Guild Wars 2

how does the game encourage us to alt? all I see is that I have to grind through a lot of kitten pve content to get to dungeons, something in this game resembling fun then it’s still very restricting for at least like 20 levels and I’m handicapped because of gear/traits.. I kinda feel like I’m playing to get to the endgame, then have fun, something you guys explicitly stated you wanted to avoid.

Because the gameplay is vastly different for each class. I just enjoy approaching the different aspects of the game through different playstyles.

Ursan.7846:

Because the gameplay is vastly different for each class. I just enjoy approaching the different aspects of the game through different playstyles.

I do too! how does that relate to my concerns?

I love alts! I don’t think Anet encourages them much with the locks on dungeons story modes being per character, the grind for ascended gear and soon the progression in WvW being character specific.

And if you don’t want to do the early levels of pve you can always craft or do WvW, both of which can get you up.

Ursan.7846:

Because the gameplay is vastly different for each class. I just enjoy approaching the different aspects of the game through different playstyles.

Definitely.

Playstyles differ vastly between classes.

However, time gated ascended gear is not very alt friendly at all. If you don’t mind the stat difference in WvW, it’s not that big of a deal. If you DO mind the stat difference in WvW, it’s quite the problem.

The game wasn’t designed for min/max players.

I sold most of the mats and equipment I get while playing. I used the gold to buy gems for bank expansions and character slots. I have eight slots and use them to try out whatever race/class combos I want. I try to keep one toon of each class and delete the ones I get bored with around level 20 to try something new.

I couldn’t care less about standing around in LA wearing the “look at me! I’m on fire!” armor or getting Ascended gear. They are irrelevant to my enjoyment of the game.

I don’t play the game the way you do. And I don’t expect you to play the game the way I do. But the game was simply not designed to support your play style. The devs are trying to retrofit the game to be like other mainstream MMOs, but their success so far has been limited because the game was not designed for it to begin with.

you hate 0-20?

Roll and alt grab 10g from your bank, level jewelery to 400, level cooking to 400 problem solved.

to OP,

if you want to know how to beat a class, then play the class…. that’s the reason i have alts….

Well the fact that they give us 4 FREE alt slots very much encourages us to go alting. I am sorry if YOU are in a hurry to reach end game just so you can do dungeons all over again for whatever reason. However personally for me I LOVE the fact I have to start from scratch on EVERY alt and slowly build up my power/skills with each char. That’s the main fun of it! It also makes me LEARN the class so much more this way.

I don’t know what your rush is tbh. Afterall you can do dungeons on your main and use the tokens on your alts. Why not just do this?

Ps Today I should hit 100% world on my 5th char/class and I don’t feel I rushed too much. I basically just start a char and complete every map before hitting the story. I have a lot of fun and a good learning exp doing this for the class as I said. So again I REALLY don’t know what your rush is. Stop, slow down, breath and ENJOY the game. Sheesh….

You get to gather more orichalcum and wood per day.

LotusThief.4613:

You get to gather more orichalcum and wood per day.

yup, that’s one of the motivation too, although i go for omnom rather than wood….

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

Ursan.7846:

Because the gameplay is vastly different for each class. I just enjoy approaching the different aspects of the game through different playstyles.

I’m with youI on that, I enjoy the game with diff. Race with diff. Professions.

Actually i forgot about the earring’s in my reply above, it would take you over 3 years to outfit all alts in ascended via laurel system not 2. Yeah this game definatly not alt friendly.

I don’t like leveling alts,and generally I stick to my main char
and play it as much as possible,but in GW2 I’m already leveling
2 alts,and I find it rather amusing.
I started with one mule,in order to just get a crafting skill to 400 and
in the process I got to love it.
I intend to level up all of the available professions.
Leveling and learning other professions
has given me great understanding of not only those other two
classes I’m leveling atm ,but also my main class.

Rifter.6591:

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

Thing is, ascended gear isn’t exactly necessary for alts though. If you geared it with full exotics, you are only a few % weaker than someone with full ascended accessories. I don’t play fotm a lot, I have grown bored of it but I don’t find it to be too tasking to get the rings at least.

As I have said before, that is why alts are called alts and mains are called main. You can’t expect all alts to be geared at the same level as your main even though full exotics are pretty much 99 % of the way there.

You know what’s really not alt friendly? Most other mmo’s.

pullnointer: “how does the game encourage us to alt?”

Does it need to? I thought people played alts for fun, or because they wanted to play a new class/race. Now they have to give you cookie, just for playing the game a different way? Frankly, I have a handful of alts, and I play them because I want to try different classes or races, and see different facets of the world/story. I don’t need any other reward for doing so.
————————————————

pullnointer: " all I see is that I have to grind through a lot of kitten pve content to get to dungeons, something in this game resembling fun then it’s still very restricting for at least like 20 levels and I’m handicapped because of gear/traits.. I kinda feel like I’m playing to get to the endgame, then have fun, something you guys explicitly stated you wanted to avoid."

Sounds like you didn’t enjoy the game the first time — not sure why you’re expecting to be pushed into enjoying it the second time.
--——————————————

purpleskies: “I don’t think Anet encourages them much with the locks on dungeons story modes being per character, the grind for ascended gear…”

The dungeons are “locked” to certain levels, because they are designed for certain levels of difficulty. This is done out of necessity, because characters simply don’t have access to the same skills and stats at all experience levels, from 1 to 80. I know GW2 has certain semi-“equalizing” areas like WvW, and downlevels higher-level characters in zones that are beneath them, but it’s not a perfect system. Even “upleveled,” you can’t send a Level 1 character into Arah and hope for any level of success. This is the case for every MMO ever made, and in fact I think you’ll find it’s a lot worse in other games, with the amount of content you’re gated out of being a lot higher.

With regards to Ascended gear, there are a variety of methods you can attain this through. It used to be that you had to spend Fractal Relics (which are account-bound, by the way), but now you can buy them with Laurels (which you can get using any character you please), or by doing the new guild missions (again, you can use any character to get them).
If your complaint is that winning a piece of gear on one character doesn’t “unlock” that gear on all characters, I don’t know what to tell you. Your expectations are way out there, and not representative of any MMOs I’ve ever heard of.
————————————-

Vorch: “If you don’t mind the stat difference in WvW, it’s not that big of a deal. If you DO mind the stat difference in WvW, it’s quite the problem.”

Admittedly, ArenaNet has not handled the “Everyone is 80!” equalization very well in WvW. It’s not a perfect system, and higher stats still exist. Still, it’s a lot better than in most other games, and even Level One Leeroy can still be a thorn in the side of Ascended Joe if he’s smart or is actually a team player.
But even granting that, Ascended gear is not really that big a deal. Unless we’re talking about higher-tier Fractals where you need Agony-resistance, you don’t really need Ascended gear for anything. Exotic, Rare, or even Masterwork will get you through most scrapes in PvE (if they don’t, better stuff will come to you in time, or you will get better at the game). And in sPvP, there is no Ascended gear or stat progression anyway.
Is it really so bad, if Ascended gear is calendar-gated, to some extent? It’s technically the “best” level of gear in the game, period. It wasn’t designed to be something that is readily available, tossed around like candy. So what, if you actually have to make a decision about how to spend your time and resources, and where your Ascended gear goes?
——————————————

Rifter: “it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.”

Then the complaint becomes “GW2 discourages you from having best-in-slot gear on 5 characters,” not “GW2 discourages playing with alts.”

azizul.8469:

LotusThief.4613:

You get to gather more orichalcum and wood per day.

yup, that’s one of the motivation too, although i go for omnom rather than wood….

Another one is dungeon rewards.

The change they made to dungeon DR a couple of weeks/months ago made it possible to go through fast dungeon paths without waiting for around 2 hours to do it again on an alt to get maximum rewards as long as you don’t spam it consecutively.

I’m just waiting for the twink topic to come up at some point in time.

hmm? do you have a lvl 80 or two, OP?
I alt because I have no main. And my alts are all grown up… /me shrugs

Extremely alt unfriendly actually, in comparison to let’s say WoW where I could easily level an alt with full heirlooms in a few days and have it maxed out in heroic epic gear whereas I’d have to grind months in GW2 for ascended gear, seeing as how dailies are account bound and not character… pointless having anything other than 1 main.

Having dailies account bound is like the equivalent of Blizzard locking raids to one character a week, so I can only gear up ONE main and no alts. It’s complete trash. (which they would never do btw)

I’ve never played a game so unfriendly to alts, never ever it’s horrible.

Ascended gear makes me not want to get another toon up to 80 then have to grind fractals/ dailies.

I can just craft another character to 80 and take the pain out of that… but ascended…

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

Shonie.5297:

What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

I’ve never bothered to teach my alts to tell time let alone read schedules. In fact, sometimes they need to pull out ascalonian weapons just to figure out if it’s day or night.

But really, ascended trinkets complete a character in this game, they think? I’ve spread them out, not much of a boost compared to the stuff I can make. Well apart from the +20 mf slotted one, but still that’s JUST +20 etc. In the end, I can just craft another set of weapons, trinkets, potions, oils, food and armor, switch to what is needed, when it’s needed and on the character that is needed.

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

With the imbalances wouldn’t it behoove you to at least be on par with your opponents gear wise? My alts can’t be because of how one can currently obtain ascended gear. That makes me want to roll fewer alts. Sorry if you don’t like WvW… but that’s the only reason many people play still this game. I sPvP as well btw ^^

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

With the imbalances wouldn’t it behoove you to at least be on par with your opponents gear wise? My alts can’t be because of how one can currently obtain ascended gear. That makes me want to roll fewer alts. Sorry if you don’t like WvW… but that’s the only reason many people play still this game. I sPvP as well btw ^^

So put your ascended gear on the character you WvW with mostly?
This sounds like a ‘you’ problem.

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

With the imbalances wouldn’t it behoove you to at least be on par with your opponents gear wise? My alts can’t be because of how one can currently obtain ascended gear. That makes me want to roll fewer alts. Sorry if you don’t like WvW… but that’s the only reason many people play still this game. I sPvP as well btw ^^

So put your ascended gear on the character you WvW with mostly?
This sounds like a ‘you’ problem.

So your argument against my thoughts about how this game discourages people to have alts… is that I shouldn’t care that I’m not able to be as competitive with alts in WvW and should just stick with 1 character? Wat? You just proved my point…

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

With the imbalances wouldn’t it behoove you to at least be on par with your opponents gear wise? My alts can’t be because of how one can currently obtain ascended gear. That makes me want to roll fewer alts. Sorry if you don’t like WvW… but that’s the only reason many people play still this game. I sPvP as well btw ^^

So put your ascended gear on the character you WvW with mostly?
This sounds like a ‘you’ problem.

So your argument against my thoughts about how this game discourages people to have alts… is that I shouldn’t want to be able to be as competitive with alts in WvW? Wat?

You mostly WvW, WvW is important to you, you claim to need to be ‘on par’ with other people in WvW for ‘balance’ reasons…
And you go and put ascended trinkets on characters you don’t WvW with and you complain about your alts not having ascended gear for WvW.

What???

Fyrebrand.4859:

purpleskies: “I don’t think Anet encourages them much with the locks on dungeons story modes being per character, the grind for ascended gear…”

The dungeons are “locked” to certain levels, because they are designed for certain levels of difficulty. This is done out of necessity, because characters simply don’t have access to the same skills and stats at all experience levels, from 1 to 80. I know GW2 has certain semi-“equalizing” areas like WvW, and downlevels higher-level characters in zones that are beneath them, but it’s not a perfect system. Even “upleveled,” you can’t send a Level 1 character into Arah and hope for any level of success. This is the case for every MMO ever made, and in fact I think you’ll find it’s a lot worse in other games, with the amount of content you’re gated out of being a lot higher.

My entire point was about story mode needing to be done for you are able to start an explorer mode, not about the level requirement, although I admit I did not articulate the point well. This is partially a problem because of the design of story mode having no real reward other than unlocking explorer, so finishing story mode becomes a chore to do over and over again just to access explorer on your alts. This isn’t always a problem because you only need one person to access the dungeon but it has been an issue several times for me.

Fyrebrand.4859:

With regards to Ascended gear, there are a variety of methods you can attain this through. It used to be that you had to spend Fractal Relics (which are account-bound, by the way), but now you can buy them with Laurels (which you can get using any character you please), or by doing the new guild missions (again, you can use any character to get them).
If your complaint is that winning a piece of gear on one character doesn’t “unlock” that gear on all characters, I don’t know what to tell you. Your expectations are way out there, and not representative of any MMOs I’ve ever heard of.

You seem to take my criticism to extreme then say it is absurd, when you talk about unlocking and I have no idea where you got that from, but it is an unfair way to discuss and issue. Ascended gear should not be in this game, it was a horrible decision that was put in place to keep the grinders happy at the expense of the other players. No gear grind worked for UO and GW1, it wasn’t needed here but people complained when they were shocked to learn that they got what Anet were promised, no gear grind.

The game was promised as having easy access to the best equipment, and the equipment was obtainable in a variety of ways, ascended gear broke this promise. Ascended gear is getting more variety but it is still a pain to get, especially if you don’t like fractals and/or have a small guild. Laurels are the only real equal access for all play styles but if you use the laurel system the time to gear an alt becomes immense (and is only going to get worse as more pieces are added). That doesn’t even include if you want to have multiple specs. If you only use laurels for example, it could take up to a year to gear two characters or just two specs with your main geared with ascended. That doesn’t sound like encouraging multiple characters to me.

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

With the imbalances wouldn’t it behoove you to at least be on par with your opponents gear wise? My alts can’t be because of how one can currently obtain ascended gear. That makes me want to roll fewer alts. Sorry if you don’t like WvW… but that’s the only reason many people play still this game. I sPvP as well btw ^^

So put your ascended gear on the character you WvW with mostly?
This sounds like a ‘you’ problem.

So your argument against my thoughts about how this game discourages people to have alts… is that I shouldn’t want to be able to be as competitive with alts in WvW? Wat?

You mostly WvW, WvW is important to you, you claim to need to be ‘on par’ with other people in WvW for ‘balance’ reasons…
And you go and put ascended trinkets on characters you don’t WvW with and you complain about your alts not having ascended gear for WvW.

What???

Huh? Who said I don’t WvW with alts? I would just like those alts to be able to have the same ascended gear as my main… ascended discourages me from making more alts or using the ones that don’t currently have the gear. I don’t see where you’re getting any of this and I’m inclined to agree with Rukia… so good day sir ^^

I have alts for the things before endgame. Story that is. I want to see ALL the personal stories. Thats why I have alts and I love them.
For endgame content I just use my main.
My wish though is that dyes were accountwide unlocked and not character unlocks. With 10+ characters I just don’t waste on dyes much :/

how does the game encourage us to alt?

By offering the most fun leveling content of any available MMO (or at least the ten or so I played).

Feel free to try elsewhere.

My only gripe is with the ascended gear. I’ve personally had a blast leveling different characters. It’s been fun trying different race/class combinations and leveling them up. I just wish the ascended gear was account bound and not character bound in case i happen to be in the mood to do fractals with a different character, then i have to grind for more ascended gear and wait years to get enough laurels for them to have acsended gear in each slot rather than just letting them borrow gear from my main when i feel like using a different character.

pullnointer.1476:

how does the game encourage us to alt?

By offering the best leveling experience, vastly different playstyles on all professions and lots of different story paths (up to a certain point).

I made lots of alts just to see all the different racial/order storylines, and to re-experience the leveling process, which is the best I’ve seen so far in an mmorpg. Unlike other players I don’t play for the material gain, I don’t really care about gearing alts in ascended gear like lots of other players or “abusing” the system by farming events/resource nodes multiple times, therefore I leveled all my alts “the hard way”, never crafted to get them up, I spaced my alt leveling along many days (so I wasn’t doing the same zones over and over) while I made sure to have a great variety of races with different choices, keeping things as fresh as possible. Also, last I checked you don’t need Ascended on all your alts to do anything in this game, it’s not required nor essential for progress.

If your idea of having an alt is “farming dailies like nodes/bosses with all your characters” then you are not “encouraged” to make alts, which in my opinion is great. If your idea of making alts is to actually enjoy the leveling process itself then it is certainly very very encouraging.

Ascended and exotic accessory stats are minor. The damage difference is not 20 % or 10 % its <5 %

Rukia.4802:

Extremely alt unfriendly actually, in comparison to let’s say WoW where I could easily level an alt with full heirlooms in a few days and have it maxed out in heroic epic gear whereas I’d have to grind months in GW2 for ascended gear, seeing as how dailies are account bound and not character… pointless having anything other than 1 main.

Having dailies account bound is like the equivalent of Blizzard locking raids to one character a week, so I can only gear up ONE main and no alts. It’s complete trash. (which they would never do btw)

I’ve never played a game so unfriendly to alts, never ever it’s horrible.

Ascended gear is Best in Slot gear. To get BiS gear in WoW does not take day’s or weeks.
If Anet made getting ascended gear really easy, what would you do once all your alts were kitted out?

Rifter.6591:

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

what if your useing both Laurels and Guild tokens???? Hell when a guild has all the missions unlocked you could get an 1 acended a week.

Rukia.4802:

Extremely alt unfriendly actually, in comparison to let’s say WoW

Except WoW leveling has been extremely boring since vanilla – what with Blizz killing off world PvP (remember that?) and never catching on to the basic idea that you have to give people a reason to be in low level areas other than leveling ASAP to ‘get to the fun stuff’.

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Aberrant.6749:

Shonie.5297:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Not really.
If your only definition of alt-friendly is “getting ascended gear in a timely fashion” then I suppose I would agree with you.
But since getting ascended gear on all characters isn’t really all that important…
It’s not hard to gear out all characters in exotics, and get a few of them into ascended every few months.
What’s the hurry really? On a tight schedule?

If you WvW it’s important to have competitive gear. 10% stat difference and up to 20% performance difference is fairly large. Easily make the difference between killing and dying.

For PvE… doesn’t matter… but a decent group can beat the vast majority of PvE in rares without much issue… so I don’t really include that in my thoughts about this subject.

I wouldn’t mind ascended if there were just more ways of obtaining it. I don’t like fractals… so I’m limited to the laurels which is very slow.

On top of that my build on any character could easily get nerfed. I can’t do anything with the old ascended gear… so I would have to start all over on whichever gets nerfed whenever. The more alts, the higher the chances of a nerf to one of them.

In WvW how often are fights fair?
And who cares if they’re fair.
It’s designed to be unbalanced.
WvW isn’t about 1v1 anyways.

If it’s important enough to you, use your character that’s in ascended gear in WvW until you get your other characters decked out?
You’re basing your argument on “maybe my character will get nerfed, so make ascended gear easy to acquire so I can pretend to be balanced on an alt character in an unbalanced gamemode”

With the imbalances wouldn’t it behoove you to at least be on par with your opponents gear wise? My alts can’t be because of how one can currently obtain ascended gear. That makes me want to roll fewer alts. Sorry if you don’t like WvW… but that’s the only reason many people play still this game. I sPvP as well btw ^^

So put your ascended gear on the character you WvW with mostly?
This sounds like a ‘you’ problem.

So your argument against my thoughts about how this game discourages people to have alts… is that I shouldn’t want to be able to be as competitive with alts in WvW? Wat?

You mostly WvW, WvW is important to you, you claim to need to be ‘on par’ with other people in WvW for ‘balance’ reasons…
And you go and put ascended trinkets on characters you don’t WvW with and you complain about your alts not having ascended gear for WvW.

What???

Huh? Who said I don’t WvW with alts? I would just like those alts to be able to have the same ascended gear as my main… ascended discourages me from making more alts or using the ones that don’t currently have the gear. I don’t see where you’re getting any of this and I’m inclined to agree with Rukia… so good day sir ^^

Man your really going to dislike the 26th when character bound WvW trate’s come into play.

pullnointer.1476:

how does the game encourage us to alt? all I see is that I have to grind through a lot of kitten pve content to get to dungeons, something in this game resembling fun then it’s still very restricting for at least like 20 levels and I’m handicapped because of gear/traits.. I kinda feel like I’m playing to get to the endgame, then have fun, something you guys explicitly stated you wanted to avoid.

I don’t think it’s the game’s responsibility to encourage me to alt. I alt so that I have extra personalities and roles to play. In my opinion, GW2 should be designed so that only one character is needed to play. As I have 5 characters at level 80, I don’t remember the road to lvl 20, being very long.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Rifter.6591:

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

what if your useing both Laurels and Guild tokens???? Hell when a guild has all the missions unlocked you could get an 1 acended a week.

This is assuming you are in a large guild, which i am not.

Rifter.6591:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Rifter.6591:

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

what if your useing both Laurels and Guild tokens???? Hell when a guild has all the missions unlocked you could get an 1 acended a week.

This is assuming you are in a large guild, which i am not.

well who’s fault is that. ((and my guilds not large ether but we all enjoy working together for a gole))

Just FYI ((and i know its just a name )) But you are playing a game Called ->GUILD< – War’s.

and dont kid yourself even without acended gear there are huge advantage’s to being in a good guild. ((such as not needing to buy most mats or most exotic gear and almost alway’s heaving a reliable group to run stuff with. as well as info about whats going on in parts of the game you may not be in. ))

pullnointer.1476:

how does the game encourage us to alt? all I see is that I have to grind through a lot of kitten pve content to get to dungeons, something in this game resembling fun then it’s still very restricting for at least like 20 levels and I’m handicapped because of gear/traits.. I kinda feel like I’m playing to get to the endgame, then have fun, something you guys explicitly stated you wanted to avoid.

I haven’t read everything but this game is the first game ever where I have multiple characters.

My reasons are:
Leveling is easy. One proceed very fast so it’s not that I feel like “oh no, not all of this again.”
The world is huge. I’m currently lvling my second char which is around 60 by now and I have barely done any zone twice. (I have some others with lower lvls as well)
It might be different for people who already have 100% world but that is a huge plus for me.
The different classes are different enough that it is actually fun to try them out.
Gearing them with exotics is easy enough that you do not have to stick with one “main”.

The only thing that I don’t like is that ascended issue but yeah I don’t like that gear anyway.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Rifter.6591:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Rifter.6591:

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

what if your useing both Laurels and Guild tokens???? Hell when a guild has all the missions unlocked you could get an 1 acended a week.

This is assuming you are in a large guild, which i am not.

well who’s fault is that. ((and my guilds not large ether but we all enjoy working together for a gole))

Just FYI ((and i know its just a name )) But you are playing a game Called ->GUILD< – War’s.

and dont kid yourself even without acended gear there are huge advantage’s to being in a good guild. ((such as not needing to buy most mats or most exotic gear and almost alway’s heaving a reliable group to run stuff with. as well as info about whats going on in parts of the game you may not be in. ))

I would prefer to play with my RL friends rather than be a nameless number in a large guild, and i dont believe the players should be punished for making such a choice.

Rifter.6591:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Rifter.6591:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Rifter.6591:

Lafiel.9372:

Rifter.6591:

This game is very alt unfriendsy.

I reccomend you just run a main with maybe a single other char and wait for Anet to hopefully make it more alt friendly.

Eh, it’s quite alt friendly in my opinion. It really depends how you define alt maybe? I see alt as something which is second to your main character. i.e. my main will always be the one geared first and most well geared. My alts will have good gears but not have the newest top of the line goodies straight off release. Personally, i’ve been able to gear at least 3 of my alts with ascended accessories and full exotics ( and different exotic armor sets/weapons for different situations. The only thing my alts don’t have is the ascended amulets and maybe the fractal capacitor. my last 2 level 80s are currently still in the progress but it is by no means hard to gear an alt appropriately with exotics. The total cost is usually around 20-30g in gold to gear in exotics and maybe 1 week of dungeon runs if you don’t want to buy the exotic armor. You can also get most accessory type items via karma merchant which I have in abundance.

Assuming you love to run fractals all the time its not so bad. If you dont however love to run fractals all the time and need to use the heavily gated and super alt unfriendly laurel system it will take you over a year and closer to two years to earn enough larels to outfit all your toons with ascended accessories, and thats assuming you just use the 5 provided slots it will take longer if you have more toons.

And they havent added ascended armor/weapons yet, when they do i could easaly see it taking 5+ years to outfit all alts using laurels.

what if your useing both Laurels and Guild tokens???? Hell when a guild has all the missions unlocked you could get an 1 acended a week.

This is assuming you are in a large guild, which i am not.

well who’s fault is that. ((and my guilds not large ether but we all enjoy working together for a gole))

Just FYI ((and i know its just a name )) But you are playing a game Called ->GUILD< – War’s.

and dont kid yourself even without acended gear there are huge advantage’s to being in a good guild. ((such as not needing to buy most mats or most exotic gear and almost alway’s heaving a reliable group to run stuff with. as well as info about whats going on in parts of the game you may not be in. ))

I would prefer to play with my RL friends rather than be a nameless number in a large guild, and i dont believe the players should be punished for making such a choice.

your also very naive, you are in no way being forced to do it, you can still earn all the things, it will just take you ((and your guild)) much longer. your not being Punished your just not being rewarded.

“rewarded for what?” cooperation. its kinda a big thing in this game……

did you know runing with 1 other guildy only nets you 20 influance. but runing with 3 gets you 100… why do you think that is

It is not that big guilds cooperate more it is that more people even if playing solo pile up more influence. That system is prefering pure number and not the level of cooperation. Small guild can cooperate way better and still have not enough influence. The system doesn’t reward “doing” but “beeing in”.