Guild Wars 2

Draknar.5748:

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 haven’t been able to put my finger on why, and certainly not to the level of detail required to explain it to people looking to poke holes in my opinion, but when I see alts as a burden rather than an asset, then I start to think the game is not alt-friendly.

I’m not sure exactly when that happened, but sometime in the last six months.

Other people disagree, but that’s why it’s an opinion as opposed to a fact.

Alt friendly? no. If ANET wants to make the game alt friendly, they need to eliminate the entire concept of soul bound.

No — not alt friendly.

I’ve shelved my five level 80 alts. It’s not worth the time investment to gear them into ascended, rank WvW, level fractals, obtain world exploration, etc. I will play them when I want a “flavor” change from time to time in WvW, but it’s apparent as soon as I start when I look at my low WvW rank on the alts that I’m not on my main.

The time gating is one of the single biggest issues with alt-unfriendliness. Yes I can use laurels and karma on any toon (until recently that was only laurels) — but one laurel per day divided among all your alts is sparse. Now consider everything else that’s time gated — even charged quartz crystals.

I’ve stopped leveling my last two alts because I know I won’t do much with them at level 80.

I wanted to follow up and say there have been some great alt-friendly mechanics added recently:

1. Sharing karma across all toons
2. Magic Find changes using Luck

Those have both been alt-friendly boons — big ones really.

The gear treadmill and time gating sort of squash out those awesome updates though, making my alt-experience negative.

I don’t find the game to be alt-unfriendly, but for each person this is going to vary… by probably a lot. It depends on what you enjoy doing.

If you enjoy playing a lot of classes, but your main stream is WvW – if you’re looking at leveling up the various weapon lines, yes wvw can seem extremely alt unfriendly. However, at the same time, by tying the lines to a specific character, if you play differently with each character (and some people do) this allows you to build the lines as needed (you may want one line for a roamer, but not necessarily for a zerger for example) to make each character ‘unique’. It was the trade off made for those that asked for some type of ‘character’ progression in WvW. On the flip side, some people don’t care about ‘unique’ necessarily, even though they play with multiple characters, and those people feel hobbled on their alts because they already have progression on another char. These people feel that it should all just go into one pool, and the unlocks should simply be across the board, this way if they want to transition from one role to another they don’t necessarily have to change characters. Unfortunately there is no way to please both of these play styles..one or the other will end up kittened off.

I can’t really say anything about spvp. All I play are the hot joins, and those are alt friendly for me.. Of course, not spending a lot of time in that mode also limits my knowledge of it.

As a main stream pve player, I don’t find the game alt unfriendly, but others may. It depends on what part of pve you prefer. People feel world bosses and dungeons aren’t alt friendly because the rewards are once per day per account, and those are pretty much all they do, yet on the flip side other people that also do these things may prefer a specific character to do them on so (an ele for one, a guard for another, etc) so to them, they aren’t alt unfriendly.. because they aren’t doing the same thing repetitively. Honestly, I think a lot of the pve issue may simply boil down to rewards when playing your alt in a scenario where you’ve already probably completed that content at least once that day, and I have some mixed feelings on that, but that’s a totally different topic. Overall though, I would not say that pve is alt unfriendly, except in very specific instances.

So, like I said at the beginning… your view is going to vary based on what you play, and how you like to play it.

Progression systems by their very nature are alt-unfriendly. Progression exists because many players are goal-driven. Progression exists to give those players goals. Progression systems are time sinks.

If progression systems were 100% account based, you’d have the reverse complaint, “I’ve maxed X and there is now no reason to roll an alt. There’s nothing left to work towards on it.” It might not be the same people complaining, but the complaints would occur.

What this discussion comes down to is the same play-style conflict we’ve seen with Ascended gear, the conflict between wanting hard-to-reach goals to exist and not wanting such goals to exist.

Arimahn.3568:

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.

I believe the major issue with this is the fact that you you loose karma and experience if this was the case. I don’t disagree that the map could already be unfogged, but there is valuable experience and karma from Hearts, POIs, WPs, etc. that you can use to level up with. Even if you don’t level this way, many do.

TooBz.3065:

Draknar.5748:

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 haven’t been able to put my finger on why, and certainly not to the level of detail required to explain it to people looking to poke holes in my opinion, but when I see alts as a burden rather than an asset, then I start to think the game is not alt-friendly.

I’m not sure exactly when that happened, but sometime in the last six months.

Other people disagree, but that’s why it’s an opinion as opposed to a fact.

I suppose that’s a fair and honest response. They have never felt like a burden to me, but then again I’ve never been able to play more than 2 or 3 characters regularly anyway. I suppose if I was actively trying to juggle 3+ characters it would start to feel burdensome. But why do something if it feels like a burden.

The game isn’t alt friendly.

I disagree with your “map completion required for legendarys is not alt friendly”.

I have 4 100% map completions and I enjoyed it each time. It is also a good way to learn the basics of a class you haven’t played.

@Draknar (sorry the chain was getting too long to post).

I haven’t created a new character since I started to feel this way.

They weren’t a burden when I created them. They were fun and different. I would get an alt, get them to 80, “finished” them(gear and a look) and move on to another character.

This was doomed to failure as MMO’s aren’t really set up for finishing characters (This is entirely on me, so I’m not complaining just typing).

First, new gear is added. Frankly didn’t expect that. Nothing about ascended gear has gone the way I thought it would. Everything makes perfect sense in hindsight, but I was naive about how MMOs work.

Second, changing builds / nerf buff cycles. Absolutely necessary for the health of the game. But when a build gets nerfed to the point where the character isn’t viable anymore (glamour mesmers are the most obvious) then the character is no longer finished. For a while it was exciting to get new gear for a toon and try out a new build based on whatever has been introduced. While exotics are still cheap and relatively easy to get, all my money goes toward ascended items now. And that doesn’t leave much left over for experimentation. (It kills me that I can’t salvage temple armor or anything that I got from WvW vendor. It seems needlessly cruel to make those items useless once you touch them.)

FYI, I think 2-3 is a good number of characters for this game. Enough that you can still gear them out, but not so much that it’s a huge drain.

Arimahn.3568:

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.

I’d like it if Anet sold a couple of leveling items in Gem Store:

• If you have 1 level 80, you can use a scroll giving you 20 levels on your next alt.
• If you have 2 level 80s, you can use a scroll giving you 30 levels on your next alt.
• If you have 3 level 80s, you can use a scroll giving you 50 levels on your next alt.
• If you have 4 level 80s, you can use a scroll giving you 60 levels on your next alt.

This gives an experienced player 20 levels left to learn his class and then he can start having the real fun.

Obsidian.1328:

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.

I disagree. All my characters look great. You’re trying to make it sound like 10 dyes is better than 400 dyes and unlocking a dye isn’t somehow better than having to always get another one.

I’m not sure that many people would agree the old system was better.

I have so many dyes on my alts, I never have trouble getting any of them to look good. I think I’ve bought three dyes since launch…and no expensive ones.

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

Dante.1508:

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

I think you are trying to say that the game is farm-unfriendly, not alt unfriendly.

You seem somewhat upset at the fact you can’t just switch between your 11 characters and farm the same content each time to get 11x the pay-out. That really has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. They are time-gating content. Karma is about as alt-friendly as it gets. If you want to farm karma, then probably not. Living Story alt-unfriendly? You share the achievements between characters lol, how is that unfriendly? Same with guild events. I’m sorry you can’t farm commendations 11x more than everyone else.

The game is alt friendly, it isn’t farm friendly. They want things to take time to complete, some players want to get them ASAP and are kitten they cannot. This is not an alt-friendliness issue, it’s a farming/time-gating one.

Sirendor.1394:

Arimahn.3568:

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.

I’d like it if Anet sold a couple of leveling items in Gem Store:

• If you have 1 level 80, you can use a scroll giving you 20 levels on your next alt.
• If you have 2 level 80s, you can use a scroll giving you 30 levels on your next alt.
• If you have 3 level 80s, you can use a scroll giving you 50 levels on your next alt.
• If you have 4 level 80s, you can use a scroll giving you 60 levels on your next alt.

This gives an experienced player 20 levels left to learn his class and then he can start having the real fun.

That doesn’t sound half-bad. Hell, selling Leveling Scrolls at all would be a great step in the right direction.

Draknar.5748:

Dante.1508:

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

I think you are trying to say that the game is farm-unfriendly, not alt unfriendly.

You seem somewhat upset at the fact you can’t just switch between your 11 characters and farm the same content each time to get 11x the pay-out. That really has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. They are time-gating content. Karma is about as alt-friendly as it gets. If you want to farm karma, then probably not. Living Story alt-unfriendly? You share the achievements between characters lol, how is that unfriendly? Same with guild events. I’m sorry you can’t farm commendations 11x more than everyone else.

The game is alt friendly, it isn’t farm friendly. They want things to take time to complete, some players want to get them ASAP and are kitten they cannot. This is not an alt-friendliness issue, it’s a farming/time-gating one.

I understand where you are going from, but I think that account wide time gating is alt-unfriendly.

This isn’t well thought out, so I apologize for rambling / lack of coherence. But I think anytime you have a reward that is for a character (e.g. soulbound gear) that is purchased using a currency that is time limited at an account level (e.g. laurels) it’s alt-unfriendly.

Honestly, I think the entire issue I have is tied to the fact that items can’t be shared across the account. If they could then there would be little difference between having 1 toon and having 7. Having extra gear would be a convenience item to save time swapping.

But currently if I want a berker sword for my warrior, guardian, mesmer, and thief then I need to get 4 beserker swords, no sharing.

Legendaries should be account bound.
FotM rank should be account bound.
Dungeon stories should be account bound.

If they implemented these three it would be extremely helpful in being alt-friendly department.

In general, the more things are account bound instead of soulbound, the more alt friendly game becomes. Account wide magic find and unlockable skins was step in the right dirrection, I hope they’ll continue to make this game more alt friendly, because I have 3 lv 80’s and 5 more underleveled chars.

Since when does the term “alt-friendly” = all my alts automatically get the stuff I earned on another character? The logic applied to many of these arguments is ridiculous. Currencies are shared now so all your karma earned by your main can now be used to on your alt. Dungeon tokens are account bound. Titles are account bound. AP is account bound.

But just because I spend countless hours and gold earning something on my main, doesn’t mean my alts (of which I have 7) should automatically get free stuff.

There are a couple things that would be better if it were account wide. But things like fractal ranks…I think the idea is that Anet doesn’t want you bringing a fresh alt in rares with 0AR and little dungeon experience into a lvl 38 fractal, just cuz your warrior is geared hardcore.

TooBz.3065:

I understand where you are going from, but I think that account wide time gating is alt-unfriendly.

This isn’t well thought out, so I apologize for rambling / lack of coherence. But I think anytime you have a reward that is for a character (e.g. soulbound gear) that is purchased using a currency that is time limited at an account level (e.g. laurels) it’s alt-unfriendly.

Honestly, I think the entire issue I have is tied to the fact that items can’t be shared across the account. If they could then there would be little difference between having 1 toon and having 7. Having extra gear would be a convenience item to save time swapping.

But currently if I want a berker sword for my warrior, guardian, mesmer, and thief then I need to get 4 beserker swords, no sharing.

I actually agree with this. I wish we could go back to the old school MMO days where you could move armor and weapons around whenever.

I don’t agree you should be able to put it on TP though, because you have to have some level of consumption in the market otherwise everything would be worthless.

I think all soulbound gear should be account bound. That would solve a lot of these issues.

Draknar.5748:

TooBz.3065:

I understand where you are going from, but I think that account wide time gating is alt-unfriendly.

This isn’t well thought out, so I apologize for rambling / lack of coherence. But I think anytime you have a reward that is for a character (e.g. soulbound gear) that is purchased using a currency that is time limited at an account level (e.g. laurels) it’s alt-unfriendly.

Honestly, I think the entire issue I have is tied to the fact that items can’t be shared across the account. If they could then there would be little difference between having 1 toon and having 7. Having extra gear would be a convenience item to save time swapping.

But currently if I want a berker sword for my warrior, guardian, mesmer, and thief then I need to get 4 beserker swords, no sharing.

I actually agree with this. I wish we could go back to the old school MMO days where you could move armor and weapons around whenever.

I don’t agree you should be able to put it on TP though, because you have to have some level of consumption in the market otherwise everything would be worthless.

I think all soulbound gear should be account bound. That would solve a lot of these issues.

Absolutely. I was thinking something like an item would become account bound on equip instead of soul bound.

Seras.5702:

Since when does the term “alt-friendly” = all my alts automatically get the stuff I earned on another character? The logic applied to many of these arguments is ridiculous. Currencies are shared now so all your karma earned by your main can now be used to on your alt. Dungeon tokens are account bound. Titles are account bound. AP is account bound.

But just because I spend countless hours and gold earning something on my main, doesn’t mean my alts (of which I have 7) should automatically get free stuff.

There are a couple things that would be better if it were account wide. But things like fractal ranks…I think the idea is that Anet doesn’t want you bringing a fresh alt in rares with 0AR and little dungeon experience into a lvl 38 fractal, just cuz your warrior is geared hardcore.

By the point you reach lv 50+, you have enough rings and usually enough other resources to fully gear your alts with agony resistant equipment. All my three alts have 45 AR and I usually can’t use them, because they have lv 1 reward level in fotm.
Doing higher levels of fractals is actually EASIER and FASTER, because you have people, who know what they’re supposed to do. Just because you roll a new class it doesn’t mean you suck at fotm again and need to start from scratch, your statement is absurd.

Seras.5702:

Since when does the term “alt-friendly” = all my alts automatically get the stuff I earned on another character? The logic applied to many of these arguments is ridiculous. Currencies are shared now so all your karma earned by your main can now be used to on your alt. Dungeon tokens are account bound. Titles are account bound. AP is account bound.

But just because I spend countless hours and gold earning something on my main, doesn’t mean my alts (of which I have 7) should automatically get free stuff.

There are a couple things that would be better if it were account wide. But things like fractal ranks…I think the idea is that Anet doesn’t want you bringing a fresh alt in rares with 0AR and little dungeon experience into a lvl 38 fractal, just cuz your warrior is geared hardcore.

It all depends on your point of view.

For many people, each character is a unique individual, a new story, that you are creating from scratch. From this point of view, soul bound makes sense but daily’s do not.

For other people, there is one player (me) playing on the account, whether they chose to play a warrior or an elementalist on any given day is irrelevant. From my point of view, I shouldn’t have to have less just because I play 5 characters instead of 1.

Edit: Also, I never asked for “free stuff” I asked for my alts to be able all share the same set of gear. I don’t want two Amulets, I want 1 that I can take off my warrior and put on my mesmer.

TooBz.3065:

It all depends on your point of view.

For many people, each character is a unique individual, a new story, that you are creating from scratch. From this point of view, soul bound makes sense but daily’s do not.

For other people, there is one player (me) playing on the account, whether they chose to play a warrior or an elementalist on any given day is irrelevant. From my point of view, I shouldn’t have to have less just because I play 5 characters instead of 1.

Edit: Also, I never asked for “free stuff” I asked for my alts to be able all share the same set of gear. I don’t want two Amulets, I want 1 that I can take off my warrior and put on my mesmer.

I’ll agree with the different points of view. I didn’t look at fractals from that angle. I concede to your point.

I wasn’t pointing the “want free stuff” at anyone in particular. It’s just a general sentiment that I feel often comes from this topic. But being able to swap your amulet (and presumably all ascended gear eventually?) freely amongst your characters is, in essence, free stuff. It’s no different than getting a free amulet for your alt. It means you can earn gear for a character and then not have to work anymore for any other character. Got zerk gear on your mesmer, guardian, and thief? Awesome, you can now have a fully geared necro, ele, warrior, engi, and ranger for the cost of the 5 mins it takes to deequip, put in the bank, and reequip on your alt. All for zero effort. And it removes some importance from spending currency wisely.

I like free stuff. Who doesn’t? But I don’t want to see the the importance of earning gear disappear. Anet needs to find a way for players to earn top-tier gear without a grind, and then only require that grind for rarer skins. It’s what they promised (grind-free play) and it’s the answer to this account-bound for all issue.

I will point out though that rare gear is incredibly easy to get for any alt. And exotic isn’t that hard either. It’s completely plausible to have the currency for a full set by the time 80 rolls around. And the stat gap between the tiers isn’t large enough (yet) for it to make much difference.

Seras.5702:

I wasn’t pointing the “want free stuff” at anyone in particular. It’s just a general sentiment that I feel often comes from this topic. But being able to swap your amulet (and presumably all ascended gear eventually?) freely amongst your characters is, in essence, free stuff. It’s no different than getting a free amulet for your alt. It means you can earn gear for a character and then not have to work anymore for any other character.

Aside from armor types, you can certainly make that conclusion that getting an item on one character and then transferring it to another is “free” stuff for that alt, but if we are going to speak in terms of characters on an individual, then the main character is now minus an amulet, which is the opposite of “free” stuff.

Overall, though, wouldn’t the idea of being able to swap gear between characters be in line with the essence of GW2? If anything would be casual friendly, it would be being able to move my Exotic light armor from my Mesmer to my Elementalist and back. You would still need different sets if you ran different builds, or if let’s say the Light armor on my Mesmer doesn’t quite fit the character of my Elemenalist, then you wouldn’t swap them and would pursue multiple sets, but having the option to wouldn’t be a problem, in my opinion of course. Or, to be completely honest, if this was a feature, at first I would probably switch armor, but ultimately I would want to get a set for each character to avoid the inconvenience of going to a bank, dumping the armor in, swapping characters and re-equipping. Most players I know would still get sets for each character even if it was available to swap.

It would mostly be useful for newer, more casual players, and less useful for regular/hardcore ones.

I think we can all agree on that.

Vayne.8563:

I have so many dyes on my alts…

Then you’re very, very lucky.

Back and forth, back and forth.

Before you start a serious conversation, you need to have some ground rules, such as how one defines the topic.

Its pretty obvious that the issue is people can’t even agree on basic definitions.

GW2 is alt-friendly in some respects, anything that’s account bound, the shared wallet, stuff like that. Its also alt-unfriendly in some respects, such as soulbound stuff, and time gated content.

But the basic measure of an MMO’s alt friendliness is how long it takes to get the character “settled” as in all the gear you want, skills, traits, basically have the character complete. Of course, many MMOs then dispense expansions or content that increases the character cap (levels, gear, more skills, etc.) requiring further refining of a player’s character.

In GW2, the problem isn’t the ability to spend currencies (like dungeon tokens, laurels or just basic gold thanks to the account wallet) its EARNING them. Account based Dailies, Monthlies, dungeon rewards, chest rewards, laurels, etc. means that no matter how much you play specific content, your rewards will only be as much as a person who plays it once.

While this can be seen as an incentive to go PvP or WvW, many players don’t like that aspect and prefer to PvE only. What this creates is a bottleneck at the supply point of currencies, which discourages players from “maining” more than one character due to the multiplicative amount of time taken to gear alts.

Its also a disincentive for new players, as they didn’t have the “headstart” beta and other players had in unlimited currency acquisition via dungeons, Plinx chain, etc. Which means that players who started early will ALWAYS have an advantage, even if the new players are playing 2x, 3x or more the amount of time older players are currently.

But just to reiterate, the problem with GW2 in terms of alt friendliness isn’t spending CoF tokens on a fresh 80 who has never been in the dungeon, or spending Laurels earned on your main to buy an Ascended Trinket for an alt, its earning them in the first place. It should be pretty obvious to anyone that the time taken to gear one main is much less than multiple alts. And that’s fine, it should take more playtime.

However, the problem arises that you could play 8 different characters, 24 hours a day, and reap the same rewards as a player who plays one main character for just an hour or two. By definition, that’s alt-unfriendly.

It’s all about perspective. Go play LOTRO up to level cap and then level an alt to level cap. Then come back to GW2. You will think this is the most alt friendly MMO next to that game. That includes the craft leveling nerfs that have happened since last month. This game is super alt friendly. The difference between this game and most other MMOs? You DON’T need to have BiS gear at all. Exotics are great for this game, you can start playing PvP from day 1 and be totally fine since it isn’t a gear based pvp system. People telling you it isn’t alt friendly haven’t gone back to old games and are taking this game for granted. Perspective is king.

Iason Evan.3806:

It’s all about perspective. Go play LOTRO up to level cap and then level an alt to level cap. Then come back to GW2. You will think this is the most alt friendly MMO next to that game. That includes the craft leveling nerfs that have happened since last month. This game is super alt friendly. The difference between this game and most other MMOs? You DON’T need to have BiS gear at all. Exotics are great for this game, you can start playing PvP from day 1 and be totally fine since it isn’t a gear based pvp system. People telling you it isn’t alt friendly haven’t gone back to old games and are taking this game for granted. Perspective is king.

This game is super alt unfriendly compared to GW1. Perspective is king.

This game is not only Alt-unfriendly, it is Alt-penalizing.

Here’s why I say this. I have 8 Lv. 80 toons, one for each profession, and all with full exotic gear, and most with ascended trinkets. To get to that point I have had to repeat lots of (to me) boring/grinding content that should have been account bound. I do not want to spend 15 minutes teaching skills to cows on some random ranch just to get a ‘heart’ when I am really after challenging combat. Why can’t WvW skill level be account-bound so that I can play all 8 of my toons with the benefits I’ve earned? Why can’t map completion be one-and-done so that it isn’t boring as kitten to open all the areas for all my toons? Oh, and add to that the fact that the much-touted ‘build diversity’ boils down to full zerker in PvE and PVT in WvW.

I suppose you can say ‘if you’re not having fun then just quit’, but that misses the point. If the game were living up to its stated goals I would be having fun…

Daddar.5971:

This game is not only Alt-unfriendly, it is Alt-penalizing.

Here’s why I say this. I have 8 Lv. 80 toons, one for each profession, and all with full exotic gear, and most with ascended trinkets. To get to that point I have had to repeat lots of (to me) boring/grinding content that should have been account bound. I do not want to spend 15 minutes teaching skills to cows on some random ranch just to get a ‘heart’ when I am really after challenging combat. Why can’t WvW skill level be account-bound so that I can play all 8 of my toons with the benefits I’ve earned? Why can’t map completion be one-and-done so that it isn’t boring as kitten to open all the areas for all my toons? Oh, and add to that the fact that the much-touted ‘build diversity’ boils down to full zerker in PvE and PVT in WvW.

I suppose you can say ‘if you’re not having fun then just quit’, but that misses the point. If the game were living up to its stated goals I would be having fun…

I agree strongly with this. The only end-game for players who started playing at headstart (like myself) is World vs. World.

When I play a new character however, I don’t like being kicked into the ground by a level 80 who just started playing 1 month ago. No offense, but he’s just a GS warrior and he can 2-hit me with auto-attack?? And I played over a year and know combat a looooot better than that guy? Seriously?

SEPERATE W3 GEAR AND LEVEL AND PVE GEAR AND LEVEL. THANKS

style.6173:

Alt friendly? no. If ANET wants to make the game alt friendly, they need to eliminate the entire concept of soul bound.

Not to mention merge the dyes per account instead of per character, achievements per account like once you explore the world once that should be it, every character should have the same map, separate the dailies between toons so there’s one per toon, things like this should be a no brainer honestly for any mmo gamer, oh and if we were to be really really honest about ascended gear they’d make it so that it’s only useable in fractals because that’s the reason why they made the consumable upgrades on that gear the way they did originally because agony was coming to the fractals. We don’t need ascended in anything else really and they shouldn’t balance the open world or WvW around ascended either because ascended has no place there.

Iason Evan.3806:

It’s all about perspective. Go play LOTRO up to level cap and then level an alt to level cap. Then come back to GW2. You will think this is the most alt friendly MMO next to that game. That includes the craft leveling nerfs that have happened since last month. This game is super alt friendly. The difference between this game and most other MMOs? You DON’T need to have BiS gear at all. Exotics are great for this game, you can start playing PvP from day 1 and be totally fine since it isn’t a gear based pvp system. People telling you it isn’t alt friendly haven’t gone back to old games and are taking this game for granted. Perspective is king.

You certainly don’t need BiS for LOTRO. In fact, landscape quests in LOTRO are far-easier than anything in GW2. I suspect Turbine nerfed the mobs for the F2P crowd. (Just went back to LOTRO this month, and actually shocked how easy parts of the game are).

Also, LOTRO has been out for 6 years (since 2007). Of course, it is going to take longer to reach level cap. You think GW2 is going to that alt-friendly 6 years out? Not a snowball’s chance in you-know-where.

Hmm isent ascended weapons account bound ? i thought the made it so alts had legendary stats ? i wouldent know im still on 492 weaponsmith

Why does Anet hate alts?

I know its really weird and makes no commercial sense whatsoever…

They should encourage all players to play alts because the more alts you have the more chance you would buy stuff from the gemstore for them and possibly with real $.

But, I long a go came to the conclusion that the people at Anet think very differently from how I think…they just have strange ideas and make weird decisions…

Dante.1508:

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

Most of those aren’t alt-unfriendly. You can do them just as well on alts as you can on your main. The only alt-unfriendly things are those that are account limited to once per day, like dungeon paths and laurels.

Daddar.5971:

This game is not only Alt-unfriendly, it is Alt-penalizing.

Here’s why I say this. I have 8 Lv. 80 toons, one for each profession, and all with full exotic gear, and most with ascended trinkets. To get to that point I have had to repeat lots of (to me) boring/grinding content that should have been account bound. I do not want to spend 15 minutes teaching skills to cows on some random ranch just to get a ‘heart’ when I am really after challenging combat. Why can’t WvW skill level be account-bound so that I can play all 8 of my toons with the benefits I’ve earned? Why can’t map completion be one-and-done so that it isn’t boring as kitten to open all the areas for all my toons? Oh, and add to that the fact that the much-touted ‘build diversity’ boils down to full zerker in PvE and PVT in WvW.

I suppose you can say ‘if you’re not having fun then just quit’, but that misses the point. If the game were living up to its stated goals I would be having fun…

So the problem is you hate the game. It has nothing to do with alts, it’s just that you don’t like the game so don’t want to have to play it more than once but for some reason you masochistically play it with one character and are compelled to play it with 8 characters because you like the way they look or something.

If you like the game in the first place, doing it again with an alt wouldn’t be an issue. Plus why do you need to do world completion with all of your characters? Just craft to level cap, buy some exotics, and then do whatever the heck you want…

Draknar.5748:

Dante.1508:

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

I think you are trying to say that the game is farm-unfriendly, not alt unfriendly.

You seem somewhat upset at the fact you can’t just switch between your 11 characters and farm the same content each time to get 11x the pay-out. That really has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. They are time-gating content. Karma is about as alt-friendly as it gets. If you want to farm karma, then probably not. Living Story alt-unfriendly? You share the achievements between characters lol, how is that unfriendly? Same with guild events. I’m sorry you can’t farm commendations 11x more than everyone else.

The game is alt friendly, it isn’t farm friendly. They want things to take time to complete, some players want to get them ASAP and are kitten they cannot. This is not an alt-friendliness issue, it’s a farming/time-gating one.

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels – Cannot Get Laurels for all Characters, it would take years
Dungeons and Fotm – Must do each character, its not account wide
Commendations – Don’t get enough to cover two characters in a timely fashion, again years..
Map completions – Each character must copy the maps over and over..
Bound items – Cannot trade between Alts
Crafting now after Ascended weapons – Crafting was great but now with Ascended we are forced to make the Ascended on the character we need the weapon for, which is not how crafting was designed till ascended..
Build making – Cannot Copy Builds to alts like we could in Guildwars 1
Karma since the nerf. – Karma was fine now its so trickle fed you’ll never have enough
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly. – Each living story you and guild events you are forced to use level 80 characters and characters with full map completions because low characters get crap loots and cannot keep up with the map jumping requirements.
etc etc

Nothing there is to do with Farming, i have 11 characters farming is not an issue honestly..

Plus World XP in WvW.