1k for skills, still ok.

you can get cash for skills easily just by playing the game. 1k per skill point is fine. it takes very little effort to get all skills for your primary/secondary classes. now, if you're going for skill hunter title, or if you have a wacky goal like me (to collect all skills on 1 character) then the real problem becomes not money but actually rather that you run out of skill points.

i've been buying skills for 1k each for so long that the concept of paying less for one seems almost ludicrous.

in all reality, though, you don't need to buy a lot of skills on 1 character. statistically, 1 character is unlikely to need the majority of skills. you're only going to have a handful, say maybe 4 or 5, builds that you use for your character combination, and most of those will probably use at least 2-3 of the same skills in each build.

even if you change secondaries, you're not going to need more than a couple new skills for each build. that's easily obtainable by playing normally.

if your main complaint is money, stop and think about it: tally up how much money you've spent on armor, materials, weapons, and other items. think of how much money you've spent on runes. think of how much money has come into your hands and then back out again to the merchants. you've touched *alot* of money, more than you realize, and it wasn't that hard to get, was it?

if, after thinking about that, you still want to come back and say, "but i'm a casual player, i don't have that kind of time", then you must be playing like, 1-2 hours a week max, and to you, i can only say: yes, you're casual. you're *too* casual. you're *so casual*, that you hardly even qualify as playing the game. i understand casual playing, but at some point, there *is* a minimum amount of effort that you have to put in to getting something, or else it's just called "handing you everything on a silver platter." if you're *that* casual, you need to be in a single player RPG with a god-mode or infinite-money cheat or something, because if you don't have *any* time to put into the game, you really probably shouldn't be playing games in the first place. it's entirely possible that you've grown up and gotten an adult life, an adult schedule, and kids, and gaming is just one of the things that you may have to give up.

anyway, 'nuff said. the point of my post is: 1k per skill isn't that much. be patient, play the game, and don't go skill-buying-crazy, and you'll be fine.

ciao.

eudas

since 15k doesnt protect you any better than 1.5k and the cost equals75k? plus a bunch of costly materials? you sure are not hurting for gold.

you dont need all the skills or if you do you sure dont need vanity armor.

and if the skills are for pvp use faction for that

Money may be easy for you to get, but it may not be for other people. You may farm a lot, but other people, like casual players, do not. 1k faction may sound easy, but there're other expenses, like armor, weapons, etc. I think it's just too much for a casual player to cough up that much dough. Multiply that 1k by 10, or 20, or 30, and you're looking at a fairly substantial sum, one that cannot be easily afforded by a casual player.

And also in response to your assertion that money is easy to get in Factions, there was a poll conducted on GWO, that showed that the vast majority of players do not think this is the case.

What if you're using your PvE character to PvP? Isn't that what ANet is ultimately trying to do, bridging PvE and PvP? And isn't PvP supposed to be the end-game content for PvE?

Farm alot? Hell, I don't farm at all. When the kids are in the tub I play a round or two at Aspenwood for the fun of it. Two wins = 1.2K faction = 1 amber plus change = almost 2K gold. Some quests give 1K faction plus... that's ~2K gold right there.

I play bathtime (kids) and an hour or two before bed. Don't get much more casual then that, and I have plenty of cash. Amber/Jadeite is the fastest form of insta-wealth I've found, not including that lucky drop or the likes.

I think the current system is fine, considering Factions's been out for only 6 weeks. There's still 4 months for everyone to get the money to buy all those skills!

But if you want a suggestion, how about - buy a new skill for 1k, and buy a skill that your account has already unlocked at a discount like 750g.

milias,

you don't have to farm very much, if at all. be conservative in what you buy and buy only the skills you need for your build and you'll be fine. you don't even have to be particularly minimalist. you can play normally for 2-3 hours and make about 1k per hour just from id'ing and selling items to the merchant. engage in a little bit of salvaging/materials selling and you can opportunistically make nice supplementary income.

i mean, just how casual *is* your so-called "casual" player? are we talking "plays 1-2 hours per night", or "only plays 1 hour per night", or are we talking "plays 1-2 hours *per week*"?

before this turns into a heated discussion of "power farmers vs oppressed casual players", we need a definition of 'casual'.

so: just how casual is "Casual"?

eudas

2k isn't exactly that much, considering how many skills there're in the game, something to the tune of 150 skills per profession. If you have 6 chars, each with a secondary, so that's 300 skills per char, and 300*6=1,800 skills across all chars. Granted, you may not get all of those skills, but even a fraction of 1.8 mil is a pretty big number. I can't help but wonder how many of those "bathtimes" it will take for you to get that much faction...

Personally, I wouldn't mind making all skills questable, that would make it less expensive and more fun...

your math is off. there's about 75 skills per character class, plus around 15 elites for each, for a total of about 90 skills per class.

90 * 8 = 720 skill points needed.

minus 26 * 1 skill point (tyrian missions)...
minus 13 * 3 skill points (canthan missions)...
minus all the skill points you get from tyrian and canthan quests.

i estimate that for my goal of obtaining every skill in the game on one character, i'll need a total of approx 7 mil xp.

skill capping elites helps too because you get 5k xp for each elite capture. so 15 * 8 = 135 * 5000 = 675000 xp that you dont have to farm for, which is 45 skill points for free. so skill capping feeds itself.

check out this checklist:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...ist-id1682.php

it doesn't have the ch2 elites for the ch1 classes on it, but it has everything else. with Telamon, i've unlocked about 275 skills so far, and he's at 1.6mil xp. Right now, I'm going through the Canthan missions/quests to try to get all the free skill points I can (and using xp scrolls, the more densely packed maps/mob groups help earn skill points a tad faster), but by my estimates, I'll need another 4.5 mil xp or so to finish unlocking everything. I still have all the ch2 elites to cap, too, and like i said earlier, skill capping elites feeds itself. plus you get a neat title out of it.

eudas

Seriously, what's the rush to get them all. This isn't Pokemon. I haven't bought skills in a while... I'm happy with my assassin build and having a blast with it. The "need" to get all 1800 skills just simply isn't there, not for a truly casual player. But for the skills I've wanted or needed, no problems affording or getting them... and with over 100K in storage now just from daily little play (selling things to merchants, mainly, including amber and jadeite) I don't forsee ever in my GW playing the need to worry about skill cost again.

By the way... all my characters have the 1.5K armor. Every one. That makes a big difference. My only splurge was my assassin... he has the 1.5K Luxon armor.

Okay, my math may be a little off, but that's still a little over 1 mil in gold for each char. We're not talking about experience here, we're talking about gold...

i edited my post since you quoted it; go back and check the updated post.

and, yeah, it comes out to, say, at least half a mil gold, but
a) go back and consider my point about thinking about how much gold has passed through your character's hands -- you've had more gold in your hands than you think about; and
b) that's only if you're being Pokemon about it like me, and are trying to collect them all. I'm an extreme case. The more average case is that by the time you finish the game, you'll have 40-50 extra skill points sitting around, and for the average case, that's really all you'll need. And if you do need more than that, it won't be very much more. 40 extra skill points is 5 complete 8-skill builds, and that's not even taking into account the ones you got for free from quests, or the fact that you'll reuse some of your skills in multiple builds. 40-50 skills at 1k each is only 40-50k; it sounds like a lot, until you consider that you can make around 1k/hr by selling drops in the southern shiverpeaks.

to make a long story short: the only people who need to farm for skill points or gold are the extreme cases like me who want to be all OCD about it.

eudas

The point is, the casual player doesn't NEED all those skills. It's just like 15k armor. You can play perfectly fine without even having all your primary skills. However, if you want to get them all, then you're going to have to do some work for it. That's really what's so great about Guild Wars. You don't have to put that much work into it to be able to play, but if you want to work really really hard and get all the skills or super expensive armor or the really hard to get titles, then you can. It's entirely up to you how much work you want to put into it, and if you don't have the time to get the skills at 1k each, then you can't get them. It's really not that hard to make money, I got a set of 15k armor from farming the Great Northern Wall for a few days.

O.o

o.O

O.o

o.O

I'm willing to bet you're not a casual player :P

By the way, I thought shields were locational, in that they don't protect you if you're hit from the side or in the back.

heehee. i was looking at that, wondering, too.
but, it could be that they are not locational, in the sense that they are not, themselves, a body hit target location. they *add* to the hit-location if the attack is coming from the front. thus, are potentially not considered "locational" by themselves. you can get hit on the head, chest, hands, legs, or feet, but you never get hit on "shield" location. it just adds AL to another location if direction criteria is met.

eudas

were you farming the charr at the end for charr hides to make fur squares, or something?

eudas

I feel too many people play the builds or variations of builds they made early on in the game, when skill aqusition is faster, no thats not down to this one thing, i think its a factor.

15k performs the same as 1.5k, but certian builds dont perform the same as others or are less applical to the area/arena, skills are a bit more bread and butter, whereas 15k is jam.

Yes certian things should be worked for, im of the school of thought that thinks skills are not one of those things. (EDIT, no mr i can see you coming flame, i do not mean i want it handed on a plate)

Anyway more info.

I made this new charachter, a canthan ranger with the intention of not farming. I hit a wall once i got to kieng though and needed to get the armour, and still had 8 skill points.
I could have gotten the collectors armour, but the time it would have taken, blah, so i "stole" 30 plat of my other char to get that money (which was my reserve). I used a collectors longbows, with mods id salvaged, and plain green not black armour. Im on the very last levels now, still with 10 skill points, and about 50-60% primary unlocked 20% secondary. I have 5 elites.

One thing people have said is i could have tried selling end game greens, well i tried that and just gave up after half an hour.

I could get some more money off my other charachters, but ive been treating this charachter like a "new" account one, though i already cheated on that with the 30 plat.

Im not sure that 1k is unreasonable which is why i made my post as much of a question as i could, but for me personally its unreasonable.

I have no problems with the price, the cost of aquiring a skill hasn't kept me from getting anything I really wanted.

I'm perfectly fine with the 1k cap. It scares me to think how much a skill would cost me now if it weren't for that cap.

i think 1K is fine, but i dont like how in factions you have to pretty much buy ALL your skills.

in all honesty, i think in prophesies they gave you too many skills for quests and now in factions they dont give you any. i think it would be good to either get half your skills from quests OR maybe the CORE skills you get from quests and the chapter only skills you need to buy...

Hm, idea:

Take 5 commendations.
Trade them for an Expert salvage kit.
Sell the kit for 1k*.
Buy your cap sig, assuming you have a skill point.

*Is this number right?