Artifact Revamp (You've killed alts)

Okay so hear me out here. We no longer have the real ability to run alts successfully due to the artifacts in game and i have a way for you to help player and continue to make money while bringing alts back to the game. So how artifacts work currently is that each toon has its own artifacts with xp individually. My idea is this, move all of the artifacts into a single column where they are accessible to all toons on the account. Heres the full lay out. We get a new tab in the inventory, this tab holds all of the artifacts and instead of the nth metal xp how it is, we change the artifact to only receive the max amount of xp, put all xp across all toons into an xp pool. With doing this you will give every toon on the account access to the same artifacts. You will still need to level up the artifacts and buy catalyst and seals. The only thing this would change is that it would benefit us the players. We'd still be able to purchase our 75k xp but itll stack into a pool instead of in chunks, still buy seals, still buy catalyst, still have the same artifact levels, so if my main levels a 200 solar, my alt has that same solar. This will also free up a small amount of inventory space because all artifacts will be in a new tab.

In other words we wouldn't need to purchase as many seals and nth Metal detectors because our toons are sharing Artifacts. They're not going to go for any ideas that cut into their profits.

When the entire combat system and content design is affected because of the impact of the artifact system, they might have to. When the very system that gives them a quick, short term-buck right now is slowly but surely pushing other paying customers out the door, they might have to.

Cause and effect go hand in hand. Even if they would do exactly what the OP suggested, do you really think seals wouldn't suddenly cost 900DB and the cheapest catalysts would go up to 50+ source marks?

Also I hope OP does not expect (in the miraculous case of this wish coming true) that all the alts with R160 artifacts would magically keep them to feed the same amount of XP (on double weekends) into new artifacts because they wouldn't need three Transformation Cards?

If the exact change like suggested would happen, I would save countless hours of farming and a lot of bucks since my alts already have plenty 160artifacts.
I probably would only need to spend some cash on Seals of Completion and that's it.

They would just find another way to make ends meet.

Well, they kinda would if they made an implementation more userfriendly rather than going all in on a small minority of spenders, lol. Especially when said implementation is currently impacting the rest of the population aswell.

By impacting do you mean falling behind or falling off?

I agree. I been playing since 2011 and ever since daybreak bought this game it has felt like a cash grab and since then I take longer breaks then playing. Artifacts really bum me out cause they are character only and I like to use both roles so that means I'm trying to level up 6 artifacts and I have 3 tons. So in essence 9 artifacts is very overwhelming and I dont have deep pockets. I have a 3 month membership that ends in August and I'm not sure if I'm going to renew it. Artifacts should be accound bound and be able to earn seals in game in my opinion. Heck the fact seal are a purchase only make me feel like daybreak is strong arming me for my money. I had 3 purple seals break at 85% success rate all break in a row. That's strongarming your patrons. Sad really.

unfortunatly game companys only look at the what makes money fast, instead of what makes 10x more money but a lil slower, ive said before, you can have 10 people paying 1000 bucks or 1000 people paying 10 bucks, they still make tha same amount on the stupid stuff but there are more people in the 1000 catagory buying memberships replays or watever else off the marketplace than in the 10 catagory

i refuse to buy any of the overpriced catalytist xp or seal stuff for artifacts, however because people do buy it, what i do doesnt matter. hopefully 1 day players will wake up an stop buying TC's or Seals or any of these pay to win things, untill then though nothing will change

They didn’t kill alts. I still play alts and level up artifacts. Getting them to 80 isn’t hard nor have I ever had anyone say anything negative towards me about low level artifacts but it seems like argifacts are becoming more important than skill points. Ever since they allowed people to pay for some feats and artifacts no one really takes this game seriously anymore, that’s just my opinion.

I shoot for the 120 mark, but yeah...you don't need 200's for alts unless you are chasing that scoreboard. Now, can you run 16 toons anymore like the old days? No...you cannot (unless you drop a bunch of cash), but running 4 or 5 viable alts is doable. Would it be nice to share my 180-200 artis between toons? Sure, but as others have said, no way they are killing that income from seals/cats/xp sales.

I personally believe this would increase spending, not decrease it. I remain unconvinced this would negatively affect spending.

Much as the original poster suggested, I know very few people who bother with Artifacts at all on their alts. And if they do, they often seem to reach a minimum threshold around 120 and then move on. They don't strive to achieve those higher level break-throughs (you know, the ones that would actually need them to buy Seals).

I know lots of people who spend money on artifacts. I do not know anyone who is spending money on artifacts for alts.

Making Artifacts into an account-bound function increases the value of the artifacts. That makes those purchases more appealing. That gives players on the fence a reason to make a purchase that they might not otherwise feel like is "worth it".

The actual flux of income is going to vary only in the following ways.

Income would be lost only from players who are spending money to level the exact same artifact on multiple characters. If you paid $100 to level up your Transformation Card on 2 different characters, that would have been reduced because you would have only had to do it once.

However, income would be gained from every alternative Artifact that a player levels. When a player who normally gets their three artifacts and then stops finds that they decide to instead level up a fourth Artifact to increase overall options for all characters across their entire account, that is extra income that was not normally received.

Additionally, and perhaps most relevant to this decision, comes the issue of trade-in. Current practice for many players who are spending large amounts of money on Artifacts (IE: players who want to use the new artifacts, use them immediately, and use them at their higher levels) is to feed their old artifact to the new one. With Artifacts being account-wide, you are not just trading in your Eye of Gemini on one character to level up a Transformation Card. You would be trading in your Eye of Gemini for ALL CHARACTERS. Not everybody is going to want to eliminate an Artifact across multiple characters. Different powersets like different combinations. Players start having a reason to level up more than just the three artifacts for their main as an option.

And every time a player does not cash in an Artifact because they don't want to destroy their old level 200 for half-xp, then that is literally half of an artifact worth of Nth Metal that they can sell that would otherwise be just given away for free.

I've got 2 Artifacts at 200 and another at 160. My main is a Healer. I have only seriously pursued Healer Artifacts. I don't DPS on that character, so I am not going to spend money on DPS Artifacts. And I am not going to spend money on an alt. But if I could do DPS artifacts on my main, and still use them on my alts, then I actually would be eager to level them. That's more spending, not less.

I can speak for myself on this statement, I have 3 alts just sitting in my account that I am refusing to play with because of these arts. They are already losing profit... I have stopped supporting by not spending anymore than just the monthly sub.

Both.

Or they will basically do what they always do and simplify content to where it wouldn't matter what level the artifact is like they always do.

Less of a headache, plus it would help newer players.

Avoid trying to treat your Alt like it’s a main.

On your alt rank up the artifact you feel is most important for your role and leave the other artifacts at lower levels

That is pretty much what I do for my alts.

Because they aren't account bound when they should be!

What was the excuse before Artifacts? Because that's nothing new.

If you want to talk excuses, "this isn't new" is the worst one of them.

But as a follow-on to the OP, I would actually expect the amount of Nth metal to bump the levels up higher for shared artifacts to be increased... so instead of the levels they have now you might need an extra 15-20% beyond what it's at now. That's actually not an unreasonable trade-off to be able to have access to all artifacts across the account. Perhaps each toon that wants access to it would need to "buy into" the ability to share artifacts. There are other things that can be done that would be reasonable if it means that we can level up a single artifact and have access to it for all toons on the account.