Skill points are Stupid!

This is assuming you can just jump into a FoW group (which isn't the case in my experience, playing an N/Me), and then the bigger asumption is that you have favour. I play on European - so Fissure isn't something I can enjoy on a daily basis. Also, playing an N/Me means farming isn't an option.

Oh - and before you flame me:
Anyone prepared to criticise me playing on European - My friends play on European, friends > game.

Anyone prepared to tell me to scrap the N/Me - I want to play this character because it's what I want, this is my main character that I aspire to perfecting.

Anyone prepared to tell me to change secondary profession - No skill points to do anything with that.

That's exactly why I bought guildwars, too bad nearly every word of it was a complete lie.

<SolInvictus> "10 minutes before dinner,, blah blah... wow that was a really fun 10 minutes"
<SolInvictus> 10 minutes = LFG
<SolInvictus> Wow that was a really fun 10 minutes </sarcasm>


This is exactly the type of game I wanted to play when buying guildwars.

People who say scrap the N/Me don't know what they are talking about anyway. N/Me is actually very versatile, and can be very strong offensively. Every class in this game is a viable class and can fill a role in most situations. I agree that it's hard to get into a random group for UW/FoW as a necro or mesmer, because people don't understand how good those classes can be. But you can always make your own group too. I go with a guild group when I can, but if there's only a few of us and we want to go, I will just start the group myself (as a mesmer). And I like to get a necro when I am making the group.

As for playing on the European servers, though, getting favor would definitely be a problem. I am not sure what can be done about that.

No it not you loser, don't come here flaming me because your an anal retentive ass hole who hoards every little point and then come here and insults other to make yourself feel like you are superior to others, here’s an idea, go get a fraggen life.

Just to be clear, I have EVERY skill available for :Monk, Warrior, elementalist. I am missing 32 for Necromancer, 31 for mesmer, and 15 for ranger. I'm glad your happy farming for 1 skill point every 30 mins go buy yourself a hero cookie. I don't think I have ever gotten xp that fast I seem to get a SP ever couple of hours but i guess I don't have an uber lEte build like you. I just want to finish out all the skills and I don't think I should have to grind another 150+ hours to do it.

Couldn't have put it better myself!

I've done some n00bish things in my first run through the game, but squandering skill points at the skill traders in the cities was not part of them!

By the time I got ascended, I had a nice healthy 42 skill points in my character, more than enough to capture all my elites, and still have a good amount left over to zap around and pick up any other skills I didn't get first time round....

...and my character is a ranger. Hardly a great solo farmer in the higher areas, but I'm 6 skills short of the full set of ranger skills (never really bothered with my secondary), and I know that I don't really need them, but with 15 skill points left, kow I could pick them up, and still unlock a few necro elites if I feel so inclined, without needing to grind for XP.

Skillpoints: somewhat okay.
Refund Points: suck.

my opinion

Skill points are not stupid per se, they have just been implemented badly and take too long to get.

The worst thing is that buying buying a skill which you later get as a reward means you completely waste a skill point. So you either have to know what's coming or not buy any skills until you have finished all the quests.

how about:
you complete a quest for a skill you already got- you get back your skillpoint.

uuuu i can see thousands of people swearing "i got my skills prepatch yadda yadda"

when Anet say hours played, they are referring to *leveling to 20* and gaining godlike gear

you can rightfully argue that skill collecting should be part of it too


Jeff Strain, producer at ArenaNet, interview
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php(que)nid=20050401094900

of course,
then there are people who complain that the level cap of 20 sucks

My first run through the game, I blew all my skill points, but that character does have nothing but elites left now, and after a few hours, enough capture signets to get all but about five of them. My other characters don't have nearly as many skills as I would have expected at their points in the game...

I really don't see the logic behind skill points myself. I can understand making someone pay money for them, as you use money for other things as well, so that would limit your choices a little, but with skill points, they're there to waste, so why not? If skills cost 1k with an increasing cost per skill (25g, 100g ,250g, 500g, 2k, 3k...) each at vendors you wouldn't see as many complaints, I'd imagine. Or I'd hope.

Your missing the point dude, I had the same thing as you. I ran 4 Characters to 20 so far and I’ve got ALOT of skills. I'd say, looking at my records, I have about 3/4th of all skills in the game, I did NO, let me repeat that for the slow people NO!, farming to get all them. BUT to finish out all my skill sets, I have to ether farm mindlessly for skill points or Delete one of my characters I spent so much time on and worked so hard on. It pained me to do it but the math says that the quicker option is to delete and remake. The point of my post is that THAT is BS. Are you people not reading or are you just slow?

You're missing the point as well. I'll summarize my previous post:

There's no reason you should get all the skills - having all the skills will doesn't give anyone an advantage over someone who has all the skills minus two dozen (provided both people in question have brains).

GW isn't meant to be a game in which you completely run out of things to do in 50 hours of play. GW is meant to be a game in which someone who has 50 hours of play can have just as powerful a character as someone who has 5000 hours of play.

The fact that you can't get what you think you should get unless you delete your characters and rebuild them does not mean the game is flawed.

"I can't <insert sentence here>, so the box and the devs lied! This game is a grind! They need to fix this!" = not a real argument.

I’m not missing your point; your point is that is it a legitimate practice for A-Net to require you to grind mindlessly or to delete characters you put months of work into if you want to advance in their game after a certain point. I just don’t agree with your point.

An alternative solution to the problem would be to give more faction from pvp. Faction can already be used to unlock skills.

This is now mainly a PvE issue. Faction solved (to some extent) the PvP side of this issue.

It is not unlocking the skills but getting them for a character (or it is for me at least) that is the problem, even if I have the skills unlocked I can't use them for my PvE characters.

AMEN brother, thats a whole different can o worms. lol Don't even get me started

well there are a lot of games that there is very little limit - try WoW for example.

I'm sorry if you feel like I was flaming you. But I have never had a problem unlocking skills, even without farming o.O. I have all skills for all classes, minus a few elites here and there. It's not really hard, but I don't recommend spending all your skill points at one trainer. Maybe you should try replaying one of those characters with a different build to acquire the skills you presently don't have.

Again, sorry if I offended you.

Well, yes, that is my point - and you don't have to agree with it, you only have to realize that ANet has to.

There's no way this game would be economically viable if ANet were to give a damn about the amount of time *you* or *I* would like to play to completely finish the game (and then put it on a shelf and switch to another online game which you will not want to let go of when GW's next commercial expansion comes out, but that's another matter ).

The ideal scenario is the one in which *both* Mr. Casual and Mr. Hardcore are still playing the game on a more or less regular basis when the expansion comes out. Mr Casual may be trying to get to Hell's Precipice on his first character while Mr Hardcore may be trying to get his 20th set of FoW armor... but there's *no* reason why you, as a game developer, would remove one of these guys from your equation. You want to keep them both playing, so you want to give them both something to chase after.

(What GW does is merely give Mr Hardcore less useful stuff to chase after compared to what he'd get in other games. Instead of giving him twice as much hp as Mr Casual and three times as good an armor, GW only lets him chase after good-looking-but-not-better armor and extra skills which he can't equip all at once anyway... This is enough to make GW not be a grinding game as the others out there, since you only get mostly useless stuff from grinding... but don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that GW has any reason to not give Mr Hardcore *anything* to chase after.)

Making every single skill hard to get, or making full skillsets easy to get are just ways of narrowing down your customer base by allowing either extreme to lose interest in the game. They have to plan the game to hit the target on *average*. If I find the game too hard, I won't buy an expansion because I'll still have a lot of the original to play, or because I'll assume the expansion will be too hard for me as well. If I find the game too easy, I won't buy an expansion because either I'll have lost interest by then, or I'll assume that the expansion will be too easy for me as well.

I seriously think ANet did a fine job on this matter (at least ). There's a bunch of guys on my Guild who play a couple hours every other day since the guild was formed... most of them have one level 20 character by now. Then there's another bunch of guys who are online every time I log on and never seem to sleep... and neither of them has a full skillset yet - you can't say that's not a sign of good game desing. On average, they're keeping everyone playing, for one reason or another. The casual players don't quit because the game makes them believe their characters don't suck. The hardcore players don't quit because the game makes them believe they can get a little bit better still.

Don't you get a skill point for every story mission you complete? I can't recall if you get one each time you do the same story mission over though. Personally I have more skill points than I really need. I don't requre "every single one of them". And one can only use "one" elite, so I don't see a need to get every single one of them either".

/sigh there just no reasoning with some people; they are just too caught up in their own BS to even try to see the obvious. But ether way, I'll have all the skills in the game at some point in the near future, sense this thread started I've almost finished out another class skill set. But I’m going to remember this thread when A-net makes skill easier to get, couse I’m pretty sure their going to. As for me I'll keep chasing more skills because I don't do it to feel superior, I do it couse it gives me a goal and a reason to keep playing a game I enjoy.. And I’ll privately morn the lose of my favorite necro

Anet did a bad job with skill points. Amongst the designers' stated goals were that you should be having fun all the time you play and that skill should be more important than time spent in the game. Grinding for skill points is not fun, nor does it rely on skill - it is entirely dependent upon time. And that is the major problem, that skill points are so uninteresting to acquire, rather than that they are difficult to acquire.

It is possible that these goals changed during production, in which case they made a bad design decision, or (more likely) they merely failed to fulfil them.

I actually believe that having to grind turns more people off than it keeps playing and if Anet want to keep people buying the expansions (which should be their goal rather than to keep people playing) then they should be concentrating on making the game enjoyable.

Why the hell do you need 475 skills on ONE character? Besides you do realise that you can get free skills doing quests right?

What's more you can get FURTHER quests after changing your profession...

Loved by guildwars fans? Indeed... if you mean love the other way, everyone loves a noob.