Thoughts on skill availability progression

I've been noticing several people making side notes in semi-related threads concerning the availability of skills. I've had a few thoughts about how the current system is set up and how it could be altered to meet the need for a wider variety of skills available to a specific character at specific times through the progression of the PvE storyline.

Each area should have a group of skills assigned to it, and those skills should be available incrementally based on previous purchases. For example:

Let's say a location has a specific set of 24 Warrior skills available (4 of each type). Of those 24, display 2 skills of each type when a player first speaks to the trainer there. Now, once that player buys a skill from a specific line, replace that skill with a new skill from the same line. Rinse and repeat this process until all available skills of that line have been bought from that trainer. Do the same with a character's secondary, but only make 1/2 the skills available to that location's secondary pool, and only show one of each type.

Of course this is a VERY basic explanation of the process I'd like to see, but the point is to have every trainer have skills available that a player will need as opposed to multiple redundancies of the same early availability skills.

The alternative is to simply not make skills available at a trainer if the player already has them, but for each removed in this way, another skill of the same type must replace it. Again these should be pulled from a limited pool, but would work in a similar way.

As for the trainers in those odd camps in the explorable areas, assign them their own specific skills not garnered from any incremental pool. Instead, stick special 'hard to find' skills out there for those who have the desire to work their way out there to get to them.

I'm sure there are many ways to come up with that will facilitate the elimination of useless skill trainers. I'm just tired of arriving at a totally new area and finding no skills of the theme that I'm following with that character making that trainer useless. Every character should find at least one skill at each successive trainer in the storyline (this only means those in typical areas encountered when doing the missions straight through, in order) that fits their character's theme, even though the specific skill may not be one they want, at least it's there if they do.

I agree some skills really need to be more available than they are. I think the main problem, however, is that some of the trainers seem to teach nearly the exact same list of skills no matter where you go.



/daydream

On the other hand, while we are on the "I wish this was in the game" daydreams, perhaps a bit of flavor could be tacked onto your idea. Instead of just having trainers have 2(or 4 possible) skills from each line, why not just make each individual trainer have entirely new lists of skills that the other trainers do not teach? This would add the same amount of skills to the game availability-wise, but the trainers would also have skills that fit with that area plot-wise. So, sure, you may run into an illusion/death/marksmanship/etc. line trainer in one town if those lines fit the area, but the next town you find would have an entirely new trainer with large amounts of skills from the strength/water/protection/etc. lines.

For example, let’s say there is a hypothetical land located in the "Fire Caverns" or some similarly named place that has lava rivers and the whole fire theme going. I think the skills taught there should be skills like Incendiary Arrows, Immolate, or Fevered Dreams. Or for a real example, perhaps skills taught in Denravi should stick to the whole forest/Shining Blade rogue theme and teach skills like Poison Arrow, Life Attunement, or Barbs.

This way you would both get new skills from trainers and the skills learned would go with the general theme of the entire area.

/end daydream

Specialist trainers. That works for me too. Make the trainers in cities and major stop overs (like Yak's Bend or Denravi) have general sets of skills, while the lesser locale (the little camps scattered around the explorable areas) trainers have specific skills sets for each profession. Similar to what was done in pre-searing ascalon, but not profession specific, only type specific. For example, the trainer in location X would have only Sword skills for wars, only water skills for eles, only healing prayers for monks, only domination skills for mesmers, only marksmanship for rangers and only blood skills for necros. I think somethign of that nature would be pretty cool, although I can hear the PvP only players complaining already... "You mean I have to find my way to X camp to get my (insert skill set here) skills? WTF? ANet is forcing me to play their PvM AGAIN!"... sigh.