We need Alts. Low level areas/economy is dead

[Azrapse]

I don’t advocate for bot-farming just because I state the reason why bot-farmers are making money in the game. Let’s not live in a black-and-white world of “you are with me, or your are my enemy”.
By understanding what makes it possible for bot-farmers to exist, we can figure out how to get rid of them, by attacking their reason of existence.

Bots selling gold for money exist because of a reality that AGS and, apparently, many hardcore players, don’t want to admit: Many people just want to have fun when they play a videogame.
Think that it’s not that they are lazy. They are just middle age adults with families and jobs, that can consider themselves lucky to get a few hours a week of free time to have fun.
They don’t want to spend their valuable and scarce free time doing menial tasks, that unlock fun later.

And I say “valuable”, because in the time they would spend working in a fake videogame job, they could be working instead on their real world job doing overtime and getting lots of money.
So their free time is as worth as the overtime they could be doing instead.

Of course, the conclusion is that by placing timesink obstacles in their wayt to fun, the game is pushing those people to bypass those unfun menial tasks by spending real money to get the stuff done (farm gold, farm materials, etc), so that they can skip to the fun part.
This is not any stupid conclusion I have come to by myself. This is the core business model of all browser and mobile games of recent: “Play for free. But fun costs X (energy/gems/time). Or you bypass that with real money.”

The more inaccessible you make the fun stuff, the more people will want to skip the obstacles, and the more profitable will be for bot-farmers to supply that demand.
I am not stating anything that anyone with a minimum knowledge of how the market works doesn’t know already.

So in order to remove the bot-farmers, AGS needs to take one (or multiple) of these paths:

• Sell materials or gold in the in-game store for cheap, and take the bots out of business by undercutting their prices. This will cause the playerbase to scream “Pay to win!”, though.
• Add a certain bypass to all the menial tasks and requirements so that people can have fun straight away without having to grind for it. Perhaps to versions of PvP and PvE content that doesn’t provide the same rewards as the real thing. Either way, the hardcore playerbase will scream “Stop listening to the carebears!”

[tinyfangz]

I am a complete altaholic usually. I got 19 characters on GW2, can’t recall how many I got on ESO, but plenty as well. Had loads on Lotro too, RoM - if I can have alts, I tend to end with an army of them

Reading your arguments, obviously a part of me perks up - alts! As I am also addicted to housing, the thought that through alts, I could come to buy houses I right now can’t, for added decoration fun, brings tears of joy to me eyes. I also get bored to stare at the same character all the time, and we lack a transmorg system, so right now I have to counter that by owning an array of chest pieces I switch around, some head pieces too.

But alts, while a vital fun part for me, will not solve the other issues I have with the game, and there is just not enough content on offer to make me believe I’d do much with those alts, past housing and some customisation. As I imagine, introducing an alt system to the game would require quite a bit of dev time (how to incorporate alts into the faction and company system?), while right now I would rather see that time spend on fixing other aspects of the game.

Once all those things are sorted, I’d say yes, alts would be nice, and not sure what alts have to do with bots. Any account can only have one character active inside the game at any time, and if a bot is reported and dealt with, I would think the whole account gets banned (or should be). Just because someone with bad intentions would make 5 characters on their account, would not mean they could use those characters at the same time, so botting is not the issue in regards to alts.

Not certain why the company opted against alts. They may thought with their weapon and respec system it would not be needed/desired by players, but well, there are so many QoL features missing anyway, alts could be considered just part of that overall trend.

So yes, maybe in the future, but there is a lot which has to be taken care of first, and it’s quite a list already as is, at least in my view.

[Silvermore]

I agree thats alts are needed, and will help the game overall rather than hinder. Being able to skill up in any new weapon is not a reason to prohibit Alts.
It can be easily added without causing a problem with spying as you would restrict the Faction of your alt to the same as your Main. This was done in Dark Ages of Camelot a loooong time ago and worked.
Alts would allow players already maxed out to experience the game again from another starting location.
Add to the low level economy.
And vitally allow people to create a new character with their friend who’s just bought the game and level up with them.

The argument to not allow it due to prevent Botting, doesn’t hold water as apparently that issue already exists.

The only reason I can think of not to allow it is to force those who want to alt on the same server as their other friends and Guildies to shell out for an additionally copy of the game.
I think it would be reasonable to have a nominal cost to create an alt as something to buy in the store.

[MaDBoLT]

We have bots for that. Silly.

[inky123]

I have said this from release. You cannot make a game and expect to sustain a game when it is so hard for new people to come in. You start with a lager base and they all linearly go towards end game, leaving behind casuals and new people who then can’t get groups for expeditions or help with quests.
The game will never succeed until they find a way to get new people in. Really seems counter intuitive to release a game where there is not a plan on how to keep new player traffic coming in.
Making it where 1 char can be any class at any time for a couple coins, let that 1 class max out every single weapon negates any reason to make an alt even if you could.
To me, this is the really big game killer

[Rabbi]

I’m not sure this true for all servers. Mine seems to have quite a few newer folks (level 7-20)…and they aren’t bots…I’ve interacted with them. The thing that will discourage new players is older players. I see people asking simple questions in chat and getting the standard “STFU n00B!” responses.