Alternate Persona Tip Window - Swapping Personas Requires Fast-Camp / Starting Zone

Note that it's not working like this in beta, and these tips are likely preliminary (Crafting Skills are listed twice in these notes). Also note that one of the notes in the Beta forums says

Because no answers have been provided to thread from early October where DPG asked for player questions, we can only guess at what the limitations will be from information like this help text.

I see a lot of people that, like myself, are planning on using Personas to enhance their EverQuest experience by adding flavor to their existing characters. For example, having my mage take on a rogue Persona for sneaking passed mobs and then summoning the group. Or having my shaman use a druid Persona to port the group around or pop Group Spirit of the Great Wolf and then revert to a shaman. According to this help text, these enhancing use-cases will be made cumbersome through the fast-camp requirement.

If I had to guess, I'm in the small minority of people who are planning on using Personas to do a true main-switch and have combat-effective Personas that are swapped between.

Some of you are be basing your purchase decision on using Personas as enhancers, so caveat emptor.

edit:
Persona swapping restricted to safe-zones / starter cities is confirmed.

Swapping in a fast camp or STARTING CITY may not let people do what the intend. Think about it that wording is specific.

The "starting city" thing is probably more for early stage TLP servers, since I don't believe there are any fast camp areas in the beginning of EQ. That doesn't really apply to Live servers, since there are plenty of fast camp zones. Nobody on Live is going to be going to starting cities to swap out.

Agree, but, for the purpose of creating a warrior as something you would need from say a druid in a group. Swapping in a non-fast camp or starting city to the warrior from the druid on live to take on a named doesn't look like that is possible with the wording currently. None of the latest xpacs are "starting cities" or fast camps zones. Going back to a fast camp zone to swap and fire back seems to defeat the intended purpose as it is written now. Maybe the instructions need to be clearer?

So basically it is not an enhancement for your character like many hoped (your example of swapping to rogue, running somewhere, then swapping to mage for COH... swapping to druid, porting somewhere then swapping to main...) but instead is an actual alt that shares your bank, TS, achievements, etc. I said it weeks ago, this AP is going to disappoint a lot of players. Not having it be an enhancement is one such disappointment for some.

It will be good if someone wants to start a new alt character on their main account. Now you don't have to redo all the achievements and progression from earlier. As I am someone who has no desire (or time) of starting another alt, AP is not so appealing.

It has a ways to go from the help descriptions to do what I think the understanding is and some understanding that the toon needs to be lvl'd. A faq of how they work would be helpful.

If you need to be in a fast camp zone, to swap a persona, I'm not sure I'm gonna continue to play this game. That is such a useless feature!!!! That is an alt, what's the difference, you can share a flag?? I hope that is incorrect. They could make personas so amazing, or completely worthless. In beta you can swap personas, as long as you are Out of combat. I REALLY hope that stays like it is in Beta, if not it's an absolute waste of time, 100%.

It sounds like the help notes need to be updated to match Beta Micker99

Well, that’s terrible that it’s going to share lockouts between Personas.

Disappointing - very disappointing. Alternate personas could have been so cool and useful, but as it looks now seems pretty useless, in fact almost pointless? Its basically just an alt that share your name? (which is a benefit to some, but not for all)

You may just as well just level an alt, since they dont share EXP or AA with your main, and also the personas:
- share lockouts with your main
- share vitality, so you cant use one of the characters to boost the vitality of the offline one.
- doesnt share faction gains (so in many cases will mean you need to flag twice)
- can only swap in fast camp zones, so you might just as well log out and log on to your alt anyway.
- Shared inventory - may or may not be a bonus, depending on what you carry, sharing clickies is nice, but you need to carry your other personas gear with you taking up space. Sharing big bags is nice, but again...you need that space. (and you could shared bank transfer those bags anyway)

This type of restriction would take away so much usefulness of personas that they probably aren't worth releasing relative to the complexity of implementation. Just getting persona switching working is complex, and then add in all the issues about quests, armor, achievements, etc. that need to be worked out. This is going to have a big impact on the EQ code and take up a lot of development time now and in the future. Only allowing switching in certain zones means it's only going to be used by a relatively small number of people and in very limited situations. The development and support time is essentially wasted. It would be better to put this type of development effort towards something which would have a wider impact so there is a bigger payoff.

Hoping that Tip window information, just isn't correct. I can see if they made you be in a fast camp zone to start a persona(even then why?), but to switch? An alt would be much better, at least you could camp them where you are exping. With a persona, you would have to go to a fast camp zone, switch, go back to your group, buff or whatever then do the same in reverse lol. No thanks, if that what personas are, then just STOP any further development time, because that would be worthless.

The more that is released about these, the more disappointing they are. Feels like a complete bait and switch gimmick. Would've been better just having your alts share flags/keys and making items heirloom.

You can still do these things just that it will take a little more work. Swap around to do the buffs in a fast camp/starting city, port to the zone you want, have 3 members be rogues to sneak to the camp and place a campfire, and finally swap to the desired class for grouping and campfire back to the spot. Granted this won't work until PoP and fellowships are released but it is a way to deal with the limitations that are in place.

The one redeeming factor would be if each Persona counted towards a character spot for things such as campfires or requesting DZs and stuff

I was looking forward to

6 hour raid fights per fight

Was looking forward to tanking as a warrior.
All my disks down, 2nd tank your turn.
Camping my warrior for paladin, they have all their disks up and full endurance and everything, brb in 30 seconds.
I tank now. Go ahead camp and swap 2nd tank.
My disks down again, 2nd tank your turn.
Camping to bring in my SK, they have all their disks up and full endurance and everything, brb in 30 seconds.
I tank now. Go ahead camp and swap 2nd tank.
My disks down again, 2nd tank your turn.
Camping to bring back the warrior, disks should be back up, they have all their disks up and full endurance and everything, brb in 30 seconds.

Was looking for to raiding and.
Healer cleric out of mana. Backup healer cover for me.
Camping and be back in 30 seconds with druid.

Boss at 20%
All dps, camp now and come back with wizard.
Mana burn time.

Was looking forward to complex raids.
Where there are phases 30 people have to switch to SK to do DT within 1 minute otherwise fail.
Then another phase 30 people have to use AP shaman, raid boss hp goes down per disease DoT on them, per disease DoT affects their hp, not how much damage those DoTs do.

Then another phase switching AP midfight again, paladins, stun time, gotta maintain 50+ stuns 6 seconds or longer for 5 minutes to get past that phase.

Was looking forward lots of camping and switching even more complex raids.

This would be a good use of personas even with limited swap. If your fellowship is full, being able to add different classes with personas would be a way of making your fellowship more useful in special cases like this. But given the difficulty and complexity of implementation, I'm not sure if these kinds of special uses justify the effort. This is a big change. If they are not used a lot, then it's a lot of effort going to waste. And add in the effort it will take the players to level up their personas. Even if the personas are useful in special cases, the players may not want to spend the time to level up the persona for the odd time they would need it. An actual alt seems like it would have much more utility and benefit to the player than a persona that can only swap in certain zones. Of course, a "zone-limited-swap" persona will be able to do some things that an alt can't, but it seems like too much effort for whatever those persona benefits would be.

With having to be ooc your lookin at 15 min alone of just sitting your toon waiting to go ooc to swap those 3 times.

Just missing a word or two. It's clear that refers to general tradeskills will be shared (Blacksmithing, Brewing, etc), but Alchemy & Tinkering & Poisonmaking won't be.

Was thinking of having a teleporter persona but I guess that wont work. Might as well just run rather than jump through hoops.