Guild Wars 2

As an Alt addicted player i like to have different toons for different situations, if the team needs a Mesmer i can just switch to my mesmer toon if they need a guardian i can switch to a guardian who doesnt like to switch play styles sometimes?

my major gripe with this is that it is a major time sink to build them for what is needed and you need to build every toon and of course you cant just trade weapons or armors between them because they are soulbounded.

to be honest, the soul bound is a lazy time sink, that way you keep people stuck in the grinding treadmill for their toons.

what if i my build was nerfed why i need to grind every token-gold-karma out there so i can rebuild myself instead of swapping with another toon.

the Account bound is an amazing well designed anti-account steal system, since it cannot be traded to another account.

nonetheless the soulbound system in my humble opinion is a bad implemented design.

This I agree with. I have no issues with stuff being account bound, but if I spend my gold or actual cash for extra bag slots or what have you, I should be able to use that with any character that is mine. The soulbinding thing is not right.

On the contrary, I find leveling alternate characters much more enjoyable in this game than something like World of Warcraft or Diablo 3.

Esquilax.3491:

On the contrary, I find leveling alternate characters much more enjoyable in this game than something like World of Warcraft or Diablo 3.

this isnt about leveling, this is about the benefices you invest time/effort/money on which are constrained to only one character, when most of the time most people have 1 main, and 2 sub mains they change intermittently.

@OP I agree, I played my ele for 11 months, gave it ALL the skins, all the cool weapons, all the effort, now I want to play a mesmer and MY GOODNESS, DOING EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH?! It hurts, I feel like a hobo with no skins, nothing good to look at. Also having to farm and wait for laurels/commendations/tokens to make the minimun of 1 full set with good stats and at least half of another is very time consuming (and resources).

What hurts the most is the cash shop items like the 800 gems harvesting items which are now bound to my ele which I dont feel like playing anymore, thank goodness I didnt put a Bifrost on, otherwise I would have been a very sad panda

In part to remove gold from the economy if people feel they need to retrait .Its not like the majority of items are soulbound until they are used anyway so big whoop there.

I have 3 toons at 80, and each with 2 different sets of armor and trinkets that are exotic/ascended. I’m working on a 4th and 5th, too.

The game is fine as far as alting goes.

5 characters at 80. Soulbinds are stupid.

As someone who came from an MMO where alts were encouraged and few things were character bound, City of Heroes, I consider soulbinding here annoying only for items from the cash shop.

Either introduced a more expensive account bound version of these items or a converter item that changes soulbound to account bound. Make it 500 gems/2000 for 5. Anet still makes money, player begrudgingly pays.

The biggest problems with alts right now is WvW ranks and Fractals levels. These should both be account bound. Having them be character bound forces me to play certain characters for different aspects of the game.

With Fractals I am indeed playing that same character even though I would love to be able to switch around and have some variety. With WvW on the other hand I play whichever character I want and this has essentially made WvW ranks meaningless to me.

I also alt swap for my guild’s needs. Have been doing so for over a decade, often using 2 to 4 accounts through different games to play 2 or 3 at a time.

44 alts here in GW2, 12 at 80 (all but one of those 80s in full exotics), running fractals, have ascended, celestial and laurel gear scattered across a 3-4 “mains”, as well as explorable badge gear for looks on a couple. Oh, and a couple of 80’s that have some karma gear for specific builds.

I have respecced at least 3 of my 80’s and regeared them accordingly (from the ground up). And no, I don’t run CoFp1 farm loops… never have.

I find the balance of soulbound and account bound gear to be fairly reasonable in this game.

And yes, at age 56 I have a life. Some of it is “retired”. A lot of it is not. Thank you for asking.

PS: I’ve chosen one character to WvW with, and yes, there are some changes I’d like to see there.

goldenwing.8473:

I also alt swap for my guild’s needs. Have been doing so for over a decade, often using 2 to 4 accounts through different games to play 2 or 3 at a time.

44 alts here in GW2, 12 at 80 (all but one of those 80s in full exotics), running fractals, have ascended, celestial and laurel gear scattered across a 3-4 “mains”, as well as explorable badge gear for looks on a couple. Oh, and a couple of 80’s that have some karma gear for specific builds.

I have respecced at least 3 of my 80’s and regeared them accordingly (from the ground up). And no, I don’t run CoFp1 farm loops… never have.

I find the balance of soulbound and account bound gear to be fairly reasonable in this game.

And yes, at age 56 I have a life. Some of it is “retired”. A lot of it is not. Thank you for asking.

PS: I’ve chosen one character to WvW with, and yes, there are some changes I’d like to see there.

cool story bro.

Someone hasnt learned how to make items account bound. To be fair though, for all those who want supposed immersion, it would not make sense for you to give your Asura’s boots, to a Charr or Norn and expect them to fit. My only issue with soulbound so far was when I accidentially soulbound a Desert Rose without equiping it. Tried applying the skin to an unbound back item, expecting to get a Desert Rose with bound on equip. Good thing I didnt use my Shattered Wings skin to try it…

I think the biggest problem is the gem store stuff being soulbound instead of account bound. I don’t mind stat-based items becoming soulbound because the means of acquiring those items is generally related to gameplay and content. However, the gem store items are typically cosmetic or confer benefits that are of abstract value in the context of the game itself (like the infinite tools). These items becoming soulbound, at least to me, definitely dampen my interest in playing other characters. Even recently I’ve been pondering starting a new character, but it’s much harder to justify knowing I will have to repurchase things like bag slots or skins. It’s even worse in the case of the infinite tools because I couldn’t even get those benefits on my new alts even if I wanted to.

I’d very much like to see any gem store purchases that are not service-related (like appearance reconfiguration or name change) be made account-wide investments.

I fully agree with OP. And situation slowly getting worse, with the implementation of ascended gear and time gated resources. On top of that the rune/sigil system is not player friendly and rather inconvenient to use and the game lacks gear and build manager which makes things even worse for people who play multiple characters.

I disagree. It would be more accurate (imo) to state that Anet does not promote alt chars for grinding purposes. They still promote using alts, for the enjoyment of doing so though. You play an alt because you like doing scenario ‘a’ on this one, and scenario ‘b’ on that one. This would (to me) entail a variety of fine tuning for each character.

One of the bigger complaints in GW1 was the necessity to regrind a title in order to have it on an alt. They have removed that here. Now you can get an achievement on any character and be able to use/show it on any other. I like not having to worry about whether or not I need to play a specific character in order to progress a specific achievement or title.

However at the same time, they have removed some of the imbalance of players with multiple alts getting so drastically ahead of those that dont. Some people just don’t play multiple characters, which, lets face it, put them at a massive disadvantage when it came to farmable things like events. It levels the playing field a little bit, and allows Anet to more easily control the growth of the game, including economy management.

Hammerguard.9834:

The biggest problems with alts right now is WvW ranks and Fractals levels. These should both be account bound. Having them be character bound forces me to play certain characters for different aspects of the game.

With Fractals I am indeed playing that same character even though I would love to be able to switch around and have some variety. With WvW on the other hand I play whichever character I want and this has essentially made WvW ranks meaningless to me.

So much this. I have a toon of every profession. I’ve killed buckets in WvW, and since I use multiple toons, none is over rank 5. And my best ranked frac is 5 too. Tho that I’m kitten thered by since not into fracs, but it’d be nice to know what each toon’s rank is without having to log them and go to the gate and seeing what the max it will allow me is. Still. Much rather the WvW ranks be account rather then char.

Having multiple characters is definitely difficult. I have 7 level 80’s, 1 level 51, and a level 2. I was working on the level 51 and I just decided enough!

I’ve narrowed it down so that I only ever use 2 classes. (Guardian and Mesmer, not that it matters). I’m pretending like the others don’t exist. I’ll probably park them at an ori node or something. (I would just delete them entirely, but I have all crafting disciplines up to 400 across the different characters)

It’s a hard lesson, but you will have more resources and better gear if you stick to a single main. I still haven’t managed, but sooner or later I’ll drop 1 of the last two.

There are certain items that I think should be more account bound instead of character bound. Especially items that you buy with laurels. If laurel items are going to be character bound, then let me do my daily and monthly on all my alts instead of having that account wide. It seems like the fair thing to do. I suppose you could argue “who has time for that?” People who raise level 80 alts, that’s who. And it’s not like people would be forced to do dailies/monthly on each toon. Either that or make laurel items account wide. It annoyed me from day 1 I couldn’t do dailies on each character

I’m a alt-aholic, though I can only somewhat agree with OP, as I gear each character too different to really want to share their gear (appearance wise). Things like accessories though would save me a ton of time and money

Soulbinding is the answer to twinking, probably the most notable game with that was Diablo 2.

After having a level 80+ character farming runes, armor sets, and weapons people could build a set for benchmark levels 20, 40, and 60. That will carry them to the next set these sets and their runewords were hundreds of times more powerful than the gear that one would normally get at these levels. making all content trivial. It’s hard to balance when some level X’s are 5 times more powerful than other level X’s the concept of this is a level X mission goes out the window.

MMOs have been trying to combat this and the best option (they feel) is to make every character have to earn their own equipment. Just like you have to earn your way to 80. There is also often a limitation on the level of equipment one can wear minimum level. Anet has decided in that way to adhere to the MMO standard which is you have to level each alt, and you have to earn gear on each alt.

I know GW1 didn’t have this but remember that was a completely different game. You could also level to 20 with the press of a button.

soulbinds remind me of customization in gw1. That was cool. If you wanted to keep a weapon for yourself on a specific character you got a 20% damage boost.

Very legit very respectable choice one would make with their account gear. Miss that really. I only have 1 80 and a few low level alts, but it makes me exhausted thinking about having to build another from scratch.

Lokki.1092:

Soulbinding is the answer to twinking, probably the most notable game with that was Diablo 2.

After having a level 80+ character farming runes, armor sets, and weapons people could build a set for benchmark levels 20, 40, and 60. That will carry them to the next set these sets and their runewords were hundreds of times more powerful than the gear that one would normally get at these levels. making all content trivial. It’s hard to balance when some level X’s are 5 times more powerful than other level X’s the concept of this is a level X mission goes out the window.

MMOs have been trying to combat this and the best option (they feel) is to make every character have to earn their own equipment. Just like you have to earn your way to 80. There is also often a limitation on the level of equipment one can wear minimum level. Anet has decided in that way to adhere to the MMO standard which is you have to level each alt, and you have to earn gear on each alt.

I don’t think this is the reason. I think it’s just a money sink. Because, if you create an alt, that alt has access to far more gold than any other level X character would have and therefore can buy that much better gear. You just have to be willing to pay for it.

pdpgriever.5680:

soulbinds remind me of customization in gw1. That was cool. If you wanted to keep a weapon for yourself on a specific character you got a 20% damage boost.

Very legit very respectable choice one would make with their account gear. Miss that really. I only have 1 80 and a few low level alts, but it makes me exhausted thinking about having to build another from scratch.

I seriously recommend not playing any alts. It seemed like an ok thing to do early on, but it’s so not worth it. Focus on your main. Gear them up and then get rich.

Alts are like boats, nothing but money sinks.

There is no real twinking in GW2. The stat variations in D2 don’t even remotely compare to what’s in GW2. The best you can really do is craft the best armor/weapons you can and have your first level 80 help fund it (which is exactly what I do). Those items being account or character bound doesn’t change that in the slightest. It also doesn’t change anything once they’re all at level 80. If things were account wide instead of character, it would only save time and money, that’s it. You’re still gearing them the way you would have anyway

TooBz.3065:

I don’t think this is the reason. I think it’s just a money sink. Because, if you create an alt, that alt has access to far more gold than any other level X character would have and therefore can buy that much better gear. You just have to be willing to pay for it.

Right, but before soulbound/level restricted gear you could for example just pass your high tier gear to your low level alt. Both of these were introduced to combat that. Now they are just a staple of MMOs at this point. In fact I would say guild wars has done it correctly since all skins and all low level gear is in fact not soulbound at all. It isn’t until you get to the high tier sets (Rare and higher) that you run into that. Again this is so that one person cannot make 1 set of armor, and get one set of ascended (celestial) trinkets and just pass them around to every character they make. Each character has to earn their own gear.

I come from games where everything is soulbound. Everything.

Lokki.1092:

TooBz.3065:

I don’t think this is the reason. I think it’s just a money sink. Because, if you create an alt, that alt has access to far more gold than any other level X character would have and therefore can buy that much better gear. You just have to be willing to pay for it.

Right, but before soulbound/level restricted gear you could for example just pass your high tier gear to your low level alt. Both of these were introduced to combat that. Now they are just a staple of MMOs at this point. In fact I would say guild wars has done it correctly since all skins and all low level gear is in fact not soulbound at all. It isn’t until you get to the high tier sets (Rare and higher) that you run into that. Again this is so that one person cannot make 1 set of armor, and get one set of ascended (celestial) trinkets and just pass them around to every character they make. Each character has to earn their own gear.

Sorry, misread you post the first time.

Masterwork gear is also soulbound. I do not care if something is an MMO staple, that’s absolutely not a sufficient reason to reproduce it here.

I see level restricted gear as a way to make sure that everyone is on a more or less level playing field. I still don’t get the need for soul bound. Or why the two go together.

Lokki.1092:

Right, but before soulbound/level restricted gear you could for example just pass your high tier gear to your low level alt. Both of these were introduced to combat that. Now they are just a staple of MMOs at this point. In fact I would say guild wars has done it correctly since all skins and all low level gear is in fact not soulbound at all. It isn’t until you get to the high tier sets (Rare and higher) that you run into that. Again this is so that one person cannot make 1 set of armor, and get one set of ascended (celestial) trinkets and just pass them around to every character they make. Each character has to earn their own gear.

If they want to go that route, then they need to make dailies and monthlies character bound and not account. Cause as it is right now, only 1 character can work toward laurel items. If they want each character to earn their own, then make a way for that to happen

Akadai.9561:

Lokki.1092:

Right, but before soulbound/level restricted gear you could for example just pass your high tier gear to your low level alt. Both of these were introduced to combat that. Now they are just a staple of MMOs at this point. In fact I would say guild wars has done it correctly since all skins and all low level gear is in fact not soulbound at all. It isn’t until you get to the high tier sets (Rare and higher) that you run into that. Again this is so that one person cannot make 1 set of armor, and get one set of ascended (celestial) trinkets and just pass them around to every character they make. Each character has to earn their own gear.

If they want to go that route, then they need to make dailies and monthlies character bound and not account. Cause as it is right now, only 1 character can work toward laurel items. If they want each character to earn their own, then make a way for that to happen

That is a little like the “raid lockout” but with less time. Like it or not Ascended is our end tier gear in this game. In previous MMOs you had/have to raid to get that gear and could only attempt it once a week/month. taking you a while to get a full set for one character.

Well Anet took the RNG and dungeons out of the equation and instead decided we only have to spend a very small amount of time every day to get our gear. However they still want it to take (comparatively) the same amount of time to fully gear a character as other popular MMOs so that the content sharks don’t just consume it and move on.

This is why only one character can work towards their gear at a time And why it’s attached to the daily. Not saying this is the right or only way to do it, but it makes sense. they learned their lesson with exotics and other content that we consumed like piranha. But this is our alternate to having a weekly raid that takes many hours and RNG for gear. It still only takes about 40-60 days depending on your route to fully gear. We just don’t have to spend as much time to do so and so we participate in the events.

I agree with the original poster! anyone who disagrees is just a fan boy. They give inadequate justifications to the original poster well thought out reasons. I was severly punished in GW1 for playing multiple toon so I couldn’t otherwise I would have never gotten God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals title. You had to do almost everything on 1 character even though anything I do on that account is still effort by me. I hated that! And because of that experience I am also very disappointed to see anything soulbound in GW2. It feels like I am being punished all over again even if it isnt as bad. I also can’t collect everything in this game as I would want to. Acquiring item in this game especially in store items should be account wide unlocks just like the Zenith, Radiant and Hellfire skins through the achievement system.

I’m not entirely sure what the OP’s complaint about soulbound items is… (Nor do I care, nor will I check this thread again)

However, in reply to the topic;
This is the most alt-supporting MMORPG that I’ve even seen, and I’ve been around the block with non-moba MMOs. Also, I have a severe case of Alt-itis; I never have (and play) less than 3 characters in any given game. (In this game I have 8 characters, and actively play 6 of them.)
Most of them soulbind basically all the gear (from crappy starter things all the way to endgame). Most of them have a gear progression that’s slow, and/or requires a lot of other people to get anywhere with (raiding). Most of them do not allow you to move non-gold currencies between characters. Most of them have achievements (or anything else you can earn in the game) by character, so even choosing to (gods forbid) change your main causes you to just give up years of work and progress.
In Final Fantasy 11 and 14 you only get one character slot, and have to pay extra per month to have more. (Though, to be fair one character gets all the classes, so alts are more like TES alts: Re-experiencing things for fun, rather than actually playing all the content.)
Even in GW1, I played multiple characters (and swapped my main more than once) so it took me years to get my first GWAMM.

Soulbound armor in GW2 is not a problem when its all so easy to get. All my 80’s but one have exotic lvl 80 armor, and half of those have two sets. I have multiple characters with a full set of ascended jewelry, with infusions (minus backpack, holyoverpriced), and have the currency for more.
I would never expect an MMO to have unbound armor (or even acct bound armor) like say … Dungeon Defenders or Diablo.

Now if the complaint was about things in the gem shop, I agree.
I was actually grabbing my wallet to buy some gems for the unlimited pickaxe when it first showed up, and just barely saw complaints in time in guild chat that it soulbinds to a character on equipping. That was a complete killer for me, as I have no main in this game, and play multiple characters every day that I log in. I did not buy gems, or the pickaxe, and didn’t even look at the garbage they brought out for axes and sickles.
I haven’t picked up any of the armor skins so far, in large part because they’re one time use. (Other factors being I don’t like the whole look of the outfit, usually only a couple pieces, and they’re really overpriced even if you liked and planned on using the whole outfit.)
I don’t mind the costume pieces as bad, because even though you only get one of them, and they’re generally overpriced (the entire gem shop is), they are acct bound after equipping, not soulbound.

I see it as more of a pre-complaint about ascended gear, because it’s going to be a pain in the kitten to obtain. The trinkets aren’t fun to get, nor will the rest of it.

It’s because of this that I decided pair down the characters that I play drastically. Right now I basically have three builds I need to support. I don’t think I can support more than that. If the ascended stuff is too terrible, then I may just give up all together.

Your issue with the pickaxe is the same as my issue with ascended gear, the only difference is that one costs money and the other costs time.

Gw2 doesn’t promote playing. Gw2 tries to pressure playing.

Lokki.1092:

Soulbinding is the answer to twinking, probably the most notable game with that was Diablo 2.

Strict level requirements stop twinking. Soul binding fights gear deflation.

That said, the current soul binding system is very hostile to playing more than one character.

TooBz.3065:

It’s because of this that I decided pair down the characters that I play drastically. Right now I basically have three builds I need to support. I don’t think I can support more than that. If the ascended stuff is too terrible, then I may just give up all together.
.

It was decided long ago that the gear treadmill would be tuned for the most “dedicated” players that play only a single build. Give up and tap 1 like everyone else.