Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone!

I’d like to discuss with you an “issue” that i have with main/alt characters:

I main Thief and have something around 2000 hours on it, on the other hand, all my other 7 characters together hardly have 250.

The problem is: i would like to spend time on other toons, specially Elementalist that i really like, however, whenever i log to play with her, i get the feeling that i’m “wasting time that i could be using to do something more productive for my main”, and also there’s gear issue, my Thief is the only one full ascended, and i don’t really want to spend the money/time to craft a second set of ascended armor.

I would like to know if i’m the only one with this “issue” and if there are others, what do you do to mitigate this feeling?

Thanks!!

Given most things are account bound I don’t have this issue. I generally log on whichever alt I feel like playing that day.

Very few things require me to be on one particular alt.

Most of my alts are only in Exotic gear too, but if I’m playing for fun, I really don’t care.

I suck for alts, I have one character that I really play and the rest I only play them very sporadically.
you’re not the only one in there, my friend

I sometimes only plain my main, and other times I invest in my alts. None of my characters are in ascended at all – apart from my main who has a couple of pieces of jewellery.

I would say you are not “wasting time” if you are enjoying doing what you do. All your alts are in the same game. Mrs. Flatley has said to me that it’s a waste of time laying in bed but I say I quite enjoy laying in bed, thanks.

Sarie.1630:

Given most things are account bound I don’t have this issue. I generally log on whichever alt I feel like playing that day.

Very few things require me to be on one particular alt.

Most of my alts are only in Exotic gear too, but if I’m playing for fun, I really don’t care.

That’s the point: i know that almost everything is account bound, but still, i can’t seem to play other characters! Maybe my love for Thief is so big that i simple don’t find it really that fun playing other classes

While I occasionally have dalliances with alts, my heart and time are most given to my main. I get ideas for builds and purposes that’d work better on other professions, but I always come back to making those ideas work on my main and giving them a go instead.

My alts get parked for farming. I log them in on the weekday evenings to gather mats as a way for me to relax for bed.

On those rare occasions when I log in alts to play them instead of farm, I always feel daunted by the prospect of leveling them and building them up to be close to on-par with my main. That feeling is why I instead tailor them to a specific purpose (WvW zerg, solo dungeon, etc) when I feel like playing something a little different.

~EW

that’s a big possibility too. it also depends on how you relate to your character.

I don’t really have the gear issue. I main a mesmer, and the main alts I am interested in are my necro and ele, so that makes gearing a breeze. I have one of each profession at 80, a set full set of each type of ascended (3 lite armor sets). So even out gearing issues…
Mesmer – 4k+ hours
ele – 20 hours
necro – 25 hours
theif – 10 hours
ranger – 8 hours
engi – 2 hours (I hated this one)
war – 3 hours (hated this one almost as much as that one)
guard – 6 hours
rev – 1 hour (thanks free level items)

For me I just think i enjoy playing my mesmer far more then my other characters so I rarely switch.

Miku.6297:

For me I just think i enjoy playing my mesmer far more then my other characters so I rarely switch.

Right? even tough sometimes i want to switch for a “refreshing” play style, my mind and my heart are always set on my Thief main!

I’m relieved that i’m not alone on this matter! =)

Pedroso.4603:

I’m relieved that i’m not alone on this matter! =)

With a world populace of over 7B, you can be pretty confident you are never alone in anything you think on any topic.

~EW

I know exactly what you mean OP. I “main” four characters out of a total of eight (see signature). Of those four I really only focus on two. I feel so bad for my other characters, except one because he’s a key farmer and I feel bad for him for groundhog day reasons. Then, when I do play the lesser played characters, I feel like I should be returning to my mains ASAP.

~sigh~

I don’t have an issue playing my alts either, but that’s probably because I don’t have alts. I don’t mean I only have 1 character, I mean that I vary my play time between several different characters. None can be considered a main. Given the fact that I have 10 characters with world complation this means that I can take almost anyone anywhere I want, so it doesn’t really matter. It all depends on what class I feel like playing (or build, since I have seconds of a few classes with different builds).

It also doesn’t matter to me if they’re ascended or not. Exotic gear is perfectly fitting to walk around in. I do make sure I always have runes and sigils equipped, and a full set of trinkets (I know a lot of people who don’t seem to bother with those). However, 9 of my characters do have full ascended sets of gear (and one of my Warriors even has 2 ascended sets, one for dps and one for condi). So even if that was a dealbreaker to me, it wouldn’t matter anymore for me at this point.

The only class I ignore is Engineer. I do have one at level 80 and the elite specialization unlocked, but I really don’t like the class so it just sits at the end of my row of character slots, collecting dust.

I don’t have a main. My biggest goal in this game is to get 9 professions with 9 sets of ascended armor. Halfway through my 4th and 5th set at the moment (because of duplicate chests). The rest are exotic. The first thing I think every player should do is get 9 level 80s, and 2 sets of ascended armor for each armor tier, and all the crafting done. It is just too fun to be able to play everyone doing everything

I agree. As a mainoholic, I only play with one character in every MMO. I don’t have time and patience to level up, gear and unlock stuff for alts.

(Edited typo).

I love my alts and play them whenever I get the urge, but I usually have one alt I’m focusing on over the others at any given time. But no I don’t feel like I’m wasting time. There’s no rush to do anything in this game since it’s different from others thankfully, so you can do things on your own time.

24 characters total. I’m rapidly closing in on having a different character to play for every day of the month. :P

HoT and the list of masteries and such kind of restricted me to playing only a few characters, as anything that was under level 80 was “wasting experience” I could have put toward masteries. ( So glad I finished everything but raid masteries now! )

Ascended is nifty stuff, but I don’t worry about it so much. If it weren’t for the bloated price of leather, I’d happily craft some exotics to do most of my content in. Looking forward to slapping around some fractals in the hopes for RNG Ascended gear and using the Forge to get stats I want.

But overall, GW2 has been the most friendly alt experience of any MMO I’ve run into, and I’m glad for that. Just waiting for playable Tengu, so I can make more characters.

I have no ‘alts’ I just have characters to play for whatever I want to do at the moment.

I have 13 alts, and I use them as I see fit. I am mainly on my Elementalist…… but I will sometimes go with Ranger, Chrono or Necro….

I don’t play my 8 alts much anymore because of the gear issue. Ascended is the new exotic and it’s an annoying grind for me with my RL commitments. Then having to constantly change the ascended I do have to different stats is also too much of a grind for me every time they adjust balancing.

Also, I just have gotten bored over the years taking 7 now 8 alt characters through the exact same content with no real class variation.

I wish I had an option for the story quests I do to also count for my entire account. A button I can push or something that would make the story done for all my alts, too.

i am not an alt player, i found it as a waste of time

we almost have everything to change, one time class change could be there, would be useful for some

I bounce around between most of my characters, although I’ll mostly play my Guardian, Reaper, Herald, or (for guild missions or stuff where world completion is nice) Ranger.

The only think I don’t like is the fact that all but one of my characters are just in Exotics, so I’m forced into playing Herald if I want to do fractals

I main a war and use him for most purposes (mainly cause he has 100% map completion so easy travel) … but I WvW main on my guard, roam main on my necro (also spvp main) … and my thief only ever gets time spent learning after I get trolled too hard on my main by other thieves.

Funny though, I main’d a rev for quite a while in WvW and he also has the farthest progression in HoT story. (I’ve spent less than a year on this account) but gearing was important to me so I crafted 2 full heavy sets of ascended, and gave the others rings/amulets.

My necro is full exotic presently only because I haven’t gotten ascended vipers rings/amulets for him yet

I’d estimate playtime spent in this type of breakout:
War/Bers – 50%
Guard – 20%
Necro/Reap – 15%
Rev/Her – 10%
Thief – 5% if that (made it cause I want to unlock the ascended staff)

My main only has Ascended gear but I love playing my alts even without Ascended. I think it depends on how you play. I have one alt that thanks to HOT, I play more than my main. And that is because the elite spec added a ton of fun for me to open world pve on that toon. I also have an alt that I moved to be dedicated WvWer. Then I have alts where I am just playing to try out different combat styles/weapons.

Each of my alts is used for different purposes. I am big into the role part of rpgs so each has its own background and story. That keeps it interesting for me. I can tailor GW2 different content to whatever background or story progression I have created for them. it keeps the game and playing experience fresh for each toon.

I don’t have any problems with alts, I main two Characters. Guardian (Charr Male) is my default main character and my Alt Main Character whos a Mesmer (Charr Female).

No Gear issues eather, My own problem is I am running out of progress for each of my alts XD, I need more slots soon.

When I started out having alts was a issue beacuse each alt saps a lot of money from you, But eventully that lessens by a huge amount beacuse they already 80 and have the 80 lvl gear.

Nope i dont have aternatives, unless only to use them in pvp, otherwise one pvx character is more than eneught, the pve grind is already boring in one character.

That’s the tradeoff with alts really.

GW2 is probably the most alt friendly MMO out there, but as these games are generally about some form of character advancement, its only logical that playing one character means you can’t keep playing the other, and that investing gold one way means its not getting used another way. The only reason you have extra character slots in most cases is so that people with multiple accounts don’t have too much of an advantage, and so that there’s something to monetize for people that like creating alts.

Just figure out your overall goals and figure out how you can use your alts to achieve stuff for your main. I found that although I don’t play alts a lot, after using scrolls and such to level a character to 80 there’s plenty of stuff my alt can do that is more efficient that way, like getting rewards for story and map completion and other once per character stuff that pays out rewards that are per character.

Excelsior!

I always have a very high relation to my alter ego in video games. And all are based on my real-life principles (e.g. I only wear black in real life. So do my characters, Shadow Abyss is 80% of my wardrobe colours, the other one is “black” and red, including hair and eyes). So I naturally have problems with alternative characters.

In League of Legends I even have several accounts to play only one hero on it – to keep the stats clean. In Final Fantasy 14, everyone can do everything, which is such a nonsense in many ways (Black Mage and White Mage in one person?!). But I was fine, I had my spot and I never change that.

Except for GuildWars2. This game provides 3 (!) classed that are totally like built around my (real life) character and preferences: Engineer, Thief and Necromancer. Since I started as Engineer, which is an outstanding class, I felt it was too average in all areas. I had fun, but everything felt like 60-80% in all departments. So I dared to lurk into other classes by using the HoT item and eventually fell in love with the Thief (actually assassin).

And while I can understand the thread creator, I send my Engineer on vacation and probably stay with my now “alternate” character (my main for now). So I have alternative characters, but usually only either to Ying-Yang out gameplay styles so they never get boring or because I found something better.. which is the Thief.

But else, I will never understand people creating 10 guys. But then, I do not like weak-minded people that are sometimes like this, sometimes like that.

(I think I lost the point of my post and kept derailing it. Now I have this essay here with a total obscure quintessence. Even Asura need a break I guess…)

So I have 2 characters in GW2, Zedekk and Zedexx, but I basically replaced the first one with the latter one simply because Thief is a tad better and not because of the need of switching around. I am glad other people are the same. “Mainaholic”, huh? That is a nice word. So if my Asura Thief is keeping me fascinated as he is doing for the past month, I might ditch my Engineer and stick with Zedexx. I haven’t switched back to my Engineer since then, so I guess even having one alt, I do not play him. He can do laboratory stuff now or whatever.

The only issue that I have when I play my Alts are the lack of map compeletion on them. I have two at 100 and doing another one just sounds like a huge chore. Only my main has full ascended and he is the only one I plan on doing fractals on. Haunt exotic gear doesn’t bother me that much at the moment. I just wish that the gift of exploration can be consumed on another character to boost their map comp to 100 with the penalty of no exp or HP from it, could also be only used on a 80?

The addition of ascended tier killed the desire to alt for me.

Pedroso.4603:

Hello everyone!

I’d like to discuss with you an “issue” that i have with main/alt characters:

I main Thief and have something around 2000 hours on it, on the other hand, all my other 7 characters together hardly have 250.

The problem is: i would like to spend time on other toons, specially Elementalist that i really like, however, whenever i log to play with her, i get the feeling that i’m “wasting time that i could be using to do something more productive for my main”, and also there’s gear issue, my Thief is the only one full ascended, and i don’t really want to spend the money/time to craft a second set of ascended armor.

I would like to know if i’m the only one with this “issue” and if there are others, what do you do to mitigate this feeling?

Thanks!!

I used to only play my main and felt the same. My warrior was fully ascended with around 3 legendary weapons, frostfang, sunrise, and ad infinitum. I felt like I invested so much into her and if I played anything else I’d just have to grind back up.

Eventually by the time HoT came out and I had around 400 tomes of knowledges and a significant number of ascended chest from fractals. I felt it was more of a waste to let resources sit in my bank and decided to test out each elite spec.

It was pretty fun actually. I feel like HoTs is more balanced than core tyria was and playing things like necromancer was actually fun. As I dipped into other classes, it was refreshing. I learned some important things about each class, like the optimal place to stand for druid heals.

I haven’t touch my warrior much since. My alts are gradually gaining more play hours. I’ve even started working on legendaries just for them. I’ve got 4 classes fully ascended and working on my 3rd core map completion, 2nd HoT map completion. I regret not exploring other classes more because they aren’t a waste of time. Map completion generates a nice chunk of gold and the class knowledge is great for understanding group play on a higher level. Also the gear progression in GW2 is rather low, so there’s only so many things you can honestly work on that aren’t cosmetic only, so spread the love.

Ashen.2907:

The addition of ascended tier killed the desire to alt for me.

The tier that has been in the game for over 3 years? The one that has been worked on and been significantly made easier to obtain since? The same armor that isn’t soul bound and possible to move between character?

Why do so many people feel the need to equip their alts with ascended gear? It really makes barely any difference in open world PvE whether you’re exotic geared or ascended. Sure, you need it for higher level Fractals (not for the extra 5% but for the infusion slots, though). Depending on what group you join, it can also be demanded for Raids. But other than that exotic is more than fine.

Unless you’re a diehard WvW player, then I’d understand. But I don’t do much with that game mode so I don’t know if ascended is really that essential in WvW. All I do is a few solo dailies every now and then, or be the glass cannon appendix to a small zerg while trying to get my GoB’s.

I crafted 3 Ascended armor sets, one in each weight, and all of the Ascended weapons, including under water, with duplicates of axe, sword, pistol, dagger so I can double up if wanted. It took forever and cost me a lot of gold and time but it was worth it.
It makes going through the LS with alts a breeze.

Basically I can do anything with anything character, and with the new maps trinkets and back ability to change, just makes it that much easier.

I’m not concerned with any character being the best. I play whichever character I feel like or whichever I think is best for what I want to do.

Before HoT, yeah I liked to play my other characters, but Post HoT and after doing almost everything in the core game, I tried playing the HoT maps, only to find out that they are not solo friendly at all for me. Since then I have not been able to play my alts otherwise, I won’t get anything done.

I dont have this “issue”. I’ll list the reasons below.

1). I play mostly Soldier classes. (I have 4 warriors from 3 different races) and these make up for the most of my alts, I have 5. With one of each of the other professions bar mesmer, not really a fan, but will probably buy a slot at some point to make one just so I have one of each class, and at least this mesmer will make it to 80 thanks to tombs, unlike my mesmer in GW1 who to this day is still sitting in Yaks bend.

2). I play all different game modes with my main/alts, so gearing them is easy. I’ve played enough PvP to gear them with full exotic as soon as they ding 80, and have had enough ascended drops that I have 2 ascended heavy armor sets(1i crafted), and I’m 2 drops away from a full light set, if I dont craft the rest. Same for weapons, I only ever crafted a sword shield and a great sword, out of the 12 ascended weapons I have. Not including the collection ascended and the 2 legendary weapons I have.

3) The only real individual progress with this game is the story, and world completion, that is is. So I don’t see how I’m wasting time playing alts over my main.

I have 8 characters and what usually motivates me to play the alts are the specialization collections, which require completing a HoT zone with that alt, and also learning the class.
It can feel ho hum sometimes, but then I could stumble across a way of playing an alt that is very different from my main and it becomes addictive for a while.

I guess technically nowadays I don’t have a main, as it used to be my engineer but that was before HoT and I barely touch him now. I’ve been focused on playing daredevil, dragonhunter, reaper and chrono since then. Started a warrior just last week too. XD

Even with most things being account bound, I do not do Alts very well.

Many years ago, I used to play pen and paper RPGS. In those games, progression took quite a bit of time. Which led to the mindset of sticking to one character only.

That mentality is something I have not been able to change in the decades since.

i only play one character and that’s a charr engineer. masterrace + masterclass. everything else is weak beta trash.

KickzNGigglez.4958:

Pedroso.4603:

Hello everyone!

I’d like to discuss with you an “issue” that i have with main/alt characters:

I main Thief and have something around 2000 hours on it, on the other hand, all my other 7 characters together hardly have 250.

The problem is: i would like to spend time on other toons, specially Elementalist that i really like, however, whenever i log to play with her, i get the feeling that i’m “wasting time that i could be using to do something more productive for my main”, and also there’s gear issue, my Thief is the only one full ascended, and i don’t really want to spend the money/time to craft a second set of ascended armor.

I would like to know if i’m the only one with this “issue” and if there are others, what do you do to mitigate this feeling?

Thanks!!

I used to only play my main and felt the same. My warrior was fully ascended with around 3 legendary weapons, frostfang, sunrise, and ad infinitum. I felt like I invested so much into her and if I played anything else I’d just have to grind back up.

Eventually by the time HoT came out and I had around 400 tomes of knowledges and a significant number of ascended chest from fractals. I felt it was more of a waste to let resources sit in my bank and decided to test out each elite spec.

It was pretty fun actually. I feel like HoTs is more balanced than core tyria was and playing things like necromancer was actually fun. As I dipped into other classes, it was refreshing. I learned some important things about each class, like the optimal place to stand for druid heals.

I haven’t touch my warrior much since. My alts are gradually gaining more play hours. I’ve even started working on legendaries just for them. I’ve got 4 classes fully ascended and working on my 3rd core map completion, 2nd HoT map completion. I regret not exploring other classes more because they aren’t a waste of time. Map completion generates a nice chunk of gold and the class knowledge is great for understanding group play on a higher level. Also the gear progression in GW2 is rather low, so there’s only so many things you can honestly work on that aren’t cosmetic only, so spread the love.

Ashen.2907:

The addition of ascended tier killed the desire to alt for me.

The tier that has been in the game for over 3 years? The one that has been worked on and been significantly made easier to obtain since? The same armor that isn’t soul bound and possible to move between character?

Yes, it has been over three years since the addition of a disincentive to play alts (for me),

I can say that no, I don’t share that as a GW2 issue. I believe I have around 60 characters across several accounts that I run frequently. Sure, there are some characters that get little use. Mostly it’s from not liking the profession mechanics and Meta at the time. Though as the needs change and the Meta changes, so do the amount of use some characters receive. It’s a nice cycle that keeps things interesting for me. Especially if you PvP at all.

I went for that mastery for crafting full ascended for every weight, so when I feel like putting some time in on an alt I will put the ascended for that weight class on the alt I am playing. I am one piece of armor away from having 2 full sets of ascended for my main, so I can use the spare set for a light alt. They all have their own achievements. In other words, i went out of my way to get all the specialization achievement weapons for every different class, so I have one of each class. I farm with my alts. I don’t feel like I am wasting time on them, but I do feel most comfortable driving my main around. It is just easier for me to play her, she is geared to the teeth and she is hard to kill, so I enjoy her a lot more than the other characters.

Guardian – 899 hours
Ranger – 607 hours
Ele – 353 hours
Necro #1 – 150 hours
Warrior – 89 hours
Necro #2 – 29 hours (Because I’ve come to loathe the sylvari, but I like Necros)
Mesmer – 28 hours
Thief – 4 hours
Revenant – 1 hour

Total playtime according to /age command is 2557 – so among the characters I’ve deleted, there’s an unlisted 499 hours that have been on Ranger.

Suppose that makes Ranger or Guardian my main, though I feel I play the Necro more.

Still nothing compared to gw1, in which I accrued over 7000 hours, primarily on my Necro.

So, I’d say the GW franchise is alt friendly, allowing that some people flat out won’t like some classes.

I main mesmer, have 4 asc sets for every possible occasion and i literally play the **** out of him. Atm i also got pretty much every class except ranger/engi geared up for pve (fracs/raids). If u play mostly solo sticking to your main 100% is fine by all means. If u are interested in group content like pve/wvw raids having only one class properly geared and played is like shooting yourself on the foot.

Even when just doing fractals with guildies some times some1 has to change class so we can actually get a decent set up.

Right now I have 1 of each profession on lvl 80.

I main with Necromancer (although before HoT, my necro suffered alot of lack of DPS capabilities that still rules the core game PvE content), I also play alot with Warrior, Ranger and Elementalist, all mentioned have unlocked and maxed out inventory space for that reason.

For the rest, I play on some occasions, tho I might move Thief, Engineer, Guardian and Mesmer once I unlock and max their inventory space…

Pre-HoT I spent my time getting all my characters to level 80. Then during HoT I basically used all the spare exotics to finish off gearing some of them (some are still not done though, priorities + game breaks n all). For the same reason as you I tend to do new content on my main first, however now that all my alts are starting to get into a decent shape I do shift my playtime more and more spread over all of them.

I have also spent some time getting them all a decent build to use, only my engineer is still fairly weak due to gear issues but everyone else I’d take to Dragon’s stand as a commander if I want. I will never play certain classes as much though, not all of them are as fun in all aspects of the game. My daredevil is an absolute glass cannon and there’s no way I’d bring that to Dragon’s stand in it’s current gear and build.

HoT also introduced ascended specialization rewards and I’m working on finishing those now. This already gave one alt of mine an extra ascended weapon and I’m getting close to finishing all the others too. A couple have received ascended trinkets from LS2/HoT story achievements. I am not too fussed about gearing them all in ascended, but I have started on my second armor set (light Yassith).

A couple of things that have also helped is the increased focus on account bound rewards vs soulbound rewards. I can share the map keys around to characters that I want to take to said map (i.e. VB or SW etc.) At the end of the day you just have to accept some characters might not suit you as much as your main.

I don’t have a main. I have professions I like more than others but I try to play them also. I have at least one of each professions and I switch frequently between professions, even on the same day. So the question for me is “Do you feel like playing with a main?” The answer to that question is no.

I stay with one new class for awhile before even setting “foot” on another because my memory is bad enough that I will dump all I have learned on the new class. I also have more than one of my favorite classes because I like more than one race.

As for ascended, you can swap weapons with all that can use them and gear with all of that weight class. If I think I am going to use a piece of gear only on characters that use condi, I make that gear some version of condi.

If I am going to swap them between different damage types, I just make it zerk since it will work on everything, just not as well as condi on condi builds.

I wish we could buy shared weapon slots and shared gathering tool slots.

I have 32 characters that I play. It got so hard to choose who to play that I made a list of them, go to a random number generator site and randomly generate which character I’ll play, once I finish my daily on my main.

I’ve finished mapping bloodstone fen on 23 characters. lol

I have my main, an engi, which I love, and slowly going for full ascended. Then I have a few alts. I don’t play on my alts much at all, I always end up playing on my alts for a very small amount of time, and then going back the my main. Always. I’ve gotten to the point that I may just delete my other chars, and just invest heavily into just my main.

As someone with 29 alts, make different builds for each! Granted, looks, race & armor differences are nice, but if each alt has a different playstyle, then logging into each is a different experience for whichever playstyle you feel like using for the day / content. In fact, try crazy builds or niche ones ala Boots’ Bad Builds style if it works for you. I’m sure there are plenty of mad scientist theorycrafters out there that could give you some inspiration