Guild Wars 2

I keep reading this, expression I guess to call it. People keep saying that GW2 is not alt friendly? How can that be? If the game was friendly for your “main” how is it not for an alt?!? Call me a noob, idiot what ever. Just someone explain this to me. I have 14 characters…. The game is just fun on each of my 13 “alts” as it was on my first character.

Maybe I don’t know what Alts are. I’m gonna go with that….

Players like us that like to level and actually play alts have no issue (I made a lvl 80 for all classes) the problem is that many items get soulbound instead of account (mainly legendaries and ascended), some other players would like to have WPs be unlocked account wide (it makes no sense imo), rewards being per account instead of per toon and so on.

I think that GW2 is among the most alt friendly MMO I ever played.

Most of the time when people say this they mean 2 things:

1) They want to skip levelling up and playing in the open-world, they just want to make a few character already at level 80 so they can go straight into WvW or dungeons or whatever.

2) They don’t want to have to buy/make another set of armor or weapons, they want to be able to re-use the ones they already have or get new ones much faster than they did the first time.

I don’t understand it myself, partially because I’ve never played any game that let you do that and partially because to me repeating the levelling process (and the personal story) is both a good way of getting used to a new profession and a big part of the reason I make alternate characters.

Grind ascended for a few of those alts, you will hate your life, hate the time spent in game, and hate everyone associated with it… even worse if the ascended skin you really want has the most useless stats in the entire game (healing power primary attribute in my case). You will learn the meaning of bored, the meaning of hate, and you will be reminded why you stayed away from “korean style grinders” in the first place

Depends on if you think you MUST have Legendarys and full ascended. In that case its not alt friendly. If you are fine with exotics and some nice cheaper skins its totally alt friendly

Ascended armor for the alts is actually really hard.
Ascended weapons for alts is not that bad, just don’t try to make full weapon sets for all your 5+ toons
Ascended trinkets is pretty easy for your toons, 3 of my toons have full ascened trinkets (and I don’t play fractals) so yeah … go for it.

Beldin.5498:

Depends on if you think you MUST have Legendarys and full ascended. In that case its not alt friendly. If you are fine with exotics and some nice cheaper skins its totally alt friendly

compared to endless cycles of the same old 6 or 7 meta events, grinding the legendary was a ray of sunshine, followed by a cool spring breeze, followed by a long walk in the park, and then a swim in the lakes of heaven… because for that, at least i was able to get it doing things i actually enjoy.

OKAY! FINE…except hearts and pve exploring wvw, the second was kind of unfair.. but w/e, at least it was something DIFFERENT constantly and hitting the meta grinder even then was purely optional, not half of everything i had to do.

Side note: increasing the dragonite drops from keeps and castle in wvw isnt going to bring me into wvw… those things almost never flip during my timezone’s hours so that change was…stupid, sorry..but it was.

Dreadful grind is even more dreadful when you have to repeat it for alts.

Generic heart tasks get boring quickly, and this problem gets a lot worse when you must repeat them all with alts.

Playing with new skills and mechanics is fun, but not so much when most of the content is same-y, or easy enough to apply the same strategy to each battle regardless of the profession you pick.

Many things are also soulbound when they shouldn’t. It’s demotivating to spend a lot of money to unlock a new dye color, only to find out that you must repeat that process for every single other character you have. Personal character progression should remain soulbound, of course, at least to a certain extent, but there are many things that players work hard for a sense of progression, and then that sense of progression does not exists outsides of their main alt.

It’s even more important when we look at, say, WvW. You want to stay competitive, you want to diversify your gameplay experience by playing with alts, but you don’t want to soullessly grind for hours in PvE to acchieve that.

Inimicus.7162:

Beldin.5498:

Depends on if you think you MUST have Legendarys and full ascended. In that case its not alt friendly. If you are fine with exotics and some nice cheaper skins its totally alt friendly

Legendary is simply to expensive. I can deck out all my 12 characters with nice skins just for the cost of one legendary. Also i have meanwhile 12 ascended weapons in total since i like doing world events.
I don’t bother with ascended armor, since the 1% more that a full set gives you is simply not worth the cost. Only did a leather chest piece so far because i liked the look.

I believe the expression also applies on some other principles they have put in place that weren’t there in the first place. For example, having two toons that are level 450 artificer won’t let you craft two ascended materials the same day. Doing the same dungeon path with two toons gets you nearly no bonus token, and so on.

Now I do agree with both sides, I have a level 80 of all professions because leveling is fun, and I really wouldn’t want to get everything my other characters did handed to me without any effort. I would just like to be able to do twice the same content for twice the reward because I took the time to gear and level a second character, that’s all.

Ascended weapons and armor added a lot to this problem, because if I want to get involved in high level fractals, I have to choose one toon that I will fully gear for it. Because those require a huge amount of materials, I will probably never play any other character there.

(This is the rational side of the argument, the irrational being that you NEED to have ALL your toons max geared, which I personally think is a bit too much to ask).

Edit: Wow, really? 5 people replied while I was writing my answer… Well, just read it as if the people above hadn’t said that already :-P

Belzebu.3912:

Ascended armor for the alts is actually really hard.
Ascended weapons for alts is not that bad, just don’t try to make full weapon sets for all your 5+ toons
Ascended trinkets is pretty easy for your toons, 3 of my toons have full ascened trinkets (and I don’t play fractals) so yeah … go for it.

Correct, but the weapons issue is that some of the ascended weapons skins are quite nice, but red and poop brown or ebony and cornsilk are not the colors i wanna match to… so any ascended stats i want on weapons (thx to whoever put the kabosh on weapon dye channels in early development and kept kitten-caning until people quit regularly asking for it) means that if i also want the asc skin, i have to make 2 weapons, and there was no reason ever to make asc weapons require a full vision crystal. Im not even mad over the other mats…i can get over spending gold…but weeks of boredom just to put 2-3 armor pieces and average 5 weapons on 4-5 (3 characters now i guess since the flamekiss groin-stomp voided the only thing that made my norn ele and mesmer tolerable to play) but yes, i am still looking at needing 30,000-40,000 of some mats that come in 30 at the time from events that i’ve never, ever, ever wanted to run as primary anything… indeed, i generally try to stay as far away from these things as i can and only might go if one happens to pop on a map i so happen to be standing in. This is why ascended crafting isnt alt friendly.

Game is perfectly alt-friendly so long as you have no reason ever (like friends) to step foot in high level fractals…exotic gear is quite easy to get and you are only nerfed 5% in exchange for never getting into fractal level 50…until they finally get around to altering that too.

Beldin.5498:

Inimicus.7162:

Beldin.5498:

Depends on if you think you MUST have Legendarys and full ascended. In that case its not alt friendly. If you are fine with exotics and some nice cheaper skins its totally alt friendly

Legendary is simply to expensive. I can deck out all my 12 characters with nice skins just for the cost of one legendary. Also i have meanwhile 12 ascended weapons in total since i like doing world events.
I don’t bother with ascended armor, since the 1% more that a full set gives you is simply not worth the cost. Only did a leather chest piece so far because i liked the look.

Legendaries were not designed for all players to obtain them. They’re supposed to show that the player has played the game for a while and has done a little bit of everything (crafting, dungeons, WvW, DE’s, hearts, etc) and is dedicated.

They’re supposed to the be the long term goal that you work toward. They should have been the only type of gear that you would have to “grind” to get if you didn’t achieve it very slowly. Ascended gear should not have been the grind it is to get it.

It does irk me that you can buy a legendary but not an ascended and legendary is supposed to be better. When the former is supposed to be something that shows something about the wielder and the ascended is supposed to be able to let you play a part of the game (high level fractals).

And to answer the OP: Mostly due to Ascended gear nowadays. Since the gear gets soul bound at some point. And it can take upwards of a month if not longer to fully gear out one character if you can keep up with the necessary mats. Which can be hard unless you’ve hoarded like crazy or are willing to open up your wallet if you don’t have the gold. And that doesn’t even cover the various account bound mats that are needed in bulk.

Seera.5916:

It does irk me that you can buy a legendary but not an ascended and legendary is supposed to be better. When the former is supposed to be something that shows something about the wielder and the ascended is supposed to be able to let you play a part of the game (high level fractals).

I totally agree. It is pretty asinine that you can buy a legendary but cannot buy an ascended weapon. If anything, ascended should be purchasable and legendaries not.

Oh, and anything with a time gate is not ALT friendly at all. Which is fast becoming the norm in this game.

Soulbound, dubveedub rank, ascended gear, crafting levels, etc.. Most of this stuff that’s missing is just QOL features — but it does make playing an alt unreasonable sometimes.

Yeah I don’t get the gripes about not being alt friendly either. Especially when it’s complaints about leveling. I can only assume the people that find leveling alts on GW2 to be too time consuming/tedious have never played another MMO. GW2 is both far faster and offers far more options for leveling than anything else I’ve ever played.

My post was non judgemental. I didn’t understand the term. I asked for clarification.

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

My post was non judgemental. I didn’t understand the term. I asked for clarification.

Because, IMO, this post is reintroducing an old fight that I thought we had finished discussing months go. Frankly, I don’t care anymore. I’m just here waiting for the next thing to come along.

Look up the old posts if you want to know how people feel. If you want to fight, do it with someone else. I’ll delete my post.

Ok but I’m new to the forums maybe 3 weeks. I’m not about to go back 30 pages to find something. But thank you for your views.

Ok. Sorry, I was assuming that you were just trying to kick a hornets nest, and, for me, the nerve is dead (almost).

In a nutshell, I would say that soulbound items are alt-unfriendly. Ascended gear makes it worse. I want to go and play the parts of the game I enjoy (WvW, map exploration) without worrying about getting BiS gear.

I also like variety. I enjoy my mesmer, thief, warrior, guardian, elementalist, and necro, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time gearing them up. The current system requires that I spend way too much time / resources on gear.

“So don’t” is the inevitable reply. Yeah…

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

I keep reading this, expression I guess to call it. People keep saying that GW2 is not alt friendly? How can that be? If the game was friendly for your “main” how is it not for an alt?!? Call me a noob, idiot what ever. Just someone explain this to me. I have 14 characters…. The game is just fun on each of my 13 “alts” as it was on my first character.

Maybe I don’t know what Alts are. I’m gonna go with that….

I have 15 max level characters. I did the math. There is no way in hell that they will all be equipped with Ascended gear within the next five years. It’s the grind. And, it’s impossible with alts.

In WoW, which I’ve been playing lately, I have 5 max level characters which I’ve just about got geared. This all happened in under two months. Now I can just relax and play my alts however I want. No more grinding gear.

Interestingly, I wouldn’t call WoW alt-friendly, as any game with vertical progression will not be alt-friendly by definition. However, WoW is far more alt-friendly than GW2. GW2 is not alt-friendly.

Thanks everyone from what I see, as long as I don’t expect to get all my characters to top tier gear and weapons. The game is ideal, one character gets to be spoiled but not all at a reasonable time frame.

The more there is to do for one character, the harder it is to get alts up to speed.

GW1, STO – these are games where it is easy to get alts up to a decent level of performance, if not absolutely maxed out. GW2 isn’t too bad, really, compared to most MMOs.

And I don’t agree that WoW is more alt-friendly than GW2…at least until they let you buy level 90 characters, lol.

Belzebu.3912:

Players like us that like to level and actually play alts have no issue (I made a lvl 80 for all classes) the problem is that many items get soulbound instead of account (mainly legendaries and ascended), some other players would like to have WPs be unlocked account wide (it makes no sense imo), rewards being per account instead of per toon and so on.

I think that GW2 is among the most alt friendly MMO I ever played.

I’ve only played one other MMO, and it went just the opposite over time – started with lotsa Bound the Character loot, and went to more Bound to Account over the period of about 2-3 years. GW2 is a very good balance compared to the more stringent first year of that other game.

I pretty much gave up on my alts after Ascended armor came out. =(

Inimicus.7162:

Correct, but the weapons issue is that some of the ascended weapons skins are quite nice, but red and poop brown or ebony and cornsilk are not the colors i wanna match to…

I’m in the same boat.
I want to craft a zerker or valk ascended axe for my ranger, but I wanted the blue skin to make pair with the Frostfang and my “ice themed” set, to be sincere, that is the only thing that is holding me to craft the ascended axe for my main.

Belzebu.3912:

Inimicus.7162:

Correct, but the weapons issue is that some of the ascended weapons skins are quite nice, but red and poop brown or ebony and cornsilk are not the colors i wanna match to…

I’m in the same boat.
I want to craft a zerker or valk ascended axe for my ranger, but I wanted the blue skin to make pair with the Frostfang and my “ice themed” set, to be sincere, that is the only thing that is holding me to craft the ascended axe for my main.

You just have to stop the min-max thinking. I also made the white ascended scepter for my elementalist .. and i simply don’t care that i do now maybe 1% less damage.

Get rid of soul-bound items in favor of account bound items. Of course, you would still respect class distinctions. An account bound heavy armor cannot be worn by a mesmer for example.

This would free, rings, trinkets, weapons, etc. which you no longer want to use in a specific character to be used in an alternate character.

Why is this needed? Because the implementation of soul bound items goes against the spirit of the game and it hinders the game.

Take fractals for example, it is great that the fractal level is account bound. However, that does you no good if your agony resistance gear is still soul bound.

Lastly, make everything account bound: Dungeons for example, once you complete the story in the account, that should apply to every character in your account.

@OP

I think you have the right idea. Stay away from top end gear and be happy with basic Exotics. Good luck being happy with the ‘end game’ going forward, but if you find something to do in game that makes you happy, by all means do so.

Personally, I have 7 alts, 5 at 80 and I’m not even sure why. At first it was to make sure a class could be fun for me, then it was about farming, then it was “designer” characters, like I’d log into my mesmer (main) for dungeons, but PvE train/events I’d roll my warrior or engie, etc. Then it was about having an ideal PvP class to get into (never really happened). Then it was about making a character that I’d want to have a specific legendary on. In the end, I really just end up playing my mes and engie. :P.

Also, to those not wanting to grind hearts… don’t After I do the 5 starter areas, I normally just hit all the WPs and a few low hanging PoIs. Amazing how much xp you can get from just dodging mobs like mad and tagging easy map points.

GW2 is more and less alt friendly at the same time than other games…

Using WoW as an example, since it’s the only other MMO I’ve played heavily after level cap (note, it might be outdated, last played during WotLK)…

How it’s more alt friendly:

- Shared bank and crafting storage… as long as it’s in the bank, any character has access to it, I could gather in one char and it’s instantly available to craft in another.
- Shared gold and tokens. While playing WoW, for example, I’d get tokens for playing heroic dungeons, but they were soulbound, meaning I couldn’t play them on my druid then use them to buy gear on my priest. My warrior in GW2 has a couple pieces of CoF armor for its looks, but has never set foot inside of it.
- Most gear is either soulbound on use, or account bound, meaning anything that drops on a dungeon or open world can be used by any other character right away. Back in WoW, for example… oooh, the sword of a thousand truths finally dropped, the best weapon for my warrior… too bad I’m playing my druid that can’t use swords….

How it’s less alt friendly:
- Account bound timers. Several things like crafting components, charging quartz, boss bonus chests and dungeons tokens are once a day by account, not by character. It’s very annoying if you want to craft ascended gear, mildly so for things like charged quartz, but don’t see much of a deal about it for dungeons and bosses, since you can always do another one. I doubt many people have enough gameplay time in a day to do all bosses and dungeon paths in the game…

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

I keep reading this, expression I guess to call it. People keep saying that GW2 is not alt friendly? How can that be? If the game was friendly for your “main” how is it not for an alt?!? Call me a noob, idiot what ever. Just someone explain this to me. I have 14 characters…. The game is just fun on each of my 13 “alts” as it was on my first character.

Maybe I don’t know what Alts are. I’m gonna go with that….

I don’t know how well your main and alts are, but try gearing all of them in Ascended gear – trinkets, rings, amulets, armor, weapons.

For me, it’s not even the cost of mats. Yes, it’s expensive, but I make enough gold doing dungeons so it evens out. My main bottle neck is 1) having to level up EVERY crafting profession if you have light, medium and heavy alts and 2) dragonite. I kittening hate farming dragonite. I hate open world events with a passion, and I hate that being forced to do this so much so that I stopped playing my alts altogether.

I treat each of my alts as separate characters. (All 50 of them).

Having played MMO’s for 14 years, I do not expect to be able to share gear (although DAoC allowed this.)

I do not expect insta-leveling (although, again, DAoC had a /slash 20 command for accounts that had at least one endgame level character. It caused an uproar when it first went in.) GW2 now provides the same ability via 1-year birthday level 20 scroll. I have used multiple of those on new alts.

I did have a problem with character specific Fractal levels. As someone who provided the profession my guild needed when we were 4-manning Fractals, it was painful to start over. That has now been addressed.

I am waiting for account-wide WvW ranks and do not understand why this did not exist persistently from the beginning of the game. Again, I provide the necessary alts for my guild’s 4-man swat team. Usually this is my Elementalist. There are times, however, when they prefer my Warrior, Guardian or Necro.

I have multiple characters of the same profession that I have taken to WvW and used in PvE for Explorables and Fractals. They have different builds and corresponding different gear sets. It’s easier for me to level a new character (2 days) and gear it (in exotics) than carrying around multiple sets of gear, keeping track of them, swapping them and respeccing. There is no easy in-game mechanic to do so (unlike some other MMOs – WoW/WoW clones.)

Ascended gear added another twist in the alt-game. I have one fully ascended geared character and multiple characters with pieces from Fractals/Laurels. The time/cost of fully gearing others is daunting. Yes, gearing that way IS a player choice… mine… I and my guild are old school min/maxers because we are constantly pushing the boundaries of what we can do with 2, or 3 or 4 people, in order to find the challenge we want in the game. It’s how we play.

Again, my choice.

If it was a WoW/WoW Clone, the issue would be par for the course.

In a game that was promoted as lateral progression, the addition of Ascended is a tad annoying.

And probably where a lot of the concerns over alt-friendly arise. I personally felt constrained to pick a main in a game that did not have a trinity, and had promoted “freedom of choice” in profession and build and gear.

That was disappointing.

I adjust. I am now considering whether to move forward with outfitting some of my other alts in Ascended.

As soon as account-wide WvW ranks goes in.

I’m not holding my breath. I know they will get there…eventually.

Ascended gear is the most alt-unfriendly part of the game for me as well. In addition to the things others mentioned, it is worsened by the fact that I hate fractals, which leaves laurels (or laurels plus fancy dinner plates) as my only means of acquiring rings.

I actually thought the game was highly ALT-friendly until ascended gear came out….that ended alt-friendliness, since I now have one character fully decked in ascended (granted, only a single set of armor)….while all my others are in exotics. This means that if I want to put my best effort forward in dungeons or WvW or anything, i only have one character rather than the way I used to play (pre-ascended) where I played different characters every day.

GW2 is alt friendly for leveling but after that it quickly punishes you for having more than one character. Want the commander tag? That’ll be 200g per character thank you! You only get 1 daily and thus 1 laurel, which at 35 laurels+ per item can quickly turn into YEARS to gear out all your characters and specs. Then you’ve got exotics/runes/sigils that all add up to a whole lot of gold farming depending on the number of characters and specs you’re wishing to support. Then of course legendary weapons are soulbound. Finally you’ve got character bound World ranks, which are set to change sometime in the future.

Some gamers login with a goal in mind and play in a manner which they may or may not enjoy to achieve their personal goal. In their minds there may be an element of grinding. This may be absolutely correct, from their personal perspective.

I consider myself to be just another gamer, IMHO I do not grind i simply play games. My 8 professions at 80 were/are all enjoyable in their own ways.

Darthaemos.6370:

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

I keep reading this, expression I guess to call it. People keep saying that GW2 is not alt friendly? How can that be? If the game was friendly for your “main” how is it not for an alt?!? Call me a noob, idiot what ever. Just someone explain this to me. I have 14 characters…. The game is just fun on each of my 13 “alts” as it was on my first character.

Maybe I don’t know what Alts are. I’m gonna go with that….

I don’t know how well your main and alts are, but try gearing all of them in Ascended gear – trinkets, rings, amulets, armor, weapons.

For me, it’s not even the cost of mats. Yes, it’s expensive, but I make enough gold doing dungeons so it evens out. My main bottle neck is 1) having to level up EVERY crafting profession if you have light, medium and heavy alts and 2) dragonite. I kittening hate farming dragonite. I hate open world events with a passion, and I hate that being forced to do this so much so that I stopped playing my alts altogether.

MY GOD, another player who feels like I do on this front speaks up!

Meta boss haters unite and take a stand against the dragonite grind gate!

Wow, I was looking at ascended but with the karma grind to finish my legendary who knows. I don’t mine exotics, I’m not a hard core player.

My ranger is my “Main” if I had to classify. It’s the one getting the legendary.

Here you have my reasons:

1. Time gates. Laurels and Guild Missions are fine for just one character, but too slow for multiple.
2. Ascended. Too expensive, too hard, acquisition based only on crafting and time gated.
3. Build diversity. Having various sets of gear is too expensive. Changing traits is too tedious.
4. Runes and Sigils acquisition methods (or lack of). Related to point 3. Replacing runes and sigils requires you to destroy the old ones, and most of them can only be acquired in the BLTC (or crafted after buying rare ingredients from the BLTC). They are way too expensive.

I do also have things that I like about having multiple Alts.

1. Different personal stories.
2. Play different classes whenever I want.
3. Lots of skins for customization.
4. Harvest T6 nodes on each character
5. I always have something to do, 5 out of my 9 characters are still wearing green under 80 items.
6. Dungeons and Fractals, I can change to a different class if the party misses something.