What if you entered the game with maxed out stats?

[Kedhran]

With enough money, proggression points, and the proper swords

This is a pretty big hump for most (99.89%) players, you realize. The grind being mentioned isn't just getting the skill bar to be all green, it's everything--  Money and PP aren't in unlimited supply for anyone, so they can't be ignored in this issue.

[Tontow]

With enough money, proggression points, and the proper swords

Not so easy when trying to level non-combat skills..........

[zanzibar]

Remember how some people suddenly discovered that the brown way's summon stone spell was the most kick ass ranged damage possible (which bugs me, brown way is concerned with defense mostly. Red way is supposed to be the one that deals the most damage, shortly followed by dark way because it uses pure 'death' power) so suddenly, every slapknut was aiming to be a brown way master, until 90% of the PVPers on the server have level 100 brown way.

Amen to that, and thank god i'm one of the other 10%.  level 1 brown way! w00t!.... anywho, i don't think too much grinding is required for the current leveling system.  training costs can get a little high, but the actual time required isn't bad.  With enough money, proggression points, and the proper swords it would only take me about an hour to get a new char to lvl 20 swords.  Maybe an hour and a half at the most.

Level 20 swords is nothing though.  And if you're trying to level something that isn't a combat skill, you're sol.

[Cheeldash]

I think entering in the game with the possibility to max stats&skills isn't a bad idea, but it needs some limits.
I agree with the idea of skills which drops with disuse or to apply this to settings-approved chars.
A nice thing could be the possibility to move the gained pps to others char, so when creating a character you can move them directly increasing the skill without the pratical training,maybe increasing the pps needed (so you pay also the pratical training).

[Prolix]

One thing you could do is have a certain number of points to assign for an account with no more than 60% for any one character on the account. Then you could have an xp modifier such that the more points spent on a character the slower advancement would go. This would allow for a range of starting levels. If you start a combat character low it could advance fairly fast and if your crafter started high he could do more right away. I certainly prefer the set your stats rather than game the creation system to get the best you can. That puts new/casual users at a big disadvantage and they will likely start with sub-standard characters, not preferable to me.

Some kind of hybrid system would allow for more customization while throwing out as little as possible.

[zanzibar]

One thing you could do is have a certain number of points to assign for an account with no more than 60% for any one character on the account. Then you could have an xp modifier such that the more points spent on a character the slower advancement would go. This would allow for a range of starting levels. If you start a combat character low it could advance fairly fast and if your crafter started high he could do more right away. I certainly prefer the set your stats rather than game the creation system to get the best you can. That puts new/casual users at a big disadvantage and they will likely start with sub-standard characters, not preferable to me.

Some kind of hybrid system would allow for more customization while throwing out as little as possible.

Doing it by account means people would simply make new accounts for new characters.

[Prolix]

You are correct, sir! They do that already, I have 6 or 7 myself -- some were created to test an account creation problem; some time ago others were created to test the tutorial previous to that; some for other reasons. 90% of the time I play only the one character although I mostly don't get in much anymore.  However having the reduced rate of advancement for characters with more than their share of starting points would tend to discourage that.

Anyway it is just an idea.

Personally I do not mind too much a gamable system for base stats but do not like it for starting skills. I much prefer a system of points allocation for both.

Pardon me for I fear I have strayed from your topic.

[zanzibar]

Pardon me for I fear I have strayed from your topic.

No worries.

[Timmeh]

Ive been playing Guildwars for a long time, and you start that game with level 1 and you got max level (level 20) in about 2-3 days. You can change your attributes anytime you want (in an outpost/town only tho) and it works perfectly. If you want to pvp only there even an opportunity to make a new pvp character which is lvl 20, has max armor and weapons, so every1 is equal. this game sold over 5 million copies (WoW 11 million) so its very attractive for many gamers.