And that's where FF14 trumps over WoW, you get access to everything from just playing your one character... Progress/Classes/Crafts/whatever. Which is a fantastic idea.
The having to re-do very time consuming grinds again is a complete turn off for a lot of people.
Maybe, depends on how much content you are consuming because Blizz will still be adding content. I did the math and for me to "100%" the All the Things addon it will take 17 years assuming in those 17 years Blizz adds nothing new.
But 100%ing is well beyond "sane human" lol.
My Collection
- Bring back my damn zoom distance/MoP Portals - I read OP minimum, 1st page maximum-make wow alt friendly again -Please post constructively(topkek) -Kill myself
Reality is that the content we talk about is not really replayable at a large scale, so instead of playing an alt they rather skip that. And unsub.
An alt should not need you to replay everything, but to play a class having access to the achievements and reputations you already farmed with the first char.
Playing an alt is additional content, and not meant to be the complete journey again and again. It is way enough if you have to gear your alts seperately. No need to let them refarm every bit of Azerite / Anima / Artefact power or whatever blizzard implements next as their big time gate sink.
Because the devs are all pissed the budget got cut and their friends were fired. Thats pure intention from Hazzikostas and crew how 8.3 was designed.
Last edited by yogdadoolin; 2020-01-19 at 08:19 PM.
Okay, so what? Still nothing in there that says all these toons have to be equally as strong/progressed by spending less time on them. That's wishful thinking and nothing more.
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FF14 is offputting to a lot of people for the very same reason, the idea that class choice literally does not matter is not something 100% of players enjoy.
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I think it's mostly a problem of rep grind being the real outdated concept here. Not only that but it's worse today than it was before since it's impossible to farm or invest time in it, we're just forced to stop getting rep after doing X and Y everyday. It's straight up bullshit. If we could just get rep from dungeons people would get their essences as they play for gear on their alt and everything would unlock at the same time instead of being forced to do terrible obsolete content to get something that is designed to be part of the class.
I play alts because I enjoy variety in the gameplay, if I only played my main I would get bored out of my mind - playing alts allows the game to have more longevity. The issue in BFA is that there are so many hoops to go through to make your alts "viable", which is super demotivating when you enjoy playing different classes but dont want to spend eons farming the same things for the umptieth time.
Alts have been very helpful for farming rare stuff since forever. Back when the horseman's mount was new (and the brewfest kodo) having a bunch friends, all with a bunch of alts meant you could get a lot of chances at the mount for each person's main.
I think one thing is that the reason people have alts has changed over the years. Aside from people who want a variety of characters for RP purposes, which has always been a thing, that is.
Early alts seemed to mostly to fill in profession gaps, like levelling a herbalist/alchemist because your main was a BS/miner and you didn't want to lose all the rare patterns by swapping, or levelling a miner so your main could be a BS/Engineer. These alts didn't need to level to the end game once they got to a point where they could end-game gathering and/or crafting, and certainly didn't need flash gear (aside from large bags), so crafted and random green drops (remember when a green drop with good stats meant something?) were good enough. They didn't need attunements either - until you discovered that the new flask recipe was inside the new raid. The awful state of most crafting professions in the last few expacs (including this one) has killed this, and BfA requiring BoP raid components in great quantities to make BoP gear has really done a number on this (along with punishing characters that have the 'wrong' professions for their class - or it would if the gear was worth the effort).
Next we got alts to fill spots missing in a raid, or to allow more dungeon runs in your guild by filling a tank or healer spot, but not seriously enough to make them a 'new main'. I saw a lot of these in late BC, because there were reasonable catch-up mechanisms (gear purchasable by currency from heroics and Kara, and by grinding BGs and by doing your ten arenas a week). Also, the amount of improvement you could do for your main was capped by raid lockouts, the limited number of dailies, and so on. So, if you were going to be online hanging with your guild, you might as well work on and alt, use an alt to gather and craft, or use an alt to help run guildies through dungeons and stuff if the alt might get something from it and the main wouldn't.
Then, from sometime in LK on, levelling became easy enough that it was worth levelling a class just to see if you liked it, or to 'collect' characters, or for something to do, and you could gear them well enough for alt runs and pug runs through raids in LK (not so much in Cata, which declared that heroics were 'serious business' and decided that you needed to gear in them to raid).
I had a whole bunch of alts that I levelled over time in LK through to Legion, though some I did very little with in some expacs. Getting them their weapons and a few interesting transmogs was great fun in Legion, even if I never intended to play them seriously. Sneaking around pick-pocketting people in WoD and Legion on my Rogue was entertaining. These days, I look at the ones I have levelled and wonder why I bothered. I don't actually like levelling much after the first couple of times through content, yet it was more fun than having them at max level. Basically, all they are good for now is stuff I can do on a main anyway, so I may as well pick the character I like most (or has the highest numbers, or that people want in a group most, or whatever) and play them all the time.
I think that lack of meaningful hard caps on stuff is one of the major issues. When there's a hard cap of 2k Honor from PvP a week, X many heroic runs a week that give decent rewards, etc., once you hit the caps on your main, you might as well play and alt. Also, it makes smaller catchups easy to arrange - just have the cap on total currency earned raise from week to week, so if you're a bit behind you can grind out currency until you catch up. Also, if there are caps, we don't need what we have now, where the WQs are often junk by themselves, and almost all the value is in the emissary's offering, because there's no hard limit on how many WQs you can do on a character.
I cannot concieve WoW anymore without having multiple alts.
I don't have alts and most people I know don't have alts (at least on appropriate level to play). I used to have an alt in WotLK as it was an very alt-friendly expansion but never since then.
That's definitely a good point.
IMO, it's a product of Blizzard attempting to pad the amount of time it takes to complete various objectives. And, in some ways more important to them, the ability to PREDICT how much time it's going to take players to complete those objectives. This is a clear result of the monthly sub model, and a result of the influence that the mobile game design is having on the gaming industry as a whole: Get them to log in every day, establish the habit, lock in the investment(emotional or otherwise), then exploit.
I know that formula isn't as prevalent as it could be, and I'm thankful for that. But for anyone who's been watching the progress of the gaming industry for, the past 5 years or so, can see the increasing trend. It's unfortunate, because I believe that this is causing the degradation of the quality and enjoyment that should be possible in WoW. Instead of being a game where a player goes on an adventure, it's about a player logging in each day and ticking boxes on a checklist like it's a job.
Naysayers will undoubtedly say that there's always been that sort of thing in WoW, and I would be forced to agree. But where I see a problem is with how much of that is put in the game.
so basically people want
content that's deep and meaningful and progresses your character at max level.............. that is completely inconsequential and meaningless so you can play alts
There was always that sort of thing but it was not on that level of ridiculous. The worse is that some of the things that were not time gated like that now are, like rep farming. I used to love pulling an all nighter with friends to farm dungeons for rep. Now we're just forced to do a little 30 minutes a day of WQs over 4 fucking months to get was used to be a few days thing is you wanted to. Not to mention the incredibly shitty feeling of being behind if you miss 1 day of your super restricted crap.
FOMO(Fear Of Mission Out) is another powerful tool in the arsenal of manipulating players. What you just described is one aspect of that, but another is the practice of invalidating content each major patch, or simply disabling access to content(Mage Tower, certain transmog appearances, etc).
As I said, it's a matter of how much of that sort of thing is being used to sell their product. And I say "product", because a lot of it is not just the game, but the subscription, character services, and everything else that falls under the "live" service.