skills

Is anyone else concerned about the fact that having to buy almost ALL your skills will, in fact, encourage people to go to e-bay to buy gold?

I had saved judiciously over 500k prior to Factions being released, because I wanted to make sure I had enough money for armor (I was saving for mesmer FoW, but I got the Canthan Imperial armor instead), and due to having to buy all the new skills for my mesmer, and ritualist, I'm down to $280k (okay, I did buy the 15k armor, but that was only 60K since I had saved materials as well).
I know I'm frustrated that I now have no good place to farm for gold.
And I have noticed that one of the locations I was occasionally farming, Elona's with the minotaurs, has now pretty much been taken over by bots. This is both the int'l and american districts.
I know that I can make gold doing other things, I have in the past, but I'm wondering how many more people this is going to send running to ebay so they can buy all those skills, etc.

well, when a level 17 or so assassin, never played the game before, is standing in KC #1, demanding to pay 175k for 15^50 zodiac daggers now... you can kind of guess ebay had something to do with it.

I know I am concerned. I do not farm, but I have played for quite a while (since January 1 - have two Lvl. 20 chars from Prophecies). I thought I still had a decent amount of money, but am already paying 1k per skill purchased with my new Cantha char, and I do not even have 1/3 of them for my primary profession. I have a few for my secondary, but if I want to switch secondaries I have to pay 1k for each of those too. On top of that of course I want the fancy 15k armor, but don't know if that will ever happen. Since I made a Warrior in factions (figured there would be enough Assassins and Rits around), I'm kicking myself now since if I would have started through Prophecies I would have many more skills and a lot more money. Frustrating that I can't even go back to Prophecies and get those Warrior skills via quests...Only char I'm starting in Factions from now on will be a Ritualist since I have no choice. Sad

Yeah, but now we get money and skill point rewards!

The problem is...
you don't get a platinum.

In prophecies, you gained two skills from a quest reward...now you can buy half of one if you're lucky.

Most if not all quests and missions gives gold, the gold you farm, the weapons you sell.

200-300g per quest/mission

Those of us who would like to change our Tyrian character's secondary class have to spend 1k per skill....I can afford it but I wouldn't be surprised to find that others can't. Expecting a newbie who just bought Factions to start shelling out 1k per skill (both primary AND secondary) after only aquiring 30-40 skills total is asking a bit much, wouldn't you say?

Then they decide to make a new char and are faced with the same price issues. I guess only time will tell but it seems like they should at least slow the rate of increase back down to what it used to be when it comes to buying skills. It hits 1k very quickly.

Since we have to buy all Cantha skills, it sounds like Anet wants us to farm more. Can you say "grind"?

Actually, I haven't found any problems with it yet. I have bought the skills I want to use or try out, and don't have an "Otyughs Cry" in the way. But between quest gold and sells to merchants from drops I'm noticing by bankroll increasing (slowly) while my skill total also goes up slowly.

What this has done, imo, is encouraged me to try out more of the skills I have rather than buy them for the sake of doing so and not using them.

They could lower the price cap on skills, or maybe give us more gold for the missions. It is kinda ridiculous how much you have to spend to fully unlock a class.

I like the idea to be honest. Perhaps it's not the best for everyone though.

With the new skill system I've been able to buy the complete Ritualist skill line with unused skill points on my warrior. Even though I won't be using them, I have those 53 or so skills unlocked instantly at the cost of 53K gold - a lot better than grinding out the faction.

I only buy the skills I know I will use...

I do wish that they would let you TEST each skill though. So you knew if it was worth it.

Gold not the problem here, the problem is skill points...

See it's fine for those that have a lot of gold, but for those who don't farm or play a lot. All I know is I would have A LOT more build options right now if I started a Tyrian Warrior. Part of the fun I had with my previous chars was trying out new builds. Now if I want to try a new build I have to spend (for me anyway) a lot of gold. Oh well - I'll say no more. This game is a lot less fun for me than the first chapter, and not just because of the buying skills issue.

Money, for skills, armor, whatever, has never been a real issue. Once I got down to the faction areas 40-80g drops were popping up everywhere. I sell the collectors items and the weapons i get, salvage the armors and sell the to the material traders at quite a nice profit. It would seem to me that the casual player would not feel so rushed to buy new stuff for their characters. Its the 'now' mentality. I say none of this to be rude or to invite flaming, but it seems that people are either complaining for the sake of complaining or going about getting what they want in the wrong ways. Play the game. If you have the skill, the patience and a little luck, the things you want won't take forever to get.

Honestly, I haven't had any problem thus far. Each quest gives approximately enough gold to purchase one skill, plus a skill point. Prophecies, to my memory, had very few quests which actually gave you a monetary reward (besides items). Not to mention, the hordes of creatures that doggy-pile on you wherever you go...Just selling 1-2 items from those buggers easily covers a skill.

Also, the skill system we have now allows for greater flexibility. You can purchase, or not purchase, whichever skills you need or want. You don't have to buy them all at once. It's only a problem if you decide you need ALL the skills right NOW. That wasn't even entirely possible in Prophecies, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's not in Factions, either.

~Astraea

The problem is both. Barring capping elites, and ignoring money for the moment, the skill acquisition rate is still much slower than Prophecies.

But money compounds the problem. I had a hefty sum saved up myself, but it's slowly draining away. I get 150-300 gold per quest, and a bit of gold per mission, but it's not really enough. It still bleeds my money away.

When I talked of gold sinks in the past, I focused on optional features. Grinding gold for a necessity of the game is NOT what I had in mind. Particularly because I prefer PvP, and I play PvE for the fresh experience the first time through, and the rest for the faster skill unlocks.

I like a lot of the new things in Factions, but my biggest qualm is the way much of it has been implemented.

Gaile spoke of the new skill unlock system as giving people a greater variety of choice in what skills to use. Personally, in Prophecies at this point, I had more skills unlocked, and I bought the last remaining few ones at a much faster rate.
I have more choice now, but I have less that I can actually pick, due to skill point and gold limitations. Somehow, I don't think that's at all an improvement.

Whats easier, to go get 1000 gold for a handul of skills... or do the quests necessary to get the skills? If anything it is less grind... I prefer this method, as I only do the quests I want. Less grind IMHO.

~prime

General consensus: Factions is harder than Prophecies
getting skills in proph - easy
getting skills in factions - not so easy
Some of you are complaining you can only unlock so many skills for your primary. The point isn't to have all of your skills as soon as you start the game. Maybe there is more grind in factions, but there was next to NONE in prophecies. At end game how many people use more than 2-4 builds for their character? that's only 16-32 skills tops

bottom line, quit complaining, the skill system is fine. In factions you have to EARN your skills

I have to agree that since almost no skills are given when creating a new Factions character, the high prices on skills that you have to purchase is VERY ridiculous...

I hope A-net fixes this somehow...

IMO they should either a)Make those Imperial Commendations useable for skills as well or b) Make the money rewards rise from 175 gold from some quests to 300g,and just make a slight increase in gold rewards in general. I prefer b), but which ever one works best I spose. Comments?

actually in factions its easy to get exp and skill points, + capping elite gives you 5k exp thats an brilliant idea. so skill points shouldnt be problem as lon as you use wisely

they didn't thing good about this problem, i only got blood skill for my necro and some others.. and i'm already at 1k, how can i even get all of them!? RED ENGINE GORED.

go back in Tyria.. and do UW/FoW and if like farming you can still farm in tyria also in cantha, you dont need to make big deal out of it. you will eventually get them, just spend your money and skill points wisely.

Just imagine if you're like me, and have a goal of capturing/buying *all* skills!

eudas

As a primarily pvp player, I really only enjoy pve through the first time, but I did prophecies with 4 characters to get all skills unlocked faster. I really don't have much gold, I simply don't have the patience to solo farm for hours. Right now I have ~25k between 5 pve characters, which is really sad. Without quests, I'm forced to buy skills for 1 plat, and though I have ~60 skill points between my characters, I can't buy the skills :-P I just hope for a lucky drop now.

From what I've seen of Cantha, its not a 'farm' begging to be razed like Tyria is - the emphasis seems to be on mission completion, team-work and exploration. Alongside that, high end weaponry is easy to get hold of so that players don't have to grind farm. This is why I'm confused that it costs 1k per skill when i have a couple of hundred to unlock. The petit gold reward from missions nowhere near matches the price of skills.

More like 1000 gold for ONE skill. And personally, it doesn't bother me because I have the gold, and getting skill points is easier. But I know a lot of people who don't have all that much gold and are buying only a few skills, which gives them less flexibility in being able to change builds for different situations.

In other words, I was concerned about those people that don't have a large gold stash to tap into ...... like ...... new players.

I think the skill purchases scale slower now?
I dunno maybe it's just been a while since I hit the 1plat cap...

I don't agree with this idea of paying for skills either. Anet made the game with the premise that you would not have to spend hours and hours to play the game in order to get some sort of an advantage. Although it seems that you would have to do it in order to stand out (15K and FoW armors) these essentially have the same stats as the "cheaper" Drok armors. Now that people have to pay for the skills, it almost inevitably leads to the fact that they would at some point HAVE to farm. Although I farm myself I don't like that fact that it has become a necessity for the game because it does go against the basic principle that Anet build this game around. While it is true that you do gain money through the quests, there are some 100+ skills released for across all eight professions which means it will cost some 100+ platinum to buy it all and I doubt (although not confirmed) that a character can achieve this some without a large amount of grinding. This presents a considerable amount of challange to those who just started the game. I think back to how difficult it was when I first started and had no money/runners/ideas on where or what farming is. While I do understand how this could be a solution for end gamers for the buyers of prophecies and also perhaps lower the prices of some items (1K for skill is a good portion of the money you could be using to drive up bids) it seems very unfair for those who are just starting and contridictary to Anet's stand that factions is a stand along game. Also while you do have more choices in what skills you buy, if you really didn't want a skill in prophecies you could have always avoided it (unless it were one of those few required ones) so I don't see the merit on flexibility. Changing the entire system would be a daunting maybe adjusting the cost of each skill (for Cantha only) comparable to the rewards for the quest would be an appropriate action.