As the new adventurer makes their way in their world, they learn. This in turn increases their array of abilities, feats, skills, spells, perks, talents, etc, making them more powerful, and this makes them capable of facing greater challenges, which brings them new lessons and makes them learn further. Its probably all very Nietzsche, although the ultimate destination of this relentless, but often repeated, drive to perfection is perhaps less clear.
At any rate, rather than overwhelm the new player with hundreds of abilities from the word go, it has become standard in these games to ration them out, usually as the player's level increases. It makes sense; now you understand those, try these new buttons. The mechanism for this is typically the Trainer; a veteran grizzled old campaigner who spends his remaining days standing about the training facility, showing young whipper-snappers how to punch a man so hard that his spleen comes out of his nose, or how to create a fireball so powerful that the target's ancestors get singed.
In my reflective moments online, after just having dinged, rushed to the trainer, instantly learnt a whole new bunch of tricks, each more powerful than the last, I have sometimes stopped and gone 'Haaaaang on...', and wondered why the Trainer, with his obvious and absolute mastery of all the tricks of my trade, isn't out there dealing with The Threat himself? I'd pay good money to be a fly on the wall when the Warrior Trainer, the Priest Trainer, the Crowd-O-Mancer Trainer, the DPS-Backstabby Trainer and the Pet-Class Trainer walk into an instance.
But what about the Monsters? Do we learn nothing from them?
Nifty! #6: Guild Wars' Signet of Capture
Completely agreeing with, and then totally ignoring, those folks who say Guild Wars isn't an MMO, I find that it still follows many of the conventions, particularly in mechanics. You do get hotkey skills, and there is indeed a [Skills] chap in most major outposts. The skill rationing is only loosely linked to level here; you get a point every level (and every time you fill L20 again thereafter), and some skill points for particular quests. These points can then be spent as desired, to buy skills from the [Skills] chap, at a rate of one point per skill.
However, Guild Wars skills come in two types; normal, and Elite, and the Elite ones are very important. They're generally substantially more powerful, flexible, versatile and efficient, compared to similar normal grade skills. You're only allowed one in your hotbar of eight, and typically, they are the lynchpin and cornerstone of any skill build.
Trouble is, these skills cannot be bought from Skill trainers. Only the monsters know how they're done. Enter the Signet of Capture.
As you rampage about the various PvE campaigns, you come across many glowey 'Boss' creatures. There are invariably accompanied by lesser monsters, have a class-based sheen to them (Yellow above; a Warrior Boss), and can put up quite a fight. If victorious, you now have the opportunity to learn one of the nasty tricks he's just used on you, via the Signet.
Standing next to its corpse and using the Signet, causes the above window to appear, which lets you pick one of the skills the dead boss has. These are the actual skills it has available to use in combat on you, and not just itemization for 'loot', so you'll have already had a taste of how the skills are meant to be used, from the 'customer' end, just by fighting him. Both normal and Elite skills can be chosen, but its generally the Elite that's most desirable - unavailable through other means. When chosen, the Signet permanently changes into the skill you picked, and for further skill capture, new Signets will need to be bought. It does this change there and then, allowing you to use the thing immediately, although you may not necessarily have the attribute points spent to unleash it's full potential.
From then on, having learned your lesson in combat, fire and blood, you will remember, and the chosen skill becomes a part of your library, for future use as and when a build requires, and it is now also considered 'Unlocked', becoming available for your Heroes and PVP-Only characters too.
Its a fascinating concept. Certainly all games of our type have an abstract kind of parallel, in Experience. Successful fights give you xp points, which are meant to represent the practice and knowledge you gained during that fight. You learned a bit during the engagement, and when you've learned enough, you get quantatively more powerful - ding! But its a warped system, tortured into game mechanics. You learn nothing from losing a fight, but escaping with your life? You unlearn things by dying? If you only do 45% of the fighting, someone else learns from the engagement, but not you? All very strange.
With Guild Wars' unique take on Skills though, the Monsters get down to specifics. If you want to learn a particular trick, you have to go to the source, and study it in action. It also makes for a whole new kind of collection gameplay which I find very appealing indeed. I'm a bit of an Icon Fetishist in most games, but Guild Wars brightly coloured skill buttons hold a particular fascination, and even better, collecting them all, isn't just about money and NPCs; it involves significant fighting, and a lot of exploration.
Its not just the handful of endgame raid bosses either; Elite teaching monsters can be found almost everywhere from the midgame onward. There's just so many of them to find. The Legendary Skill Hunter title, for capturing every Elite in all campaigns, takes 291 Elite captures to achieve, 291 different Bosses need beating down and their secrets studied. Having never been a raiding type, this seems a admirable alternative for life after victory, a different kind of endgame.
This kind of Monster Mentoring sort of exists elsewhere, but with nothing like the pervasiveness, with most skills in most games coming from that lazy, but astoundingly competent Warrior Trainer again.
The four 'Pure Arcane' classes in Everquest 1 (Wiz, Mag, Enc, Nec) have a limited sort of equivalent; most spells can just be bought in the profession shop, next to the Trainer, but some require mastery of a tradeskill of their own to create; 'Research', and the consumable items needed to fill out the spellbook were often monster drops. It wasn't as if that monster was specifically teaching you anything though; it just happened to have a useful spleen, that was all.
EQ2 has a hybrid type of thing; the basic skill doesn't even need to be trained - it just shows up on the bar when you ding, but improving its stats can be done via crafted items or chest drops. Again, the monster isn't directly responsible for your tuition; it just happened to have eaten someone who could have taught you, recently!
WoW has various Codex consumable drop items which improve ranks in existing skill, but this is typically a high-end/end-game level thing, and I'm not sure these books teach you new things, only improve existing ones, and again, beyond the random drop and the xp, well, the monster could have been anything at all.
LotR has Deeds, (or so I'm told), some of which are to be had for developing vendettas against one particular type of monster, so its possible that you're learning better stats from the boars - only they could say.
To be honest, I'm not sure that the Signet of Capture style of On The Job training could work in many other MMOs, largely because monsters exist to attack, and then die, and the Signet is quite an elegant way to add an extra option to that limited set. Perhaps a monster might yield, and offer to show the adventurer a thing or two in exchange for its life? I'm not sure we, the roving band of online mercenaries, are quite ready for monsters that complicated really.
So, for making monsters matter, and showing that the smug lazy Warrior Trainer doesn't always know everything, Guild Wars' Signet of Capture; Nifty!
Guild Wars is very much alive and well, and available all over the place. The Signet of Capture itself however, doesn't enter the picture until some way into each campaign, and you'll need to get to one of the following outposts to find the quest that lets you get started on the wonderful Monster Safari that follows:
Prophecies: Lion's Arch
Factions: Kaineng Center
Nightfall: Marga Coast
(Eye of the North starts at L20, so you'll have already done one of the above. EotN has no unique Elites, but does offer alterative locations to get at the other campaign ones.)
Elite Skills don't start showing up on the Bosses until a bit later on form that.
If you'd rather not have to scour the whole planet to find that one skill you need, here's a big spoiler list of where all the Elites are. This list only points you in the right direction mind you - you still have to get there, and kill the guy, and will have only seven other useful skills as you do so!