Okay, now that I have your attention, I was thinking over my past experiences and I find that one things is constant: If a new guild has most of its members constantly rerolling alternate characters, that guild fails. This could be a cause or only a coorelation. Whether it's the cause or not is not the point of the post. I'd like to discuss your thoughts on alternate characters and the number of characters per account. snip....
I don't think your " unlock your alts " idea has any merit, but the point about people being able to play freely when switching characters does. I think if developers started all of an accounts characters to the same guild, then a much more tight community would sprout. Taking away the anonymity of players in this case would probably be a great way to bring people together.
Only recently has there really been a limit placed on characters in a game. MOst mainstream MMOs have numerous servers upon which you can make X number of characters. Often players end up with more character slots than they need. Recently with Darkfall and Cryptic MMOs (STO and CO) character slots are limited gamewide. ONe wonders if Cryptic will sell character slots in microtransactions (I thought I saw someone write on this). I will say that STO you unlock a Klingon slot when you reach a certain level
Why should we all play the same way? If one likes to build new characters over and over, then so be it!
There are limits, sure. A college roommate I had last semester bought WoW after watching my friends play the game, and since purchasing the game about 5 months ago, he has made upwards of around 30 toons all on the same server with none of them over level twenty, each time declaring he has decided on a new main character. This guy has probably tried out every single class/race combination multiple times over, and if I were a guild leader, I will admit to getting tired of inviting a new toon of his every week.
This topic has me scratching my head, but let me just say that if a guild has a problem with the fact that I choose to make alternate characters, I will find a new guild.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Another poster said that you won't discover anything new that your highest Level Toon has not seen. That is correct of course!
Myabe in many of the newer mmo's lately you are correct, but some of the older ones like EQ1 you can level up 5 to 7 chars well past half way to max level and never utilize any of the same areas or quests other than a couple places for portals
Next, I'd like every game in the future to only offer 1 character per account at the start. Good lord, no. On some MMOs I have over 50 characters. This limitation alone would assure that game never got my money.
Lastly, I think that in order to unlock more character slots, you should be required to level a character to max level. So if you want your second character slot, you need to get your first character to max level. If you want your 3rd character slot, you need to level up your second character to max level, and so on. This'll help people stay committed to their characters, and help stop people from jumping around from one character to the next, never getting far on any of them, and then quitting out of boredom. Why do you feel the need to control how other people play? I happen to like jumping around from character to character. Sometimes I feel like playing a high level one, other times a lowbie.
Before the accusations and immaturity starts, I'd like to say that I suffer from altitis as well, and have learned that if I'm ever going to enjoy the game and get to max level, I need to stick to one character, and ignore "the grass is greener" syndrome. So those of you with altitis, I feel your pain. All I can say is that I'd love to play with you all, not just in the 1-20 range, but the entire game. That's why I think this is necessary. Otherwise, you all will reach level 20, and reroll to something else and I'll never see you all again. That, or I'll have to keep an Excel page open with a list of your characters, so I know who is who in the guild. That's just annoying. I'd rather get to know the people playing along side of me, and it's hard when I can never group with you, because you keep rerolling or bouncing between characters. So I must change the way I prefer to play, because it is more beneficial to you? Sorry, but I play the way that's most fun to me. It seems to me that the whole point of your post is that people playing alts affects your game, and so you feel others should adjust their style to match yours.
If people need alts to stay interested in the game, then the game won't last them anyways. Their first character will continuously show them new content and places to see, as long as they're playing them. So if the new content and areas can't keep their interest, then what's the point in rerolling, since not too long in the near future, they'll just quit that character like they did the first one. Again, test servers could be used to test out characters. Is it possible that the player just doesn't like the way that type of class plays? Maybe after 10 or 20 levels, they decide that they'd rather finish exploring the game with, say, a meleer instead of a caster. But your method would penalize them. You're saying "No. You've created your one character, now finish it to the top level or you won't get another!" ...and when a person is splitting their time between characters, they're not nearly as good as they could be if they focused on mastering one class. That alone hurts the community, because you're a less effective group member. I wholeheartedly disagree. Any player who has tried all the classes will have a much better understanding of the capabilities of each, the strengths and weaknesses of each class. That will make them a better group member.
I wouldn't be bothered if you never played the game if it implemented my idea, because you're probably not the type of person who I'd play with, since you'd likely never be around my level, nor would you stick on one character long enough for me to trust you enough to add to my friends list.
My entire thread, and everyone in it has been flame free and non-provoking, yet you felt the need to provoke me by telling me I'm controlling? In most things in life, there are those with ideas, and those that follow. In MMORPG's, strong communities are remembered and make the game more fun. So I'm speaking of my idea, that'll help make the community stronger. So it's not about pleasing me, rather it's about what's good for the community as a whole; what'll make a strong community. Your attitude is a "me me me" attitude. You want to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and damn anyone elses wants or needs. If you don't care about the people you play with, then that's your right, but don't expect me to change my idea to cater to you, since you don't care about other people anyways.
Now if you have an actual idea on how to foster strong cohesive communties, not just guild communities, while still allowing for altitis inflicted members, then please share them and point to examples of where this has been tried and proven successful. My idea has been tried, and has been successful in SWG.
Someone who tries all the classes will have an idea of what each class is about, but you could really only accurately comment on what you've physically played yourself. So if you've only played a class to lvl 20, and the level cap is 50, then how could you say you can accurately surmise what that class can do off those 20 levels? Believe me, after playing 40 classes in DAoC, I do understand how playing all those classes can give you an edge when forming groups and fighting other classes, but to accurately know who can do what, you need to get them to a high level, which takes a lot of time. So in the short term, meaning 3-6 months, focusing on a main is more beneficial to the community than focusing on a handful of alts.
Actually I disagree with you. people who roll alts tend to be more sociable. In wow I had 4 80s mainly because I did not want to turn into the type of people who raid in wow. The decent people who play the game you suggest at least in my experience are far and few between. MMOs are not a second job to me it sounds like you take the game too seriously. Even with all my 80s most were made because my guild needed that class or the only thing left to do was raid and with 6-10 hours a week to play i did not want to waste it dealing with raiders.
If limiting alts is so important to you, then show some discipline and stick to one character. Why should everyone else have to endure limitations to gaming freedom to cater to your lack of self control?
If limiting alts is so important to you, then show some discipline and stick to one character. Why should everyone else have to endure limitations to gaming freedom to cater to your lack of self control?
Because a community is made up of everyone, not just him. I understand his reasoning and what he wants, but I disagree with him. In a sandbox game, maybe it'd work (well, he claims it already does, using SWG as his example). But in a themepark game? No.
Another poster said that you won't discover anything new that your highest Level Toon has not seen. That is correct of course!
Myabe in many of the newer mmo's lately you are correct, but some of the older ones like EQ1 you can level up 5 to 7 chars well past half way to max level and never utilize any of the same areas or quests other than a couple places for portals
Heck, in WoW each faction has has enough content and zones to level three different characters with very little overlap in the quests you do till around level 55. Outland is fairly linear so the experience is pretty much the same from character to character. Northrend essentially provides you with two sets of zones for each level range and you can mix and match which ones you do.
Beyond that there is the fact that even if you are repeating the same quests and zones, things play out very differently on different classes. In WoW I started out as a hunter, then made a palladin, followed by a rogue and then a mage. They were quite varied in the way one needed to play the character so fights I had done previously were singificantly different when attempted with another class.
If limiting alts is so important to you, then show some discipline and stick to one character. Why should everyone else have to endure limitations to gaming freedom to cater to your lack of self control?
Because a community is made up of everyone, not just him. I understand his reasoning and what he wants, but I disagree with him. In a sandbox game, maybe it'd work (well, he claims it already does, using SWG as his example). But in a themepark game? No.
In SWG the system locked you into your role pretty much only way to try new roles was to give up most of your progress up to that point. Say you were a weapon crafter who wanted see if playing a rifleman would be fun. You had to give up most of your crafting skills to do that and if you did not like the combat side you had to regrind all the skills you lost. It got even worse when you chose a role that made you important to your guild. Running a player city required you to put points into specific skill trees that you could not use for combat or crafting. So someone had to 'gimp' themselves so the guild could benefit. If that person then got bored and quit the game, things would deteriorate rapidly.
I'd like to back up Nate's concerns about how people rerolling alts constantly can cause a guild to lose members and disband. I know those members probably read the forums and at this point I don't care as I believe the leader (one of the rerollers in question here) basically abandoned the guild without any notice. I'd to love to see a FFXI class switching system in place in MMOs to remove the need to switch to alts or a classless system in general.
Nate probably encountered this in "The Path Ahead" guild formed via the MMORPG forums. Well, I few of us didn't like the game chosen (or couldn't run it for whatever reason - Vanguard in this case) and decided to keep within the spirit of the community formed there and switched our to EQ2 with a few of us.
Well anyway, our guild leader was a classic altaholic. He switched his main literally 8 or 9 times within the course of a single month. I don't understand how or why anyone would do this. It's essentially replaying the same content over and over again, there really wasn't much "new" to experience after a second or third time through.
I'll get into why I think this was bad in a bit, but I constantly brought it up to him how it annoyed me (as well as a few others who agreed with me, some didn't mind, and many were rerollers themselves - we had at least 4 or 5 others with similar huge character counts).
First, the main problem with it was we were constantly having to help level the guild leader (who is in a leadership role and probably should be helping us, that's just how I feel leaders should be). We had to constantly do old content over and over again. The best gear available at the time for low levels was in a winter only event dungeon called Icy Keep and I had to quite literally run this about 100 times over mostly because of the guild leader and other rerollers. The need to constantly keep gearing them up exhausted us and basically threw away the whole notion of us being there to explore all the content in this game I felt we were stuck perpetually gearing and leveling these members.
Second, we couldn't do new content because of this. We needed those members who were stuck at low levels. Due to them constantly rerolling alts we were not only stuck leveling them (so we couldn't progress), but we didn't have enough members to form full fledged groups (aside from the low level stuff).
So low and behold, membership kept constantly dropping. Now I'm typically a really hardcore power gamer (though I've been in a few casual guilds here and there) and I never seen an instance where such a huge portion of the membership felt the need to constantly reroll alts. Maybe we were doing something wrong on the leadership end to make them feel that way, but it really hurt us and I don't get why the leadership couldn't see it. I've never seen a guild go from fully active to almost dead in a month after forming. Even my brief stint I tried as a guild leader (I make a terrible one, which is why I hate taking leadership roles) once lasted much longer and didn't fully destroy the guild.
What didn't help was those rerollers (including the leader) were the first to leave the game, leaving the active membership who actually cared about their mains and spent a good portion of their time LEVELING THEIR "NEW MAINS" left with a partially dead guild. Did I mention they left with no notice - so we actually had hope they'd be coming back, but that looks less and less like a possibility? I feel like now I'm going to have to cancel my membership since there is almost nobody left to play with (and sure I can join a new guild, but that would defeat the original purpose of my subscription to the game - to start from the beginning - since the server is pretty much full of max level characters).
I would like some MMORPG to have one character per account, but would never be so selfish to wish upon ALL MMORPG's to work that way.
I love a game that can provide me with enought content, keep in mind content is NOt quest/missions only as some seem to asume but it's allot more then just story/mission/quests. To give me one character per account, unfortunaly the current trend with most A-title MMORPG's offer far to little to keep the game intresting for just one character.
1 Character would mean a more effective community/economy, something most A-title company do not provide , so as started I would like to see some MMORPG being released that way, but would not want ALL MMORPG released that way as there is enough room to give players many options and choose the game that suites them best.
Overall nobody is forcing you to create Alts, that is ALWAYS in the players hands themself.
I've never really been fond of alt's myself, but have had a couple. PoTBS - different nation so I could do their unquie missions, SWG just because I brick-walled my main and couldn't solo anymore missions. Plus the alt got to do the new NGE quest line that didn't exist when I ran my main up.
Now my son has had alt's in almost all his games. Fighter, entertainer, craftsman. Unless you can combine those like you could in SWG pre-CU, then I'd say there's a good reason for them. Sometimes you want to fight, other times just hang at the cantina.
The real downside of only 1 toon per account would be when a family all share the same game. I know with 2 son's having a min of 3 slots allows us all to take turns playing on the same account, thus keeping cost's down.
I'd like to back up Nate's concerns about how people rerolling alts constantly can cause a guild to lose members and disband. I know those members probably read the forums and at this point I don't care as I believe the leader (one of the rerollers in question here) basically abandoned the guild without any notice. I'd to love to see a FFXI class switching system in place in MMOs to remove the need to switch to alts or a classless system in general. Nate probably encountered this in "The Path Ahead" guild formed via the MMORPG forums. Well, I few of us didn't like the game chosen (or couldn't run it for whatever reason - Vanguard in this case) and decided to keep within the spirit of the community formed there and switched our to EQ2 with a few of us. Well anyway, our guild leader was a classic altaholic. He switched his main literally 8 or 9 times within the course of a single month. I don't understand how or why anyone would do this. It's essentially replaying the same content over and over again, there really wasn't much "new" to experience after a second or third time through. I'll get into why I think this was bad in a bit, but I constantly brought it up to him how it annoyed me (as well as a few others who agreed with me, some didn't mind, and many were rerollers themselves - we had at least 4 or 5 others with similar huge character counts). First, the main problem with it was we were constantly having to help level the guild leader (who is in a leadership role and probably should be helping us, that's just how I feel leaders should be). We had to constantly do old content over and over again. The best gear available at the time for low levels was in a winter only event dungeon called Icy Keep and I had to quite literally run this about 100 times over mostly because of the guild leader and other rerollers. The need to constantly keep gearing them up exhausted us and basically threw away the whole notion of us being there to explore all the content in this game I felt we were stuck perpetually gearing and leveling these members. Second, we couldn't do new content because of this. We needed those members who were stuck at low levels. Due to them constantly rerolling alts we were not only stuck leveling them (so we couldn't progress), but we didn't have enough members to form full fledged groups (aside from the low level stuff). So low and behold, membership kept constantly dropping. Now I'm typically a really hardcore power gamer (though I've been in a few casual guilds here and there) and I never seen an instance where such a huge portion of the membership felt the need to constantly reroll alts. Maybe we were doing something wrong on the leadership end to make them feel that way, but it really hurt us and I don't get why the leadership couldn't see it. I've never seen a guild go from fully active to almost dead in a month after forming. Even my brief stint I tried as a guild leader (I make a terrible one, which is why I hate taking leadership roles) once lasted much longer and didn't fully destroy the guild. What didn't help was those rerollers (including the leader) were the first to leave the game, leaving the active membership who actually cared about their mains and spent a good portion of their time LEVELING THEIR "NEW MAINS" left with a partially dead guild. Did I mention they left with no notice - so we actually had hope they'd be coming back, but that looks less and less like a possibility? I feel like now I'm going to have to cancel my membership since there is almost nobody left to play with (and sure I can join a new guild, but that would defeat the original purpose of my subscription to the game - to start from the beginning - since the server is pretty much full of max level characters).
You are putting the blame on the wrong thing. The problem your guild had was that you did not have enough members to support two distinct playstyles. Some of you wanted to play very casually while others wanted a more hardcore, power-leveling approach. This was not helped by the fact that your guild leader obviously did not find the game fun past a certain level.
Why the heck did you run that dungeon 100 times when you did not enjoy it? Are you a masochist? You should have told the rerollers 'no'. Part of the reroller playstyle is that after a while you will not be able to find people who want to rerun the same content and you will have to skip it.
That seems to have been one hell of a dysfunctional guild with the two factions in a sort of unhealthy co-dependant relationship.
The solution to the alt "problem" is simple. One character - Many classes/skills. Instead of having to reroll a new character or lose current character progression, let every character level up every skill/class in the game, but have to choose which skillset/class to play at any given time. I like how EVE (sort of) does this; your character can have every skill in the game, but not every skill is useful in every situation. Your ship and modules limit you. It would work thus:
I start a new character, and become a Warrior .. rising to level 100. I "reroll" my character, and level a Mage to 50.
Now I'm a level 100 Warrior and a level 50 Mage; but I can only be one "class" at a time. If I'm levelling up my Mage skills and a friend tells me they could use a Warrior for a level 100 raid, I can switch back to my Warrior skills and go enjoy that raid, then switch back to my Mage skills when I'm done. It's just like having alts, except that they're all contained in one character.
Earthrise promises to do this. You can learn every skill, but the gear you equip determines which are active.
I was lucky I guess most of my guild had many alts. We would level together multiple times or use our high levels to burn through stuff. The issue I have is always the same end game is raiding and I would rather real reroll then have the game turn into a job.
This topic has me scratching my head, but let me just say that if a guild has a problem with the fact that I choose to make alternate characters, I will find a new guild.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
This topic has me scratching my head, but let me just say that if a guild has a problem with the fact that I choose to make alternate characters, I will find a new guild.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
I'll say it again, "good for you". But players have the right to play these games how they want to. One way is not better than another.
So if you are type of player who wants to make many alts and experience different types of lower lvl content or the same content with different characters then fine. You've earned it. It's your right. Don't know how many different ways I need to write it.
But if other players want to progress through the content to higher lvl content, especially if it offers different sets of challenges or different rewards then that is their right as well.
the converse can also be said.
A player who doesn't have alts and wants to progress through the levels of the game with one character would not want to join a guild of players who all reroll and and enjoy lower lvl areas and content or do content multiple times. He would want to enjoy a different type of guild.
Where do you find in my first post that I said any differently? One player does not have the right to dictate how others play. No mattter what their play style and should find a group of like minded individuals to play with.
Again, I don't see what the problem is? I'm not saying you should join a guild like that.
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@Torik - While I agree that it was pretty dysfunctional because we had two different playstyles I think you are confusing things a bit here. First off the rerollers were by no means casual players as they had invested just as much time (sometimes more) in game. I'd definitely put them in the hardcore category.
Also, we in no way were taking the power leveling approach. I understand why you would make that assumption since I did state I'm typically a power gamer, but for this guild I was trying something different and slowing it down. We had level locking in place and wouldn't remove it until we completed all the content in that level range.
The person who removed level locking was the guild leader himself. He would consistently powerlevel all his characters. We had to wait for him to level up since we didn't have enough members to do new content. When he'd level he typically level past us (ignoring or changing the level lock himself). Eventually he threw out the whole idea of a level lock altogether and that's where membership really started to drop. During the course of one week he leveled 4 characters (each were his new "main" to the level cap or past it). We geared all these characters, yet he kept rerolling. My character never made it to the end game (not even remotely close) in the month and a half period of playing where I usually hit end game in two weeks to a months period of time.
I'd ask what you would do in the same situation? Would you try to help the guild hoping the people who kept rerolling would eventually settle, despite having to grind gear out for each of these new mains on the new content? Would you say "no" and sit there and wait a month or so (which would like lead to you not playing, which is what happened for most of the membership anyway) for them to level to you, refusing to help them if they reroll? Would you join a new guild (the only choice right now on that server in EQII is to join a guild that reached the end game, so that would mean soloing all the way to max level which is extremely boring)? Would you just cancel your subscription and forget it?
This topic has me scratching my head, but let me just say that if a guild has a problem with the fact that I choose to make alternate characters, I will find a new guild.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
I'll say it again, "good for you". But players have the right to play these games how they want to. One way is not better than another.
So if you are type of player who wants to make many alts and experience different types of lower lvl content or the same content with different characters then fine. You've earned it. It's your right. Don't know how many different ways I need to write it.
But if other players want to progress through the content to higher lvl content, especially if it offers different sets of challenges or different rewards then that is their right as well.
the converse can also be said.
A player who doesn't have alts and wants to progress through the levels of the game with one character would not want to join a guild of players who all reroll and and enjoy lower lvl areas and content or do content multiple times. He would want to enjoy a different type of guild.
Where do you find in my first post that I said any differently? One player does not have the right to dictate how others play. No mattter what their play style and should find a group of like minded individuals to play with.
Again, I don't see what the problem is? I'm not saying you should join a guild like that.
Exactly! all I was doing was stating how "I" would react in a situation, so I can't figure why you keep quoting my posts or why you keep arguing with me when I'm not even presenting any points to be argued.
This topic has me scratching my head, but let me just say that if a guild has a problem with the fact that I choose to make alternate characters, I will find a new guild.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
I'll say it again, "good for you". But players have the right to play these games how they want to. One way is not better than another.
So if you are type of player who wants to make many alts and experience different types of lower lvl content or the same content with different characters then fine. You've earned it. It's your right. Don't know how many different ways I need to write it.
But if other players want to progress through the content to higher lvl content, especially if it offers different sets of challenges or different rewards then that is their right as well.
the converse can also be said.
A player who doesn't have alts and wants to progress through the levels of the game with one character would not want to join a guild of players who all reroll and and enjoy lower lvl areas and content or do content multiple times. He would want to enjoy a different type of guild.
Where do you find in my first post that I said any differently? One player does not have the right to dictate how others play. No mattter what their play style and should find a group of like minded individuals to play with.
Again, I don't see what the problem is? I'm not saying you should join a guild like that.
Exactly! all I was doing was stating how "I" would react in a situation, so I can't figure why you keep quoting my posts or why you keep arguing with me when I'm not even presenting any points to be argued.
Ok, gotcha. I thought for some reason you were taking issue with what I had written concerning the text "moving forward".
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I've disliked the concept of having multiple alts since UO. If you need something go to a crafter and have it made. This supports the game economy and community both of which seem to be getting worse in most games these days.
It sounds like you may be in the wrong guild if you are looking for a guild that focuses on end game content. For most games this would be a raiding guild. Just switch guilds. Do not force other players to play content they may not enjoy by changing the guild charter.
If a guild I joined suddenly changed to a raiding guild, I would quit that guild. A guild may fail just as easily by changing their focus to endgame as it could if that guild does not have an endgame focus. It all depends on what you are looking for in a guild.
I personally enjoy the journey and in most games I dislike the endgame content. Too many games have adopted the same tired endgame formula of grinding certain group dungeons for gear and raiding the same old dungeons repeatedly until everyone has a full set of gear. When I get to the start of the endgame I switch to another toon.
I actually like trying other classes (alts) and sometimes is it is good to take a break from your main and play a toon with a different style of play. I would dislike doing this on a test server for several reasons. Any time spent developing a toon on the test server is wasted if you decide you want to continue with that toon. In many games,some classes are so different it is helpful to do the tutorial from level 1.
Only having 1 main puts all your eggs in 1 basket. I played EQ for 3 years as a druid with a "nuker backup healer" build. Sony fundamentally changed the class by making all raid bosses virtually immune to druid nukes so you either changed your build and became a healer or quit. After what Sony did in EQ, I am reluctant to invest that amount of time in a single toon in any game.
Many games do not require you to help lower level toons as there is plenty of solo content.
I am not a big fan of dungeon or raid progression that requires that you cannot survive in the next dungeon until you have geared up in the previous previous dungeon. EQ had raid progression where you could not enter a raid dungeon unless you had completed the pre-requisites and the pre-requisites often needed a full raid to complete. With normal turnover of players you spent far too much time revisiting the same old raids to get the pre-requisites completed for the newer players.
A better option is leave it up to players to chose what type of guild they wish to join. Most good guilds have a guild charter you can check before joining.
Comments
This thread is a joke, right?
I don't think your " unlock your alts " idea has any merit, but the point about people being able to play freely when switching characters does. I think if developers started all of an accounts characters to the same guild, then a much more tight community would sprout. Taking away the anonymity of players in this case would probably be a great way to bring people together.
Why should we all play the same way? If one likes to build new characters over and over, then so be it!
Only recently has there really been a limit placed on characters in a game. MOst mainstream MMOs have numerous servers upon which you can make X number of characters. Often players end up with more character slots than they need. Recently with Darkfall and Cryptic MMOs (STO and CO) character slots are limited gamewide. ONe wonders if Cryptic will sell character slots in microtransactions (I thought I saw someone write on this). I will say that STO you unlock a Klingon slot when you reach a certain level
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
There are limits, sure. A college roommate I had last semester bought WoW after watching my friends play the game, and since purchasing the game about 5 months ago, he has made upwards of around 30 toons all on the same server with none of them over level twenty, each time declaring he has decided on a new main character. This guy has probably tried out every single class/race combination multiple times over, and if I were a guild leader, I will admit to getting tired of inviting a new toon of his every week.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Myabe in many of the newer mmo's lately you are correct, but some of the older ones like EQ1 you can level up 5 to 7 chars well past half way to max level and never utilize any of the same areas or quests other than a couple places for portals
I wouldn't be bothered if you never played the game if it implemented my idea, because you're probably not the type of person who I'd play with, since you'd likely never be around my level, nor would you stick on one character long enough for me to trust you enough to add to my friends list.
My entire thread, and everyone in it has been flame free and non-provoking, yet you felt the need to provoke me by telling me I'm controlling? In most things in life, there are those with ideas, and those that follow. In MMORPG's, strong communities are remembered and make the game more fun. So I'm speaking of my idea, that'll help make the community stronger. So it's not about pleasing me, rather it's about what's good for the community as a whole; what'll make a strong community. Your attitude is a "me me me" attitude. You want to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and damn anyone elses wants or needs. If you don't care about the people you play with, then that's your right, but don't expect me to change my idea to cater to you, since you don't care about other people anyways.
Now if you have an actual idea on how to foster strong cohesive communties, not just guild communities, while still allowing for altitis inflicted members, then please share them and point to examples of where this has been tried and proven successful. My idea has been tried, and has been successful in SWG.
Someone who tries all the classes will have an idea of what each class is about, but you could really only accurately comment on what you've physically played yourself. So if you've only played a class to lvl 20, and the level cap is 50, then how could you say you can accurately surmise what that class can do off those 20 levels? Believe me, after playing 40 classes in DAoC, I do understand how playing all those classes can give you an edge when forming groups and fighting other classes, but to accurately know who can do what, you need to get them to a high level, which takes a lot of time. So in the short term, meaning 3-6 months, focusing on a main is more beneficial to the community than focusing on a handful of alts.
Actually I disagree with you. people who roll alts tend to be more sociable. In wow I had 4 80s mainly because I did not want to turn into the type of people who raid in wow. The decent people who play the game you suggest at least in my experience are far and few between. MMOs are not a second job to me it sounds like you take the game too seriously. Even with all my 80s most were made because my guild needed that class or the only thing left to do was raid and with 6-10 hours a week to play i did not want to waste it dealing with raiders.
If limiting alts is so important to you, then show some discipline and stick to one character. Why should everyone else have to endure limitations to gaming freedom to cater to your lack of self control?
Because a community is made up of everyone, not just him. I understand his reasoning and what he wants, but I disagree with him. In a sandbox game, maybe it'd work (well, he claims it already does, using SWG as his example). But in a themepark game? No.
Myabe in many of the newer mmo's lately you are correct, but some of the older ones like EQ1 you can level up 5 to 7 chars well past half way to max level and never utilize any of the same areas or quests other than a couple places for portals
Heck, in WoW each faction has has enough content and zones to level three different characters with very little overlap in the quests you do till around level 55. Outland is fairly linear so the experience is pretty much the same from character to character. Northrend essentially provides you with two sets of zones for each level range and you can mix and match which ones you do.
Beyond that there is the fact that even if you are repeating the same quests and zones, things play out very differently on different classes. In WoW I started out as a hunter, then made a palladin, followed by a rogue and then a mage. They were quite varied in the way one needed to play the character so fights I had done previously were singificantly different when attempted with another class.
Because a community is made up of everyone, not just him. I understand his reasoning and what he wants, but I disagree with him. In a sandbox game, maybe it'd work (well, he claims it already does, using SWG as his example). But in a themepark game? No.
In SWG the system locked you into your role pretty much only way to try new roles was to give up most of your progress up to that point. Say you were a weapon crafter who wanted see if playing a rifleman would be fun. You had to give up most of your crafting skills to do that and if you did not like the combat side you had to regrind all the skills you lost. It got even worse when you chose a role that made you important to your guild. Running a player city required you to put points into specific skill trees that you could not use for combat or crafting. So someone had to 'gimp' themselves so the guild could benefit. If that person then got bored and quit the game, things would deteriorate rapidly.
I'd like to back up Nate's concerns about how people rerolling alts constantly can cause a guild to lose members and disband. I know those members probably read the forums and at this point I don't care as I believe the leader (one of the rerollers in question here) basically abandoned the guild without any notice. I'd to love to see a FFXI class switching system in place in MMOs to remove the need to switch to alts or a classless system in general.
Nate probably encountered this in "The Path Ahead" guild formed via the MMORPG forums. Well, I few of us didn't like the game chosen (or couldn't run it for whatever reason - Vanguard in this case) and decided to keep within the spirit of the community formed there and switched our to EQ2 with a few of us.
Well anyway, our guild leader was a classic altaholic. He switched his main literally 8 or 9 times within the course of a single month. I don't understand how or why anyone would do this. It's essentially replaying the same content over and over again, there really wasn't much "new" to experience after a second or third time through.
I'll get into why I think this was bad in a bit, but I constantly brought it up to him how it annoyed me (as well as a few others who agreed with me, some didn't mind, and many were rerollers themselves - we had at least 4 or 5 others with similar huge character counts).
First, the main problem with it was we were constantly having to help level the guild leader (who is in a leadership role and probably should be helping us, that's just how I feel leaders should be). We had to constantly do old content over and over again. The best gear available at the time for low levels was in a winter only event dungeon called Icy Keep and I had to quite literally run this about 100 times over mostly because of the guild leader and other rerollers. The need to constantly keep gearing them up exhausted us and basically threw away the whole notion of us being there to explore all the content in this game I felt we were stuck perpetually gearing and leveling these members.
Second, we couldn't do new content because of this. We needed those members who were stuck at low levels. Due to them constantly rerolling alts we were not only stuck leveling them (so we couldn't progress), but we didn't have enough members to form full fledged groups (aside from the low level stuff).
So low and behold, membership kept constantly dropping. Now I'm typically a really hardcore power gamer (though I've been in a few casual guilds here and there) and I never seen an instance where such a huge portion of the membership felt the need to constantly reroll alts. Maybe we were doing something wrong on the leadership end to make them feel that way, but it really hurt us and I don't get why the leadership couldn't see it. I've never seen a guild go from fully active to almost dead in a month after forming. Even my brief stint I tried as a guild leader (I make a terrible one, which is why I hate taking leadership roles) once lasted much longer and didn't fully destroy the guild.
What didn't help was those rerollers (including the leader) were the first to leave the game, leaving the active membership who actually cared about their mains and spent a good portion of their time LEVELING THEIR "NEW MAINS" left with a partially dead guild. Did I mention they left with no notice - so we actually had hope they'd be coming back, but that looks less and less like a possibility? I feel like now I'm going to have to cancel my membership since there is almost nobody left to play with (and sure I can join a new guild, but that would defeat the original purpose of my subscription to the game - to start from the beginning - since the server is pretty much full of max level characters).
I would like some MMORPG to have one character per account, but would never be so selfish to wish upon ALL MMORPG's to work that way.
I love a game that can provide me with enought content, keep in mind content is NOt quest/missions only as some seem to asume but it's allot more then just story/mission/quests. To give me one character per account, unfortunaly the current trend with most A-title MMORPG's offer far to little to keep the game intresting for just one character.
1 Character would mean a more effective community/economy, something most A-title company do not provide , so as started I would like to see some MMORPG being released that way, but would not want ALL MMORPG released that way as there is enough room to give players many options and choose the game that suites them best.
Overall nobody is forcing you to create Alts, that is ALWAYS in the players hands themself.
I've never really been fond of alt's myself, but have had a couple. PoTBS - different nation so I could do their unquie missions, SWG just because I brick-walled my main and couldn't solo anymore missions. Plus the alt got to do the new NGE quest line that didn't exist when I ran my main up.
Now my son has had alt's in almost all his games. Fighter, entertainer, craftsman. Unless you can combine those like you could in SWG pre-CU, then I'd say there's a good reason for them. Sometimes you want to fight, other times just hang at the cantina.
The real downside of only 1 toon per account would be when a family all share the same game. I know with 2 son's having a min of 3 slots allows us all to take turns playing on the same account, thus keeping cost's down.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
You are putting the blame on the wrong thing. The problem your guild had was that you did not have enough members to support two distinct playstyles. Some of you wanted to play very casually while others wanted a more hardcore, power-leveling approach. This was not helped by the fact that your guild leader obviously did not find the game fun past a certain level.
Why the heck did you run that dungeon 100 times when you did not enjoy it? Are you a masochist? You should have told the rerollers 'no'. Part of the reroller playstyle is that after a while you will not be able to find people who want to rerun the same content and you will have to skip it.
That seems to have been one hell of a dysfunctional guild with the two factions in a sort of unhealthy co-dependant relationship.
Earthrise promises to do this. You can learn every skill, but the gear you equip determines which are active.
I was lucky I guess most of my guild had many alts. We would level together multiple times or use our high levels to burn through stuff. The issue I have is always the same end game is raiding and I would rather real reroll then have the game turn into a job.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
I'll say it again, "good for you". But players have the right to play these games how they want to. One way is not better than another.
So if you are type of player who wants to make many alts and experience different types of lower lvl content or the same content with different characters then fine. You've earned it. It's your right. Don't know how many different ways I need to write it.
But if other players want to progress through the content to higher lvl content, especially if it offers different sets of challenges or different rewards then that is their right as well.
the converse can also be said.
A player who doesn't have alts and wants to progress through the levels of the game with one character would not want to join a guild of players who all reroll and and enjoy lower lvl areas and content or do content multiple times. He would want to enjoy a different type of guild.
Where do you find in my first post that I said any differently? One player does not have the right to dictate how others play. No mattter what their play style and should find a group of like minded individuals to play with.
Again, I don't see what the problem is? I'm not saying you should join a guild like that.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
@Torik - While I agree that it was pretty dysfunctional because we had two different playstyles I think you are confusing things a bit here. First off the rerollers were by no means casual players as they had invested just as much time (sometimes more) in game. I'd definitely put them in the hardcore category.
Also, we in no way were taking the power leveling approach. I understand why you would make that assumption since I did state I'm typically a power gamer, but for this guild I was trying something different and slowing it down. We had level locking in place and wouldn't remove it until we completed all the content in that level range.
The person who removed level locking was the guild leader himself. He would consistently powerlevel all his characters. We had to wait for him to level up since we didn't have enough members to do new content. When he'd level he typically level past us (ignoring or changing the level lock himself). Eventually he threw out the whole idea of a level lock altogether and that's where membership really started to drop. During the course of one week he leveled 4 characters (each were his new "main" to the level cap or past it). We geared all these characters, yet he kept rerolling. My character never made it to the end game (not even remotely close) in the month and a half period of playing where I usually hit end game in two weeks to a months period of time.
I'd ask what you would do in the same situation? Would you try to help the guild hoping the people who kept rerolling would eventually settle, despite having to grind gear out for each of these new mains on the new content? Would you say "no" and sit there and wait a month or so (which would like lead to you not playing, which is what happened for most of the membership anyway) for them to level to you, refusing to help them if they reroll? Would you join a new guild (the only choice right now on that server in EQII is to join a guild that reached the end game, so that would mean soloing all the way to max level which is extremely boring)? Would you just cancel your subscription and forget it?
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
I'll say it again, "good for you". But players have the right to play these games how they want to. One way is not better than another.
So if you are type of player who wants to make many alts and experience different types of lower lvl content or the same content with different characters then fine. You've earned it. It's your right. Don't know how many different ways I need to write it.
But if other players want to progress through the content to higher lvl content, especially if it offers different sets of challenges or different rewards then that is their right as well.
the converse can also be said.
A player who doesn't have alts and wants to progress through the levels of the game with one character would not want to join a guild of players who all reroll and and enjoy lower lvl areas and content or do content multiple times. He would want to enjoy a different type of guild.
Where do you find in my first post that I said any differently? One player does not have the right to dictate how others play. No mattter what their play style and should find a group of like minded individuals to play with.
Again, I don't see what the problem is? I'm not saying you should join a guild like that.
Exactly! all I was doing was stating how "I" would react in a situation, so I can't figure why you keep quoting my posts or why you keep arguing with me when I'm not even presenting any points to be argued.
that's very fair and you definitley have the right to do that. I mean, it is your money!
but it's also not fair for players to expect that every guild wants to move forward in the same way.
If you are in a guild that is trying to accomplish certain things and they have some players who will never catch up AND who keep making alts that take up Guild space where an actual player might fit in, then you should also understand if they say no to your latest creation or that they make up rules regarding how the guild should be moving forward.
Players have the right to play with like minded people and should recognize when they are not in the right place for them and for others.
What is "moving forward?" Conquering content? I will never join a guild for the sole purpose of conquering content, and if a guild only values me by the level of my character, I will chose not to be a part of that guild.
I'll say it again, "good for you". But players have the right to play these games how they want to. One way is not better than another.
So if you are type of player who wants to make many alts and experience different types of lower lvl content or the same content with different characters then fine. You've earned it. It's your right. Don't know how many different ways I need to write it.
But if other players want to progress through the content to higher lvl content, especially if it offers different sets of challenges or different rewards then that is their right as well.
the converse can also be said.
A player who doesn't have alts and wants to progress through the levels of the game with one character would not want to join a guild of players who all reroll and and enjoy lower lvl areas and content or do content multiple times. He would want to enjoy a different type of guild.
Where do you find in my first post that I said any differently? One player does not have the right to dictate how others play. No mattter what their play style and should find a group of like minded individuals to play with.
Again, I don't see what the problem is? I'm not saying you should join a guild like that.
Exactly! all I was doing was stating how "I" would react in a situation, so I can't figure why you keep quoting my posts or why you keep arguing with me when I'm not even presenting any points to be argued.
Ok, gotcha. I thought for some reason you were taking issue with what I had written concerning the text "moving forward".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I've disliked the concept of having multiple alts since UO. If you need something go to a crafter and have it made. This supports the game economy and community both of which seem to be getting worse in most games these days.
I disagree.
It sounds like you may be in the wrong guild if you are looking for a guild that focuses on end game content. For most games this would be a raiding guild. Just switch guilds. Do not force other players to play content they may not enjoy by changing the guild charter.
If a guild I joined suddenly changed to a raiding guild, I would quit that guild. A guild may fail just as easily by changing their focus to endgame as it could if that guild does not have an endgame focus. It all depends on what you are looking for in a guild.
I personally enjoy the journey and in most games I dislike the endgame content. Too many games have adopted the same tired endgame formula of grinding certain group dungeons for gear and raiding the same old dungeons repeatedly until everyone has a full set of gear. When I get to the start of the endgame I switch to another toon.
I actually like trying other classes (alts) and sometimes is it is good to take a break from your main and play a toon with a different style of play. I would dislike doing this on a test server for several reasons. Any time spent developing a toon on the test server is wasted if you decide you want to continue with that toon. In many games,some classes are so different it is helpful to do the tutorial from level 1.
Only having 1 main puts all your eggs in 1 basket. I played EQ for 3 years as a druid with a "nuker backup healer" build. Sony fundamentally changed the class by making all raid bosses virtually immune to druid nukes so you either changed your build and became a healer or quit. After what Sony did in EQ, I am reluctant to invest that amount of time in a single toon in any game.
Many games do not require you to help lower level toons as there is plenty of solo content.
I am not a big fan of dungeon or raid progression that requires that you cannot survive in the next dungeon until you have geared up in the previous previous dungeon. EQ had raid progression where you could not enter a raid dungeon unless you had completed the pre-requisites and the pre-requisites often needed a full raid to complete. With normal turnover of players you spent far too much time revisiting the same old raids to get the pre-requisites completed for the newer players.
A better option is leave it up to players to chose what type of guild they wish to join. Most good guilds have a guild charter you can check before joining.