Why should an MMO be "Alt Friendly"

[Witchblade77]

variety is a spice of life. I don't know about you, but I don't like being locked into a single playstyle. the only reason I don't have this issues as much with Elder scrolls online (and while I was still playing Secret world) is becasue I can literally play any role in any way on a single character. some classes/races are better for certain setups than others, but even less optimal set ups can still be viable.

no, I don't want to be known for a single class/role. I want to be know as "that player who is good time to play with, regardless of which alt they bring"

[RoKPaNda]

Because being stuck playing one class really sucked in Vanilla/BC.

[Vaerys]

Because being stuck playing one class really sucked in Vanilla/BC.

It would suck equally now, since they make such dramatic changes to gameplay every expansion.

RIP survival hunter.

[deniter]

Alt unfriendliness increases replay value tremendously, when you decide to start from scratch perhaps on new server and class. If it takes a year or two to max your character and a game offers a dozen different classes there's more than ten years of fresh content for you to play through.

Ofc this is true only if the company doesn't promote skipping content or catch-up mechanisms.

[RoxyBlue]

It used to not be so alt friendly. And really back then I was fine with that I had 2 chars that were focused on. Because an MMORPG was about the character you built a huge life for a character, it had a story and a journey, and you built that character up as time went on.

ofc that means back when mmorpg had rpg base to it. Its just a massive online game now, its not really an rpg , more a hybrid game.

[Queen of Hamsters]

"Want to be known for the one class they mastered"...LMFAO!!

People want to play the game and experience different characters than just the one. Doesn't mean these people can't also be good enough at the game to master them all. The people sticking with one character and nothing else, choose their way. The game can be catered for both types.

I have 33 characters at 100. All with names I put effort into, all with memories and experiences tied to them (no RPG my ass) and all set to become 110 in Legion. My main however is the same char I started with, and is the most progressed one which I raid with and do everything that matter swith first.

It's all about choices.

[Violetti]

When all relevant (non-pvp)content is gated by weekly resets and done in few hours, ppl are bored most of the week.
Either you give the players more to do in shorter iterations or have them do it with multiple characters.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I've always wondered why people think that they should have every class at max Level.

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

I think one shouldn't prevent the other. There's fun in playing several classes - there's also a reason why we say "Main" and "Alt". A Main is the character you're going to spend the bulk of the time on, but an alt is one you're playing in a more relaxed way on the side. Alt-friendly means that you can level another character with less "barriers" than the first one.

[OneSent]

MMOs shouldn't be "alt-friendly", and for the longest time, they weren't.

The traditional MMO, a good MMO, caters to players who are dedicated to a single character. That MMO strives to develop frequent content to keep those players interested with new, exciting ways to progress their "main" character.

A poor MMO model (aka WoW for the past several years) is to cater to the re-rollers and character-ADHD players; Those players who aren't dedicated to anything, so they bounce back and forth between characters, trying out everything, and simply failing to get anywhere meaningful in the game.

This is the demographic that MMOs have been chasing after for years now. And all it does is lead to stale, uninteresting endgame content which is setup around boring, repetitive features that can be repeated on 14 different alt-characters (Garrisons, LFR, Apexis dailies to name a few). This content is never time-consuming, and is often designed to be completed at a quick pace. (Gotta do it on all 14 characters, remember?!)

Meanwhile, the player with the dedicated "main" character has nothing to do for months on end, because the content is focused on being entertaining only up until a certain point, after which your only options are to make a new character or wait until the next major content patch; content patches that seem to be coming more and more infrequently with each new expansion.

I don't know exactly when this change happened within the industry, (I would guess it started around 2009) but it has been the single greatest contributor to the downfall of the traditional MMORPG, and the rise of F2P, mobile-games designed for people who want quick, easy entertainment with no commitment.

[Sansnom]

I've always wondered why people think that they should have every class at max Level.

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

Some people like variety.

[dontknowdoya]

Alt friendliness would probably be pretty important to the company in question in regards to replay-ability.

Player : "Oh, I have leveled my toon to X and have completed all of the content. I guess I will just cancel my subscription until the next content patch."

Company: "Do not cancel your subscription! You should play the game again, on another class, and we will give you incentives to do so, like faster leveling!"

Player: "Incentives you say? I am not canceling my subscription!"

[clevin]

If an mmo is to succeed it has to cater to every type of player, simple as that. I have friends that fall into each category and guess what? To each their own.

This isn't actually possible. Every product makes choices. AS the old saw goes "Features, cost, schedule - pick two" meaning you can have a TON of features and the same cost as now... but the schedule will move out. etc.

Good product teams define what they want to address and focus on that. They may through bits to other groups, but it's practically impossible to give every single segment of your market the same high attention. That's one reason I dislike the focus on things like pet battles... those aren't core and while I'm sure some people enjoy them I'd have reassigned those people to create 5 mans for content patches which ARE core to WoW.

The entire issue is this - what's your product? "EVERYTHING" isn't a real answer. You can't effectively cater to the kind of person who loved the old BRD dungeon that make take hours and hours and to the person who wants 10 minute dungeons.

- - - Updated - - -

Alt friendliness would probably be pretty important to the company in question in regards to replay-ability.

Player : "Oh, I have leveled my toon to X and have completed all of the content. I guess I will just cancel my subscription until the next content patch."

Company: "Do not cancel your subscription! You should play the game again, on another class, and we will give you incentives to do so, like faster leveling!"

Player: "Incentives you say? I am not canceling my subscription!"

Which is fine but not OP's question. It's one thing to level, say, 2, 3 or 4 classes. But people seem to expect to be able to level and gear all 11 classes. To the degree that WoW is inspired by its RPG roots, you're kind of forsaking those when you don't get players to focus.

[luckydan79]

What the actual fuck did I just read

If you didn't understand that then Wow perfectly caters to people like you.

[PrairieChicken]

Because trying out different classes without having to grind for months (or waiting, in modern fashion) to just begin is fun

[Normie]

I've always wondered why people think that they should have every class at max Level.

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

You're confusing things with other things.

Mastering a class has very little to do with leveling a class, particularly when most specs are not ideal leveling specs. Most specs can be mastered in a few days; what takes time is mastering encounters with that spec, especially when oddball strategies are required. That's a function of the number of encounters, not the spec.

I'm not opposed to the idea of a game that rewards players with greater and greater depth for playing a single character, but WoW hasn't been that game for some time.

[Joti]

It would suck equally now, since they make such dramatic changes to gameplay every expansion.

RIP survival hunter.

Lols, you mean RIP hunter. Have you not been keeping up with the alpha? They're butchering the entire class.

[Mad_Murdock]

I've always wondered why people think that they should have every class at max Level.

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

Why shouldn't it be? I can play and master more than 1 toon. Why do people who only want 1 toon in their life, hate it because people can play more than 1 toon?
My main it not my Warrior, it's my Account!

I don't understand people who rolled a X when WoW came out and that's the only toon they plan to every play. How do you even know you don't like the other classes? Maybe you are a good hunter, but you would actually be a awesome shaman! Why don't you want to know how other classes play?

You can't really judge a class by getting it to level 20, 50, 80. You at least should get it to max level and try a little 5 man and LFR. It's not like getting to max level takes months.

I don't expect Blizzard to make getting the legendary easier for me on the alts. Namely because I'm not willing to do that grind more than once. But having the game not be totally punishing to alts, isn't a bad thing.

[huehuehue]

I have no problem with the game being alt friendly experience or transmog wise, but I still don't agree with gear catch-ups mid expansion. I think rushing everyone to the current raid has been bad for the game. Especially because their patch cycles have been awful in recent expansions. The content just doesn't last when anybody can walk into it easily. It's just consume, sit and wait for next meal.

Getting to max shouldn't be hard, gearing should. Neither has been hard since mid WoTLK.

[Baine]

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

No. I don't have a favorite class. I cycle through a few classes so I want to share the love.

[Thage]

I like FFXIV's solution to this debate. Leveling takes time on your first class, but speeds it up for alt classes--and your character can level to cap in every class through the Armory system. It helps keep you attached to your character as your avatar in the world, leveling still feels meaningful (especially with all the main story quests that take you through solo, duty, and trial content at level 50 to tie the storyline into Heavensward content), but you can speed it up on alts by wearing an easily-obtained ring that buffs your XP gain by 30% until level 30, plus a buff to XP gain from having a class above your current class's level.

As it pertains to WoW, however, alt-friendliness from fast leveling is kind of a side-effect to Blizzard's primary reason for speeding up leveling below a certain threshold: new players, if faced with a static leveling curve that was never sped up from Vanilla, would be all but hopelessly locked out on their characters without using a boost that, currently, does nothing to teach them even the most square-peg-round-hole basic mechanics of what their class does (even the fast and easy leveling of today gives you time to figure out what Charge and Steady Shot do), throws them into the current storyline with no context or attachment to their character, and sets the ball rolling on making things even harder for those who do reroll without ponying up $60. In a world with no boosts, this would become an even larger problem as the pool of available endgame players shrinks dramatically every expansion, leading to the EverQuest problem where maybe 2 or 3 guilds would have access to the new expansion content, making it largely pointless to continue developing expansions until the player base catches up, which puts a big dent in the company's profits due to the loss of lump-sum box sales.