Curse

octaviancmb · Oct 02, 2005, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Although I thought the increased cost of skills in PvE was a good thing, I've recently created a new character, and I've come to realize that the rate of skill cost increase should be rebalanced.

My newest character was a Necromancer/Monk (I'd never played a Necro primary and wanted to see what Soul Reaping was all about, and since I knew I wasn't playing one of the "holy trinity" I chose Monk to assist with my henchman useage). I also challenged myself to never draw gold out of my vault to pay for anything for this character. I have utterly failed in this challenge.

Although I never purchased a skill I could get from a quest, only bought two sets of armor (the ascalon set and the droknars set), and only purchased two signets of capture, I am now at Thunderhead Keep and Copperhammer Mines with skills that cost me one plat each. I have skipped numerous Monk skills, still don't have all the basic skills for my primary profession, and now *must* resort to farming in order to pay for skills on this PvE character.

So I'd like to make two suggestions; I plead with ANET to make at least one of them:

Lower the rate at which gold cost for skills increases.
Increase the rewards/gold drops along the way through the game.

A purely casual PvE player has little means of finishing a profession's basic skills (and very little hope of even scratching the elites) under the current system. Using myself as an example, my character picked up every crappy thing that ever dropped for her and all the gold, finished all the quests, missions, and opened all areas (up to TK, which I'll finish with henchmen after posting this...). I was very frugal, eschewed armor, runes, and excesses (no keys, dyes, or dwarven ale for me: just the basics -- identify, salvage, expert salvage kits), never "rushed/ran" anywhere, and used collector items as weapons/foci/intermediate armor between Acalon and the Southern Shiverpeaks. My only purchases have been two suits of armor and skills, and my character's broke. (She's had to dip into my vault already, and I'm not even heavily invested in finding elite skills, yet.)

In short, I've tried the newly costed skill system, and it costs too much.

Ednemak · Oct 02, 2005, 10:58 PM // 22:58

Ya, I dont understand how A-net is gonna go around and nerf farm spots then up the cost for skills...

Jenosavel · Oct 02, 2005, 11:19 PM // 23:19

I haven't made a new PvE character with which to test it myself; however, in order to get things fixed how they should be, perhaps a closer look at what needs to be changed should be made? General statements like "it's too high" or "change it back" don't help anyone. How many skills could you buy before you reached the 1 platinum cap? By playing PvE normally, how much gold does one generally have by certain milestones in the game where spending skill points becomes important (Grendich Courthouse, Ice Tooth Cave, Ascalon Settlement, etc)?

I think answering these kinds of questions would be the first step towards convincing ANet to change anything. Proving something needs to be done is far more effective than just complaining something needs to be done.

IxChel · Oct 21, 2005, 04:12 AM // 04:12

/signed

Jenosavel. I don't have exact statistics, but one of my characters went from having skills cost about 350 to 1 platinum with the update. I didn't buy skills before the update because I lacked cash... I should have gone to a loan shark if I had known the change would be that drastic.

Perhaps the skill cost should be a combination of per-character and per-account so that your first character is quite a bit less expensive than your second or third character. Since I've unlocked all skills for my monk, I've started to accumulate some serious cash -- and it isn't a problem any more. However, I can imagine how it would be a serious problem for someone's first character.

generik · Oct 21, 2005, 05:29 AM // 05:29

The costs now are definitely quite significant.. and rises really steeply once you've purchased 10 or so spells (usually elites).

My counter to this? Just cap elites for your primary class only, and cap those useful unbounded (no attribute) elites for your secondary.. works very well.

I can afford to do this since I have one character of each class.. so no point wasting skills getting (say) Domination skills for my El/Me when I can simply turn it around get get superior Dom with my Me/El