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One Character or two?
ethion
Member UncommonPosts: 2,888
I'm thinking I need two characters. One for melee classes and one for Magic user classes?
Does this make sense or are people just leveling up all classes on one character and the stats aren't that important?
Thoughts?
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Ethion
Comments
Well as in the predecessor FFXI you don't need to make alts but often times many do,mostly to duo box.I found this game was not made to duo box very easily,not so sure that was smart by Square but whatever.
Gear which carries stats are changeable as you switch classes,so there is no need to make alts to attain a certain class.However there is something to think about.This game has not only classes but JOBS,these are more specific roles designed to be the best possible role in a group.You might want to create alts to create all JOB type characters.
I am not playing this game until later so i can only draw on my Beta experiences but that is probably what i will do which is go for the Jobs.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
One character can be all jobs in addition to all classes. I'm a Dragoon and a Warrior already on my only character. You just swap the job crystal.
Leveling all classes and jobs IS the game for me, I don't need to do it twice.
Personally I like alts and playing them differently from each other.
Like an archer/pugilist
have a melee with glad/lancer and mara
Then a magic with all 3 conj/arc and thaum
That's just me,as I like my melee too be that and not an archer.Pugilist feels ok with archer.
Edit too add:In my case I'm not looking to get all the advanced classes/jobs,only certain ones.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
One character is sufficient. Even with a class that is heavily opposite on stat needs, the over-all difference of lets say 4 mnd less would only yeild perhaps ~6 more health healed on a spell. Not a huge difference at all. An average race (more even spread) would have maybe a 2 point difference. Its really that NOT effective.
That being said if you did want to MAXIMIZE to the utmost and those ~2 points more is a big deal, then you will likely want 5 difference characters. 1 Strength based (Dragoon/Monk/Possibly Paladin or Warrior), 1 Dex (Bard), 1 Int (Summoner/Blackmage), 1 Mnd (Scholar/Whitemage), 1 Vit (Possibly Paladin/Warrior). You COULD do more for each individual class, but stat wise its usually not that huge of a deal.
One character: Gets a XP bonus for having a lv50 job on alts. Has a lower subscription price.
Multiple characters: can see all three starting cities stories, can be in all three GC at the same time, gets the benefit of storyline missions and quest hubs ect. More storage ect.
There are benefits for either choice. You wont need more than one character though. IMO start off with a one character lower sub price...then after you hit 50 and get a feel for the game decide if you want to add more characters for whatever reason.
Your sub goes up the more character you have on the same server. You can make up to 20 (I think) 1 per server with no extra cost.
There is no reason to make more that one character ever, unless you are torn between friends on different servers, the class system is build with maximising all melee, magic, craft and gather to 50 with one character. If you want a different race with certain classes, (you will be gimping yourself somewhat) then at least don't waste money on the same server.
Thank you for the clarification. I'm still torn. I guess I'll follow that dude's advice of getting to 50, first, then deciding. Maybe I won't make a secondary character (job/build) at all. I don't know for how long I'm gonna want to play the game. I'm not an MMO guy.
But I do think I'll get two builds, my first one is to be a Paladin (still just a GLD); and my second, a Summoner (who's supposed to be a healer early in its development).
The stat issue isnt even an issue. Racial difference is trivial and leveling stats are allocated separately as you level the new class. The only reasons I could think of to have a 2nd character is if you want a different look, name, or if you just want a L1 to sit at the market board to check prices.
There's really no point to leveling a different character except perhaps gear sets and that really only if you where constantly changing and wanting specific set ups.
It may* be slightly faster to level an alt do to them having access to quests your other character has already completed. But even then its very minor as you have access to fates/leves/dungeons.
In terms of an alt crafter?...again the only real point of that would be storage space. You'd have to be selling a lot of not selling items to run out of storage space with two retainers though.
That said you can play how you want. In the end there are very few advantages to keeping just one character ... most of which are just preference. Jobs are very limited to what classes they can borrow from so your jobs wont be gimped much, plus you can always just level the class you want the skill from. Classes are hardly used at end game content so the disadvantage there doesnt really matter. I myself have kept Bard on since I got it, even for leveling. Classes are supposedly better for solo'ing but the game isnt exactly hard enough to notice a difference.
When the game launched i played 3 character up to 11'ish, one in each starting zone. This took an awful lot of time to do, with all the reading, learning the game, and learning the layout of each area. Bottom line it was very fun and i had the time as i was on vacation.
I picked one character as my main and continued playing. Back to life and significantly less time to play i carried on with my main, coming to realize you "literally" can do everything on one character (i took that with a grain of salt prior to playing), i started a couple alts on my main.
Personally this is working out very well and am finding no need for the other 2 characters i created. It's not only convenient, it actually enhances my gameplay, it's so fast to switch into something else without having to log out, log back in, reorientate. Literally flick on your alt, GO.
Here is a little sample of changed gameplay, I'm in Ul’Dah on my main and need to head out to Eastern Thanalan, instead of zoning over there, i flick on my low level alt, leave Ul’Dah and adventure my way over there through the low area, do a little mining, and when i get to my destination, flick my main back on.
Leveling these alts is so much faster and much more fun too. I've mainly leveled them through hunting and doing their main quest line, one is 9 and the other is 5. Now i admit i know what's what from my earlier experience and had done most, if not all the low level errand quests. So it's familiar area as well, no orientation time.
One reason leveling is much more fun is the mix matching of skills between them all, seriously WOW what a great feature and benefit to doing it all on one toon. The only disadvantage which isn't one actually but for some it may be, is that it slows down your leveling progress on the main, but I'm in no rush. The variety it all adds to the game far outweighs this though.
Outside of the starting "experience" i got from all three toons, i am left wondering if they will ever leave the inn, there are far to many benefits and fun advantages to doing it all on one toon.
Bottom line doing it all on one toon is a integral part of the core game in my opinion. I wouldn't want it any other way now that I've experienced an mmo this way.
I'm not sure.
All classes on one character has been really cool. Here's an example..
When I was working on my level 30 gladiator quest, I had to work my way through this cave with tons of aggressive mobs coming in groups of two and three with a crazy fast respawn timer. After a half hour of sprinting out to avoid death I tried a different approach.
Switched to miner. Stealth to the back of the cave. Fight the quest mobs. Collect quest item. Teleport back to town. Profit.
As far as I can figure, there is no way to mail mats and items between your alts because it is only permissible to mail stuff to someone on your friends list and there's no way for alts to 'friend' each other unless they were on separate accounts.
This can be worked around by putting stuff in your FC storage on one character and pulling it out with another (or doing the same thing, presumably, with personal or FC housing once it comes out).
You can have all classes and jobs on one character howerer there are reasons for having more than one character.
Names - Some people like to give there characters class appropriate names.The name you chose for your warrior might not seem so good when you decide you want to be a black mage or bard.
Races/Genders - Some people think certain races or genders fit certain classes better.It's also about variety if you can only play one character every class you play will be the same race.I don't think I've played a mmorpg with multiple races and multiple characters per server where all my characters were the same race.
Chocobo's - You can have chocobo's as battle companions, they can be trained as tank,dps and healing.However right now your choices are permenant.They are going to be adding a way to change the the choices you made.However if it isn't easy to change your chocobo from one role to another that could be a problem because it is easy to do so with your character.
As for the price of a subscription.There are 2 levels of subscription.Entry gives you 1 character per server and a total of 8 for $12.99 per month.Standard gives you 8 characters per server and a total of 40 for $14.99 per month.However standard has multi-month discounts, the 6 month subscription is $12.99 per month.So if you pay for 6 months at a time you get the standard subscription for the same price as the entry.
Unless you really want to play one specific class with your character looking a certain way only, there's not much point.
The early storyline which is different based on some choices, really would be no problem just watching the ones you didn't do on youtube or something. They converge later.
There are really only 3 reasons I can think of to go with multiple characters:
1) Roleplaying/see the early storyline from the other cities/just want to have multiple races. This really amounts to no practical reason other than you really want to and think it would be fun or interesting. That's fine, I can totally dig it, and I'm considering it myself.
2) Storage Space. You can already have multiple retainers, and they can hold a lot, but I guess if your really a crazy packrat or have some organizational OCD where you want a different retainer for different categories, you could make even more alternates to have even more retainers. I'm not sure you can mail stuff to yourself, but even if you can't, you could always get a trusted third party to hold on to your stuff while you change characters and make it work. This has some practicality to it, but you get a lot of storage space via retainers by default, so it would be something fairly out of the ordinary if you needed to go this route.
3) As you level up, your class gets some stat points to allocate - 30 in all by the time you hit L50. Each class gets their own stat points, and jobs share the base class stats, which for the most part is fine. But... Arcanist shares two jobs, and they each prioritize a different stat: Scholar -> Mind, and Summoner -> Int. Now, it's possible to reset your stat allocation (via a GC-purchased item, around 2,000 seals), but doing it every time you switch jobs would be very expensive. If you were really anal about min-maxing, and really wanted to play both of those jobs and switch a lot, this is the one outlier case that sorta makes sense right now.
Aside from those 3 reasons, I can't think of any other reasons to have multiple characters.
To counter all of this, to have multiple characters on the same server does cost a higher subscription rate.