Devs, can you explain personas please?

Can we have an honest conversation of what the vision is for personas? When would you choose to use it? In what scenario is it better than an alt?

We have tons of comments on what people dislike, what it could have been, what it isn't. But I honestly don't understand what it IS. I got the expansion for Christmas. I am curious to try it, but I'm not sure why try it. It's like an alt that has to keep gear it can't use in the bags.

Congratulations on being the 100th person to ask this question (counting Beta).

and likely the 100th to ignore the answers

It's an alter-ego that retains the flags, inventory, all/all gear and mercs, of the original character. But the alter-ego starts at lvl 1.

In most situations, swapping between main-persona is also faster than logging an alt in.

Anyway, this is not a new idea, many RPG use this concept for NG+ content.

A feature to advertise and make money from.

How is it faster when you have to go back to a non combat zone to switch?

this thing was a joke from the start, it does nothing to improve the game, and is actually less useful than an alt.

if you bought this expac just for this feature, you are a sucker.

The official answer in an interview was, that it is a feature for players that do often create new characters.

Except it isn't. I make alts to do quests, many of which are unrepeatable. So I cannot play a persona as I would an alt.

Alts still win hands down for me.

can we get a solution to certain things are only obtainable through achieves IE the bard slow weapon in RoF can we please make these weapons obtainable through a quest only if ya have it originally on your main character or at the very least make an NPC to turn it into to recieve the weapon for said class

My takeaway from that interview was that instead of just adding 2 more character slots (which would bring the total max to 16, one for every class), they chose to waste time making a buggy, limited system so they could monetize it.

I had to look up what NG+ was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Game_Plus

My guess is that Daybreak saw something similar with other games and decided it would be good for EQ.

That's likely how we got Achievements, Collectables, Overseer, and other stuff.

No mysterious conspiracy, no strange midnight meetings. Just, "Hey, other games use this NG+ thing, how about we bring it to EQ?".

Were there thoughts of increasing income involved? Of course, this is a business. I want Daybreak to make money so they can keep EQ alive.

As the saying goes, "We don't print newspapers to make money, we make money to print newspapers". I don't want Daybreak to improve EQ to make money, I want them to make money to improve EQ.

I do not think Personas in their present form are something I'm interested in.

Because you are measuring "faster" for a different process than the one DBG meant.

Don't feel bad, most of us did.

What goes "faster" is the process of changing your mind about what class you want to play. Maybe not permanently, but at least for a while ("a while" is not the next 15 minutes, the rest of today's session, or anything like that. I think the useful timeframe here is days/weeks/months).

With personas, you start with all your flags, tradeskills, achievements, useful clickies, etc, etc. So this new character, which you are supposedly devoted to for now, can get going much more quickly. And, they can totally SKIP timesinks which would be required (or at least really nice to have), letting you more quickly get back to the content you WANT to be doing.

Really, it's not a bad feature. It just isn't the feature I wanted, when I heard about it. Like you, I thought it meant, hey swap to this other class, right here where I'm at, get whatever use out of it that I want, and then swap back (or maybe to some third class, who knows). THAT'S a feature I'd be happy to have.

For the 734,982nd time...

IMHO alternate personas are great for players who want to main change/create an alt and do not want to take the time to redo slayer, hero fort/vit/resolution, expansion merc/partisans, TS, obtaining various augments and clickies, etc. The time saved from having to do all of the above (especially when your main is max on all of the above) is very helpful.

If you don't fit that criteria, then alternate persona is just not for you. As for me, who has a main and two alts and can only play 2 of the 3 characters, it is not for me. Unless something happens that I get everything done on my second alt, maybe then I will consider it. But that is many many months from now

New Game Plus is a great concept, but got implemented really bad into EQ. Account-wide achievement unlocks (for the current server only) including PoP, TDS, and other progression are the way to go. Instead of adding AP slots, Darkpaw would only have to raise the cap of buyable characters slots which is currently limited to three.

Actually the cap is 6 additional character slots. 3 using DBG cash and another 3 by using loyality points.

But imagine the consequences of making all achievements account wide. We would loose the ability to level any alt passed 110 through the achievement xp.

With the personas we at least can decide ourselves if we want the achievent xp or rather the shared achievements.

Would be an opportunity to ditch progression by one-time achievements which many players don't like anyway.
Let's smash two flies with one flap !

However, when looking closer it seems that leveling by one-time achievements is a well planned dastardly step and part of the AP concept by spoiling experience gain by killing mobs and then nudging the players into APs.

Whatever the vision for personas is, I urge DPG to consider whether the current implementation fulfils that vision.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...d-well-buy-the-new-expac.294567/#post-4267612

I wrote out this reply a week back or so. I love the system so far. If you already have 2-3 alts and have things accomplished, I'm still at a loss as to why people are on here complaining about a feature they'd never need/use anyways.

Because, as I wrote in a reply about this a couple weeks back, we're tired of "features" that we don't use, and don't care about. It would be nice if they added features with more appeal.

Literally, of the last 8 expac features, the only one I've used at all is the faction UI. Keyrings mean nothing to me, Dragon's Hoard is useless if you're storing items for easy access across all your characters (that's where housing shines), and the TS depot looked great >if< they had followed through with the guild version (again, see the comment about access for all your chars).