Pay to Train

If we did something like that, I would want a couple things tied to it. First would be age - how many game hours have you invested. Because otherwise, if gold were available, anyone could just pay to become skilled instantly. The 2nd would be a time level - you would have gold automatically deducted from your "training account" on a weekly basis (not too different than paying weekly property tax). That amount would be increasing increments over time, and skill level. And the 3rd thing would be, how many of X items have you made, to show you're actually working on the skill to become proficient.

Those things would be the only mechanism to make charging gold for training more balanced and fair, at least in my mind.

Taking it one step further, maybe a person would have to be required to "check in" and "stay" at the guild training house until they've reached journeyman level.

 

What people are forgetting is that the skill system is still in development. They have specfic plans for the system and its going to change a number of times between now and the final version.

One thing that isn't likely to go away is that it will be a gold sink. It is one of the ways that they intended to take money out of the economy. If you read one of Chris's post about the current changes, you would realize that, overall, the costs weren't unreasonable. The costs were based on hard data regarding how much money was being made, on average.

One of the changes that hasn't been implemented yet is skill level restrictons. You aren't going to be able to be level 1 and train to the tier 5 levels. (Yes this is an exaggeration, but the point is that level restrictions are going to limit what tiers and skills you can train at any given time. So you won't need 20K or 30K or even 50K to train your skills. As Chris has said, it is going to be a progression and you should have the gold in hand to train the available skills (based on level restrictions).

More iterations will result in not all skill be available from a single trainer. You see part of that design and implementation iteration this release with the Soltown trainer only being able to train the first two tiers. They have stated on numerous occasion that they want higher tiered skills to be trainable in different ways, by different trainers, and in different areas. We aren't likely to see this all at once. The very nature of iterative development, monthly releases, and the current state of any and all systems, not just skill training, means that until a system is completed we don't know what the final state is going to be. But they haven't veered far from their intended or stated design principles, in this case that training is meant to be a money sink, that training will be done by multiple trainers, training will be done using varied and different delivery methods, and that that tiers will be restricted by level. Charging for training is common in a level based system, but not so much in a use based system.

 

This plan is not logical to me. A money sink cannot be based on a finite thing. Once you achieve master status, then what?

They have to have other plans in place, for the economy, that do not involve the finite systems.

 

i agree in principal to you caliya. however with what we do know that this game is scheduled for yearly additions to what the main thread of the story i can only imagine that with each new release we will be seeing more skills, more things to make and definetly more things to waste our money on... both real world cash and game gold... cause if were truly honest most of us have pixel crack addictions... not saying we want the crack our selves for some its making sure others don't have it. every game needs gold sinks the problem without it items become inflated

 

My pretty simple conclusion: I had to pay in UO also if i wanted to Train Skills to a basic level But i had a choice. I could learn my skills alone also.

 

There are a lot of good suggestions.

I think it's a good idea to let us *play around with our skills* before we actually have to pay. Most games I currently play or played in the past, have a mechanic to allow you to allocate skill points before making the allocation permanent. You could back out of skills and recoup your points with no problem. We can do part of this in SoTA, ie, recover skill points, but as far as I can tell, the gold is not replaced. This could be a problem if you goof up in the beginning or make a mistake with the higher tiers. So getting cash back before making it permanent with a simple, "Are you sure" from the trainer might help.

Here is a line of reasoning that may or may not explain why we pay for skills in SoTA when in games like LoTRO and STO for example, you don't. In those games, you seem to *learn skills* the way you would in school. (Or in a way that has more realism the way Caliya describes above in the thread).

In SoTA, specifically for combat, we are actually training to build decks that contain *glyphs*. I look at that as a more physical representation of something we are allowed to use, ie, like weapons or armor, as opposed to something we actual retain in our brains. Glyphs become the third thing we carry and it does seem to end up like a card game akin to Magic the Gathering. So yes, we pay for those glyphs under the guise of *training*. If you want to swap glyphs, you get the points back, but not the cash. I don't know if this is good or bad or even if this is the way it will be at release. I'm not passing judgement on it, only sharing my thoughts and observations.

 

That brings up the other debate, that I don't care to enter of course, the deck system..... lol

But your explanation makes sense. I hadn't thought of it that way.

 

This really made me laugh. Thank you for the great piece of satire!

P.S. Can I pre-order the game?

 

LOL, yeah the deck system. I realize not everyone likes it, but I confess that Magic the Gathering is the ONLY game I could PWN my ex-husband in. So the glyph system in SoTA brings back happy memories of Mr. Ex unable to comprehend being trounced on a consistent basis. But I digress!

I honestly can't recall if we pay for crafting training or not. Senior moment and I am too tired to log into the game to refresh the old brain pan.

But if we do pay for crafting training, then my logic about the glyphs comes to a screeching halt...lol. No glyphs with crafting. Guess we'll see how training is handled in future releases!

 

Ya, they're not always really consistent in the design. A real card game is one thing. Digital, quite another. I'm not a fan of the deck system. But I'm past debating it, it's not going away. My husband owns a crud pile of Magic cards, and his collection of rare cards is worth a small fortune.

Speaking about card games, it's a little annoying but also somewhat fun. In Witcher 3, there are card games that are kind of fun but I hate playing against a computer. That's probably the other reason I don't care for card systems in games.

But I also don't remember if we pay for crafting training because...........I didn't even know we ever paid for any training at all, not even the glyphs. lol No clue why I never noticed that.

I still need to log in to get the rare hat in this release. Dragging my feet.