Why do Signets of Capture cost skill points?

I still have not heard a good argument in favor of this. I would think ANet would want you out there capturing skills instead of buying them. The only reason I can come up with for making Signet of Captures (SoC) cost skill points is to preserve the xp grind. Why would anyone want to do that? People hate the xp grind and it is contradictory to the PR statements about Guild Wars.

How would making SoC's skill-point free hurt the game? Someone explain this to me. If it can't be explained, tell me why the fine folk at ANet haven't changed it.

Umm...

Duh, they cost skill points cause you're getting a skill with them.

That would be pretty fun, but you'd have people going into missions with nothing but signets of capture so they can grab every skill from every boss because they refuse to spend their skill points. I think free SoCs would require a semi-revamp of the skill acquiring system.

I'm not a big grinder, and I still usually have more skill points available than I am able to spend. It's a slight problem if one does the secondary profession switch, and needs to pick up a large amount of skills in a short time. Otherwise, the only "problem", if you can call it that, with SoC is porting to a town and buying one. And that's not really much of a issue..at least in my experience.

And the logic seems consistent that a skill point is spent every time a skill is aquired, whether through SoC or other means.

Skill points for SoC's?! Why are Skill Points in Guild Wars at all?!

Technically, you're not getting a skill when you buy it.

What's wrong with that? It's not like every boss has a wide diversity of skills. Furthermore, people going into explorable areas or re-doing missions to find bosses with skills is the type of gameplay I think ANet would want. Why not encourage it? How is forcing people to xp grind for skill points a better situation than the one you or I described above?

Making the SoC skill-point free is essentially making skill capturing like skill questing. There are plenty of quests out there that reward you with skills for killing a boss and they don't cost you skill points. Why should the SoC be any different? It's the same amount of "work".

So why not fix the "slight problem"? There are no drawbacks to making the SoC skill-point free. Why not do it? Again, someone tell me what I'm missing here.

Well that's the slippery slope argument to my point and I can't argue against it. I'm not endorsing it mind you but if they did away with skill points, I wouldn't complain.

It'd be awesome if SoC's didn't take Skill Points. You might want to limit how many SoC's you can put on your bar (no more than 3, maybe), but other than that, I don't see how it'd be a real problem. You still have to kill the bosses. And the bosses usually require a little bit of work to reach.

Why do Signets of Capture(Looting) require skill points? Well because Arena Net made it so. Deal with it.

Sad but true.

The signet of capture system used to be effective for two reasons:

1) If you wanted a powerful non-elite ability, you still had to pay for its slot instead of potentially getting it for free later in the game. In order to capture this skill you still had to have the timing and skill to pull the capture off. Thus no level 5s with meteor.

2) If you wanted elites, you needed to have a modicrum of talent to get them. That's been completely done-away with, so now I hear more idiots than ever glowing about how "omg i totally have ubar <skill> it pwns all".

I don't understand your aversion to having signets cost skill points. Technically you *are* getting a skill. When you use this skill you permanently gain another. Why doesn't signet of capture cost one when you buy it and one when you capture then?

The poster who said people would start stocking too many signets was dead-on. People are already taking capture instead of resurrect because of skill greed. I'd hate to group the elementalist who has four signets and four spells--one of which is an attunement, one of which is a glyph. You can't check that prior to entering an area or mission. It's bad enough you can carry more than one signet at a time (I liked it better when you could only stock one).

Frankly, ANet wants it to be hard to create the perfect PvP character through PvE. That's not unreasonable. Currently PvE characters can find weapons superior to those offered through PvP creation. They can also BUY upgrades and runes without unlocking them, which means your PvE character can have a superior arsenal. Currently the ONLY limitation on this is "unlocked skills". If a PvE character could (without any limitation such as skill points) go capture every pokemon for every class (sorry, I meant skill) the entire premise of the PvP character would be demolished. People would be willing to do this just so they could use their black-dyed character in the tombs, let alone because they don't have to grind for items--just skills, which are FAR easier to find.

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"Frankly, ANet wants it to be hard to create the perfect PvP character through PvE"

That's the only way to make any kind of PvP character. At least one that isn't a pre-made template.

"If a PvE character could (without any limitation such as skill points) go capture every pokemon for every class (sorry, I meant skill) the entire premise of the PvP character would be demolished."

How do you figure? The only reason to play a PvE character is to unlock runes, skills, and item modifiers. Allowing you to unlock every skill via a free SoC would give people greater reason to play PvP characters, not less. If I want to unlock every skill (in a reasonable amt of time) I need to use 3 of 4 character slots just for PvE characters. This means I can only have 1 PvP character at any given time. So if I decide my team needs another Elementalist or Warrior instead of my Monk, I have to delete my PvP Monk and create whatever it was that was needed.

Right now, the PvE to PvP concept is kinda lame. I should be able to acquire all PvP items with just 1 PvE toon. I shouldn't need to create PvE toons to unlock skills, just to have to later delete them for PvP characters.

I think Elite should cost skill points and Normal skill shouldn't cost skill points.
This is only when you are using SOC. WHy would you use SOC for normal skills when u can buy it easily? It takes big effort to capture skill anyway. It will promote people to use SOC more for normal skills. However, if you capture elite skill it will take your skill points away. Elite should be difficult to get anyway.

Technically, you are getting a skill when you buy it. All signets are skills. This is as true of SoC as it is for Dolyak Signet, Signet of Judgement, etc.

The point is, your PvE character has access to more items, runes, and upgrades. Your PvE character can use items he has not yet unlocked. Your PvE character can change his subclass as many times as he wants, but every time you change him you do not lose his runes, upgrades, or other items you have bought or found for him. PvP characters can be made with no hassle, but they are somewhat limited. While you may have unlocked a superior vigor rune and thus can put one on any PvP character, You cannot have multiple sets of eq for your PvP character with multiple rune configurations. You can grab weapons out of storage, but they will not be customized--nor can you customize them, nor would you want to since PvP chars are generally throwaways.

PvE characters are potentially far more powerful, especially if you are clever enough to employ weapon and armor sets. Giving them yet another huge bonus over PvP characters defeats the point of having a quick way to create a PvP char.

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you pay a skill point because you are getting a skill

thats like saying that when you go to the skill trainers, they should just give you all of the skills they can train w/o it costing you skill points

rarely do i hear people sitting on here complaining about having too few skill points...

PvP characters can use any of the armor sets a PvE character can. Except for the really expensive ones.

As for customized weapons... so what if it isn't customized? Customization is pretty insignificant for 4 out of 6 professions.

And superior runes are getting to the point of being so cheap that not having unlocked it is nearly irrelevent. You can get just about any Superior rune but Vigor and Absorption for like 20k or less. It doesn't take too long to make 20k gold. I think you can apply any rune you've got in storage to a PvP toon. And you can salvage the armor after, to recover the rune, I think.

You can also get skills for free by doing quests but, oh wait, that's still too much for the "competetive PvPers".

If you absolutely can't tolerate what Guild Wars is now without complaining about "the grind"/UAS/skillpoints I reccomend you the idea of "shutting the **** up" and starting a Tic-Tac-Toe guild. You may find that game features all the minimalistic features and simplicity your kind are obviously looking for.

They can have one piece for each slot. You can't load a PvP character with four sets of armor. Many clever players stock multiple sets of armor for use against different team layouts and situations. This isn't possible with PvP chars.

Not so. If you find it insignificant, that's your business. Flexibility is king in PvP. A more convincing argument: "most wand and staff users don't rely on melee/ranged damage." True, but many builds rely on dealing certain types of damage to trigger effects, as well as dealing certain types of damage to gain bonuses from rituals and enchantments. So please, no generalities.

Try it, then let us know. I'm not willing to believe ANet would leave so glaring a hole open.

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So delete your PvP character and choose different armor.
Okay, there are a few non-Ra/W primaries that will use a weapon if they have that as a secondary. But I'd say no more than 50% of the players in the HoH and random arenas are using weapons. And probably a decent percentage (like 5-10%) of those I see with weapons are doing the Illusionary Weaponry thing.
I just did. I was able to buy a Rune at the conveniently located Rune Trader in the Competition Arena, and apply it to my armor. After pulling money out of storage to pay for it. I wasn't able to salvage that armor, to get the rune back... but that's not that huge. Like I said, getting 20k isn't a big deal... unless you're 'rerolling' every night.

PvE characters are, IMO, largely inferior to PvP characters for PvP. It is far easier to test out new builds with a PvP character. And other than customization for 20% increased damage, there is no difference at all. You just have to grind out XP on a PvE character any time you want to change your spec. I have quit PvPing with my PvE character. Respeccing from farm mode to PvP mode every few hours was becoming a chore.

A convenient way to respec is to change your secondary at the desert. You get back all the points you put into your secondary =)

However this only works for secondary skills T_T