I've seen this opinion stated numerous times lately, and instead of derailing other threads I'll make this one. What is your overall thoughts on getting the skills? I'll provide my opinion as well.
I honestly liked them a lot. It gave me a feeling of accomplishment for getting and unlocking these skills early and for the most part I had a lot of fun. I think people are way too used to having new skills come out, and then just be handed them. Look at ninja, guns, even as far back as puppets and fighter all of those were quick storylines that gave us instant access to all the skills (or near instant anyway). Maybe it's because I'm an older player, but back in the day when magic pages were rare seeing something with ice spear wasn't very common. Ice spear, Fireball, Thunder, Arrow revolver, and Shock are all page collection quests as well, and I don't think I've ever heard major complaints with those. Why does all content need to be accessible to new players right away? There's so many other games where you can't use certain classes, or do skill questlines right away. You can get the base class skills pretty easily but not all of them. Now of course I do think some of the quests and objectives are really poorly thought out.
Dorcha crystal 1: The drop rate on this one is really high, but you do need the coil pass itself I liked this one
Dorcha crystal 2: With limited ancients, and rabbie phantasm being the only drop sources, the drop rate is way too low. 5 runs of phantasm, not a single drop and I've killed around 200 ancients without getting one. This is absurd as said activities took just under ~14 hours, and I ended up buying one.
Dorcha crystal 3: Get it quicker by doing a lord mission, or just afk fish overnight. Probably one of the easiest to get.
Dorcha crystal 4: It's 50k at Fleta. Don't really have anything else to say.
Dorcha crystal 5: While tedious it wasn't too bad took me 12 runs of peaca basic but you can do barri instead if you're lower level.
Dorcha crystal 6: Easy to kill, not bad drop rate but the spawn of them was pretty limited the first few days, but that's to be expected.
Death Mark
Can be done in a party if you're on the weaker side, not too long but a decent challenge. Didn't like running back to the quest giver after every objective though.
Dorcha Conversion
Waiting for Rua was annoying, but the quest itself was fine and didn't take very long.
Chain Burst
High skill reqs, but a fairly common drop and very simple quest, not much else to say. Didn't love it, didn't hate it.
Bachram Explosion
The page hunt for the most part was fun, and you can just buy the pages you're missing if you really hate the baltane missions. The next part of this, which is the quest was very stupid. You need to achieve bachram boost 10 times why? Just to make us wait long periods of time for no real reason, and getting a squire to likability 5 seems pointless too, but easy enough. ( I know it has story reasons) on top of all this you need to kill 50 baltane mobs while IN bachram boost, again a time gate taking forever for no reason. I liked the pages part of this, but the rest was rubbish.
Raging Spike
A lot of RNG getting outfits from boxes, and you need to wait until their birthday to gift it to them, meaning the quickest we can get this skill is Tuesday. This quest feels like a last minute addition and time gates for the only reason being a time gate.
To me getting the skills has been a breath of mostly fresh air, and I enjoyed it.
EDIT: made a typo on the poll, 1 is lowest not zero. Apologies.
Comments
But I hate the RNG so much. The RNG is horrible.
Also whatever is the rates for crystals and pages, it feels like way harder and more random than all the magic pages etc. Also the fact that Baltane missions are for level 60+ and things like having to give the outfits to the squires in a concrete day (some people plays only the weekends for example) just adds up to how it sorts of feel like they made it harder than it should really be and no, I'm not asking for it to be go, hit a mob and get your drop (which can actually happen lol).
Overall and even with all the cons, I actually have fun with this new talent but... just that, the talent. Eiren's story was nice to read and all but quests for skills are just plain annoying, regardless how doable they can or can't be.
Also ,still gathering the potential pages because the only times they drop are when the NPCS GET THEM AND I CAN'T PICK THEM UP! ARGH. Again, why such freaking horrible game design? I can not stress that enough.
I greatly appreciate effort>RNG.
As for the actual chain skills... as I figured... they'll just be a bunch of skills in my skill bar @ rank 1 that I'll never use other than for the stat bonuses they give. The only 2 chain skills that I /might/ use on a regular basis are Chain Sweep (AoE) and Chain Impale (1 on 1). I still prefer gunner over chains by far. For me, clearing missions or killing mobs super fast is all I care about these days in mabi and the chains don't attack fast enough for my standards.
Also, I found that gathering the pages and items required for the skills wasn't too bad. It took a little bit of effort, but I feel like if you put your mind to it anyone can gather them. The only thing I disliked about collecting items to obtain the skills is waiting for certain days to turn in outfit boxes to the squires. I could care less about squires. I never use them, they get in the way, and they are useless in the baltane missions. I guess the upside to that is, I'll only have to do it once for the skill and after that I'll never have to look at squires again... at least for a long time.
Sidenote, am I the only one who misses ranking skills based on CP (strong, awful, boss)? I dislike this whole gunner, ninja, chain skill ranking process of just mindlessly killing mobs of any cp. :L
SO MUCH HATE.
I hate the missions. I hate repetition in general. I hate having to repeat them 20-30 times just to get the page to drop from a mob one of the squires kills so I can't pick it up. I hate the 0.2% drop rate. I hate how the chests from Round Table refuse to give me outfits instead of useless junk like broken guardian weapons (seriously, I've gotten the whole set). I hate that I've run dungeons 50 times trying to find crystal 5 from dead-end chests and it still won't drop. And I hate that I've killed over 200 ancients and still haven't gotten that crystal either.
AND I NEED THREE. SO. MUCH. HATE.
I have better things to do than fight the RNG for 250 hours.
QQ I wish I could trade you the outfit boxes for the broken guardian pieces I have never even gotten one !
The second set of skills, however, is just a glorified attention draw to the Baltane Missions. Like they're cool and all, but I really do not like having to farm RNG drops in a mission that has a time constraint on re-entry. It's a time wall rather than a proper progression wall like dungeon passes are for all the other skills with pages.
Overall: This is good for people who've been playing the game a while, but not for the beginners they are pushing this talent at.
Jesus Christ who thought it was a good idea to make a talent where half the skills are locked behind RNG walls in mid-game content should be a "Starter Talent?" Cause it ain't. 7/10
It's a terrible idea because it's misleading to actual new players, but I'm sure they also know that many returning players will come back just because of the new talent/update which is why they did it... Except those players would look for it explicitly in other tabs anyway, so why confuse new players? Lexon Nogic :^)
P.S. Ninja used to be in the Starter Talent tab as well even though it wasn't the most friendly beginner talent and I imagine it was for the same reason. New, shiny, and exciting.
I never liked the page hunting ever since the Fireball quest was iimplemented, and I certainly don't like how the pages are hidden behind unreasonable missions where lag plays even harder into the outcome.
Still, it's supposedly better than "Clear story, get everything" I guess.
I'm just annoyed at how they implemented the baltane missions though. If I didn't experience any lag at the time then it's doable, but if I'm lagging it's impossible to do it.
@Hellkaizer Isn't the drop rate 100% though? But unlike other dorcha crystals, you can't get it anymore once you used the crystal.
Didn't take me long time to hunt 50 mobs while boost effect is on. Just about hmmm.. 20 minutes? It's not really stupid at all. Only part is that RNG drop rate, other than that, it's totally fine. Throwing a rock to zombies, gather them all, run around, keep throw a rock.... then........
Thank you so much for that - I manage to kill close to half and I chose the same mission too but the corpses/zombies stopped chasing me after awhile and the Bachram Boost did not come soon enough.
They're such a pain. I also feel bad for people who have a life and/or want to try out the skills but can't solo Balt. missions. The market prices to gather everything ain't helping either.