Guild Wars 2

I say alt friendly in that each profession has a very different flavour and play style and I couldn’t help but make one of each and get them all to 80. It was also really easy to gear them up at the end (to exotic.) But it definitely still asks for a “main” if you want special stuff, ascended gear, legendary, so forth.

Karizee.8076:

I think it is pretty alt friendly.

Earning dungeon tokens on one character and being able to spend them with another feels extremely alt friendly to me. In fact, I don’t know of any other MMO where I can do this.

I can also transfer a legendary weapon to another character by way of a transmutation splitter. Don’t know of any other games that let me do that.

I don’t agree that having one fully geared 80 should equal having 5 fully geared 80s or 10 fully geared 80s or 100 fully geared 80s. That seems kind of silly.

But I recently leveled an alt and was able to gear her out very quickly by using dungeon tokens, karma, guild commendations, laurels, honor badges and fractal relics and rings earned with my main.

When dungeon exotics were BiS, I would have agreed with you. Now, they are either second best, or salvage fodder for Dark Matter. Saying they are “good enough,” while true, does not address the real issue. This is that BiS gear exists to be obtained. If that is not true, then it serves no purpose.

Since I have 8 exotic-geared characters, I feel I can safely say that gearing them was not automatic. I would hope no one is asking for that. However, the curve to the acquisition of BiS was greatly extended, and for those who find that matters to them, the game has become very unfriendly to alts.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

EverythingXen.1835:

I honestly cant think of an aspect of the game that is outright alt-friendly save the AP system.

what about the laurel system? you can buy ascended items with laurels
what about the karma system? exotic endgame gear with karma from Orr vendors
what about the dungeon token system? exotic endgame gear

you guys are complaining about the small bonuses from WvW-xp levels, fractals and the dye-system? O_o

What do you want guys? Gear being accountbound = not having to work for BIS-gear on a character? Seriously? I mean you already can play entirely on your Guardian and equip your Thief BIS by spending karma, laurels and coin. In which other game can you do this?

Dungeon Tokens, yes.

Karma, no, not since they nerfed it into hell.
Laurels are incredibly punishing and you often need other stuff too like Ectos.

Also, those bonuses? They’re not small. The simple fact you called them small means either you severely undervalue them or you don’t understand them at all. Damage increases, extra abilities, extra effects, ect. It’s exactly the same as saying traits are minor bonuses. Dye was originally going to be account bound, that changed for w/e reason.

It’s it the gear that’s the issue, in fact unless you misread every person’s post. It’s everything else. Gear is okay as in, not perfect, but not backbreaking. Everything else though, is a nuisance, save for the bank system.

yeahhhhnoooyeahnooomaybeeyeah

no.

NO after the main character.. leveling an alt the same way is boring as hell

everything that can easily be fixed by some minor changes…
Making legendaries account bound – would also reduce the price on the precursors.
Making fotm,wvw acc bound may bring out some issues tho.
But making story mode dungeons account wide would be pretty logical

If your concern is being as viable as you want to be, I would say no.

Vayne.8563:

In some ways it’s alt friendly and in some ways it’s not. So depending on how you play, it may or may not be alt friendly.

Pretty much this.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

EverythingXen.1835:

I honestly cant think of an aspect of the game that is outright alt-friendly save the AP system.

what about the laurel system? you can buy ascended items with laurels
what about the karma system? exotic endgame gear with karma from Orr vendors
what about the dungeon token system? exotic endgame gear

you guys are complaining about the small bonuses from WvW-xp levels, fractals and the dye-system? O_o

What do you want guys? Gear being accountbound = not having to work for BIS-gear on a character? Seriously? I mean you already can play entirely on your Guardian and equip your Thief BIS by spending karma, laurels and coin. In which other game can you do this?

I do spend laurels on trinkets. For the three 80’s I have, none of them have all ascended trinkets yet. I have 3 laurels atm because I spend them as soon as I can. I don’t do Fractals because a) I’m always in W3, and b) I just can’t stand them. It’s been almost a year for Fractals and I think I’m on lvl 5.

Now you add weapons that have even more intense time-gating, it’ll take me months to equip one character with 2-3 weaps.

And yes, the extra stats matter, especially crit dmg for some reason. I’m loathing what armor will be like next year…

It is not alt-friendly.

Ethics.4519:

It is not alt-friendly.

Do you have a few reasons on why you feel this way? Or how said reasons could be improved?

Dyes are char bound. Very alt-unfriendly.

And try to keep more than one character up to date with all the new ascended stuff, good luck (and yeah, ascended armor is coming in a week)…

The game was very alt friendly at first I think to the extent that quite a few people (well me at least) became far more invested in their alts than maybe they normally would. It was my main turn off from the game when (as a mainly WvW player) WXP abilities were introduced (effectively open ended character progression) and it made me lose the spring in my step I used to have when playing…then ascended weapons pretty much chopped my feet off. Now I just login every now and again and dont really do much.

The time gating is what made it so alt unfriendly. Before then I got my 8 to level 80 and then got each one all exotic armor and a full set exotic weapons on each as I like to switch weapons around to change up the play style.

And then they introduced laurels. I’ve spent every one I’ve gotten as well as my commendations and still don’t have full ascended trinkets. And now ascended weapons require laurels. To get all 8 with all ascended weapons and trinkets and then armor, I can see this taking years. If I just had one to do with one set of weapons and trinkets like some people, I could be done with current ascended items.

It feels alt punishing to know I have years ahead of me while others might be done.

It is in no way shape or form alt friendly. Between all the activities being account bound, WvW ranks, fractals, dungeons….. any time gated crafting is account bound too, so good kittening luck getting alts geared up in good gear in less then a decade.

Any game with vertical progression is alt-unfriendly by definition. I first discovered this moving 6 max level characters through wrath/cata in WoW. By the time MoP rolled around, I just leveled one to max level.

With a low power curve GW2 is perhaps more alt-friendly than WoW. However, it doesn’t take an advanced degree to understand that it’s impractical to move more than one character along GW2’s power curve. And, it also doesn’t take an advanced degree to understand the impact of any power curve where power is positively related to time.

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

I had a bunch of level 20 toons in GW1 and they had BiS armor and weapons. I enjoyed playing each one, tinkering with builds and class combinations. I still try to do the same thing in GW2 but it’s clearly not as alt-friendly for many of the reasons outlined above.

One reason that I have not seen mentioned (I probably just missed it) is that while reaching level 80 isn’t an especially daunting task, it certainly takes longer than it did to reach level 20 in GW1. Multiply that by a bunch of alts and….

Vorch.2985:

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

Laurels, dailies, dungeon tokens, legendaries, character slots, inventory upgrades, dyes.

There are more things than just wvw and fotm.

Ethics.4519:

Vorch.2985:

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

Laurels, dailies, dungeon tokens, legendaries, character slots, inventory upgrades, dyes.

There are more things than just wvw and fotm.

Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.

Time gated content/rewards isn’t “player friendly”, alts or no alts. Aside from that, yes Guild Wars 2 is alt friendly. There are several PvE leveling paths available, allowing players to experience a new experience with different characters. There are several Personal Story paths you can choose, allowing players to experience a different story with different characters. Leveling is a fairly quick process, and PvP and WvW automatically scale you to the level cap. And most diminishing returns are character-based, not account-based. You have five character slots, you have account-bound Magic Find, you have shared bank space. Sure, there are things they could do to make the game a little more alt-friendly (account-based Fractal levels, for example). But for the most part, the game is very much alt-friendly.

Antara.3189:

Ethics.4519:

Vorch.2985:

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

Laurels, dailies, dungeon tokens, legendaries, character slots, inventory upgrades, dyes.

There are more things than just wvw and fotm.

Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.

Laurels are time gated. Therefore they are not alt-friendly. I could play 24 hours a day and only get 1 laurel a day. I need laurels to get ascended items for my characters. I could also use them for dyes ( also not alt friendly) and t6 crafting mats for crafting.

Dungeon tokens are reduced from account, not character. If I run 3 paths on my main, then 3 paths on my alt, I should get the same tokens on each. However I don’t.

Dailies provide XP for one. I could do the same activity that I already did on my main, and not get the XP.

If you dont have a comment for character slots, then don’t put a comment.

Yes.

It’s the first game I’ve had more than one “endgame” character in since GW1.

Yes, and no. Some features are definitely alt-friendly, such as the shared wallet and the account-wide Achievement Point mechanism.

Some others are not at all, like Soulbound anything, particularly legendary items, or the time-gated Laurels that make it really hard to gear a zoo of alts in Ascended items. I’d also argue the comparatively large grind required for Ascended weapons (and likely the upcoming Ascended armour) count towards not alt-friendly.

I guess ANet didn’t really know whether or not to make the game really alt-friendly, so we got a world painted in grey, not black and white. In their credit, GW2 is more alt-friendly than many MMOs I have played.

Ethics.4519:

Antara.3189:

Ethics.4519:

Vorch.2985:

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

Laurels, dailies, dungeon tokens, legendaries, character slots, inventory upgrades, dyes.

There are more things than just wvw and fotm.

Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.

Laurels are time gated. Therefore they are not alt-friendly. I could play 24 hours a day and only get 1 laurel a day. I need laurels to get ascended items for my characters. I could also use them for dyes ( also not alt friendly) and t6 crafting mats for crafting.

Dungeon tokens are reduced from account, not character. If I run 3 paths on my main, then 3 paths on my alt, I should get the same tokens on each. However I don’t.

Dailies provide XP for one. I could do the same activity that I already did on my main, and not get the XP.

If you dont have a comment for character slots, then don’t put a comment.

Laurels being time effects 1 character as it does many, so I see that as irrelevant. You also can get Laurels from AP chests.

I thought dungeon token rewards per path were not account bound? I looked through the patch notes but did not see this. I know gold per path is. But regardless it’s the same as laurels, whether you have 1 character or multiple, you are gated to once a day on rewards per path.

Antara.3189:

Ethics.4519:

Antara.3189:

Ethics.4519:

Vorch.2985:

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

Laurels, dailies, dungeon tokens, legendaries, character slots, inventory upgrades, dyes.

There are more things than just wvw and fotm.

Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.

Laurels are time gated. Therefore they are not alt-friendly. I could play 24 hours a day and only get 1 laurel a day. I need laurels to get ascended items for my characters. I could also use them for dyes ( also not alt friendly) and t6 crafting mats for crafting.

Dungeon tokens are reduced from account, not character. If I run 3 paths on my main, then 3 paths on my alt, I should get the same tokens on each. However I don’t.

Dailies provide XP for one. I could do the same activity that I already did on my main, and not get the XP.

If you dont have a comment for character slots, then don’t put a comment.

Laurels being time effects 1 character as it does many, so I see that as irrelevant. You also can get Laurels from AP chests.

I thought dungeon token rewards per path were not account bound? I looked through the patch notes but did not see this. I know gold per path is. But regardless it’s the same as laurels, whether you have 1 character or multiple, you are gated to once a day on rewards per path.

However, you need laurels to get ascended gear. It may take you one month to gear up one character. Even if I played twice as much as you (4hrs a day instead of 2) it would take me two months to gear up two toons.

Except dungeon tokens can be used to gear players. So if I want two sets of AC gear (since I have two characters) it will take me twice as long, even if I play twice as much as you do a day.

Calendar gating is extremely alt-unfriendly no matter how much you try to spin it.

Almost every area of the game, it is a lot more rewarding to have one main character, and explicitly play that character. This does not include sPvP

Alt friendly yes, as in you can create alts and level them up very easily.

People are confusing alt friendliness with complete “cross-overability”

Just because your alts don’t share your WvW rank or FoTM level doesn’t mean it isn’t alt friendly….

It is very easy to create, level, and gear alts. All currencies are shared. I can tell you that when my most recent alt hit 80, I was able to deck them out in a full dungeon set, full ascended acc/rings from the laurel vendor, and all ascended guild commendation gear. That’s literally BiS for everything except weapon (obviously) and backpiece, all within 10min of hitting 80…. And this is on an alt that has never, not ever, not once ever set foot outside of WvW or Lion’s Arch.

I’d class that as alt friendly any day of the week. I mean seriously, that character has done barely anything and is geared better than most 80s. All thanks to my main and other alts doing the work.

Ergo, GW2 is alt friendly, don’t listen to the naysayers, they are just angry in general.

It was at launch, but ascended carrots and wvw ranks morphed put a serious dent in its alt-friendlyness.

They made PVP ranks and other titles account wide in GW1 after a year or so, I’m surprised they went back on that for GW2

It’s alt-friendly… for the most part

The further along you get in the end game, the less alt-friendly it is, from what I can tell (map completion, I think you need to spend a large amount of skill points from one character for something for legendaries, WvW rank, (and ascended gear?)).

Leveling up is amazingly alt-friendly though. Crafting thankfully is now alt-friendly and the shard currencies are wonderful.

It is certainly more alt-friendly than GW (excepting the dye system, which… is still arguably better than in GW as you permanently unlock the dye). Achievements and titles are wonderfully (excepting map completion) account bound.

I had a lot of complaints in GW… now being an alt-aholic in my group is actually advantageous for me (it certainly does not hurt, and being able to get high-level loot with a couple characters is nice, plus I can fill in different roles in groups need be as I have 2 level 80s as opposed to 1). I’m patient for my legendary and/or ascended gear so… I am content.

Antara.3189:

Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.

Can you do the dailies multiple times in order to get Laurels for multiple characters ? If not then it is not ALT friendly.

Some things are alt friendly, some not. However, they have moved some things that weren’t alt friendly step by step to being alt friendly. As an example, Karma. First they added the jugs of karma for the dailys so that you could use it on any of your alts. Then they made the karma account wide, which is very alt friendly.

I hope that more and more things move towards being alt friendly.

Lorelei.7809:

It is certainly more alt-friendly than GW (excepting the dye system, which… is still arguably better than in GW as you permanently unlock the dye). Achievements and titles are wonderfully (excepting map completion) account bound.

Not even by a long shot is that true. GW1 was far more alt friendly (if not outright alt encouraging) than GW2 is, was or ever will be.

My 13 characters in GW1 never needed a statistical upgrade in the 7 years that i played it. GW2 broke that in 2 months. Playing those characters gave me skills that i could use on another characters heroes. I could not only have all my alts geared properly but have multiple sets as well. Armor also didnt influence builds as much or at all unlike in GW2 so most of the time you could simply swap a piece and be able to run a completely different build.

Going back to GW2:
Most other problems for alts like FotM levels and such have already been mentioned and some things have indeed been improved in the last year but with ascended gear not only is the game more alt unfriendly with every update, it is multi build unfriendly as well.

With that said i d still recommend people to try alts. ANET has succeeded in making professions play very differently and the leveling experience is adequate and diverse enough to run several characters to 80 (even without crafting) while doing different things/events etc. Past 80 however ANET dropped the ball with ascended gear and till that changes gearing alts will always be a chore, rather than fun.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

what about the laurel system? you can buy ascended items with laurels
what about the karma system? exotic endgame gear with karma from Orr vendors
what about the dungeon token system? exotic endgame gear

Laurels ARE alt un-friendly. You can only gain X laurels per day, with or without an alt. This makes the laurel system automatically better for one chr than two. Regardless of any amount of input or effort. Worse for three Characters. Even worse for four, ect.

The Karma system was originally alt friendly. The entire system.
Now that it is account instead of Chr bound, and shortly after they drstically reduced the amount of karma you can gain from jugs (which was more karma per day that can be farmed, on top of whatever you farmed) it has become a limited resource. Not to mention it’s necessity for Obsidian Shards is now more important than ever. Since the other means are more time consuming and have their own alt un-friendly means.

Dungeons are now Account Per Day restricted as well. They used to be alt-friendly because you could rerun your favorite dungeon on an alt. Now you can only get the diminished rewards. This artifically increases the amount of time to gear one chr, and again for three, four, etc.

Alt friendliness : Time input to each character = Equivalent reward.
Alt un-friendliness : Time input into each character = Diminishing reward.

“Un-friendly” doesn’t mean it’s impossible, or remarkably more difficult.

1 chr takes X amount of time to level and Y amount of time to gear.
A second chr X amount of time to level and Yx2 to gear.
A third Character takes X amount of time to level and Yx3 to gear.

Then you have to level their fractals, or WvW bonuses (time and effort that could have gotten your main a higher level).

The point is it went from the most Alt-Friendly game the world has ever seen as an MMO, to, less friendly in many ways than many other mmos.
Some of the Account Bound stuff is good, but many of the same rewards and systems are actually punishing to running an alt by increasing the time required to get rewards specific to that chr.

Sure I can have my Hammer and GS Zenith skins on a brand new chr. Great. Until I roll a thief or an engineer and have to get even more AP if I want skins for them.

The wallet was alt friendly, but brought about unfriendly changes to karma acquisition.
The magic find change was alt friendly, but is still tied in with the laurel and AP system which “appears” alt friendly, but ultimately isn’t.

Lonesamurai.4852:

They made PVP ranks and other titles account wide in GW1 after a year or so, I’m surprised they went back on that for GW2

Its not the same company any more. That much is patently obvious.

Ashen.2907:

Can you do the dailies multiple times in order to get Laurels for multiple characters ? If not then it is not ALT friendly.

Can you open the same World Boss chest multiple times on a single character? If not, then it IS alt friendly.

I choose to answer in this way:

- I have one character per profession (one in the high 20’s, the rest are 80)
- I have all the crafting professions spread out over my characters, so no need to switch crafting professions; I just switch characters
- I have three legendaries on three different characters
- On an ordinary day I play at least four of my characters and it’s not uncommon for me to have logged in with each of them during a weekend day
- I do have characters I play more than others (my guardian for fractals, my warrior for dungeons) but I consider myself not having a main character

With how I play, I find it ludicrous to say that this game isn’t alt-friendly.

The game is totally alt friendly!

IF you don’t care about……

BiS Gear, Daily/Monthly are account bound, achievements are account bound, LS event rewards are only once per account, time gates are account wide, DR is account wide, Dyes are character bound instead of being shared, Laurels are one per day per account, Dungeons are once per day per account, FotM is per character, Ranks are per character, most event items are soul bound (backpacks especially) yet you can only get one per account.

And a few other things as well that I can’t remember at the moment. SO, if none of that is a concern, then yes GW2 is alt friendly.

Antara.3189:

Ethics.4519:

Vorch.2985:

Alt friendly in everything except WvW (ranks) and FotM (levels).

Everything outside of FotM 21+ can be done without an emphasis on ascended gear.

I have 13 alts with full exotics and some ascended trinkets spread here and there.

Laurels, dailies, dungeon tokens, legendaries, character slots, inventory upgrades, dyes.

There are more things than just wvw and fotm.

Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.

Laurels are NOT alt -friendly, as you can only get one from your daily and ten from your monthly no matter how many alts you have. If I want to deck out one char with one ascended trinket that’s 30 laurels (for instance), or about a month. Now try and deck out 14 alts- that’s 14 months.

If they made laurels so that you could obtain more of them on a daily basis then that might help us alt a holics.

The game is completely alt unfriendly where it matters- end game gearing and wvw. In most other games I have played end game gears dropped and you could trade them in the TP equivalent at a reasonable price. GW2’s legendaries (read grindfest to obtain) and ascended time gated account bound stuff and laurels has become the worst MMO design in a very long time.

Ever since wvw ranks came out as character bound I have lost a lot of motivation for playing wvw as i like playing alts and indeed switching toons where necessary for the group- but now like last night when I switch to my mesmer (rank 12 or so, ranks came out after I stopped playing it in wvw pretty much) I suddenly lose 250 vit, 100 power against other players, add that to the bloodlust (stupid idea) and while helping the team cap some towers I gain nothing useful for my ‘main’ as all that wvw exp is wasted on my mesmer.

And if anyone mentions those wvw jugs of liquid wvw experience- to date I have had ONE 2500 wexp jug drop and about 6 of the 250 ones- which are also a bad idea on so many levels and again completely alt unfriendly.

Guess I’ll just main a guardian or ele or warrior or necro (although necro is kitten in pve due to the 25 stack cap on conditions) like everyone else…I wonder if ANet has noticed the vast majority of legendary weapons are greatswords…

If all you’re wanting to do is stand in LA and stare at the forge, then GW2 is very alt – friendly.

If you’re even thinking about playing the game, then you might want to stick with one character and pretend you only have one character slot and the rest cost <x amount of dollars that you cannot afford>.

morrolan.9608:

Lonesamurai.4852:

They made PVP ranks and other titles account wide in GW1 after a year or so, I’m surprised they went back on that for GW2

Its not the same company any more. That much is patently obvious.

Yeah
which makes me sad

Skan.5301:

If all you’re wanting to do is stand in LA and stare at the forge, then GW2 is very alt – friendly.

If you’re even thinking about playing the game, then you might want to stick with one character and pretend you only have one character slot and the rest cost <x amount of dollars that you cannot afford>.

Is that all you do with your alts? Stand around in LA? lol sad

The fact I can use my main character to get BiS gear for my alt characters = alt friendly. I can literally play any of my characters to progress any other character. They all share the same currencies.

I think the forum warriors here saying it isn’t alt-friendly have the mindset that if it isn’t completely interchangeable, then it is unfriendly by default. They completely ignore the alt-friendly facts, find the one or two things that aren’t alt-friendly, then label the entire game alt-unfriendly. These are the “what have you done for me lately” people. Don’t hear a peep out of them when things are good, but the moment something doesn’t go the way they want, suddenly its the worst game in the world and Anet is terrible and the game is dead and there’s no reason to play “Grind Wars 2” with all the gear treadmills and temporary content sucks, etc etc.

It’s getting soooo old.

Draknar.5748:

Skan.5301:

If all you’re wanting to do is stand in LA and stare at the forge, then GW2 is very alt – friendly.

If you’re even thinking about playing the game, then you might want to stick with one character and pretend you only have one character slot and the rest cost <x amount of dollars that you cannot afford>.

Is that all you do with your alts? Stand around in LA? lol sad

The fact I can use my main character to get BiS gear for my alt characters = alt friendly. I can literally play any of my characters to progress any other character. They all share the same currencies.

I think the forum warriors here saying it isn’t alt-friendly have the mindset that if it isn’t completely interchangeable, then it is unfriendly by default. They completely ignore the alt-friendly facts, find the one or two things that aren’t alt-friendly, then label the entire game alt-unfriendly. These are the “what have you done for me lately” people. Don’t hear a peep out of them when things are good, but the moment something doesn’t go the way they want, suddenly its the worst game in the world and Anet is terrible and the game is dead and there’s no reason to play “Grind Wars 2” with all the gear treadmills and temporary content sucks, etc etc.

It’s getting soooo old.

I disagree. If you read the posts most people have said that their are alt-friendly aspects and alt-unfriendly aspects. The only question is how much weight you give to the different things.

For example, as you say, gold / karma / laurels / dungeon tokens are shared for the account. So you can earn gold with one character and spend it with another. In contrast, laurels are limited per account and dungeon tokens have serious diminishing returns. What’s more important to you? If the later, then it’s alt-friendly, if the former, then it’s not.

I also think the game is much less alt-friendly than it use to be, and I think that factors into peoples perceptions.

Mind boggling to think that anyone could say GW2 is alt friendly with a straight face.

leng jai.2961:

Mind boggling to think that anyone could say GW2 is alt friendly with a straight face.

I think it’s mostly people trolling. But I respond anyway just in case I’m wrong. Besides what else am I doing to do, I already finished my daily. :P

The first think we should discuss here is what alt-friendly means. In my opinion, it’s absolutely alt-unfriendly.

In order to be truly alt-fiendly a game should:
a) allow to perform some given task which a character that’s most suited for it even if the reward is intended for a different toon.
b) not exclude any of your characters from getting a reward hat you already got on another one.
And also may (this goes further than alt-friendliness, in fact, is alt-encouraging):
c) allow to gather efforts on different toons in order to achieve something beyond the possibilities of a single character.

GW2 fullfills the first point extremely well.
Almost everything you get that is not binding free, is actually account bound. This means that you can get dungeon tokens and other currencies/items with an already geared character (or just one you feel more confortable with).
Unfortunately, this is not a game where you become rich efficiently farming in some spot with some specific build not one with clear roles where you would want to have every option covered. In GW2 (even if probably not with the same efficiency) you can complete every content with every character, anything you wanted the alt for should be doable with your actually geared one, so a commodity that allows you to gear up a toon without actually using it doesn’t feel like a great advantage (except maybe for WvW).

GW2 is, however, incredibly unfriendly as it refers to point B.
Every reward/currency you get is account bound in the worst scenario, but a lot them are also time gated account wide.
Every daily achievement completion you’re going to receive a laurel, which can be used for buying ascended trinkets. It doesn’t matter which char completed the dailies, the laurel is account bound and you will be able to use it on any of your toons, which is great and completely satisfies point A.
However, once you get your daily laurel on a toon, you’re prevented from getting another one on a different char, so it’s just impossible to progress with several charcaters at the same time even if you have enough time to do so.

The main reason for this is that point A is so massively present across all the game, that fulfilling point B would automatically lead to fulfilling point C too (which is more alt-encouraging than alt-friendly).
In the laurel case, since they’re account bound, if you could complete dailies and get a laurel on each of your toons, you would be able not only to gear all of them simultaneously (which is fine) , but also to gather every laurel and gear a single character much faster than what a alt-less player would do.

There are already some tasks that break this rule and simultaneously cover A, B and C points.
The most notorious one is gathering, where there are some character based time gated nodes, and which is pretty weird btw if we think on the incredible gameplay diversity you can experience wandering maps looking for wood.
Another ones would be being rewarded with a Tequatl orange dragon box and, as far as I know, fractals.

It may be surprising to rate fractals as alt-friendly since fractal level is character bound, but there’s an explanation for that.
Point A is perfectly fulfilled in fractals. If you get a ring by chance, you can use it on any of your charcaters; you also have every relic (regular and pristine) available in the wallet for any of your toons.
The main difference is that, as far as I know (haven’t tried it for a long time), point B, an by extension point C, are also fulfilled. Yes, having to work on your fractal level with every new toon is annoying as hell, but at least it doesn’t prevent you from getting pristines in multiple characters.
The sad point, however, is that fractals have different reward chests at different tiers, so there’s no problem on actually doing multiple runs and getting several ring chances / pristines with a single character that’s leveled enough. You would need a really really long time investment in order to apreciate that B and C are at your disposal too.

Honestly, the only things that grant some kind of benefit to alt users are crafting, where you can level a couple of profs on every character avoiding swap taxes (you don’t even need to level up the alts, so it’s not exactly an alt-friendly feature) and gathering, which is, as I said before, one of the most stupid places to encourage alt usage.
Then you have some idiotic alt-friendly features like sharing you tPvP rating between characters so there’s a clear matchmaking inconsistency (added to the natural inconsistency of the system itself) depending what character you’re using.
The rest of the game just offers the commodity to share loot between your characters (which mostly encourages not playing with the alts at all) at the cost of not being able to have more than one toon up to date.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Dyes are char bound. Very alt-unfriendly.

And try to keep more than one character up to date with all the new ascended stuff, good luck (and yeah, ascended armor is coming in a week)…

Not compared to Guild Wars 1, where each use of a dye consumed it and you needed a dye for each piece of armor.

By contrast, unlocking a dye for a character is far far better than it ever was in Guild Wars 1. It’s a major improvement.

Vayne.8563:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Dyes are char bound. Very alt-unfriendly.

And try to keep more than one character up to date with all the new ascended stuff, good luck (and yeah, ascended armor is coming in a week)…

Not compared to Guild Wars 1, where each use of a dye consumed it and you needed a dye for each piece of armor.

By contrast, unlocking a dye for a character is far far better than it ever was in Guild Wars 1. It’s a major improvement.

But there were only like 10 different dyes then. Total.

Now there’s like 5 thousand. And all the “cool-looking” ones are comparative to buying 5 black dyes in GW1.

TooBz.3065:

I disagree. If you read the posts most people have said that their are alt-friendly aspects and alt-unfriendly aspects. The only question is how much weight you give to the different things.

For example, as you say, gold / karma / laurels / dungeon tokens are shared for the account. So you can earn gold with one character and spend it with another. In contrast, laurels are limited per account and dungeon tokens have serious diminishing returns. What’s more important to you? If the later, then it’s alt-friendly, if the former, then it’s not.

I also think the game is much less alt-friendly than it use to be, and I think that factors into peoples perceptions.

I was directing my comments to the ones with sentiments such as “lol GW2 alt friendly? NOPE”

I don’t see how the daily laurels is alt unfriendly. Because you can’t complete daily quests on each character individually? That seems like standard issue. If you honestly have done the dailies/monthlies since they released them, then you’d be like me insofar as you have multiple characters with every kind of ascended laurel item you could need.

How is that unfriendly? Because it takes time to do it? At 80 the XP gain from dailies is lost anyway, so its even MORE alt friendly because you can hop on any alt character to do them, and thus level up even easier and gain that laurel. Heck you can character hop to complete the daily. I have a character logged out at a JP. I hop on that alt when it’s Puzzle Jumper daily, easy. My alts contribute to the same exact end-goal.

Laurels are currency like anything else and is shared. That makes it friendly. Time-gating something doesn’t make it alt-friendly or unfriendly. The fact that any character at any time can work toward that content makes it alt-friendly.

Diminishing returns on dungeon tokens? Huh? I need some explanation on that one as I’m not quite sure what you are referring to. You mean DR if you want to run the same dungeon path over and over? That’s a very different discussion and has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. I have 2500+ CoF tokens in my bank that any of my characters can access that would disagree that dungeon tokens aren’t alt-friendly. I can gear two alts that have never even set foot in CoF with those tokens, how is that unfriendly?

I just wish World Exploration would carry over to new characters. It annoys me to no end that I have to explore the entire world again on alts.