To all those saying no to alts, what is your plan then for down the road?
It’s now 6 months in. The lower level zones are dead. The lower level dungeons are dead. No one is buying any low level armor. The economy is even more shot than it is now. People are complaining left and right about nothing to do, and how the game is dying because no one new is playing. The few players that come in, decide to leave when they are gaming alone for most of the time.
What should be done in that scenario? Since having alts is such a detriment to the overall value of a game like this, what is going to be the plan for when this happens?
I personally wouldn’t mind alts, but at the same time I see the issues with it.
-gold transferring from low level quests
-cross faction exploiting
…well, thats really all I can think of, and both can be easily fixed by tying all alts to the same faction and adding timers on how often you can make or delete characters.
Some points above I agree with, with lack of alts, there’s really no reason to have low level dungeons. Sure a low level might be able to get some high levels to help, but face rolling your first dungeon isn’t really all that fun. You also couldn’t run it more than once cause no one else will be willing to farm keys.
As for zones being empty…haven’t seen that yet, most zones are filled with higher level people gathering lower level mats.
I agree, there has to be new incoming lowbies for this to work. If I have a low alt…say a crafter, I am very likely to say sure I’ll help, much more likely than I would be at max level helping level 20’s through Armine.
+1 for alts like in every other good MMORPG. I currently play four chars for different reasons on different servers. It sucks that I have to switch here and there and can’t play all with friends and family when I like to. Or that I can’t outfit them with my other already good crafters like in every other good MMORPG, or that I can’t trade items between them like in every other… you get the point. If there would be any good reason for limiting players like this, many other games like NW would have done this before. They didn’t. They only reason to do this was a halfhearted change of gamedesign. For a pure pvp survival game it might have been useful. I am thankful, it is not a game like that!But if you want to offer pvx, do it the right way.
How about creating alts to re-run all the side quests and main story quests as a way to generate gold? Wanting to have a different character look/sex? Not wanting to spend 500g to respec to use a different weapon? Have a reason to craft low level armor/weapons to feed the economy? There are a number of reasons to want an alt toon.
Looks like more than a few people skimmed right past my original post in which i listed out several limitations that would have addressed many of the ‘concerns’ in subsequent replies lol. Here, an updated and abridged version:
Any alts created on the same world group would be under the same company and faction as the first character. Leaving company or changing factions would likewise change all alts with it.
Storage is shared between characters. No storage bin characters (Yes, i would even hook the bags themselves to this as well)
Every character would share the game world log out position. If you FT on one character, it drags all your other characters with it. Azoth cap, gold wallet and PvP state is also shared.
If you’re really paranoid about the gold income from being able to repeat quests, Could even reduce the gold per quest that has already been marked as complete on any character rewards the same gold as a townboard quest.
That about addresses all the “concerns” listed in this thread.
It would in effect cause any alt characters to be more akin to loadouts you swap between on the caveat that you need to manually level each one.
Hmm, Now that i think about linking everything together, why not also link tradeskills.
This gives a LOT more value to those dungeon replicas that are stuck at level 38, as you would be able to craft them for your own alts to use. Even the Bind on Pickup ones.
the problem is with how hard getting money is right now fraining 500 g just to try a new build…(so 1000 if you dont like it and go back to the previous one), it a bit scary
You want an alt? you can… make a 2e account, buy the game and make a new character.
Your new character will need server storage space. which costs money to maintain. 40$ will do the job…for now. The switching between steam accounts takes you a minute
Yeah… I’m not level 60 yet so I haven’t felt the squeeze for gold, but 1000g is still a LOT less than the time investment needed to grind up a new character. Also you can still try out different weapons without spending anything, just to get a feel for them, before you go and swap attributes.
I think this is a prime example of gamers caught in attachments to legacy game design instead of expectation of MMO features to be progressive and pioneer a new experience current state and for the future.
For example, instead of expecting alts to be a core aspect of NW players should expect much more;
Lower level dungeons and zones scale with to max level 60. This means playing with your friends despite their current level while maintaining incentives and rewards for your own personal level.
Lower level content becomes inversed or additions of new twists with puzzles (think of Castlevania inverted castle)
Lower level content scales to offer multiple levels of difficulty; Normal, Hard and Nightmare modes
Max level restricted end-game content accessible by completing certain skill based achievements in dungeons
End-game content requiring skill to complete not gatekeeping by gear score requirements
There should be no reason to NEED for an alt in NW. Some players enjoy multiple characters sure, but requests for alts to be relevant are to satisfy player’s attachment to legacy ideas OR exploitive measures to create an alt for a tactical advantage (PvP spy accounts on different factions).
My point is if NW depends on alt creation to keep economy flowing, old content relevant and maintain a certain concurrent player-base it has failed by design.
Conceptualizing all of these ideas on paper is not the problem. Implementing them is because it means massive amount of extra content and technical complexities which cost labor/resources to create.
Please no. I love that there are no alts and no level scaling, take your pick if MMOs if that’s what you’re after. You got a second slot though so you can create level up and then delete that character over and over instead.
