All other benefits and issues aside, am I the only one feeling it’s awkward to put access to a vendor’s items on an ability line?
Just starting with the concept of ability lines. All the other ones revolve around actions the player does whether being in combat, gathering supply, etc. But this one is about purchasing items for your build. Yes, one’s build then impacts combat. But it’s a step removed and doesn’t feel like it should be an “ability”.
And then there’s how this’ll work out for anyone who hasn’t maxed out their ability lines and doesn’t have points to spare…
Say a player wants to buy some things to fit out a build, so they invest the points and do it. But it’s not like they’ll be buy more stuff often. In fact it might be a one-time need. So now the 25 or whatever points are sunk and effectively useless (until a reset happens). That’s annoying.
And so if a player has bought all they need by the time a reset happens, then there’s presumably no reason to invest in it again afterwards. In theory a player could not bother with it ever again, even though they gained the benefit from it. That’s weird.
Are those recipes and items going to be soulbound or accountbound? If accountbound, then a player only ever needs one of their characters to invest in this pip. And of course they could just do that with a character they never intend on playing WvW with, so as to not detract from the ability point usage on their real characters. That’s silly.
And if ability point resets are ever revised into a more player-friendly on-demand scheme (instead of once in a blue-moon whenever A.Net thinks it’s a good idea), then players would be able to invest, buy, reset, and spend the points elsewhere which renders the whole ability line aspect mostly useless (other than preventing people who have less than 60 or whatever WvW points from using it).
