Curse

xakia · May 17, 2005, 10:25 AM // 10:25

I'm on my 3rd secondary job and I'm a skill collecting addict. I have to gain level 20 again each time I want to obtain a skill. At this rate, its going to take me eternity to collect all the skills that I want on one character.

What we could use is more quest that actually reward skill points instead of exp. Maybe 5 Skill points at a time? While the Underworld and Fissure quest help with the exp conflict, its still incredibly slow to gain a level for that 1 skill point.

I like how we can change secondaries to work out new strategies in pvp and pve. It's a good feature, but gaining new skill points is quite the grind.

Phaedrus · May 17, 2005, 05:02 PM // 17:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by xakia

I'm on my 3rd secondary job and I'm a skill collecting addict. I have to gain level 20 again each time I want to obtain a skill. At this rate, its going to take me eternity to collect all the skills that I want on one character.

What we could use is more quest that actually reward skill points instead of exp. Maybe 5 Skill points at a time? While the Underworld and Fissure quest help with the exp conflict, its still incredibly slow to gain a level for that 1 skill point.

I like how we can change secondaries to work out new strategies in pvp and pve. It's a good feature, but gaining new skill points is quite the grind.

That's a lot of skill points. I think they already sort of gave us a solution, which is questing for skills instead of buying them. I quested for most of my primary and first secondary's skills, and I have 20-some skillpoints left. I don't think I've gained many skillpoints after 20 (though it's not like I keep track).

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Vangor · May 17, 2005, 05:10 PM // 17:10

Well, I've gained over 40 of them, purchased skills for Warriors, Monks, and now Elementalists, am getting down to 20, and I am quite watchful. I could never buy all the skills left over, many quests do not offer them, and questing at level 20 does become somewhat useless, especially for skills you do not want.

Alot of random small quests offering skill points to post ascension or post lich characters would be helpful in allowing people easier times unlocking skills.

Balc · May 17, 2005, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Seems people get what they want, a game with basicly no grind. People still complain... Apparently its impossible to make everyone happy which I say it is. But this game is hardly a grind in any sence. Your working on your 3rd set of 2nd skills? Yes it should be DAMN hard to get skills at that point they dont want to give you everything right off the bat lol. I expect a grind at that point, thats alot of damn skills.

Loralaiy · May 17, 2005, 06:03 PM // 18:03

My advice is not to collect EVERYTHING you can get your hands on, but any skill you find attractive and might want to use for a build. That'll save you some time rather than just collecting things you won't ever use; you're only griefing yourself.

Narcissus · May 17, 2005, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balc

a game with basicly no grind. People still complain...

You're right, we shouldn't be able to do quests/missions for skill points. When you get to the point where earning skill points via leveling past 20 is no longer fruitful, you should start a brand new character. This way you get to go through and do all of the tedious missions/quests/exploring that you already did before on your first character.

Working through the same content for a second or third time will be fun! *eyeroll*

BahamutKaiser · May 18, 2005, 08:02 AM // 08:02

It is better to take up a second and third character then to try to "lvl past 20" just to gain skillpoints. They basicly give you all your skills for your primary and original secondary, the advanced option to change your secondary is just that, advanced, instead of doing the SAME class over again just to use a different secondary, you can switch it.

Moreover, there are certain skill that you know your not going to use, you rarly use more then 5 skills from any 1 class, just find the best 5 from that class and move on to another, if you want the entire spell list then work for it, don't expect a hand out.

At this point, any person who even says grind is an idiot, this game has been out the lesser part of a month and your already talking about how hard it is to gain absolutly everything at the end of the game. In any other MMO you would have just gotten your first decent matching set of armor, and learn to cope with the BS gameplay. This game came equipt with rocket packs, if you want to go any faster then you need to be playing a space cadet game.

xakia · May 19, 2005, 05:46 AM // 05:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balc

Seems people get what they want, a game with basicly no grind. People still complain... Apparently its impossible to make everyone happy which I say it is. But this game is hardly a grind in any sence. Your working on your 3rd set of 2nd skills? Yes it should be DAMN hard to get skills at that point they dont want to give you everything right off the bat lol. I expect a grind at that point, thats alot of damn skills.

You do realize that its already quite challenging and expensive just capturing these skills? Thats why I do it. I know it should be difficult to get all of the skills and it is, but a few new quest that reward skill points would make things easier than running multiple trips in Fissure/Underworld.

I'm at like 500k Exp. It takes a long time to get a level anywhere else.

Hell...they should just allow us to purchase capture signets without spending a skill point.That way I could continue searching for skills I want to collect at the expense of alot of gold. Gold is pointless till next expansion anyways.

Guardian Legend · May 19, 2005, 10:08 AM // 10:08

I agree with Narcissus. I'm playing 3 different RP characters in the same content, and it sucks. I think that the fastest way to gain skills may be to skip the Missions as much as possible, and simply go from town to town, getting skill quest after skill quest. After you've done them all, do a few missions so you can get skill points, then buy whatever you need from the trainers. But you should have a ton of skills just from walking around.

I think ArenaNet should've made it to where skills were given to you from the missions, and side-quests were for something else.. like XP, loot, whatever. Skills should be something that everyone can get with little effort. Only Elite skills should require some hunting. As it is though, you need to run around the world doing boring side quests in order to unlock skills efficiently.

Boring side quests should be for people who want some extra XP or loot... it shouldn't be mandatory for skill hunters.

Oracle · May 19, 2005, 11:14 AM // 11:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balc

Seems people get what they want, a game with basicly no grind. People still complain... Apparently its impossible to make everyone happy which I say it is. But this game is hardly a grind in any sence. Your working on your 3rd set of 2nd skills? Yes it should be DAMN hard to get skills at that point they dont want to give you everything right off the bat lol. I expect a grind at that point, thats alot of damn skills.

Look. There is (virtually) no grind the first time round, I'm happy to concede, but what about the 2nd and 3rd times you want to get all the skills? I still haven't got all the skills for the only PvE char I have, yet I'm lvl 20 and I'm down to only 5 skill points with loads of skills left to capture/buy, etc.

In my opinion, there is grind in this game, it's just a case of whether you are a hardcore player with all the time in the world to grind those 2nd/3rd times, of if you have a busy life and only casually play GW but still want to enjoy TRYING other class combos, etc. I simply do not have the time to grind a 2nd/3rd time for all those skills.

And don't even let's get started on how long it's going to take to get all the runes to be fully spec'd out for PvP...

sybban · May 19, 2005, 11:24 AM // 11:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balc

Seems people get what they want, a game with basicly no grind. People still complain... Apparently its impossible to make everyone happy which I say it is. But this game is hardly a grind in any sence. Your working on your 3rd set of 2nd skills? Yes it should be DAMN hard to get skills at that point they dont want to give you everything right off the bat lol. I expect a grind at that point, thats alot of damn skills.

Seems people will always complain about someone venting on a forum. Take a moment and let the irony set in.

RTSFirebat · May 19, 2005, 11:49 AM // 11:49

I'm a bit confused, don't you get additional skill points for everyone "level" you again after getting to level 20?

Mimu · May 19, 2005, 11:56 AM // 11:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by sybban

Seems people will always complain about someone venting on a forum. Take a moment and let the irony set in.

Seems people will always complain about people complaining about someone venting on a forum.

..This could last a long time.

This game is not grind-free, I will admit that...but at this point, after gaining that many skills it should no longer be easy..just start a new character, run through the skill quests and then go back and do the missions for the points.

I can see that the only way to stop people from posting about the (minimal, compared to most games) grind in Guild Wars would be to allow (PvP) characters to unlock a random class skill for every 5 wins at the arena or HoH.

That would shut the PvPer's up and make both sides happy.

Vangor · May 19, 2005, 02:39 PM // 14:39

If they allow the option to use a new secondary, which I'm quite knowledgable of since I have all of them unlocked and can hot switch whenever Ibasically choose, then the option to progress as them all really needs to be implemented.

As it stands, as you purchase new skills on a single character, it costs antoher 10g per next skill, I'm up to 340g PER skill, it doesn't matter which it is, I will have to down more than 1k just to get 3 right now, and that number will rise. So, they have this little measure in there, why not gain more skill points so we can waste all of our cash on it instead of choosing to level a second character. I have a Monk primary, and as much as I want to be one, I really don't feel like doing it some times, I'd rather play a PvP one, I've done all of the things already.

Corwin_Andros · May 19, 2005, 05:23 PM // 17:23

What is funny here is I'm almost certain that the majority of people complaining about not being competative without 235872357345 hours of grind to get all the skills and runes and upgrades have a different concept of competative from what the developers were intending.

My interpretation of that ANet was saying and implying was that with the lvl20 cap and the ability to instantly have a lvl 20 PvP character, you didn't have to go through all the level grinding to compete.. You can install the game and compete with all the other lvl 20 characters of someone that has had the game for months. And you can. AND.. If skillful enough you can even win against someone that has played much longer and has runes and upgrades and more elite skills than the premades. I've done it.. Not consistently and I don't expect to alwys win at ANY level of experience or acquisition, but I can certainly compete. We are never outclassed in level by the other players. Even in the lower level arenas such as AC or Yaks Bend, there are level caps to keep people from simply destroying others without a fight.

What I've seen here is that many of you are seeing "competitive" a bit differently. You seem to think you just CAN"T go play and compete in the arena or tombs without having every skill, rune, or upgrade and therefore are not competative until you have all these things. TO you being competative means you have to have every toy available because SOMEONE else already has it.

That said.. I agree that they really should do a bit of revamping the skills capture/gain. I believe they should give PvP only players an opportunity to let their characters grow WITHIN the PvP segment of the game without all the PvE "grind" they all seem to to despise so much. Of course this would also leave that open for PvE characters to make use of the same system once they have access to the same arenas.

Not sure what the system would be, but it should be implemented somewhere in the Tombs aea.. Somewhere after the ascension point where everyone is Lvl 20. Give the PvP players access to the all the basic skills for their given classes. That would put all characters new to the tombs area on roughly an even footing skiils wise. You might have a few PvE players that show up with an elite skill, but I ascended without one and even though I've kept my eye out, I haven't really seen an elite worth a damn up to this point.

Give all players in the tombs the ability to either purchase, win, or capture elites and gain runes and upgrade drops to round out their characters.

If they did it this way, nobody would be cheated. I know some people doing PvE would complain that they are losing any kind of advantage in this sort of situation, but really you aren't. As a PvE player who dabbles in PvP only about 30 minutes or so at a stretch. .. I enjoy being somewhat competative with all the PvP people, but for me just getting through all the content to where I was at a literal place inthe game where I COULD compete was where it was at. And let's all be honest. All the arena combat before tombs is simply training and fluff areas. Tombs is where the real game is as far as PvP goes. So if I'm not totally compeative with PvP charaters in the arena at Lions Arch.. So what. I'll be that much stronger and experienced by the time I get to Tombs.

While it is nice to have the runes and things available. THese things are easily tradable in tombs as well and can be acquired by PvP only characters without unlocking them first.

The thing is does anyone reasonably think that anyone.. say even a group of 8 friends that have played other ames together for years.. can just go down to the store, all buy the game, install it, make PvP characters, and actually just jump right in an win the HoH? Gods willing I sure hope not. But they can sure jump right in and compete, however, ineffectively with the big dogs even if they lose. It won't take them months to get to that point.. only a few mouse clicks...

I think a system like this would be ideal for those who are tired of trying to get new skills by repeating the content. Go through the game once.. I thnk everyone playing would benifit from the experience, but once that is done and you've made it to the ending parts of the game at least once.. It would get a bit tiring for people who were only truly interested in PvP.

For me.. I don't mind the secondary change system in and of itself for my PvE character. I plan on laying him out until there is nothing left to do until the expansion comes out. And when I'm done there are other character to work on. In fact I'm working on 4 characters at once. WHen my guildmates aren't available in an area I work on another character in a level where they are at or just solo for a while.