An end to PvE Character skill segregation

I totally agree with the OP. Just think of all the primary classes that are versatile and can take advantages of all secondary skills combination. I'm also a build conceptor and I like to have access to all skills available. My Warrior may as well be W/Me, W/Mo, W/El, W/R or W/N (not even talking about W/A or W/Rt as I've not yet explored fully their capacities), and that's the same with my Me/X. Those being my two favorite characters, I've spent a lot of time, and money on their skills, and I'm still willing to test any possible combination with my other Mo, N, A, or R characters!!

Concerning the elite skills, I'm not found of collecting some skills that may not be useful for my character regarding his primary class (eg Strength elite warrior skills for any of my characters that are not W primary), so the title should be shared between all the characters' account.

/signed

Hengist

I don't see a need for a change. Once a character is advanced, and has all of the skills, why is it being deleted and rerolled? Why not, you know, just keep the character?

Sure, people will make new characters for new expansions, but with Factions there is a much better model for getting skills. Skill points come quickly and trainers teach all skills. You can play whatever build you design for pretty much the whole storyline. This is a great thing, but isn't it good enough?

Each character should have to spend time and resources to improve, even after ascension. This is part of pretty much every RPG in existence and it makes perfect sense to me. If you don't like advancing characters over and over again, then don't. Just keep a stable of fully-advanced characters.

I totally agree with this line. What I have said is that players should be out there earning new skills and hunting down the new elites to improve their collection. Players should be moving forward and not back, but the instant you roll a new class to take advantage of their primary and armour... bam, you have to re-cap your whole library of hundreds of skills. It's fine to be locked out while you learn the ropes doing the L1 - 20 stint, but after Ascension you typically want to think about your end game.

For some, the end game will mean earning a lot of money, trading or collecting rare skinned weapons or mini-pets, grinding elite zones or buying obsidian armour. For others like me, the end game is about having a complete skill set and finding obscure skill combinations to slap mobs with - and obviously each primary offers new possibilities, so a single old character with everything just won't do. Without my library opening up at some point, my new characters won't have much of an end game... certainly not a fun one anyway.

I'd like Ascended characters to have the kind of access to skills that PvP characters have, except that I don't care to play PvP characters - I like to kill mobs in new an original ways rather than players.

To make a reference to another game that had a fantastic open ended skill system, I'd point to Final Fantasy 7's Materia system. Every materia had to be found or earned, it's powers grown through killing mobs. But instead of materia being tied to one character, you could swap them around freely to quickly create new combos and it was really open to experimentation and using your brain. The most obscure thing that I found was the way Master Command interacted with Double Cut... a totally unexpected and powerful result occured that gave me a massive rush.

I approached Guild Wars with a similar mind; just an amazing number of skills combinations to tinker with if the game will let me.

/signed

I love the idea of the skill unlocks per account instead of character. I think it would help the game more than hurt it.

/signed

I quit World of Warcraft because it was a massive pointless grind. I like to play with multiple characters and anything that reduces grind is ok with me.

Either use the OPs idea, or make skills that are already unlocked cost like 50-100g at the skill trainer.

/unsigned

You have to level up a character anyway, and when leveling up a character, you level it up to play the character. Capping the skills you would like to use is part of the game.

1) If you aren't fond of it, don't cap them.
2) If you care about playability, why bother capping str on other chars?
3) If you do want to use the skills, just go out and cap.

You're absolutely right, characters are there to be played. I know you have a lot of skills Avarre, and you're a great innovator with your mesmer, but if you ever changed primaries now you'd be hosed.

If you were ever tempted in the future by a Chapter 3 class (or even an existing one), every skill you'd ever collected with Avarre would be locked away forever and you'd have to go back over Chapter 1 and 2 just to get back to where you were.

I believe players should to learn how to play a new character properly up to the point of Ascension, capping new skills along the way. After that point, previously capped skills re-appear in your library and you can concentrate on capping or buying new ones.

Replaying old chapters over and over with new characters is just insane. This change makes as much sense to me as removing "refund points" for attributes was.

I don't have lots of skills. I have all skills

Besides Avarre, I also have a necro with some 2500k xp that I use for fissure/uw, and a ranger (deleted) for solo/group fow (had about 1000k xp). These characters needed elite skills and multiple secondaries, and I went and got them. That's part of developing your characters.

Avarre is my little gem, when I make other classes I make them to play. That means I get the skills I need on that character, whereas on Avarre I get everything because I can. If I made a chapter 3 class, I would never try to max it, I would just grab everything that I need for that character and cap more on a basis of requirement. I already know where to cap previous skills, so it's not a grind, just another chance to play the character I'm getting skills for and spending time on. And those skills will allow you to play the character even more.

Asking for everything unlocked in PvE across the board is just silly.

As guild wars is rpg game. I would say no to it! YOu have to treat each charactor like a new life.

If anet runs away from this they are moving away from amking this game a true rpg! So in this case opening up all skills is not rpg! it is more like fps!

I had put deep thought in to it.

skill trainers will allow you to buy all the normal skills you have gained beforehand, but they cost just the same.

I have been suggesting the same idea for some time now, at some point in the PvE game, ascension, becoming closer to the stars, or after beating the chapter, a character would achieve some status which granted him access to all non-elite skills which have been unlocked for that account.

The other thing they can do to easily reduce the difficulty of re-skilling is remove the monitary cost for skills you have already unlocked. Basicly what I mean by this is that it would only cost you a skill point for a skill you have unlocked, instead of a skill point and gold (up to one plat), sucking up all my gold for each character I recreate is a staggering blow to finances, it is hard enough to rearmor this new character, for someone trying to build several characters, that cost is too high. With the increase of skill point and exp aquisition granted in Factions, using up your skill points and getting a few more isn't the worst fate, by just removing the cost of these previously unlocked skills it would help alot. This also allows us to unlock some skills with factions and then learn them on our characters without spending gold, for those of us who would rather try to earn "wealth" through PvP instead of PvE, this would provide a reasonable alternative, so far, we can only improve our PvP characters with PvE, it would be great if it worked both ways.

The point is that, this sort of gold sink, doesn't help stabilize the economy or protect against farmers, farmers are the guys that use the same character endlessly in patterns to gain wealth, they arn't in any need of new skills, or gaining skills over again with every other class, but for the rest of us, we need a more affordable means re-skilling new characters, it will be taxing enough to go through the same missions, quests, and exploration with our new character, spending time farming for each one is unneccessary tasking to no end, and not how we want to spend our time.

Each skill should only be paid for once....

GW is a revolution in RPG history, a game which doesn't ask a monthly charge for continous online service, and a game which stresses the enjoyment and playability of the game instead of work which should not exsist in a game. I have put even more thought into this, Anets typical perspective is one of disdain for farming and spending time doing monotinous activities for monitary wealth, this is an intregal part of GW gameplay, and should be carried out a step further. I believe the most common praise every game review gives GW is its pick up and play feasibility, farming for a dozen hrs to pay for skills on every character you make and remake isn't in sink with GW best features. Grinding may be a common flaw in RPGs, but it is a flaw, and should not be propagated just because it is common in RPGs.

dumb, like alot of people mentioned, its what RPG is.

ITS WHAT doing RPG is all about. you can't play once, then make a new char ready to be as "godly" or as useful as the last one you finally made.

stupid topic - feel bad for the people who have to explain time and time again. if you want something, go make it. if you don't wanna spend the time to do it how its supposed to be done - DONT DO IT. if you cant spend all the gold u need for all skills - DONT DO IT. quit complaining and either play with brains or quit... honestly. when i see PVE it means RPG. if your not playing with other people, your playing with the story. if you don't like rpgs, why are you playing one?


above : grinding isn't a flaw, its the same as life, you don't get a free 10k for your nice car because you were born helpless. you work for it - unless your spoiled. rpg is another world you put yourself in, play by its rules, enjoy the fantasy that doesnt equal the real world. thats role playing and its fun to grind for just your armor looks, instead of being naked for years tryin to get armor to even try to live.... makes no sense.

partially agree, I have 2 acc with 8 professions, that is a pain I have to buy/cap skills again and again, even a FoW run can't help much.
although it's fine to cap elite 8 times, but I can't afford to buy all skills with 8 characters. (I want to play PvP with PvE char, they can change suits in the middle of battles, unlike PvP char)

@BahamutKaiser: I agree with the idea to reduce the cost of skills you already unlocked for one account, like 500g or something.
and
/signed

It has rpg at the end of it becuase you are just fullfilling a role in a cooperative comptetive game that is all.I would hate if I wanted to delete and redo one of my Char. from presearing on.

Altough such a change would be dandy, I don't think it will come to be.
Buying skills is a moneydrain, and an important one at that...

I too would like to see this happen.. and yes it is a pain for those who reroll or don't like unlocking for the sake of unlocking. Earning a skill once is good enough, isn't it?

Even if ANet doesn't totally agree, there's middle ground. They could do a system where each time a skill is unlocked, the cost is reduced by 33% for new chars, or 50%, or whatever it is that seems right to them.

I do agree with the principal behind this, it is definetely an issue for those of us that look forward to high end PvP on our PvE characters.

i just rerolled my warrior because i didn't like her name, i exactly understand the OP's point of view.

/signed

/signed. Time consuming and a VERY expensive habit, that of re-rolling your toons.

We're so nearly on the same wavelength, but not quite

Instead of having a single maxed main character and some alts with the skills they need for a few builds, I like to spread the gameplay experience across six main characters and max all of them. Only then does the fun of creating builds begin.

It's a habit from playing party-based RPG's of up to six members; I created six personas going back... around 17 years or so now, which I take from RPG to RPG, each with their own name and personality, and they evolve a bit more with each game I play them in. Believe me when I say I understand roleplaying.

Currently, the only characters that I can use with my consolidated library of skills are pre-Ascended PvP characters in that psudo-PvE test environment, Isles of the Nameless. I can create a clone of a PvE character to test all sorts of combinations there, but it's limited to what I can fight and there isn't much scope for adventure either... I can't give it a proper run. I have no real interest in using the builds I make in PvP.

You've gathered all the skills on Avarre (well done by the way! ), but like I already said... I want to do it across multiple to get proper use out of the different primaries, some of which are Chapter 2 primaries and I may well find a Chapter 3 class suits one or two of my characters better as well, causing a re-roll. Replacing weapons and armour is a doddle, sharing money and inventory space across characters is also convenient when running multiple characters, but never sharing skills (like pre-Ascended PvP characters) is no fun.

This is the mantra that brought me to Guild Wars. All I want to do is get on with adventuring, capping new skills and exploring new areas, and not spend too much time repeating old content over and over to bring a character back up to speed with an old one. I see nothing silly about that.

Thanks for the support from everyone who thinks the same!

THANK YOU OP!!! I have been wanting to write something like this for a LONG time, actually have before, but retards say things like "man, just pay 1k when you need a skill, its not that much". BS, to get even the skills I am pretty sure I need, for primary professions only, would cost me at least 50k. That is BS. Now, I differ from the OP in that I will not reroll a character, no way, no how. And my expectations of of anet giving us what we really NEED is very low, though them changing alliance chat to be for everyone raised that a little, but still, what I ask for is the bare minimum. I would like all skills and signets of capture to cost 100g. no rise in cost, whatsoever. That would be decent. Yes, we would still have to go buy skills if we change our secondary profession, but I could live with that. Anything higher than 100 is still too much, lower would be nice, but again, I am not that naive. reg. skills should be 100 because people like to change secondaries, so they cant be expensive. Elites should be 100 because we still have to go out and cap them, 1k AND having to cap them is BS. For those who say the low lvl arenas might be unbalanced, WHO SERIOUSLY GIVES A ****, I MEAN, IF YOU WANT TO RANDOM PVP, MAKE A FRICKING PVP CHAR AND PLAY IN THE RANDOM LVL 20 ARENAS, is that SO FRICKING HARD? /end rant

And another thing, if I want to have every single skill for my primary and every secondary for that primary pve char, just to have them, then DARNIT, I should be able to without cutting TOO much into the money I am going to buy almost all the armors for all professions once they allow us to buy more char slots and make separate armor and special hat storage.

Tbh anyone who changes secondaries alot and has the skill points to purchase multiple skills on all classes should be able to afford them... I wouldn't care if the price lowered (it wouldn't hurt me at all), so long as we all get retroactive cash back. If you think paying 50k is BS, well... I've payed 690k, and a change with no return now would be... harsh.

Then again I never got my retroactive 450k for my capped elites, so most likely I'd just have to take the hit. I don't like the idea of PvE char skills becoming all unlocked (skill points are there for a reason), but a reduction of skill cost on an unlocked skill, as mentioned, would be cool.

EDIT: at second post

Yeah. And if I want all greens, I should get them from ascalon grawls. And if I want to get r12, I should get fame for kills in RA. And if I want to have fow armor, the price should be reduced.

See where this heads? Asking for something to be made easier because 'if I want to do it easy I should be able to' is a slippery slope, and a very bad one at that.

i go back to rolling the funny dice when it first came out.

having said that i cant remember a single RPG that let you gain access to all the skills of your other characters (present or deleted) at a later point in the game.

you create a new character you grow and play that character as far as you want not i got this far now give me account wide access to everything i have done so far.

Yes, buying new skills. I have a lot outstanding!

Those are all cosmetic changes.

Greens, Rank and FoW have no effect on the way your character plays. Skills do, and they have to be replaced on the character you want them on.

You can also farm Greens, Rank and the materials and cash for FoW on any character you like, then give them to any of your characters, but not skills.

Let me think. I've seen a L1 in 15k. There's nothing to stop a L1 Emperor's Hero as the title is inherited. There's nothing to stop a L1 wielding Greens. At least I'm asking people to Ascend!

Final Fantasy 7 and 8 come to mind (I mentioned 7 previously)... I guess there are others.

Cirian, I admit to being a little confused at your main point. When I 'retire' a character for whatever reason and re-create one, all the skills I have unlocked are still there (if I chose the same primary or secondary as I have already had). Knowing this, I do not see what the difficulty is....unless you are speaking of something like what BahamutKaiser was suggesting: if you've already unlocked /bought a skill, it should be available for the cost of a skill point only subsequently, an idea I would whole-heartedly agree with!

Personally, I much prefer the way Factions handles skill acquisition. Your avatar only receives core skills and then must choose which others to obtain. A price tag on each tends to make most people a little choosier. Prophecies' assignation of skills at random for quest rewards left me with a multitude of skills I did not want, had no intention of obtaining, and never used.

Hmm, I kinda get where the OP is coming from. Though I still think elites should be capped on each character. I've stopped deleting and remaking most of my char because it is just such a waste of money to buy skills, armour, etc. Instead, when I want a change, I reroll my pvp char as a pve char and run around as a low level for a little while.

Having said that I've played a lot of L2X and I really love how skills cost skill points, not gold as well. The OP also has a point that PvP players can unlock skills with faction and have them available to all PvP characters. Furthermore in terms of faction, the skills really aren't all that expensive. I would love for skills to cost skill points only. However I think a number of things would have to be changed to:
1) make skill points harder to get, or
2) make skills cost more than 1 skill point.
Elites should still have to be capped. Signets of Capture should still be BOUGHT - 1k each.

what you mentioned about final fantasy 7 was the materia change, that you grow the materia, and then you could trade it to another teammember, like heal materi from tifa to aeris when you get aeris for healing, and then from aeris to tifa so that tifa does the healing when aeris leaves the team.

well, guess what? you can do that, to some extent.
w/mo has all skills unlocked, goes and changes his secondary to mesmer, unlocks all skills, and then decides to go back to mo secondary, changes and voila, you have your skills back, just like changing materia.

there are few games that let you have all what you got, want an example?
resident evil 4, you finish the game, you start another game over the same saved data, and you could use all what you have acquired on that saved data.

Tales of Symphonia. once you finish the game, you can start another game loading the saved data of the finished archive, and you can get a few goodies at the start.

and that is implemented on the actual game, to some extent , you can take your lvl 20 with all skills to do previous missions.

now, if you make a new, no matter what game, you have to start over zero.

if you select the option "new game" on resident evil 4, you start with the basic stuff. if you select the option "new game" on Tales of Symphonia, you start with nothing.

if you select a made character on GW, you can "start" from the beggining with everything. if you select "make new" character on GW, then you start with nothing.

seems pretty well to me.

It sounds less like fun, and more like, "Im just too lazy to to go skill hunting again. I dont want to actually earn the skills my character has, I want to do it once, then have the ones I earned handed to my other chars, so I dont have to work for it." Ive got 4 character. and I enjoy doing the quests for my skills. Now that I know better how they work, I might take one when its earned, or I might just do a rebuild for a mission I know would be easier with a certain skill. Nothing against you, but I dont see it as "grinding" at all.

That's more like changing the materia on a single character... not swapping materia between characters.

What I'm suggesting would be more like capping a skill on one character, and having it appear on your Ascended PvE characters in addition to your PvP characters. PvP characters already automatically gain any skills your PvE characters learn by the way.

Now people may complain "But your other characters have different lives! Why should they share anything at all? You start from nothing!", but every other resource (weapons, cash, materials for armour, runes, fame etc) are freely transferable between PvE characters already. They are not separate, they are all account members who share many things.

Account members are like your own little family of characters that share most things already. On my account, my characters are either friends, have a master/servant relationship or are married. Each to their own, right?

Great examples! You have made a mistake on the Guild Wars example though. Let me show you:

When you make a new PvE character, they carry over any PvP titles and fame you may have, they are automatically placed in the guild your account is tied to, and they shortly get access to your account's shared storage, at which point they load themselves up with cash, materials for armour and shiny weapons collected by your other characters in a process called "twinking".

That's a character with nothing? No it isn't! Your account is one continuous "save game", and it stores many resources. The only resource not transferable are skills, and I want to do something about that by making your unlocked skills automatically available to all the Ascended characters on your account.

If you truly want a new character starting from scratch in Guild Wars, you make a new account.

Cirian, why don't you just ask for your PvP characters to be allowed into the PvE world?

There are those that want to use thier PvE char. to PvP in as most do.It is just a matter of changing secoundaries anyway if anyone saw my thread on Skilltrader not charm where you can trade skill not very usefull due to nerfage.

/unsigned

Making previously acquired skills available to even ascended new PvE characters will encourage more running from Ascalon to the Desert.
It's already getting out of hand to have to play Sanctum Cay with a level 2 monk coz he can't be bothered doing the storyline again.
There is a reason why you have to complete the missions and primary quests in Factions now.
Making skills available will also have an influence on the economy in the game.
My necro has till thusfar every elite skill there is and almost 4000k XP and i prefer playing with him coz i'm used to him. Not becoz he has all the skills.
I have a character of every profession (2 accounts) and this is what makes me getting used to the specific class.
Ok i had to delete several chars before i had 2 accounts becoz i didn't get used to it or got bored with it or wanted to try another. I always dreaded rerolling it but eventually i did and i always replayed the entire storyline. Why? coz i like it and it gives me a change to see how certain professions (with armor and the likes) are bound to sustain certain damagetypes and areas

How about this: change the skill hunter titles to global and give PvEers a REAL incentive to cap elites.

At level 1 title, skills and skill caps cost 20% less across the board. At level 2? 30; up to 50% at a level 4 title.

500g for skill caps cuts down on the purse load, if not the hassle of banging around fire island waiting for your cap to spawn.

Or a seperate title can be made just for PvEers. Working like "Kind of a big thing", you gain this title when 4 of your characters have achieved Protector of Tyria/Cantha, etc and it reduces the cost of skills as well. The more characters you have that get one title, the more the second levels until you max at levl 5 again with 50% skill costs. It also gives better players more incentive to return to early levels of the game, helping newbs.

Lastly, to reduce running around all over the world--and getting annoyed that your cap won't spawn on the map for the 7th damn RUN!--add a previous suggestion to the game, an elite skill trainer available only in UW and only after completing a hellish mission. These skills cost 3000g, are not effected by any titles, and since you are not in a town, you can only buy the caps, so they will have no effect on your current game.

Once? Once??? Man, I've done most of these quests 5-7 times! I don't think "lazy" is the right word

Let me ask everyone opposed this question: How would allowing people access to their previously unlocked skills affect you? Just have an NPC who you can talk to after ascending who will give you your skills. If you want to play through again, please do so. Personally, I wouldn't like to drag my Chapter 5 cahracter back to Tyria to do a quest for the 10th time just to get the skill I want.

Mind you, I'm frickin' wealthy so I wouldn't bother doing that anyway. but I also recognize the fact that not everyone has 150-200k to throw into a new character at the drop of a hat.

Again... this would only encourage low levellers to be run all over giving you no help what so ever only to make sure they ascend and get their skills. That sounds like a load of rubbish to me

As for dragging my Chapter 5 character to Tyria just to get SS for instance would let me see how my current build is able to sutain the other worlds and thus makes it worth to actually go over there and make some effort.

[QUOTE=Beat_Go_Stick]Once? Once??? Man, I've done most of these quests 5-7 times! I don't think "lazy" is the right word

Let me ask everyone opposed this question: How would allowing people access to their previously unlocked skills affect you? Just have an NPC who you can talk to after ascending who will give you your skills. If you want to play through again, please do so. Personally, I wouldn't like to drag my Chapter 5 cahracter back to Tyria to do a quest for the 10th time just to get the skill I want.

Mind you, I'm frickin' wealthy so I wouldn't bother doing that anyway. but I also recognize the fact that not everyone has 150-200k to throw into a new character at the drop of a hat.[/QUOTE]
Apparently because you "need" a certain skill Me, Im lvl 20 ascended, and Im not even sure I have any elites yet(have to check). Dont really care much, doing fine without them. I looked at http://www.xennon.co.uk/eliteskills/#necro to find out which skills are elites, and where they are, and out of those 25, theyres only 15 Im interested in.

2 Words.... RUN-NERS! I hate seeing lvl 5-8s in the desert! I once almost had a heart attack when I saw a lvl 1 there! Thats just the DEFINITION of lame, pure and simple. I dont care if youve got 20 accounts, and all but 1 hasnt finished the game, its still dumb. Um, by that time, Ill bet it'll be removed, or changed, or YOU COULD BUY IT! Unless you mean an elite, in which case do the damn quest again! Good Lord! Some of these quests Ive been on more than 10 times already, and it dont bother me at all, really. I get tired of doing it over and over again, yes, but if I "take a break" from that quest, do another, or go farming, then come back, its not a problem.
Im glad of that, because theyre are many who dont realize it.

Auto-L20's? Er, no. There's a balance between convenience and tedium, and it's easy to make arguments at one extreme or the other.

Something really tedius for example, would be if you couldn't share items or money between your characters - imagine the uproar! There were Assassins and Ritualists in FoW within a week or two of Factions coming out, and I'll bet they didn't farm a single ecto for themselves.

Now imagine if you couldn't share skills between your characters and imagine the tedium... oh, you can't share them, and boy is it tedius after 13 months of collecting the same ones over and over. So here I am proposing something I believe to be convenient, while not overly easy (like getting every skill for free on a L1, without needing to collect them even once - now that would be silly)

The runners and their low level customers have been a long standing issue in Prophecies already. Anyway, if a lowbie wants to Ascend they have to beat their L20 Doppleganger in a 1 vs 1 battle, so good luck to them if they think they can do it!

If anything, it might encourage more people to Ascend instead of turn up at Ice caves or Iron Mines un-Ascended. I'm pretty sure I've even seen a screenshot of a very low level character at the Ring of Fire mission, and some people do stuff like that for the shock value.

As for Factions, running is locked down pretty hard.

To the OP:
Great so now we will have Lvl 1 toons with elit skills, get real, this is the most ridiquless recuest I have read so far on Guru.

Bilateralrope,

I understand the differance. I have been mostly PvE. Now I refuse to actively play because of Faction, Favor, and the general treatment of individualism in Factions. So, that is my personal stance in this argument. But I don't think you are looking at the change in the game created by Balthazar Faction.

PvP players used to have to grind through PvE play to get their skills. They whined about it and got an alternative system for skills acquisition to allow all of their play to be separate from PvE play. (The reverse is not true for PvE play.) Now, they want PvE play to further conform to what they are familiar with, easy acquisition of builds. (In GvG one can acquire a build an hour or so I am lead to understand. In regular PvP play, a build a day may be unlocked.) In PvE, builds were nearly impossible to put together as skills were scattered across Tyria with a shotgun. The new Cantha system corrects this for any E-bay gold-digger.

And when I deleted all 12 of my characters it was because GW has failed to make good on the ever delayed storage promise, kept PvP control of UW and FoW access, and done nothing about the Faction system they created which I hold eternally immoral. It is also because of the "improved challenge" of 12-20 enemy mobs that cannot be separated resulting in kill-1-rez -15 dp, kill-1-rez -30 dp, kill-1-rez -45dp, kill-1-rez -60dp, kill-1-rez -60dp, ..... format now considered requisite and normal.

However, given that ANet seems to be promoting underhand economies at this point for faction, items, titles, skills, etc. I do not understand why anyone who would still bother playing the game has any problem doing anything against the EULA or not to get anythying they want accomplished. GW's signals are so mixed, and their promisses so unkept, the only thing that seems to keep more millionairs from existing, having any skills they want, and doing anything they want, is the inability to steal mommy or daddy's credit card more often. That is how I feel after 9 months in the game.

Fitz

Honestly, go cry about it. ANet is never changing the system, because it is a very important money sink. There aren't too many large money sinks in the game as is; they're never getting rid of the most used one.

Why is this even a complaint? Do you honestly need EVERY skill on EVERY new char? I just rolled a warrior, even though I deleted one a few months ago. I have every Prophecies and Core skill unlocked, but I didn't hop over to LA and buy every skill available, because I knew that would be wasted money. I actually thought about my build in advance, and bought what I needed. Heaven forfend you think about what you need before wasting money.

If, on the other hand, you just want every one of your chars to have every bloody skill in the game, you're also fresh outta luck. That is an unnecessary goal, and as such it will remain a hard and tedious goal. If you really want to remake PvE chars repeatedly because you don't like their looks/name, you should be clamoring for a stylist, not a complete revamp of the skill unlocking system. Otherwise, you need to remember that, while unlike any other online RPG out there, Guild Wars is STILL an RPG, and you shouldn't be deleting your PvE chars on a whim after putting hundreds of hours into him without being ready to put hundreds of hours into his replacement.

I haven't even been talking about elites, so here I go: elites will remain only attainable by capping. Period. We don't have that many long-term goals that are actually attainable, and finding and capping our elites is one of the main ones. However, if you find it a grind to cap "useless" elites...don't cap them! Why you would want "useless" skills instantly available to your chars is beyond me; you'll only ever use a few elites anyway. Find them online, and go cap 'em, it really isn't that hard. If you change the system, you gimp the Skill Hunter title track, which really is too high of a tradeoff to having elites available that you'll never use.

Fitz - PvP players now have the option to never have to play PvE. PvE players have ALWAYS had the option to never play PvP. It was only fair.

Skyy High,

The game is not, nor has it ever managed to be, a Role Playing Game. It is just an instanced game with gaming points of massive access to fellow gamers.

In Tyria, it was normal to develop access to every skill in the game. One began with a dummy dualed under each of the primaries and pushed them thru the game as fast as possible to open all skills. This gave ALL early players fast and easy access to any build of any class at any time they wished for any kind of PvPvE play. Then GvG builds were easy to develop because these Beta and initial players already had everything from the beginning of the game. Now you claim they should not have anything, after the so-called elite, controlling, established, precedent setting, standard bearers with their crystaline swords, million gold accounts from every early exploit before it was nerfed, etc., etc. should not be followed after by those who have had them as the example of success. Just get your 8 skills and go. Ignore the history of and in the game.

This is now the problem. Major players are going to lose interest if they cannot be major players. New players are going to lose interest if they cannot practice to the effect of major players. (They must begin with builds targetted at opponents that show them how to build to targets.)

Doing away with skills acquisition from quests was a bad idea. It should not have been completely nerfed. It should have been kept so that one could pick a build skill to use against an enemy, and if it did not work, try another, then the quests would end when you chose one to be permanent in your skill list. But it should have been working from build perspectives instead of the randome skill perspectives so far employed. The traders somewhat make up for this, but do little to help the new player.

I will admit there are skills I have found absolutely useless. I have seen a very few use them effectively where most cannot. They are not used often. I ran a water mage for sometime, though many find this too challenging to do. I used my Ele/Nec as Blood and Fire heal support as well, through Frost Gate. I have used a large variaty of builds accross a large spectrum of areas. (Though I find single class, or Class with Heal the only effective builds since it all comes down to Dmg/Sec over Dmg Mgt/Sec.)

As to the other, PvE players are still dependant on PvP players for control of game content areas. It was never fair. If something like Favor is going to be fair then PvP players should only be able to purchase elite skills within a 10 minute window after the same PvE group kills both Glint and Shiro consecutively without defeat or use max item power within a 2 hour window after the same conditions. Both being conditional for their region alone of course, and put all other regions under handicap or deny them access to arenas if their region has not defeated Glint and or Shiro in the last 10 minutes.

Fitz

Edit in on Elites: I would say elites should not cost 1k but more like 3k to 5k. But there are many Elites, especially ranger, I would not give you a gold for. I do not have a problem with Elites being available thru traders. It would have been some reason to PvP besides waiting for friends I used to play with to get on line.