I've got 156 points at this point. I've used 106. And my character is still very awesome. I could app for a few things, but I'd be hard-pressed to find 30 points worth of things I really want.

Concentrate on wanting gifts that do a lot for your character and concept, and not with getting freebies. The only pricing issue that I have with the gift tree is that the blood-gift discount doesn't appear to apply universally. Which, all-in-all, is a minor gripe.

It sounds like proposing unique gifts is the way to go.

Also, as a corollary to Helix's posts: You can propose your own gifts. Hence, you can propose your own 0 point gifts. So she did indirectly answer your question.

Gifts, as you see them listed, are simply things that other people have wanted. There are around 800 gifts in the game, so far. A little over 50% of those gifts are unique to individual players.

The right way to approach this is to think about the things that you want your character to be able to do, and the directions you want to grow in, and then ask about that. If those things are represented by gifts already in existence, the GMs will indicate that. If they don't exist, the abilities and their costs can be discussed, and the gifts can be created accordingly.

We've always been up-front about advancement rates, and told people what to plan on in terms of total pointage. At high pointage, it's fairly easy to go deeper into gift trees (because going deep tends to get you to the 0-point gift add-ons or to abilities that are more powerful for their cost), but lower-pointage characters have their schticks slightly more protected.

The design intent is to let you go buy a bunch of different things at a basic level, but to specialize after that point.

Essentially, this game approach is saying that the more experienced a person becomes, the more difficult it is for them to learn anything new. A side-effect is that the system funnels players into one-dimensional concepts, because developing skills and gifts outside of the initial core takes so long that the game becomes no longer interesting. What's wrong with increasing the rate of earning for more experienced characters and pro-rating the scale accordingly? There are plenty of Lore requirements and other prerequesites that will govern the pace of advancement without putting a 'glass ceiling' on advancement points.

Am I way off-base here, or am I missing something? If I am, then I welcome other thoughts and opinions on the matter.