Guild Wars 2

Simple, as games progress, and complaints come in, it’s good to “Hedge your bet” by having fall back characters. After the Nerf bat is swung, it can take a long time if ever to gain back lost ground, skills, abilities, etc.. For example, I adore my thief, but I know the flood of complaints from PVPr’s will result in changes sooner or later. I’ve played mmo’s for too long to think otherwise.

If you have one character/class/prof, pick another or two and level them. You’ll be glad you did.

Of course there are many other reasons for multiple characters, but this is by far the best advice I can give anyone new to this or any MMO. With multiple characters, you won’t get bored as easily, and as they say variety is the spice of life.

Your thoughts?

Well, it does allow for more perspective and doing the same content with the same character can get boring.

However, I find leveling to be an annoying process. Yea, I know there’s crafting, but meh, it just feels like a formality these days.

What really keeps me from leveling more alts is the soulbound equipment. Since my characters can’t borrow stuff from each other, I need to purchase up another set which can get annoying with the ascended stuff coming and what have you.

I agree with you, but for me, it is only one reason to have them. I love playing different characters and using different play styles. I usually try to have a main for different aspects of the game (my Guardian for Dungeons, Ranger for WvW, Ele for sPvP).

But I am an alt-a-holic and always try to play one of each class.

I don’t level multiple toons as a hedge against the nerf bat, but because I get bored of one toon too easily. I’ve been playing MMO’s since Everquest, I guess I’d say I was experienced.

I have one of everything but Necro, but I’m planning on having one at some point. I still have to level my guardian, engineer and mesmer.

If you really love the class you play, you wouldn’t give up on it because of a nerf or two.

I’ve been rolling an ele since launch, and it is still my main toon. Sure, there have been times when the nerf bat has been a real handful, but not once has there been a time I couldn’t work my way out with all the new changes. It’s all a matter of adaptation.

On the competitive pvp perspective, however, I recognize the need for having multiple toons. No nerf ever is game breaking, but sometimes the devs like to tinker the classes too far, making it inconvenient to run a certain class until it is on par with the others again.

For me it’s “more different classes, more fun”. There’s no other reason.

I refuse to call any of my many characters “toons” … and the term “altoholic” does not have its place in this game since it is unlike other mmos.

I have one of every class at 80 (actually have 10 characters) it is good to fall back on sometimes but as the nerfs seem to be game wide (haste, fury etc) most characters seem to get hit, some more than others..

I do miss playing my Engineer a lot though, but now after so many nerfs i just can deal with the class anymore, Ranger seems ok in PvE though..

1) To not over-play your main character and have the mechanics become dull
2) To learn the class inside and out for PvP
3) To re-experience content that has been added since launch

I’ve been playing as a ranger since launch so I obviously love ranger quite a bit

I like to play various professions/classes variety. Usually I’m good for about 6 months on one character then I itch to play something a bit different. Eventually, I get the itch to come back to a previous character, especially if I haven’t finished doing with it what I wanted to do.

This time around, I’ll probably play my warrior longer than I usually would but eventually I’ll want to try and play something different.

I am an extremely experienced MMOer if such a thing can be graded and yet I have a low interest in multiple characters. I find the most engaging part of an MMO is gradually decorating one character with titles, unique items, time-limited prestige pieces, unique mounts etc. and due to this, I barely spread my playtime out amongst what few alts I create. This is the first game I am actually filling my character slots thanks to the enjoyable process of levelling but still I hardly touch my ranger in favour of my warrior. All about tastes!

I have an 80 of every class and I almost feel like it just causes more annoyance due to nerfs, because no matter who’s getting a really poorly thought out change in the name of balancing SPvP that nobody plays, it’s going to be one of my characters. I wouldn’t have cared about the recent RtL change if I didn’t level an elementalist.

I identify as an “alt-o-holic” simply because i learn and master mechanics and skill sets very fast. In this game, where you don’t have much customization or build variety, i think i’d go insane if i didn’t have 5 lv 80 Characters fully geared to pick and choose which i play with. For me, i like to immerse myself into a game on a mechanical level as well. By experiencing all available options, i gain a better understanding of the intent and functionality of how it all works in conjunction. I don’t think i could ever just play one character unless the progression was so steep that i could never hope to have multiple BiS characters in a reasonable amount of time. Why limit yourself to just one character? That’s boring, especially here.

On top of what I said earlier I also don’t look at nerfs in a negative light. I usually agree with companies when they reduce something’s effectiveness as it tends to be because it was idiotic beforehand, so if I happened to have been taking advantage of it, I just look at it as a reason to try something new. Getting all wound up over changes is beyond ridiculous to me, never seen the point in it.

I have multiple toons because I tend to create a little fantasy land in my head where all of my toons have personality and interact with each other and stuff. It’s like my own personal action/comedy/drama show that I write in my head as things go along.

Also I like to play the game in different styles. Each class feels and plays so different that I have to think differently with each one.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Your thoughts?

I don’t know if that is subliminally why I have 7 level 80’s and am leveling an 8th.

…maybe its just because there isn’t enough content in the game currently to keep me entertained on only one character.

Once I finish my 8th character (and have all races and professions completely geared/leveled) I will have nothing left to do in the game except accumulate money, and spvp or WvW.

I don’t like the WvW bracket my server is stuck in (Top 3: with SoR always in third), and as fun as I find sPvP I can’t do it all day long and remain entertained.

It is me holding onto what little content there still is in this game before the fun runs out.

I blame my City of Heroes days for turning me into an altoholic. Back in that game, I had SIXTY PLUS characters. 14 of them were max level, and all incarnates (their word for beyond max level endgaming).

In the background, working how they’re all related in some way to each other is also fun as well, and helps serve to foster interest in the characters.

In GW2, the choice of creation is much more limited, but even so, I have 8 characters, which is one of every profession. If Arenanet ever decide to release any others, then my number will increase. XD

Having a diverse selection of playstyles and character class aesthetics is my reason for having alts. I have never made an alt due to any kind of nerf or class change in any mmo.

I’ve always had at least a dozen end-game geared alts in any MMO I’ve played over the last 13+ years. Ninth level 80 alt yesterday, 10th, 11th and 12th are in the level 50-70 range. (Don’t ask, I’ve got 40 character slots). Alt addiction is a horrible thing. <straightface>

Thank you ANet for letting me do it all on one account instead of 3 or 4 (with subscriptions). Oh, and for not needing to play 2 or 3 at a time in a raid situation. (I don’t miss that one bit!)

Lot of good posts here I could echo, including mechanics have always been easy to learn/master quickly, boredom sets in, revisiting content, experimenting, variety, learning all the classes for RvR, er, PvP and WvW. I’m also addicted to thinking up nerdy puns with class/race/names (to the despair of my poor guildmates.) (Yes, I’m using “class” here generically to describe multiple games. Feel free to insert “profession” for GW2 as you are reading.)

Also, if there is a class I really enoy and feel is “mine” then “nerfs” are just adjustments and I manage accordingly, I don’t swap to another class because of nerfs.

In the end, the real reason I roll multiple alts is because at any given time, someone in my guild might want a particular set of abilities, and I just love pulling a character out of my back pocket for whatever situation occurs. Less necessary in GW2 than in other games; having a large toolbox to pull from still helps.

That and I just want to experience as much as I can in any given MMO.

I really, really tried to main my warrior but the gear got so ugly, same with my thief (puppy you quilted dublets!!!) but I found I loved the concept and execution of corruption necromancers and now I’m alting a fire elementalist because I love fire mages, dat fire axe, so far she’s pretty awesome and love the outfit
So I alt because characters get to a point theyre too ugly to play.

I like playing all 16 of my alts. Most of my characters aren’t optimized. The things that have bothered me most are the adding of feet to the air elementals, including the mini and having my Runes of Vampirism on my Ranger nerfed at the same time they mangled the Penet/Shelt events so I’m getting near one-shotted by things that I can’t see due to culling and can’t figure out where to run because enemies are popping in like foliage in Crysis at release. It would be three, but I’ve decided to grudgingly accept the still slightly too low volume of my Greatsaw and Chain Swords and move on.

People that like progress will usually hate alts, because every minute / gold piece spent on an alt is one less spent on the main. That said, most people like this quit GW2 long ago cause it clearly wasn’t made for them. So ye if you’re actively playing GW2 and don’t wanna get bored, you might have to make alts.

It should be mentioned, playing alts after a skill change on your main, is good if for no other reason than forgetting the old way said skills worked. A more extreme way is what I have opted to do in the past when a barrage of skill changes across the board made whatever game I was playing, unpleasant. I avoided all the tumult by taking a break for a few months. Drastic, but effective. When I came back I had forgotten how things were and had to get accustomed to my class etc.. again. Like I said drastic. It makes more sense to simply play another class and move on. I have played GW1 since launch. I enjoyed how pvp had it’s own skillset. I’ve heard talk they are working on a similar setup for GW2. I hope they can, pvp has ruined pve in far too many games as is.

All that aside, play whatever and however you wish. I simply stated what I, and other 1%‘rs have done It was intended to quell the ire I see rising in game about changes, classes being OP’d etc.. Nonsense to be sure, but it seems they can effect change sometimes.

Exp’d MMO players know that it is impractical to maintain alts at a competitive level in the presence of vertical progression. In WoW I had 6 max level characters through Cata, But, I only leveled one character in MoP. When the power level of the game is ever increasing, alts become a liability at some point, not an asset.

Let’s say we hedged our bets very well and have 8 level 80 characters, one of each profession. Want to wager a guess as to the time to acquisition just for the Ascended trinkets alone. It wearies me just thinking about it. Had GW2 continued along a horizontal path I would agree with you that multiple alts would make sense though not necessarily as a hedge against the nerfbat. I think it’s fun playing a variety of characters, just not very practical in GW2.

Leveling u kitten uch a pain and not as fun the second time around, because none of the events are as new and I’ve been everywhere already. It’s why my Thief gets most of her EXP from crafting, now. I got the resources, now, because I never crafted much outside of the Chef skill.