1k for skills, still ok.

You can still get a handful of free skills, and the gold you get from quests is enough to pay for quite a few as well.

It's working fine as is.

Its truly amazing 'how easy money is to get in factions'. Does it grow on trees or somet???

Imho, Normal skills should be 500gold each, Capture Signets at 1k each (they do give 5000exp after all). It shouldn't cost you a fortune just to experiment, Cap signets are different, if you want the elite you have to work for it anyway, plus there is a bonus on them to actually explain the cost.

Says the ranger with a set of FoW...

Sorry, just gotta put it into perspective for anyone on Anet who reads your post.

Since when are casual players concered with buying a lot of skills anyway?

that's a good point, but we still haven't gotten a definition of what "casual" means. (No, i don't need a dictionary.com copy-and-paste definition.) is casual:
* 3-4 hours per night?
* 1-2 hours per night?
* 0-1 hour per night?
* 1-2 hours per week?

i mean, how casual is "casual"?

i have a friend who still hasn't finished far cry, thief 3, half-life 2, or even installed f.e.a.r. yet. compared to me, he's pretty freakin' casual. but if you compare me to some of the kids who do fow farming, pvp fame farming, ch2 faction farming, or even some of the obsessives who have 2 accounts full of characters that have beaten both ch1 and ch2, i'm about as casual as can be.

so when we say casual, let's make sure we understand what casual means...

eudas

When they want to experiment with skills instead of coming on a forum and getting their build. Not all casual players are lazy. I am sure Anet wants casual and hardcore players alike to experiment with skills.

I agree that 1k cost is too much. It needs to be lowered to at least 500gp. I wouldnt even mind the 1k SoC cost.

It shouldn't be hard to experiment. Now, it is. Money is easy enough to come by but when you have to do some dedicated farming in order to afford to make a new build, something's a little off.

At the very least they could bring back the old scaling, and keep the 1k cap. My characters were all at several hundred gold before the change, and while I'm no longer outraged at the money I've lost, I am still kinda bitter.

Please post your support for an alternative way of acquiring new skills, or signets of capture in this thread:

L.Totems, I.Commendation, M.Credits, E.Requisition for SKILLS, SOC, FACTIONS

1k a skill is ok I guess. But not when you have to buy Factions skills.

I prefer the Prophecies method of getting 2 or 3 free skills from completing those mini quests instead of the current system in Factions.

Farming for 1k also takes about 10 minutes if you solo farm which is probably shorter than running some of those quests (If they did offer free skills) But i'd rather do a quest to get free skills than to have to farm...i just find farming boring, work like and a chore.

I don't particularly like it, especially since new characters are strapped for cash early on in the game. It's not really an issue once you've progressed to a decent point in the game, say Maatu Keep? That isn't far, and you should have a decent amount of cash from doing quests by then, and the cash comes in steadily after that. Up until then, new characters probably have some cash flow issues. There's no problem for Tyrian characters, as you should have some money laying around by the time you come over on the boat. So it's annoying, but in limited circumstances, and in those circumstances it seems very unnecessary.

For Canthan characters, something needs to be done. Think about it, once you get to Kaineng, you need max armor, near-or-max damage weapons, and probably a few new skills. Armor is 1.5k each. You need 5 pieces. That's 7.5k, plus crafting materials, or a lot of running around and hunting collectable items in the slums with monsters that are a few levels higher than you and can kick your ass a lot easier when you don't good equipment. Even if you run around and do every quest on the starter island, and farm a bit while reaching level 20, do you have 7.5k plus materials when you get to Kaineng? Probably not. Have fun farming money or collectable items and getting killed a lot for a while after you get there.

Oh look, new skills in Kaineng! You probably want some of those too since the next few missions will probably make you adjust your build once or twice and you don't have many skills from your training at Shing Jea. Your wallet will be wrung out for a few hundred gold from buying a few skills for your primary and secondary profession.

That's a lot of cash to ask people to cough up so soon in the game, or a lot of farming for collectables around Kaineng which means since you only get 1/8 of the drops you'll be at it for a while. It wouldn't be so irritating if they didn't shove you up to level 20 and do it in such a small portion of the game with low-end drops and not much opportunity to save up for the equipment and skills you should have when you get to the "real part of the game". You end up having to farm your ass off for hours, either for money to buy new skills and equipment, or for collectables to get new equipment and money to get new skills. It's a chore, and it shouldn't be.

*****Remember, Canthan characters only for the next suggestions, Tyrian ones have more opportunity to build up money and skill points before they get here and shouldn't need adjustments*****

• Why don't they bring back free skills as rewards and give us choice? Up until Nahpui Quarter, have some quests (not all of them necessarily since there's a ton in Kaineng and Bukdek and Wajjun Bazaar) that give a free skill and 175 gold as a reward to Canthan characters, and let the player choose 1 primary skill and 1 secondary skill for completing the quest. That way you can build up a decent variety of skills to let you experiment with builds, and earn a little bit of money to help offset the costs of new equipment and armor.
• Or, change some quests in those areas before Nahpui Quarter to have high XP and 500 gold as quest rewards for Canthan characters. That way you can still earn skill points quickly without having them handed to you, and save up money for skills and/or armor at a rate that is faster than what they currently have but not so obnoxious as to pay for an entire profession of skill unlocks or leave you with a sizeable amount of free money.

a lot of people saying its okay probably have a lot of money from farming or luck, but I know theres people like me who wither don't farm or don't get lucky at all with drops so I say its a little much since it drains my money away, but after i get the skills i need it doens't bother me, until i realize theres elites to cap. so i guess it should be like 500-750 since thats not as bad.

The prices should be slightly lowered in cantha, seeing how we have to buy every skill. If anything, cap sig should raise in price. Think of it, PvPers pay 1k faction for a normal skill, and 3k faction for an elite. If anything changes for cap sig, it should be more expensive.

\

Before they did updates I remember that was the max price you'd pay for a skill.

1k is rather expensive, IMO, capture sigs should be free, so you can bring any ammount of them, that would promote captuing skills.

I'd rather see, like 500 for skills, capture signet 1k to get, free when bought,

The 1k cap is great, better than paying OVER 1k per skill before the change.

1k is definitely doable, but somebody who's constantly buying/capping new skills (especially in the absense of skill quests) will most likely hit "break even" with the money they spend on skills versus the money they get from selling lousy drops to merchants/traders.

Since ANet wanted to get rid of skill quests (which IMO was a bad choice,) then the perchase cap on Factions skills should have been lower.

The 1k cap on skill price purchases is fine. They do however need to lower the speed at which you reach that price cap. 40-50 skills before you reach 1k each instead of the current 20(?)

Capture signets should be tracked seperatly and start at 500g each, reach 1k cap after 5-10 purchased.

That's me . I've noticed, even in Prophecies, I tend to hit equilibrium points - first at around 20K (that seemed to always be the money I had when I got characters to Drok's) and then jumped to 40K before I started experimenting with new builds more and it settled to around 30K.

Factions gave a big lift in in the equilibrium, ironically because I was going straight for end-game 15K armour for a couple of characters (only the torso piece, though!) and that meant I wasn't doing much experimentation on the way, pushing the equilibrium up to 80K, now kept there by going back and collecting elites that were skipped along the way (as well as building up the skill lists of new characters). Of course, gold isn't the be all and end all - I've also been collecting materials on the way, so my true wealth in a pinch is probably over the hundred mark if push came to shove.

That said, while I think the 1K cap is fine for well-estabolished characters, I think the rate at which the price increases could do with a reduction - it is a bit depressing when Elsa has five or less skills in all but one attribute (Wilderness Lore, and that's around ten) and yet she's already hit the 1K mark. Now, I can afford that, but that's because to an extent my younger characters are being subsidised by my elder characters.

For the record, I'd estimate my playing habits as semi-casual at around 2-3 hours a day on average.

I guess the casual players are the ones who have girlfriends and who have a life and spend probably 2-3 hours every once in a while on GW. They often go outside to party with friends and to go exercising.

The other type is the lazy fatass like me who sit in front of the computer all day.

Easy, casual is anything between 2-20 hours a week

As someone who plays about 1-2 hours on average a night, I consider myself a casual player.

For the Cantha-born characters, I found that you'd normally have enough money for armor when you get to Keineng city. As for skills, that's why the quests there give money as rewards. Found with my ele, that by the time she was a lvl20, I had done most quests from that area, and while I don't have all skills yet, in prophecies, you couldnt' get all skills till you got to ember light camp, so the game was never designed to be played with all skills up front, but with the ability to add to your build/change build as the game goes on.

Yes, i could have used money from storage to buy all skills, but.. i'm trying to save up for 15k armor for this ele and 15k for my warrior, soo.. not that much money for skills atm

Do I, as a casual player farm? Yes, if it's absolutly necessary or I just feel like not dealing with people/henchies.

Well, let me put it this way: I have 60 unspent skill points over my three characters and only about 3k in cash. If I had made better choices in armor and not wasted money on unnecessary equipment I probably would have a bit more cash, but if you're looking at casual players, they probably don't make perfect decisions either.

I really hate the "casual player" argument. It's really a bunch of rhetoric. People play the game as often or as little as they want to. There isn't a clean cut definition of what is casual or not. And there is an inference that "casual gamer" means the game should be watered down.

Only a very few people pointed out that because there is a cap we're not paying more for skills. Most of us, if we wanted to buy all the skills in the game would be paying a hell of a lot more than 1k per skill. The old system was only cheap in the short term and was drastically more expensive in the long run.

If some skill prices were lowered then I think it should be primary character skills. It should be less expensive and easier to learn your primary profession. On the same hand then I think secondary profession skills should remain on the same cost curve. The two cost curves should be separate with the primary profession capping out at a lower high end.

I don't have a problem with the 1k cap, but then I remember what it was like BEFORE the cap when some of us were paying MORE than 1k for skills.

I do however like the idea that learning our primary should be cheaper (not that it matters for me anymore, since I have all the "normal" skills for my primaries) but I do think the idea would be great.

I would like to see a smaller cost per Skill.

For example:
I had 100k to blow on my SIN. 100k sounds like a lot however after armor and collecting skills and selling everything I got from treasure I have yet to make back that investment. I beat Factions with my Sin and am still 78k in the hole from the 100k I started with. Granted I now have all SIN Skills and am missing 3 SIN Elites. This tells me the game was made to be played at a much slower pace. For someone who does not have that 100k 1k is a lot of money to spend on the BUILD OF THE WEEK. You know the BUILD you must have for a (INSERT CLASS HERE) to join a Group because you can't do certain missions with henchmen.

I don't know what the cost should be. BUT there should be a way to get skills without paying 1k for em.

Conversely, I started out factions with a R/Rt, and all I twinked was some leather squares to craft level 20 armor. I've got all R/Rt skills(other than some prophecies skills that I don't use/need/want-otyugh's cry, eg) on that character. In addition, in playing that character, I've added about 30k to my stash.

This is just through playing the game normally and working towards grandmaster cartographer(at 96% currently) and Protector of Cantha(10 missions). I don't farm, and the only materials I've sold were the amber/jade that I got from the 10k faction I needed to complete the Befriending quests. I've more than made up the leather square expenditure that I twinked, and added 10x that in additional materials(my collections of silk and steel have doubled since factions came out).

Overall, I consider myself semi-casual, semi-hardcore. I play pretty much as often as I can, but working 40+ hours a week and having an hour commute each way means that I only get a couple hours to play most nights, and doing stuff around the house and going out with friends keeps me to maybe 10 hours over the weekends.

That is a great idea! I am of the opinion that it should be expensive to have a whole bunch of skills, but for your primary profession it should be a little less.

When I was still trying to get money in the vault, 1K was alot, and i actively refused to buy skills for the sake of having them. I wanted armor.. and weapons 1st. Now I’ve got a bit of cash, I don’t mind forking out.. just find skill points more work to maintain.

I doubt anyone would consider me a casual player, but from my experience playing my assassin through Factions I've come to the conclusion that the 1k cap is fine no matter how much you play. Because, from the time I started her to the time I beat the game with her I only dipped into my storage account once. For that time I borrowed 10k (which I later put back from money she earned) and some steel so that I could get her 1.5k armor and runes as soon as she got to Kaineng Center. Other than that, which I easily could've waited on or gotten collector armor instead, I never withdrew money from my other characters' savings. And by the end of the game I had bought almost every assassin skill and had also capped most of the assassin elites.

Now, I may play a lot, but the only farming I did with her during that time was for a few collector items and also a bit to try and get some green daggers from a boss. (Which never dropped for me, by the way.) Even the money I earned by selling some lucky drops I got while playing quests/missions I put into storage to go towards the 15k armor I knew I'd want for her, so that never got touched. I simply went around and did every mission and quest, IDing and merchanting all the white and blue crap that dropped for me along the way.

So, in order to buy the skills you want, all you have to do is play through the missions, do quests, and avoid wasting money. (Which isn't that hard. All it takes is a little thought, such as getting a collector weapon and salvaging materials for armor instead of crafting a weapon and buying materials.) I may have beaten the game in two weeks but a more casual player could spread that out across a longer period of time and still have just as many skills in the end. You don't get them all at once, sure, but it's still fast enough to try out various builds as you work your way through the game.

If you play for 2 hours you should have enough money and experience to get a skill. A casual player can get a new skill every time they play. I'm hardly casual at this point, but I don't farm. I'll jump into fort aspenwood for 2 hours and come away with around 4k, probably more.

1k means you may have to spend a few hours creating a new build, but it is hardly it is a reasonable burden which keeps gold valuable.

just wished capsigs would be far less in price (half, 0?).

That way i would just go and cap all my skills . Now that would be fun

Thats what i thought at first when I started my first Factions character, my Rit. Got all skills unlocked and some 1.5k armor. Then I started my Faction Ele. Then my Factions Monk. I had about 200k in storate. That was the most amount of money I had ever had. I figured, as long as I did all the quests, i will have plenty of cash for skills and what not.
So far I have taken all 3 characters through Factions, did all quests, even both kurzik and luxon side. I still need to unlock about 15 Ele skills and 20 Monk skills, and Im down to about 9 K right now. I wouldnt have thought I would run into this situation.

The handfull of skills you get for free on the "newb" island are so few that it really doesnt even matter.

...runs off to find more cash...

same here

i find that IF you are a casual gamer.. you don't need to unlock all the skills anyway.

1k is okay, except it ramps up there way too quickly. Any more than 1k and I might as well just stop trying to play the game with the little free time I get.

It wont surpass 1k. 1k is a perfect capping for skills.

it's easy to make that much and all that fun stuff.

I think the 1k cap for skills is fine.

My definition of a casual player is based more on attitude and play style then number of hours played per week. The casual player knows FOW armor and "rare skin, max damage, req 8 weapons" are effectively out of reach. But the casual player also knows that because of the way Guild Wars was designed, the 1.5k armor and collectors weapon are equally effective and easily obtainable.

The casual player knows that they have choices to make. Do they currently forgo the higher priced armors in place of money to spend on skills? Or is the game more fun with the 15k armor sets in place of the ability to currently play more varied builds?

When I played through factions with an assassin, I started her with 10k "seed money" (which she has repaid twice over) and she has never had problems purchasing skills because of lack of gold.

Especially in Factions where u are required to buy most of the skills u need, the cap signets are fine at 1k, but skills i say should be at 500g

Your insane. 1k per skill + skill point is fine and worthy of it.

Aspenwood = farming.