Why do people say Legion is actually alt-UNfriendly?

[Tyrgannus]

And you're still permanently behind because of artifacts.

Temporarily, not permanently.

With full artifact knowledge, you will be getting mind-boggling amounts of artifact power for, well, EVERYTHING. The only mandatory commitment an alt has right now is keeping up with artifact knowledge. As they put up more things to spend AP on in later patch cycles, I can bet you they will also increase means of acquiring AP and catching up with AK. There is little doubt in my mind that I could create 12 characters, 1 of every class, 6 months before the end of Legion and have ALL 36 weapons fully powered before the next expansion. People are underestimating AK because we're still so early on and so far away from full AK

[therealbowser]

I really dont see where all of these complaints are coming from outside of "I dont wanna!" which is a whole different can of worms.

I don't see what's wrong is not wanting to do repetitive and boring content. You could apply the same reasoning to gated reputation and tons of dailies in MoP. People didn't wanna, but it was still a bad design and as such it was fixed.

[Luko]

I don't see what's wrong is not wanting to do repetitive and boring content. You could apply the same reasoning to gated reputation and tons of dailies in MoP. People didn't wanna, but it was still a bad design and as such it was fixed.

What you're complaining about isn't legion but alting in general. Of course you're going to see content again. You're playing it again on a different character. The appeal to an alt isn't somehow breathing new life into areas and questlines that you've already seen but to have a different class leveled and gear to do the content with. (or professions, which again, is a whole different topic)

[rhorle]

Lots of (virtually all of) the Suramar world quests are unlocked after doing a prerequisite quest chain, and doing the entire Suramar quest chain takes hours if not days of gameplay, and that's not even including the time it takes to reputation grind.

Why would you count the reputation grind as a separate time sink from the entire story line for Suramar? You gain both at the same time and you will have world quests unlocked far before you complete the story line. But its funny how you complain about having to play a character. What is the point of your alt? What do you really expect blizzard to do? Hand you free gear, artifact power, and what ever else just because you are a second character? A third? etc.

Blizzard didn't force you to play an alt. You choose to play one. Having to invest time into that alt to do content is part of what playing an alt means. You also call world quests non-repetitive game play even when doing them on multiple characters. But they are the same world quests for all characters, and the same emissary for all characters. That is the definition of repetitive when those same things multiple times a day (or every 3 days when emissary fills up).

With 7.1 you only need friendly rep for Suramar on an alt. The two dungeons (which can be unlocked at 8k and 12k honored) will be account wide. After that you are choosing to do more just for the sake of doing it on that character.

[A dot Ham]

Just think at the previous xpacs... Your chars were not so much connected with each other.
Before wotlk there were not even heirlooms, and now we have the heirloom collection panel.
We have 1 free lvl 100 boost (plus chance to buy it).
You can now trade even currencies in your account.

Why do people always want more, when they already have been given of something?
What's the next step? Free 800 ilvl gear? Offline auto-lvling?

There is a proverb in my country which says:
I give you a hand, and you take my arm

None of which addresses anything in the current xpac. All are items that have been added over the years.

MoP was pretty alt unfriendly too. Really anything that requires a specific path to be taken in order to "unlock" the main content of the xpac is alt unfriendly.

Having to complete quests up to and completing the opening gates in MoP for example, and being completely shutoff from other zones because of the damn wall was a pretty big one.

For me, and for others there have been completely different paths that can and are taken in the leveling of an alt experience.

PvP for example, a person who doesn't really care about reaching the level cap asap, and is willing and interested in a sole PvP experience whilst leveling up can do so. Its not the fastest/easiest/most effecient but in theory a person could spen 100% of their on a character leveling up through PvP. But if you got there... you'd have to go back and do all the zone quests again anyway if you wanted to unlock say WQs.

A couple other examples would be, gathering/professions, strictly 5 man dungeons, pet battles. These are all things to do on alts that earn xp, and if you focus on any single one of them, you will be disadvantaged when you hit level cap if you want to pursue that character further beyond "just hitting level cap"

My demon hunter for example selected all gathering professions as I have one of every class and one of every profession. It is quite wasteful and redundant to repeat crafting professions when/if they exist on other characters. In legion... you are gated by character level from progressing your profession and learning new recipes. In order to unlock everything for a given profession you HAVE to hit level cap.

Pet battles: They award xp... not a lot... but its there. But if you are at level cap... that xp is wasted. In legion it is very difficult to get to other zones. In addition WQs are not available to alts until level cap, so even the rewards are limited. Both for collecting wild pets, and for defeating trainers.

PvP... lulz PvP. Because of the failed 2 part system of PvP a person who spent all their time PvPing wouldn't even be able to start collecting appropriate ilvl gear or rewards, and would be severely disadvantaged if they decided to step foot outside of PvP.

5 man dungeons: While having appropriate ilvl gear, you would still be behind the 8 ball in terms of rep and would need to go back and do quests to get yourself friendly with a given faction.

Holiday Event: I still need some toys from Hallow's End. If I use an alt to go collect candy I am gaining that xp that would otherwise be wasted correct? [Yes Partysaurus you are right.] But that boost in xp half a level, 1 level, 2 levels ultimately serves no purpose. That extra boost is wasted. I either waste the xp and complete the event/candy collection on my main, or I waste the xp on the alt, AFTER I hit level cap, and I have to complete the zone quests anyway.

Are there other options for obtaining xp and leveling up? Absolutely? But if you take advantage of them, you are disadvantaging yourself in the long run. So it makes for a very stale experience. Not one a player feels like repeating several times.

@Ricirich91 I love when people create a topic and never respond to it. Begs the question why start it at all. Clearly you weren't interested in discussion. Was it for OUR benefit... because the topic is rather dry and you haven't really provided a compelling argument convincing the rest of us that Legion is in fact very alt-friendly.

tl;dr There are many methods of gaining xp in Legion. If however, you deviate from the prescribed method of completing each zone completely and getting yourself to friendly status, you are disadvantaging yourself upon reaching level cap, and will ultimately be required to go the prescribed route anyway (minus the xp).

[goblingirl]

It's the level 110 game that is not alt-friendly. The time required to chase artifact power items is... high.

[goblingirl]

Indeed, especially if you think all your alts must be able to raid HM or do mythic+ 5 mans.

Dunno - I don't generally raid alts, but in the past I've kept 2 mains completely up to date and raided them each week. This expansion I haven't. Mainly because I spend my couple hours of playtime a day grabbing all the various AP stuff on the main I leveled first, and by the time all that's done I'm out. I would guess I spend about as much time grabbing all the AP each day on 1 toon as I spent doing Golden Lotus rep chain on 1 toon in early MoP - early MoP which was also pretty alt-unfriendly at the beginning.

I do eventually level 6-7 other toons each expansion, just to play the classes a little etc. but I don't raid those except perhaps an LFR here or there.

Anyway - yes this is, as it is currently set up, extremely alt-unfriendly. Hopefully, as they did with MoP, they will continue to relax things with future patches. Dropping the world quest unlock requirement to friendly was a good start.

The trick with other mains, or switching classes if you don't like what you're playing or Blizzard broke it (and some specs are), is that AP grind is a bitch and a half.

[rhorle]

Anyway - yes this is, as it is currently set up, extremely alt-unfriendly. Hopefully, as they did with MoP, they will continue to relax things with future patches. Dropping the world quest unlock requirement to friendly was a good start.

But it is unfriendly because you choose to make it so. You don't need to get every single source of artifact power each day for your main. The same principle for main spec vs off spec artifacts applies to main vs alt. There is a point where it is beneficial to switch to your off spec artifact instead of focusing on your main because it is less artifact power spent for ranks gained.

Yes you will be behind someone who focuses just on one artifact/character. But it won't make the big of a difference. And your other characters will benefit. If you don't want to make the sacrifice then you shouldn't be playing alts to begin with. Because playing an alt means not spending as much time on one character because you are investing it on another.

The less you play a character the more artifact power you will gain because of artifact knowledge and research. You should definitely be doing it every time on alts (since apparently the artifact grind is important for alts). So even when you don't play them for a few days you will end up gaining more artifact power when you do because of higher AK.

[orgonutil]

becouse in WOD ppl had almost nothing to do in their mains, so they think that they have to much to do in their mains now

[Dangg]

No idea why people are complaining. But the reason might be that I didn't play WoD and I compare Legion's alt friendlines to the other expansions.

[therealbowser]

Why would you count the reputation grind as a separate time sink from the entire story line for Suramar? You gain both at the same time and you will have world quests unlocked far before you complete the story line. But its funny how you complain about having to play a character. What is the point of your alt? What do you really expect blizzard to do? Hand you free gear, artifact power, and what ever else just because you are a second character? A third? etc.

Blizzard didn't force you to play an alt. You choose to play one. Having to invest time into that alt to do content is part of what playing an alt means. You also call world quests non-repetitive game play even when doing them on multiple characters. But they are the same world quests for all characters, and the same emissary for all characters. That is the definition of repetitive when those same things multiple times a day (or every 3 days when emissary fills up).

With 7.1 you only need friendly rep for Suramar on an alt. The two dungeons (which can be unlocked at 8k and 12k honored) will be account wide. After that you are choosing to do more just for the sake of doing it on that character.

I am counting the reputation grind separate because you do not get enough reputation from the main story quests to unlock further quests and unlock world quests.

World quests give you barely any reputation at all; Blizzard goes out of their way to enforce this. The grind is slow and painful. No, in order to gain Nightfallen reputation you have to grind the tedious and boring world quest with your withered army. After doing it twice I had already done it more than I'd ever want to.

You're giving garbage reasoning as well. I'm fine with investing time into my characters, what I'm not fine with is being forced to do tons of repetitive, tedious and boring solo quest content in order to do so. Ironically WoD was super alt friendly to me because Garrisons (minus some of the chores which were readily skipped) were easy to get into and the legendary quest chain -- the main source of progression once you got your character going -- was easy to get into if time consuming.

"Blizzard didn't force you to play an alt" Well gee, thanks for your incredible insight. That's a choice I made on my own. I want to be able to play my alts relatively efficiently without being forced to do a quest chain that takes hours and hours of repetitive, slow, and tedious gameplay. Ultimately I've come to that conclusion -- that if I want to play my alts, I'll just have to skip Suramar entirely because the quest chain there is too awful to do twice. Thanks to Blizzard, in doing so I'll at least be able to access the dungeons without it. So that's something, I guess.

[Jaylock]

Just think at the previous xpacs... Your chars were not so much connected with each other.
Before wotlk there were not even heirlooms, and now we have the heirloom collection panel.
We have 1 free lvl 100 boost (plus chance to buy it).
You can now trade even currencies in your account.

Why do people always want more, when they already have been given of something?
What's the next step? Free 800 ilvl gear? Offline auto-lvling?

There is a proverb in my country which says:
I give you a hand, and you take my arm

Fact is, it's not alt unfriendly. You can still maintain alts but a little more effort is required to keep them ahead of the curve. From that perspective it's in a perfect balance. No need to have a "stable of alts" because there is plenty to do to keep someone occupied on one or two characters.

[kennytheone]

I lvled two more char to 110 but i am not planning to play them too much untill i reach AK 8 the least...lvling us very fast and from 7.1 we don't even need to be friendly with the factions to start WQ nor docwe have to make the quests for arcway and cos

[kamuimac]

Your post contained more then simply leveling an alt to 110 as "required" for that alt. If you do everything "required" for an alt you would have more then enough time to do the class order campaign. Remember you listed grinding out artifact power and running millions of dungeons as "required" for an alt. You can't do that in two days. Also if you are leveling your alt in two days you are neglecting another alt, or your main. Or it really can't take that much time in the long run to maintain an alt.

You also couldn't boost your alt in WOD the very day you dinged at the start of the expansion. This is still the start of the expansion. But go ahead and keep making poor comparisons in order to boost an argument that can't really stand on its own.

- - - Updated - - -



That doesn't even make sense. The expansion has only been out for almost two months now. It will take a person longer then two months to re-roll their class to the same level they are now? It will take a shorter time because of how artifact research speeds up the less you have.

even at max AK level speed up it will still take them full 25 days to get to the same level as other toons - for majority of people its unaceptable pace - if you join game now you are basickly 2 months behind on AP grind and will perform like shit no matter how good you are at game

fucked up design is fucked up

[Larynx]

even at max AK level speed up it will still take them full 25 days to get to the same level as other toons - for majority of people its unaceptable pace - if you join game now you are basickly 2 months behind on AP grind and will perform like shit no matter how good you are at game

fucked up design is fucked up

compare that to 6.0, where you can boost a fresh 100 to be raid ready in a single lock out. I get enjoyment from actually playing the game, not grinding gear to play the game.

[Deleted]

You dont need ap? Why do you need ap? If performance is your concern then okay but that would mean you needed the wod legendary ring as well and we both agreed that could be skipped... beyond that point though AP can be skipped in the sense that youll just get it from whatever you do anyway for yhe most part. Its not like the legendary ring where its a quest you have to actively pursue.

It is not exactly the same. Was the ring powerful? Sure! Was it as game changing as AP? No. Some specs are changes quite a lot, even related to rotation as you progress though AP.

And you couldn't grind out the ring. It was gated. You can grind out AP. There are like 10-20k of AP on the map daily. If I did all that, I would have been optimal. And you got the ring once. But you need the AP for all specs if you want to play them. And alt alts. And the ring was also gated by raid progress. People in your raid where not "why don't you have ring yet??!", because the answer was "oh right, we are working on it right now together". But people are right now "why are you lazy and behind your AP. So easy to get!". Plus, the ring was so gated that you had ample time to asses your character, see if you liked the play-style and performance, if not go though the quick leveling process and gear up a bit and none of that was gated (except the crafting profs) or felt alt-unfriendly.

I know that this will fix itself for a couple of characters with AK and time. But I wish there was a fix for all future characters. Maybe the last patch in Legion is one year from now and I'll have a couple of maxed out AP/AK chars. Do you think it will be pleasant to roll up a fresh 110 and start with AK of 1?

[Scathan]

The issue with alts is that it's impossible to maintain them once they're 110. Most people don't even seem to have time for a single character, let alone several. You need to:

Do the entirety of Suramar, again.
Do emissary quests every day
Do other WQs every day for AP and gear upgrades, and for an alt you also need to care more about order resource WQs for AK as well
Do daily heroic + more for upgrades
Do Mythic+, which has no actual limit
Do your order hall campaign for the relic slot and do follower missions
Do all the profession related activities
Do LFR
Do normal and heroic raid clears every week

And you're still permanently behind because of artifacts.

Compare that to 6.0 WoD, which was:

Do garrisons
Do CM
Do heroic raid clears

RNG grinds for legendaries and titanforged, plus more systems for power acquisition and far less time gating (and worse time gating where it is present ie AK and order quest) is the issue with alts.

all those things you mentioned for legion are things you do with a main, stop playing an alt like a main. If you want a second/third/fourth main, you have to put in the effort for it

[Winterstrife]

It feels alt-unfriendly when your main isn't exalted with everything, because there's just so much to do in-game, there's hardly any time for alts.
That being said, now that my main is exalted with everything & only doing PvP, AP and Pet Charms WQ & the occasional Mythic+ outside of raiding time, I'm spending more of my play time getting my alts to 110.

[Deleted]

all those things you mentioned for legion are things you do with a main, stop playing an alt like a main. If you want a second/third/fourth main, you have to put in the effort for it

Why should this be a requirement to play more classes at the same level?

It's also not really a case of putting in the effort since most of the things mentioned just take time rather than effort.

[Trollhammer]

You have to put effort into alts to be the same power level as a main? - SHOCK!