Curse

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 09, 2005, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Inspired by kunt0r's thread on the old gem system, I've been thinking of ways to revamp the current system. The way players acquire skills is going to be critical as long as skills are such an important part of the game. It's one of those fundamental supports of the whole game system and it needs to be as good as it can be for the sake of the whole game.

First, the problems. The current way of acquiring skills is seriously flawed. Since it's been split into three systems it's not as simple and streamlined as it once was. There's no longer an easy way of trying and testing skills before they're learned. Skills are also distributed unequally leading many skills to be unavailable or difficult to reach especially in the earlier areas and especially if you're interested in a non-standard line of skills. Skill points become unimportant And, most importantly, the gold sinks are at the beginning of the system. It's harder and more costly for the average player to acquire skills than it is for one with connections.

Now, what is it that we want out of the skill acquisition system? Well, we need to cover a lot of ground because we have a lot of different interests amongs the player base. Those who are interested in getting to the action don't want to mess around with a lot of complicated details. Those who like messing around with things want the system to be complicated so they can gain an advantage by playing it right through making the right deals and trades. Those who are interested in competitive play want the skills to be easy to find so the playing field's level. Those who have the collector's bug don't want the skills to be easy to find because getting them all should be an accomplishment. Novice players don't want a lot of options so they can understand things quickly. Advanced players want a lot of options because they want to choose their own skills not have them forced down their throats. Lots of conflicing desires and tendancies - probably more I've missed - and we need to accomodate all of them with our skill system. We can't make everyone perfectly happy but hopefully we can strike a middle ground that pleases everyone in some way. At least enough that they'll put up with the parts they don't like or understand.

So, undertaking this monumental task of overhauling a complex and integral part of the game what would I do?

Skill points need to matter again. Skill points are what your character gets for continuing to level past 20. That should be an accomplishment not an afterthought so the first thing I would do is to make all skill rings cost a skill point to use. No exceptions to the fact that you earn skills by earning skill points.

What this does is to allow those people who want to collect all the skills to still do so, they'll just need to gain 150-odd "levels" in order to do so. But those collect-'em-all people don't care about that, in fact having to level that much makes it an even greater accomplishment. People can brag about their "actual level", and say "You've got 45 skills known. Well, I've been playing since release and I've got 112 skill points.". This is a drawback to the competitive crowd who'll want as many skills as they can get to keep up with changes in the game. But, realistically, by the time a character hits lv20 they'll have enough skill points for whatever plan they'll want to use. You only need 8 for a build and perhaps 4~6 more to change in and out for need. It's a small price to pay, then, for giving those players who stick with their characters a small reward by giving them more options with their skills. That sense of dedication is a lot better to me than the current idea of having an extremely wealthy or connected character who can buy up skill rings and charms to get the skills they want.

To solve that problem, I'd make some more drastic changes. First, I'd let players craft skill rings as well as increasing their drop rate. Since they cost skill points now I don't mind if they're much more common. Crafting a ring will have a huge cost, more than any piece of armor and probably more than any full set of lv20 armor. Different materials for each profession, of course, and a ton of gold, and you've got a ring you can use to learn a skill once you find a charm.

This will be the concession to the "competitive" crowd. Large, organized groups can sink their resources into making sure their players have the proper skills. Because it's so costly it's not something the average player can do that often but it should still be useful as it would encourage players to make and sell rings for profit. They'll be big ticket items but common enough that they won't be outrageously overpriced. It furthers the economy and lets teams of players adapt to changes rapidly. Just as long as they've got the skill points.

To further help the economy, I'd change the way skill charms work, too. I'd get rid of the skill gambler so no one has to spend ludicrous amounts of money to find the right skill - since all skills should be able to be found through trainers and bosses anyway, it's no big loss. And this will make the charms for rare skills all that more valuable and encourage the crafting and trading of them.

Further, I'd remove skill necklaces from the picture entirely. They're the only way to try before you buy at the moment but they represent too big a gold sink for the newer players and an incidental cost for the advanced players, I much prefer it the other way around. Instead, I'll alter skill trainers. At a skill trainer you can either buy a skill charm or you can temporarily learn a skill for a period of a few hours. To use that skill charm you'll, of course, need a ring but rings should be fairly easy to come by, perhaps even being passed out as a quest reward or two at early levels so people can learn new skills. Temporarily learning a skill would work just like a skill necklace does now but it would cost a minimal amount of gold, say 5 gold, or 1/4 or what it would cost to buy a skill charm, and you'd only have use of it for an hour or two. That's enough time for someone interested in it to test it out by running a mission or two or heading to the nearest EA or Arena. At the same time, it can be used to temporarily gain skills for that GvG match or a Tombs run when your character's run out of skill points, but only for a short time. A team relying on temporary skills to augment their strategy are going to have to keep going backto the well for more. The average player pays a small fee, the advanced players will pay more and more.

Then, I'd redo the Signet of Capture. I'd make it into an inventory item rather than a skill to slot. Just like a skill ring, it takes up a spot in your inventory. When used it will create a window not unlike the trade window where any capturable skill that's used will appear for a brief amount of time. Rather than having to time and watch the boss in order to capture, those skills will remain for, say, a minute or so, and you can browse over them at your leisure and view what it does, so that there's no rush to making your decision. Once you've decided on a skill, you can double click on it and charge your capture signet with that skill. A captured skill in a signet can be double clicked on to temporarily learn that skill, just like buying a temporary skill from a merchant. Doing so discharges the signet so you can't re-try a skill. If you like the skill you can take the ring to an NPC, probably the nearest skill trainer, who'll let you permanently learn the skill. These charged and uncharged signets can also be traded (And perhaps something like this could be done for joining a charm to a skill ring. You slot a skill charm into a ring and it has a charge you can use to temporarily learn it or you can also permanently learn it). Personally, I'd let a character capture a skill from any monster not just bosses, but that's just me.

So, the net effect is that learning a skill has two parts. You need a ring/signet and you need a charm/skill. When you put the two of them together you can either temporarily have access to a skill without destroying the items and without losing a skill point or you can permanently learn a skill and lose the items and a skill point. There are several ways to do it, and hopefully the various methods will appeal to the various niches.

Now, to address the issue of, say, the Earth Elementalist trying to play around in Old Ascalon - ie the fact that some lines and skills are under-represented in the currently available skills - here's what I'd do: Let players pick from more skills at character creation.

Each profession should get to pick and choose from several starting skill load-outs. Let's say you select a Warrior. You get one skill automatically, something any Warrior would be happy to have, let's say it's Sprint. So, when you pick Warrior you get Sprint but you also get to pick from various roles or packs. Let's say there's an "Offensive", call it "Fighter", maybe, pack where you'll get Frenzy and, say, Wild Blow as starting skills. A "Defensive" pack, "defender" where you'll get Endure Pain and Healing Signet. And four or five other packs to pick from like a "Swordsman" pack with Hundred Blades and Sever Artery and a "Hammer Time" pack with Staggering Blow and Counter Blow, and so on. When you make up a Warrior you'll first pick Warrior and then you'll get to pick say a Figher Swordsman Warrior or a Hammer Defender Warrior and get a different selection of those five skills from your primary. And then you'll get to do the same thing for your secondary but you'll only get to pick the one pack. Toss in a rez sig and dust off your hands, you've got a build. Let's say you're an Elementalist/Warrior you could pick the Fire Casting Elementalist/Defender Warrior to start off with Flare, Fire Storm, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Glyph of Sacrifice, Aura of Restoration, Endure Pain, Healing Signet, and a Rezsig. Or the Fire Flame Elementalist/Offensive Warrior with Flare, Firestorm, Searing Heat, Fireball, Aura of Restoration, Frenzy, Wild Blow, and Rezsig. There'll also be a "generic" or "recommended" set of packs for each profession that a player could click on so they don't have to bother will all the various combinations. If a player does that they'll just get the three packs the devs have picked out as the best to start that profession with and it wouldn't be much different than how a character would start now.

You could also do all that through trainers in the tutorial, having there be four or five trainers for each profession who'll give out just the pack and a quest to try it out so you can decide as you go (But, since I'm in favor of also letting people skip that tutorial if they wish and just get straight to the game it would also make sense as a set of drop-downs at the creation screen).

So, to review :
-Everything costs a skill point
-Skill rings cost a skill point to use but drop more frequently and are craftable
-Skill charms will be more difficult to obtain as the skill charm gambler will be removed.
-Skill necklaces are to disappear.
-All skills should be available at skill trainers. Just not all at once as some trainers will be difficult to reach.
-Skill trainers either let you learn skills permanently for a skill point or temporarily for a few hours. They do so by selling skill charms which you can use with rings to either uncharge to temporarily learn or destroy to permanently learn.
-All skills should be available at bosses so that a Signet of Capture can be used to capture any skill.
-SoC will be inventory items, not skills. They'll create a list of skills that you can capture so you can pick between several skills to capture.
-Capturing a skill charges you SoC so that you can either temporarily learn the skill and uncharge the signet or permanently learn the skill for a skill point and destroy the signet.
-Character can customize the skills they recieve at or shortly after creation by selecting from diferent groups of themed skills. Or, they can select a preset configuration and head straight to the game.

the idea being to reduce the amount of randomness in the system and allow players better control over their characters earlier. No more hunting down the right monster or hoping the gamble turns out all right. Instead, you can make your character into what you want. You won't be given a list of 150 skills to pick from so there's still that element of discovery and experimentation that having rare skill entails, but the system should be much more self-correcting and forgiving. At the same time, there's more ecconomic encouragement to make and trade various charms, rings, and signets. There are a lot of details and things to work out but the general concept is what I'd like to see.

Aladdar · Mar 09, 2005, 07:51 PM // 19:51

I personally hate the soc completely. I'd change it slightly to something I've recommended before. Let's go back to something closer to the gem system.

Mobs and bosses will drop ruined rings, gems, or broken rings.

Ruined rings can would be used to craft a skill ring.

a broken ring would be a ring with a broken gem.

The gem would obviously be the skill gem and to learn it you would have to spend a skill point and some crafting methods to craft it into a broken or crafted ring.

Occassionally a boss may drop a perfect ring that was not destroyed during the fight which would be very rare and possibly not require a skill point.

This and skill trainers would be my only way of aquiring skills.

cce · Mar 09, 2005, 08:20 PM // 20:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

-Skill necklaces are to disappear.

I was going to play with these this upcoming beta. In particular, I see them as adding a nice sort of "dynamic" strategy. While you have 8 fixed skills, it'd be neat if 1-2 of them could be swapped in/out via a necklace. In other words:

1. I'd make skill charms more common, and try to turn it into an economy for buying/selling them. Common low-level charms should be cheap, and the more rare, the more expensive.

2. I'd keep the two sorts of necklaces. The cheap one lasts for 2h, the expensive one lasts for 10h of _play_ time. Making it based on real-time severely disadvantages older players who only want to play for an hour or two each day, for about four hours each week. Also, the cheap ones can only equip your own skills, and the expensive ones are _always_ elite slots (since they are dynamic).

3. I'd make the necklaces specalised to particular skill-lines, and make them 'treasures'. Also, I'd make them _not_ consumable, that is, when the skill expires (or you unequip it when _not_ in an arena or game), the necklace stays, but the skill charm, of course, is consumed.

I think adding a level to charms and necklacess would be neat; a lvl 10 skill charm, when equiped would do damage as if a lvl 10 person had cast the given skill. A level 8 necklass could only be used for charms up to level 8, and not for a level 12 skill charm. When someone _creates_ a skill charm, they create it for their current skill level - 2, with a maximum of 1/2 their current level. So, a level 20 elemantalist /w a earth magic of 10 and fire magic of 14, could make a level 8 earth skill charm and a level 10 fire charm. Of course, you could still _learn_ a skill through a ring + skill charm, but in this case, the level restriction isn't important. This limitation also makes it so the 'dynamic' skills are a few levels lower than what they'd be if one equipped them directly.

Ensign · Mar 09, 2005, 09:03 PM // 21:03

I agree with most of this - the most important parts being that everything needs to require a skill point, and having every skill available at a trainer somewhere. The price of crafting a ring effectively puts a cap on the price of a ring, so it should be tweaked to being a bit more expensive than the going market rate - if rings sell for 150 gold, make a ring cost 200 gold in cash and materials. If you make it too much more expensive no one will bother.

Tweaks to the Capture Signet would be nice, but I don't think are too neccessary. Why? Because you've fixed the ring and trainer system for people who don't want to bother with capturing skills. As a result you don't have to make the Capture Signet as user friendly as you would if it was *the* way to acquire skills - you can design it to be a more elegant implementation for the role players and other PvE fiends who like the capture mechanic. Basically you have different methods for different people, so it's ok if every mechanism doesn't work for every player.

The big change I'd propose is to how people initially get their skills. I agree with Saus that people need a whole lot more choice in the matter than they currently get. I also think that Old Ascalon should be used to teach people about how to acquire skills - not just hand a bunch out for free. Thus I'd integrate the rest of the acquisition methods into the tutorial, walking people through the process of acquiring skills.

So let's say you created a new Warrior. You go outside of Ascalon City, get your first quest, complete it, and head back for your reward. Now, instead of getting handed two predetermined 'free' skills, this trainer gives you two skill points as a reward. Then he'll walk you through the process of spending those points on skills that he knows - give him a very narrow selection of skills, to make things easy. Say, Sprint, Healing Signet, Hundred Blades, Cyclone Axe, and Hammer Bash - basically just a couple general skills and a specific skill for each skill line. Introduce people to skill trainers, hand out skill points that anyone can use - you get the picture.

You also have specific trainers for each skill line - there's a hammer master, an axe master, and a sword master. You can get directions to any of these after doing the newbie quest. Each of them will have their own sidequest, just like now, and upon completing a sidequest you get a skill point. These trainers would have an additional 4-5 skills that are usable by a player with the appropriate weapon - the sword trainer might know the Sever / Gash combination as well as Power Attack, while the hammer guy would know Counter Blow and Staggering Blow. Tell players they can spend skill points at whatever trainer they want, and let people mix and match with the skill points they're being handed as well as those they've earned.

Secondary classes work the same way - pick a trainer, do their sidequest, and get access to their skill inventory. If you pick a Monk secondary on your Warrior you'll see one trainer with Orison and Healing Breeze - another with Reversal of Fortune and Shielding Hands. Take whichever suits you best.

Hand out eight skill points total for doing sidequests, after which people just get access to skill inventories. Eight skill points = eight starter skills = a full skill bar. Exactly what you want. If someone wants to skip ahead, the procedure is fairly straightforward - you just give them skill points until they have their starting eight. They can then buy all of the skills available in Old Ascalon at the skill trainer in Ascalon City.

It's straightforward, introduces people to acquiring skills in the game, and gives people a choice about how they want to develop a character.

Ideas?

Peace,
-CxE

Shrapnel_Magnet · Mar 09, 2005, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Well, don't you get a skill point for leveling up? Maybe hand out 6 skill points for free... and since the Academy suggests that you should be level 3... you get the final 2 from leveling to the suggested/recommended level. (and more points, obviously, if you level beyond this)

I do agree that there should not be just "Skill Trainers", but specialized trainers... "Illusionist Trainers", "Pyromancer Trainers", etc.

Hikarate · Mar 09, 2005, 09:31 PM // 21:31

I like the idea of skill trainers dividing up by attribute lines. Would even like to see areas built around each attribute line with mobs that are weak against the specific line, sorta building a history on why these attributes are focused on and available in this location. Good time to explain to new players about the refund points system. Bit late in the game for suggestions like these, but I really like the ideas Ensign posted.

Bgnome · Mar 09, 2005, 09:42 PM // 21:42

would skill point refunds work into this system?

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 09, 2005, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Divying up skill trainers by attribute lines sounds great. Unless, of course, you want a line that's not the one they specialize in. Then, you need to find another trainer, so hopefully whatever area you're in has more than one skill trainer. For the towns and outposts it makes more sense to have general trainers who can service everyone. It's centralized, everyone knows the place to look, it's a gather point, and so on. Where you want the niche trainers is out in the EAs or otherwise where people have to quest to reach them. They're a reward then. You want to specialize in this, well, here's the trainer who has all or most of the skills, a lot more skills than that generalist in the easily reachable areas will have, but to reach them you're going to have to work for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aladdar

I personally hate the soc completely. I'd change it slightly to something I've recommended before. Let's go back to something closer to the gem system.

Mobs and bosses will drop ruined rings, gems, or broken rings.

We're actually not that far apart, Aladdar. On further thinking about things, I see that I have a system with three ring states, too. There's unbonded rings, uncharged/bonded rings, and charged rings.

Rings require skills before they're useful. By themselves they're worthless. You need to slot a charm into every skill ring - probably at no or minimal cost. But when you add a charm to a ring - let's say "bond" it - you get a charged ring. You can expend that one-use charge and temporarily gain access to a skill so you can try it out. When that's done your ring is still bonded but you can only use it to learn that skill which you've bonded.

Perhaps there could be a way to recharge rings for a high price but that could lead to some abuses, I prefer one ring = one charge so that if you want to keep using temporary skills you need to pay through the nose but at the same time you can still try out a skill at least once before you use it (I'd also make the time limit on such things by account rather than character, if you log off it's not going ot expire on you.) so it's another high-end gold sink if people are trying to abuse it.

However, I do like the SoC as it's pretty flavorful and it does provide that alternate way of learnign skills. But, you can consider the SoC, were it an inventory item, just a skill ring that's received some sort of special charge. A charge that means you can't slot a skill charm into it but you can capture the energies from a monster using a skill and use it to charge a ring with a skill.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cce

I was going to play with these this upcoming beta. In particular, I see them as adding a nice sort of "dynamic" strategy. While you have 8 fixed skills, it'd be neat if 1-2 of them could be swapped in/out via a necklace.

Yes, I do like the options a necklace gives a character. but, then, I always liked the 9th slot, too. But what I'm trying to do is to take a complicated hodge-podge of three conflicting acquisition systems and create something more streamlined. A simple, easy to understand system that anyone can pick up and learn to get skills but one that has a lot of depth to it that can be explored and controlled. Skill necklaces are superfluous, then, because they add another unneeded layer of complexity.

Instead, their function is replaced by the ability to temporarily learn skills from that skill trainer - who'll basically take one of his charged skill rings and let you rub it or whatever because as a skill master he can recharge them while your character can't - or from using the charge of a bonded skill ring or SoC. You can carry multiple rings or rent multiple skills so there's still the strategic flexibility offered by it. However, since you don't have to buy a necklace to try out skills, it's an automatic part of the system, it's more newbie friendly. At the same time because redoing a skill ring and skill charm to temporarily learn a lot of skills is going to be more expensive, it's an added sink on the gold of those hyper-competitive players who want to take advantage of it. Since I'd get rid of cross-class skill necklacing the only real advantage here is that a player with enough money can temporarily get around the limit on skill points = skills learned so if guilds and PvPers want to grind away for those temp skills, more power to them. They'll also wind up with, perhaps, a bunch of uncharged skill rings that they can dump on the market that players looking to spend skill rings can buy.

I agree with you about the ecconomic points, though. My primary concern is to make sure that skills are all available easily, just to put a limit on how many skills you can have on a character at once, in the interests of competitive gameplay. I don't like that teams can get a good advantage because they're lucky enough to gamble the right skill charm at the skill gambler now and others are out of luck due to some skills being rare. At the same time making every skill immediately available or at the same level of availability would kill any trading of things. So, there's a tug-of-war between balance and diversity. I come down on the side of balance but I want a bit of diversity so that an ecconomy blossoms. I think I'm serving that diversity by allowing characters to craft all the parts of the skill acquisition system, as long as they can make a profit off of it, some people will do so. And that helps speed up the rate at which people can adapt to the newest FoTM but at the same time you can't make it too easy for everyone to have every skill or else there's no incentive to trade at all. So, there needs to be careful attention paid to ust how much things cost and all that, but, as I said, that's detail work. I'm an idea man.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Tweaks to the Capture Signet would be nice, but I don't think are too neccessary. Why? Because you've fixed the ring and trainer system for people who don't want to bother with capturing skills. As a result you don't have to make the Capture Signet as user friendly as you would if it was *the* way to acquire skills - you can design it to be a more elegant implementation for the role players and other PvE fiends who like the capture mechanic. Basically you have different methods for different people, so it's ok if every mechanism doesn't work for every player.

Yes, I think in my revised system the SoC could easily be dropped. Or left alone. It's the weak link, really, and hardly crucial to things. But as long as I'm making my dream system, I might as well fix that, too.

My general idea is to streamline things. There shouldn't be three systems. There should be one with a lot of different ways of going about it. That's where you get your different mechanisms for different people yet at the same time you don't overwhelm someone trying to learn the system.

Now, it's, "Okay, you can buy skills, capture skills, or use skill charms." "How do I do that?" "Okay, sit down, this is going to take a while..."

Here, it would be "Okay, to learn a skill you need a ring and something else, then you just talk to this guy and you're all set." "That sounds simple enough, what's the something else?" "That depends on how you want to do it..."

A simple, elegant system with a lot of built-in complexity and depth that can either be ignored or explored. Gee, that sounds familiar...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Ideas?

I like it. My concern would be for the rank newbs. The people who don't know what they're doing. Or who don't want to spend a few hours in a tutorial (Or for that matter, spend those hours in a tutorial *again*) and just want to pick up and go. Just creating a build from scratch can be daunting, even with the limited options you'd apparently provide. That's why I like the idea of pre-arranged packs. By mixing and matching you can build your character your way but because they're pre-arranged you know you're not doing something like getting Hammer Bash, Cyclone Axe, and Sever Artery for your starting skills. There's a bit of a safety net there that you know at least two of your skills will work well together or that someone out there thinks they work well together.

But, that could just as well be solved by an NPC being available who's the "Warrior Master" or "Head Warrior", say, who'll give you a preselected build not unlike the current starter skills paradigm. Or would just give you a few sample lists of "Say, you want to be a Swordsman? Get this, this, this, and this. No, an axe war, then? Okay, you'll need that, that, and that. Don't sass me, boy, I've been swinging a blade since you were a twinkle in your father's eye. I know what I'm talking about." Just the general idea that there's a safety net out there to ensure you're not going to be a complete gimp and that the game will look out for you as you're starting out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bgnome

would skill point refunds work into this system?

I'd like them to but that's a pretty drastic change to the basic way things work. Skills now are permanent, should you learn them. They're a choice and a consequence. Since you can always gain another level to get another skill point you can get a better skill eventually. But by permanently learning a skill you're taking a risk that it's not going to be made trash by a shift in the meta-game and will never see the light of your skill bar. You're comitted to it. Being able to erase that mistake makes sense from a competitive standpoint but not from the idea that your character is something permanent and meaningful to you.

Since skills are permanent, knowing what a skill can do first is extremely important, especially if there's no way around the skill point cap. That's why I place a lot of emphasis on trying out and testing skills temporarily. Skill point refunds would be nice but just like Refund Points there needs to be a high cost or a big limit to prevent teams with a lot of resources from endlessly respeccing without penalty.

Ensign · Mar 09, 2005, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Well, the thing is that they already do have specialized trainers like this. The first Warrior trainer is a hammer Warrior - there are axe and sword guys in the game, too. The main Elementalist trainer is a pyromancer - the other elementalist trainer is an aeromancer. The first Mesmer trainer is clearly an illusionist - the Monk at the abbey is a smiter, and the Ranger trainer is a beastmaster. Hell, the quests are even designed with this in mind - the pyromancer quest has you blasting Ice Golems, the aeromancer wants to you to blow apart a metal golem. The main Ranger is a beastmaster, and his quest is to charm an animal. The death Necromancer makes you summon minions in creative ways.

Basically most of the NPCs you want to use with a system like this are already in the game - they just need to flesh out a couple, adding a geomancer, a healing Monk, and the like. But those should be added anyway. It's just a slight change in the mechanics that gives people a whole lot more choice in charactetr development. I agree that implementing radical changes at this point is going to be problematic - but I don't think anything I proposed is all that radical. It's a straightforward extension of what we already have to work with, designed to ease new players into the game while giving veterans as much flexability as possible.

You could give out six free skill pointes, or eight free, or however many - I just chose eight because that basically gives you an entire 'free' set of starter skills. After those you have to start paying to flesh out your bar. But the number doesn't actually matter as much as the mechanic, which is to give people free skill points and to let them spend them as they desire, instead of locking them in and typecasting their classes. I'd want there to be a whole lot more than six sidequests for each character - even the 'get a friend for res signet' would be a sidequest that handed you a skill point (and the monk would then offer you the chance to learn Resurrection Signet or Resurrect, as applicable).

Skill refunds aren't a vital part of this - they're a nice option, but hardly neccessary. It becomes straightforward to add one once you've made everything require a skill point, though. I think skill refunds are more academic now - they'll become much more relevant once expansions start coming out, and people want a way to pick up new skills even though they've spent 100 already. But there are other mechanisms to accomplish that. So refunds are nice, but not nearly as critical as having a solid start to a character's life, or cleaning up silliness like skill ring twinking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

Just creating a build from scratch can be daunting, even with the limited options you'd apparently provide. That's why I like the idea of pre-arranged packs.

I don't want to hold their hand, I want to teach them how to function on their own. Just handing them packs of skills is all well and good for the tutorial, but then they get dropped into Ascalon City and don't know a thing about skill points, about skill trainers, about much of anything, because the tutorial isn't actually teaching anything about those.

After completing Old Ascalon, a greenie should know enough to be comfortable with the standard interface they'll be seeing for the rest of the game - they should understand skill trainers, capture signets, the map screen, quest logs, everything. It all needs to be spelled out. Glossing over any of that for the sake of expediency doesn't help anyone.

Given that, I don't want to hand out pre-selected skill packages, but I would like to have the in game dialogue explain the choices a player has. Tell them how the skill points they have work. Explain the differences between swords, axes, and hammers. Explain how each of the five to six newbie skills works, and which ones they should take given how things work. But perhaps more importantly, give them temporary access to every single one of these skills, and tell them they can make the choice later. The temporary access to skills that you got when trying out a secondary profession is an excellent idea, and they should carry it over to primary skills as well.

Hey, maybe you could even give them all the newbie skills when they're assigned the newbie quest, and they don't have to pick two permanently until they finish it.

Just make them use the standard interface in the end, to permanently learn their skills, just as they will have to in the rest of the game. They have to learn sometime, might as well do it during the tutorial.

Peace,
-CxE

Shrapnel_Magnet · Mar 09, 2005, 10:13 PM // 22:13

I'm looking for the specialize trainers PAST the Pre-Searing Ascalon. I noticed that Captain Greywind and all the other trainers were adept in all six of the possible character classes, :P.

I also like how impersonal the game gets when it substitutes NPC's names for "Skill Trainer" or "Crafter", lol. (another matter entirely, mind you)

Ensign · Mar 09, 2005, 10:24 PM // 22:24

I'd like to see specialized trainers out in the wilderness, characters that you have to trek out to find. The trainers in towns, though, should be general trainers - they're in centralized locations where everyone is going to see them, so it just makes sense to make them useful to everyone. Guys that you have to quest to find, now that's a good idea for a specialized trainer.

I'd assume that all of the generic names will be replaced in retail - little flavor things like that tend to get put off until the very end.

Peace,
-CxE

Hikarate · Mar 09, 2005, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I agree that implementing radical changes at this point is going to be problematic - but I don't think anything I proposed is all that radical.

I wasn't referring to your post, was referring to my comment on catering the areas to each attribute line so mobs were weak against each line. Only referred to your post in agreement with what you stated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Skill refunds aren't a vital part of this - they're a nice option, but hardly neccessary.

I think for new players it is good to mention in game at the beginning. So if they start off with Hammer and don't like it, they know they can use their refund points to switch over to swords. Just have the trainers mention them so true newbies know their attribute line decisions are not permanent like their class decisions are. While they are learning all the different attribute lines sounds like a good time to go over refund points to me, but perhaps I am mistaken.

Cleocatra · Mar 09, 2005, 11:15 PM // 23:15

While all of your ideas sound interesting Saus, I have to ask: Is there any chance they will be implemented at all? As an alpha will you actually have this much influence over the game design? Or are you just talking about your dream system that most likely will never be looked at?

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I just don't see them changing everything around when the game is about to be released in a month or so. Unless there is a good possibility for actual large scale change from ideas in this thread, I think the best thing to focus on would be the suggestions that can be implemented into the current system as it is rather than trying to radically change the system itself.

On that note, I think that the suggestion of giving new characters multiple skill choices is a wonderful idea. I also think they should make bosses of the same primary use different skills (currently they all seem to use about the same skills) and they should not use skills already found at the trainer. That is one of the reasons I have found many people don't use SoC. What is the point of SoC if all the skills the boss uses are already found at the trainer?

Spooky · Mar 09, 2005, 11:49 PM // 23:49

Quote:

Is there any chance they will be implemented at all? As an alpha will you actually have this much influence over the game design?

Very unlikely. That has nothing to do with ideas being good or bad, it's just that it is too late in development for a massive overhaul of a system that is so integral to how the game plays - especially without massive feedback that would seem to 'necessitate' it (See also: "bibs" -> Capes)
I think the most feasible thing off the list to add, something I feel is really needed, is the ability to customize your 'basic' skillset when starting a new character. Fire Elementalists are great and all that, but after playing 5,000 RPGs where Fire is the default 'power' element, i'd really like to run a Water build, but the availability of those skills (and the skills themselves for low levels) aren't particularly conducive to doing so.

Dragonne · Mar 10, 2005, 12:23 AM // 00:23

I really like the idea of buying/crafting skill rings. It make it another gold sink which I don't understand why it hasn't been done already.

I also like the SoC ideas, essentially turning it into a blank skill charm. Also the idea of removing the necklaces and turning the charms into a modified 'skill gem of olde' is good, except I wouldn't use the idea of temporarily learning a skill from a trainer but instead skill trainers just sell charms. If you double click a charm, you temp learn that skill. If you have a ring, you double click the ring then the skill and learn it permanently.

I personally never understood why you didn't need a skill point to use a ring. It just didn't make sense to me.

Good ideas all around.

Aladdar · Mar 10, 2005, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Well, the thing is that they already do have specialized trainers like this. The first Warrior trainer is a hammer Warrior - there are axe and sword guys in the game, too. The main Elementalist trainer is a pyromancer - the other elementalist trainer is an aeromancer. The first Mesmer trainer is clearly an illusionist - the Monk at the abbey is a smiter, and the Ranger trainer is a beastmaster. Hell, the quests are even designed with this in mind - the pyromancer quest has you blasting Ice Golems, the aeromancer wants to you to blow apart a metal golem. The main Ranger is a beastmaster, and his quest is to charm an animal. The death Necromancer makes you summon minions in creative ways.

My problem with this is, if I play a warrior I don't want to be a friggin hammer warrior. Why do I have to start out the game as a hammer warrior before switching to the sword. I should be able to find a warrior trainer who can train me in hammer, sword, etc..., or if I want to play an elementalist I should be able to pick starting skills of air, earth, etc... or ranger beast master, marksmanship or mix and match.

I don't like having to be forced into a starting character and waste time on those skills before being able to do what I really want to do.

Sausaletus Rex · Mar 10, 2005, 01:03 AM // 01:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dragonne

I also like the SoC ideas, essentially turning it into a blank skill charm. Also the idea of removing the necklaces and turning the charms into a modified 'skill gem of olde' is good, except I wouldn't use the idea of temporarily learning a skill from a trainer but instead skill trainers just sell charms. If you double click a charm, you temp learn that skill. If you have a ring, you double click the ring then the skill and learn it permanently.

Brilliant! Forget the bonding to skill rings idea. Skil charms can have the charge. You make one or buy one and you get a free trial period of that skill. Double clicking a skill charm discharges it and lets you know a skill for, say, 4 hours. The charm's left over and you can still learn from it. Doubling clicking a ring and then clicking a skill charm, charged or uncharged, lets you permanetly learn it.

This brings up a weakness in that a charge SoC is either different from a skill ring or you automatically permanently learn things without being able to try them but we can perhaps get around this by having an SoC transform into the appropriate skill charm when you capture...

Ensign · Mar 10, 2005, 01:17 AM // 01:17

The fact that we are so far along means that you need to look at small changes, not big ones, to get the skill system running right. Completely changing how skill necklaces and charms and all that work would be great, but we've dwaddled that time away so now we need to patch something together from what we have.

They're really just two changes away from a functional, endgame skill system at this point:

1) Every skill being learnable at one trainer or another.
2) Skill rings consuming a skill point when they teach you a skill.

That's it. Point one is to give people a reliable way to acquire the skills they need, instead of forcing people into gambling alliances if they want to be successful. Point two is to avoid turning the entire skill system into ring + charm after a month. Granted, I have my gambling alliance, and having a character with 43 skill points (43 earned) is funny and all, but it just isn't good for the health of the game.

Being able to refund skills would be a great addition - for newbies who realize that they'd rather be in a different line but wasted a bunch of skill points on a weapon already, to casual players who grabbed some skills that didn't turn out quite as they had hoped (since we don't exactly have a trial system), to hardcore players who get sick of their skill lists being a graveyard of skills smashed by the elite sledgehammer. It's a failsafe, nothing abusive, that lets people undo what they've done, to avoid crippling characters. Isn't that what this game is about?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aladdar

My problem with this is, if I play a warrior I don't want to be a friggin hammer warrior. Why do I have to start out the game as a hammer warrior before switching to the sword. I should be able to find a warrior trainer who can train me in hammer, sword, etc..., or if I want to play an elementalist I should be able to pick starting skills of air, earth, etc... or ranger beast master, marksmanship or mix and match.

I agree with this - which is why I think that the first Warrior trainer, the one right out the gates, should offer you your choice of sword, axe, or hammer. Or none of the above, you can take Sprint and Healing Signet as your first two skills and pick a weapon later. Or you can just bank the skill points. If you want to be a Warrior secondary, you can get it from the sword trainer, or the axe trainer, or the hammer trainer - and each of them can teach you skills, but it is your choice whether to learn any of them.

What type of Warrior should you start as? That should be the player's call. They should even start every Warrior with a sword, axe, hammer, and shield, and teach them how to use the inventory and equip weapons from the first moment in game. The rest follows from that.

Peace,
-CxE

Keramon · Mar 10, 2005, 03:58 AM // 03:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keramon

Ok in the pre-seared ascalon, I got given a number of skills, but almost all of them were from skill lines that I didn't want to use, which made the skills essentially useless. I think maybe that the skills you are assigned might be better as a choice. (for a Necro) ... Oh you want to follow the "Path of Blood" ... to prove yourself ... Goto the shrine of ascalon in the Catacombs and retrieve the heart of the bear (or insert blood related Quest).

I absolute agree, and mentioned exactly this on page three of the suggestions thread. I find it a real problem that alot of the free skills are ones that I do not want or need. Guild Wars needs to cater not only for the new player, but also the player that is on their third or fourth character and knows what they are doing. We need to be able to choose sword, axe or hammer if a warrior, earth, air, fire or water if a Elementalist etc... I understand the game and I am specialising, therefore I don't need skills from the skill lines that I am not choosing to specialise in.

Specific trainers in different skill lines, or a trainer that gives different options for the different skills lines in quest is something that I think is sorely needed for the early levels. Domination Mesmers probably can't make good use of Inspirations skills etc..

Lunarhound · Mar 10, 2005, 05:23 AM // 05:23

Even as a brand new character in the E3 event, I remember being frustrated that I was forced to start as a hammer warrior when I wanted to use a sword. It's true that it's too late for a massive overhaul, but a lot of the tweaks that have been suggested here are very good.

1) Walk new players through game basics. While I like the fact that Old Ascalon feels like a real zone and not like a tutorial, I think it definately needs some tutorial elements to it.

2) Choices, choices choices. Do I want hammers or swords? Fire or ice? Healing or smiting? Players should be able to feel, right from the beginning, that they're building a unique character, not being forced into some generic newbie template.

3) Definately make all skills cost a skill point. I really don't like that skill points don't seem to matter all that much at the moment.

There were other good ones as well, but these were my three favorites.