Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.
Discouraged to play multiple characters?
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Seems like everytime I log into these forums for a quick read I see this Vayne character defending Anet from complaints and grievances that their users have. You sure your not employed by Anet Vayne? Seems like you have a full time job for yourself here.
And this adds to the conversation how?
Frankly, I only defend Anet when people make spurious claims or use hyperbole. In this particular case, I’m not defending Anet at all. The OPs premise is based on a play style that not everyone shares and I’m pointing that out.
How you can get defending Anet from that is beyond me.
It’s on a premise of a playstyle that Anets model does not support, hence how it is defending Anet here. But you didn’t answer the question, are you employed by Anet? Its just an observation. Literally everytime I have come to these forums I just glance over topics and there is Vayne defending Anet.
Yes you are discouraged from playing alts. If you want to fully gear out all your characters it will take months to just get the earrings/amulet. The rings are fairly easy, the fractal level isn’t a real big deal since only 3 professions are accepted at higher levels. But storymodes, I think, should be account wide because they are so hard to complete with almost no one wanting to do them.
I’d love to gear out all of my level 80s, will it happen anytime soon? Nope Will it happen ever? Probably not.
Still I think a reasonable level for fractals is lvl 20 and maybe 30, just for the skins. If you are doing it for the better drops may I suggest farming CoF1?
Sunset
50/50 GWAMM x3
I quit how I want
50/50 GWAMM x3
I quit how I want
Seems like everytime I log into these forums for a quick read I see this Vayne character defending Anet from complaints and grievances that their users have. You sure your not employed by Anet Vayne? Seems like you have a full time job for yourself here.
And this adds to the conversation how?
Frankly, I only defend Anet when people make spurious claims or use hyperbole. In this particular case, I’m not defending Anet at all. The OPs premise is based on a play style that not everyone shares and I’m pointing that out.
How you can get defending Anet from that is beyond me.
It’s on a premise of a playstyle that Anets model does not support, hence how it is defending Anet here. But you didn’t answer the question, are you employed by Anet? Its just an observation. Literally everytime I have come to these forums I just glance over topics and there is Vayne defending Anet.
No, I’m not employeed by Anet. As far as I know, Anet doesn’t employ anyone in Australia.
Also, as far as fractals go, I thought you could do any level at any time. If you have a toon with level 48 fractals you should (maybe — level 5) have enough rings / relics to get good AR on your alt.
You can do any level you like, however your rewards are based on your personal level, unless the fractal level is lower than your personal then you get rewards based on the fractal level. If you have a toon at level 48 fractals you should have more than 2, maybe 3, alts with good AR to do higher levels (not 48 of course)
Are daily chests tied to the toon or the account? If they are tied to the account then I totally understand, if they are tied to the toon, then (and believe me I always side with the Alts on this) I think a person should have to grind up the levels to get the second chest.
For some reason I’ve never tested it, but the wiki has all the info:
Similar to explorable dungeons, individual characters can receive daily rewards for completing the Solid Ocean Fractal in each tier they have unlocked. This daily reward chest includes a Bag of Coins (which contains 2 to 4 silver), a number of Fractal Relics, a chance at a bonus Ascended or Fractal item depending on the tier, and a Pristine Fractal Relic at scale 10 and higher. Thus, a character that has unlocked difficulty 30 could complete 4 fractal dailies each day, one each at even numbers from 1 to 9, 10 to 19, 20 to 29 and 30.
For each player, rewards are based on the minimum between the selected Fractal Difficulty Scale and the player’s Personal Reward Level. Also, players running at Fractal Scales lower than their own will receive bonus karma at the end of round. The consequence is that playing at a scale higher than one’s level increases difficulty but not rewards, while playing at a lower scale decreases difficulty and rewards, but gives karma in exchange.
Completing a bonus fractal will award the player with a “bonus” chest. This can be obtained for each tier of Fractal Difficuly Scale below or containing the player’s personal reward level.
Since the reward chest is character bound it DOES make sense to have separate progression for each character, so it’s not a matter of “unfriendly towards alts”, it would’ve been terrible if it was account bound.
The reason repetition exists in MMOs is because of the whole longevity factor. MMOs are expected to last hundreds, if not thousands of hours. There’s simply no way to program that into a game without repetition.
People say they want stuff a certain way and I really believe they feel they want it…but that doesn’t mean that when they get it they’ll actually be happier.
My son got his legendary weapon and stopped playing. He’s probably just taking a break, but you know…his attention span isn’t my attention span. He may never come back to the game. As long as he was working on it, he was there.
It’s true that people can get frustrated having to do the same stuff over again, but too much time saving actually works against the best interests of the game…even if players want to save time.
If they would *program" in some better community support/tools/enahncements that would aid this mmo’s longevity. After all one of a mmo’s major major draws is community and w/o proper support (which we could definitely have improved), the mmo suffers.
Serenity now~Insanity later
I wonder, does WoW allow players who have a top-tier character to automatically be able to use all their alts in top tier PvE/PvP content without having to go through the process? Does SWtoR? EQ? Rift? Cryptic’s games? Any other theme park MMO?
Vayne is correct, this is the nature of the MMO beast.
I’m surprised no one understand why OP is complaining. He want to play a different class, for example a thief instead of warrior and do fractal 48.
But he felt discouraged since it take so much effort to get the gear and agony to do 48, not to mention even if he get it, he wont’ have a chance to loot fractal skin. Unless he start leveling from 1-48 again.
This type of thing come up from antoher game I played too. But there’s also the counter argument if achievement is account bound, people won’t be “encouraged” to play their alt. As in some people probably want to level another character from fotm1 to fotm48 but it become pointless if personal level is account bound.
I understand that, and I disagree with the conclusion. As someone who is on level 25 fractals, I currently have enough accessories/trinkets to equip 3 of my characters in ascended gear. Not quite fully, but the minimum is 3 and max is 5 ascended items. At level 48, one should easily have enough to equip an alt with ascended gear and apply the simple agony resistance infusion. Then the alternate will easily be able to do higher level fractals with the agony resistance.
As for not getting the same loot, if all you do is fractals, and you are pre-equipped with agony resistance, it won’t take long to level up. Either way, they still have the primary character for the loot and the 2ndary character can still play higher level fractals.
I wonder, does WoW allow players who have a top-tier character to automatically be able to use all their alts in top tier PvE/PvP content without having to go through the process? Does SWtoR? EQ? Rift? Cryptic’s games? Any other theme park MMO?
Vayne is correct, this is the nature of the MMO beast.
First, I don’t think anyone complained about getting an alt to 80, that’s easy.
Second, why is it that nature of the MMO beast? And is that the best nature the beast could have?
Could someone help me understand how it would harm the game to have ascended gear be account bound instead of soulbound? I don’t think it would harm Vayne’s casual play style. Nor would it cause harm to the gear grinders with a single toon. But it would greatly help those who have already leveled multiple alts to 80 and are just waiting around for BiS gear.
Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.
I wonder, does WoW allow players who have a top-tier character to automatically be able to use all their alts in top tier PvE/PvP content without having to go through the process? Does SWtoR? EQ? Rift? Cryptic’s games? Any other theme park MMO?
Vayne is correct, this is the nature of the MMO beast.
First, I don’t think anyone complained about getting an alt to 80, that’s easy.
Second, why is it that nature of the MMO beast? And is that the best nature the beast could have?
Could someone help me understand how it would harm the game to have ascended gear be account bound instead of soulbound? I don’t think it would harm Vayne’s casual play style. Nor would it cause harm to the gear grinders with a single toon. But it would greatly help those who have already leveled multiple alts to 80 and are just waiting around for BiS gear.
I do agree that I would like ascended gear to be account bound, but I do not think it’s current design discourages alts. That was the question of the main topic.
I wonder, does WoW allow players who have a top-tier character to automatically be able to use all their alts in top tier PvE/PvP content without having to go through the process? Does SWtoR? EQ? Rift? Cryptic’s games? Any other theme park MMO?
Vayne is correct, this is the nature of the MMO beast.
First, I don’t think anyone complained about getting an alt to 80, that’s easy.
Second, why is it that nature of the MMO beast? And is that the best nature the beast could have?
Could someone help me understand how it would harm the game to have ascended gear be account bound instead of soulbound? I don’t think it would harm Vayne’s casual play style. Nor would it cause harm to the gear grinders with a single toon. But it would greatly help those who have already leveled multiple alts to 80 and are just waiting around for BiS gear.
I do agree that I would like ascended gear to be account bound, but I do not think it’s current design discourages alts. That was the question of the main topic.
But the OP does, otherwise he would not have included ascended gear in the list. The only reason I can see that ascended gear could be considered to discourage alts is because of the time gating. If you can think of another reason please let me know. I enjoy thinking through these things.
Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.
Here is my feedback to something that I did not like.
Compare
The Halloween backpack reward – two similar books. I liked that concept. If you wanted you could get that optical reward for all your characters by playing the content multiple times. Downside was you could not give it to another character since it was character bound.
The Fused Gauntlets – positive side, account bound first. Negative side only available once per account.
I would like to see the same concept as the HoM rewards – make it a skin that I can pick up from a vendor with any character going forward.
“Whose Kitten is this?” – “It’s a Charr baby.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
If they made Fractal progression account bound instead of character bound like some people want, they would most likely have to make the daily chests account bound also. Which would mean one daily chest per account. And the people with ALTs really do not want this.
The only reason people want their Fractal progression level account bound is so they can have another chance at a high level fractal reward.
I understand people who run ALTs get tired of doing the same content over and over. But personally, I just don’t believe if you have unlocked content for one character that it should automatically become unlocked for any other character you create.
I wonder, does WoW allow players who have a top-tier character to automatically be able to use all their alts in top tier PvE/PvP content without having to go through the process? Does SWtoR? EQ? Rift? Cryptic’s games? Any other theme park MMO?
Vayne is correct, this is the nature of the MMO beast.
First, I don’t think anyone complained about getting an alt to 80, that’s easy.
Second, why is it that nature of the MMO beast? And is that the best nature the beast could have?
Could someone help me understand how it would harm the game to have ascended gear be account bound instead of soulbound? I don’t think it would harm Vayne’s casual play style. Nor would it cause harm to the gear grinders with a single toon. But it would greatly help those who have already leveled multiple alts to 80 and are just waiting around for BiS gear.
I do agree that I would like ascended gear to be account bound, but I do not think it’s current design discourages alts. That was the question of the main topic.
But the OP does, otherwise he would not have included ascended gear in the list. The only reason I can see that ascended gear could be considered to discourage alts is because of the time gating. If you can think of another reason please let me know. I enjoy thinking through these things.
Yup the OP does, but I think that is of his own fault and not ANets. I think that Time-Gating is fine, and adds to the longevity and replayability of the game. I’d like the rings to be account bound, not because I want it for less time-gating, but because I often equip an ascended ring right away for the agony resistance, and then later on when I have the laurels/commendations etc I will buy the ring that fits my build better. I’m then left with a soulbound ring in my inventory that is useless. However, I can make it account bound again by infusing it in the mystic forge, which is my current plan.
I do feel bad that the OP feels discouraged, but again, I do not think that is inherent in the design. I could say that I feel discouraged to play Charr because a cat once scared me. That’s really my own fault that I feel discouraged, and I feel it’s similar to the OP. It’s their own choice to not play it as is.
You’ve had great insight in the past regarding time gating and ascended gear, so maybe you can help me understand. Why aren’t alt’s a suit of clothing we can change at will? What I mean is, even if Frederick Gonzeles DeLangostino is a different “person” than Sarah Peppercorn(from an RP perspective) , I am still the same person controlling the toons. And therefore, if I do fractals level 1 to 40 on Frederick I’m just repeating content to do it on Sarah.
I know I don’t “have to do it” and it’s “my choice” and I’m honestly not looking for a fight. I’m just trying to understand a perspective that is different from my own. Toon centric vs. player centric may be a good way to describe it.
There are some conveniences built into the system, like sharing account bound items and titles, but for the most part when you start a new toon you start at the beginning of the game. I could have an 80 level character with 100% world completion and when I create a new one, it starts at level 1 and 0%. If every toon on the account were treated as if it was the same character then skills and areas of the world that were unlocked on one toon would be unlocked on all of them.
As someone else has said, mastering WvWvW play with one class doesn’t mean you have mastered it with every class. Every class plays differently, and there are choices beyond race/class that you make at creation that affect the early chapters of your personal story. Even when the story converges at the three Orders there are multiple missions to choose from.
Even the levelling process involves many different choices. I usually take toons around the five starting areas and the last couple I have levelled up a lot by crafting, one toon that is now level 76 has barely been out of the 1-15 areas. Or you can focus on one region and explore every zone in that region. Or just roam through a single zone doing DEs as they occur.
There are so many options for people who like options, that I can’t understand why people would feel limited to playing a single character. Fractals are only a single aspect of the game, and one that was added after the fact to satisfy a specific kind of player. Because those players are goal-oriented and need something to focus on, the fractal dungeons were designed to provide this. If any toon was supposed to be able to do any level of fractal then there would be no need for Agony Resistance at all, it’s a way of preventing the player from bringing an “inexperienced” character into the higher levels of the dungeon.
But the OP does, otherwise he would not have included ascended gear in the list. The only reason I can see that ascended gear could be considered to discourage alts is because of the time gating. If you can think of another reason please let me know. I enjoy thinking through these things.
Discouraging alts is a side effect of time-gating the equipment because the typical player who cares about Ascended gear wants to equip a single toon as quickly as possible. If the gear were to be rewarded simply for running the dungeons so many times or other easily repeatable tasks, the “grinders” would have everything they needed in a minimal amount of time and begin demanding more. By the game’s 1st anniversary we would have toons running around in Ascended armor with Ascended weapons and people on the forums demanding Exalted gear to grind for. As it stands the people kittenally want it can easily gear up one or two toons just by playing the game and have something to look forward to. And the game has not become a never-ending gear treadmill.
But the OP does, otherwise he would not have included ascended gear in the list. The only reason I can see that ascended gear could be considered to discourage alts is because of the time gating. If you can think of another reason please let me know. I enjoy thinking through these things.
Discouraging alts is a side effect of time-gating the equipment because the typical player who cares about Ascended gear wants to equip a single toon as quickly as possible. If the gear were to be rewarded simply for running the dungeons so many times or other easily repeatable tasks, the “grinders” would have everything they needed in a minimal amount of time and begin demanding more. By the game’s 1st anniversary we would have toons running around in Ascended armor with Ascended weapons and people on the forums demanding Exalted gear to grind for. As it stands the people kittenally want it can easily gear up one or two toons just by playing the game and have something to look forward to. And the game has not become a never-ending gear treadmill.
I know. I keep trying to think of a way to maintain the current slow gear progression in an alt-friendly way. I confess I haven’t come up with a solution. I think it’s a difficult problem.
Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.
Here is my feedback to something that I did not like.
Compare
The Halloween backpack reward – two similar books. I liked that concept. If you wanted you could get that optical reward for all your characters by playing the content multiple times. Downside was you could not give it to another character since it was character bound.The Fused Gauntlets – positive side, account bound first. Negative side only available once per account.
I would like to see the same concept as the HoM rewards – make it a skin that I can pick up from a vendor with any character going forward.
Thats my main reason why I think that Anet is discouraging us from having alts. We can only ever have one event reward item (other than Halloween ones) on a single character (unless you happened to get a second one from LS and the Winterday end present that had the back item). I never thought about having it like the HOM vendor, which would act like the costume ones from GW1 (which I really want back for at least the town clothes from the gem store). While I would prefer the ability to only have to get it once and then be able to use the event skin(s)/item(s) simultaneously on multiple toons, it would probably be better if it was like the Halloween books.
Darkhaven server
Please give us a keyring…
Please give us a keyring…
(edited by skullmount.1758)
Ahhhh….Guild Coms, laurels and Factal Relics are all account bound so your argument for ascended gear holds no water. I have never played a game where WvW/PvP ranks of any sort where account bound.
And as someone said, running through content again should be half the fun.
Ranks in Planetside 2 are account bound, but spending on skills is character bound (except for some shared trees).
It can be done in an RvR game.
First, I don’t think anyone complained about getting an alt to 80, that’s easy.
Nor was I talking about getting an alt to max. I was talking about getting them to be competitive in top tier endgame, a very different thing.
Second, why is it that nature of the MMO beast? And is that the best nature the beast could have?
Some players require MMO’s to keep their attention over extended periods of time, while playing many hours each day. That is why MMO’s have repetitive, time-gated content. It may not be the best, but all games do it because the alternative is that those players leave if they don’t have something to do.
Could someone help me understand how it would harm the game to have ascended gear be account bound instead of soulbound? I don’t think it would harm Vayne’s casual play style. Nor would it cause harm to the gear grinders with a single toon. But it would greatly help those who have already leveled multiple alts to 80 and are just waiting around for BiS gear.
Ascended gear is account bound, until you use it on a character. In the course of getting that first character to high fractal levels, chances are players will accumulate Ascended gear for alts.
Before Fotm/Ascended, many players sped through dungeons under the token system. Exotic/dungeon gear was BiS and was easy to get. Many players complained
about the lack of progression and incentive to keep playing over time. FotM and Ascended gear were put into the game in answer to those complaints. Removing soul binding from used Ascended gear would not be in accordance with the reason it was put into the game in the first place.
I really don’t think people understand how very many benefits multiple characters have in game. I’m not going to list them all, but if you do not know of them you are missing out. It is clear single character players are at the disadvantage.
Intel i7 3.9ghz processor 16GB Ram 2TB HDD
Nvidia GTX 650 Win 7 64bit FFXI 4+yrs/Aion 4+ years Complete Noob~ Veteran OIF/OEF
http://everyonesgrudge.enjin.com/home MY GW2 Music http://tinyurl.com/cm4o6tu
Nvidia GTX 650 Win 7 64bit FFXI 4+yrs/Aion 4+ years Complete Noob~ Veteran OIF/OEF
http://everyonesgrudge.enjin.com/home MY GW2 Music http://tinyurl.com/cm4o6tu
Chiming in with the others: alts are not an interchangeable skin to use over the first character you level up. There’s absolutely nothing in this game that discourages using alternate characters.
Lol, you are joking, right? Are you trying to say that account-based time-gating (as opposed to effort-based restriction) on top tier equipment is in no way discriminating to alts? That the fact that more and more rewards are now account-based also in no way affects people with multiple characters?
If it’s not alt-unfriendly, than i don’t know what would be.
As people have already posted before I got here, the effort-based acquisition of top tier equipment is there and kicking for the Fractal runners. Accessories and Amulets being limited to the account-based time gate is certainly less than optimal, but it will in no way affect your alts until you’ve already acquired the rings and back piece. At that point a good chunk of the playerbase that doesn’t spend several hours a day on the game will have enough laurels for one (and since most posters imply that they’ve already maxed their main character why not use it for their alt?). In addition there is One amulet that -can- be obtained through effort. If you for whatever reason feel that you absolutely need an ascended amulet before you have the laurels, get to work on the Triforge Pendant.
So yeah. I maintain that there is nothing discouraging or unfriendly toward alts, though I’ll agree that Ascended Accessories and Amulets need to see some effort-based love.
And for what it’s worth, Ascended is such a teeny tiny piece of the game right now that focusing on only the very tippy top stat gear as discouragement is silly. There is an entire game to play, and none of it discourages people from making (I’m emphasizing this as people all thread have confused “making alts” with “getting top gear on all your alts” which is entirely different) more characters. Some sections of the game actively encourages them to try it out. Top-tier equipment has never been a cake walk to obtain. Even in WoW where that stuff drops like candy, some people go months without getting what they want (daily time gates don’t look so bad compared to once a week gates do they?) and have no alternative way of obtaining them the way we do in GW2. Then imagine going through that on multiple characters and GW2 comes out as the easier game to get max gear on alts. So yes, GW2 looks very alt-friendly to me after my WoW days.
So it comes back down to “I want [goal] a second (or third, or fourth) time.” To which my response is “then do [activity] to earn it a second time.”
(edited by Archmortal.1027)
Fractals is such a small aspect of the game. We shouldn’t have to repeat so much just to have a little more diversity at the higher level fractals, especially when high level fractals rewards are horrible. I’m fine with having to gear up and alt with agony resist to play in those levels but having to level him up from 1 to 49 just to get the rewards on him that I could already be getting on my main is insane. I also wouldn’t mind if the fractals daily rewards were account bound to make up for this change.
As for WvW ranks, I don’t see how I can be running around on one character as a Legend rank, then switch to one of my level 80 – full exotics – alts and be classified as an assaulter. WvW ranks should act as a title, a title that I – the player – have a achieved. Something that can be shared across all my characters.
… I still want tengu.
The reason repetition exists in MMOs is because of the whole longevity factor. MMOs are expected to last hundreds, if not thousands of hours. There’s simply no way to program that into a game without repetition.
People say they want stuff a certain way and I really believe they feel they want it…but that doesn’t mean that when they get it they’ll actually be happier.
My son got his legendary weapon and stopped playing. He’s probably just taking a break, but you know…his attention span isn’t my attention span. He may never come back to the game. As long as he was working on it, he was there.
It’s true that people can get frustrated having to do the same stuff over again, but too much time saving actually works against the best interests of the game…even if players want to save time.
If they would *program" in some better community support/tools/enahncements that would aid this mmo’s longevity. After all one of a mmo’s major major draws is community and w/o proper support (which we could definitely have improved), the mmo suffers.
Yep, I agree with this, and i’m sure stuff will come in time. We already know a looking for group tool is in the works. Should it have come out earlier in the game’s life cycle. For sure. Let’s hope it comes out sooner rather than later.
Better Guild tools would help too. Smaller guilds could use guild alliances, similar to what they did in Guild Wars 1, the ability to make custom channels wouldn’t hurt either.
I know. I keep trying to think of a way to maintain the current slow gear progression in an alt-friendly way. I confess I haven’t come up with a solution. I think it’s a difficult problem.
It’s more of a choice than a problem. They chose to set up the system as they did because otherwise the typical hardcore player would burn through the content too fast. The side effect is that if it takes three months to fully gear a single toon, it takes nine months to fully gear three toons. There just isn’t any way around that.
I really don’t think people understand how very many benefits multiple characters have in game. I’m not going to list them all, but if you do not know of them you are missing out. It is clear single character players are at the disadvantage.
One such advantage is this. If you have two accounts, each of seven characters each, you can station each character at a different mega-events (Maw, SB, Fire Ele, Shatterer, Golem Mark II, Jormag, Teq and Jungle Wurm). You can monitor two events at time one on a separate computer. As event timers pop into windows, all you have to log on the character as the event on that character is pop up.
Save you a traveling cost and the chance of being put into overflow.
If you have only one character, each time you travel is about 2.5s, seven events is about 18s in porting cost alone. It is more ~25s if you mis-port, event at a different place pop, etc. Let’s say you farm like that 4 days a week, it would cost you ~1g in porting cost alone.
Let’s say each day you get 10 rares average. One week = 40 rares, but paid 1g
Now if you have 7 characters, then you eliminate this cost.
If you have four accounts each has 7 characters each. You play two characters at a time on two different computer.
You get 40 rares a day, 160~200 rares a week for almost minimal port cost. (except 3-5s porting to LA to salvage)
Having alts? Very advantageous!
One such advantage is this. If you have two accounts, each of seven characters each, you can station each character at a different mega-events (Maw, SB, Fire Ele, Shatterer, Golem Mark II, Jormag, Teq and Jungle Wurm). You can monitor two events at time one on a separate computer. As event timers pop into windows, all you have to log on the character as the event on that character is pop up.
It’s not really playing multiple characters.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
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