If all that they are going to be is for doing specialty TSs or for screwing around when you are not doing anything else, they will be fine. But for doing anything that will help your current group, they are completely inferior to an alt. Even the TS part is disappointing since you won't be able to do the TSs outside of that class. Sure, only allow that specific class skill up the TS and buy the AAs for it, but allow all the personas to have the skill level and do the combines after it is unlocked.
Of course if you plan on running multiple characters at once an alt is going to be superior to a persona but that isn't a problem. As for the class/race specific tradeskills I am guessing there is a lot of code that locks it to those classes and races. It isn't a simple matter of letting others use it. A good example of this is how you lose the tinkering skill if you change from a gnome to a different race.
Locking it to that class/race is not a lot of code going on; this is easily demonstrated by the fact that Research was given to all classes, there was more code put into that to reduce the skill caps for other classes than there was in allowing all classes to use it. It is a matter of changing the checkbox limiting to just X race or just X class. As it is, you still have to purchase the appropriate AAs to get increases, so only Gnomes would get the Master AAs; thus only Gnomes would get the +50% success rate and be able to go to 350. I will say that my suggestion that they could limit skilling up to just the class or race that can normally get the specialty TS would require new code to be implemented, I don't think that it would be that much as they already have things managing this with the reduction of other TSs from 201+ down to 200 for the Personas; having the cap be equal to the Skill level of the Persona with the specialty up to 300 should not require much more work than what already exists. Actually, they could simply tie the skill that other classes have to the Achievements that the class with the specialty has unlocked up to 300. You lose Tinkering solely because the skill was tied specifically to that race which your character no longer was. The exact same thing would happen if you changed the race of a gnome persona to something else. Your example has absolutely nothing to do with the coding, but instead because you have to have a gnome involved to do Tinkering. In what I am talking about, their is a gnome Persona which would be sharing its TS with the other Personas.
My example is showing that tinkering is tied to gnomes, alchemy is tied to shaman, and alchemy is changed to rogues. That is likely baked into the code which is different then when they added research to all the classes.
No, they are not different. They are the same. They said as much when they made all classes capable of doing reasearch. They also had to make special code to remove Tinkering when doing the race change. There were people who changed from a gnome and initially had the Tinkering skill still, they just were not allowed to do the combines because the check that is ran before the combine is done; which as I stated before is just a check box which could be changed. Tinkering, Alchemy, and Make Poison all function the same as Research and the other TSs; they just are restricted to class or race in the same way that Research was originally restricted by class. The only real change in code would be from having the check not happen when trying to use the TS container or make the item, but as the first step of a skill up check. Then only those classes would be able to skill up for that TS; and that is just to maintain the TSs being limited to those races or classes being present.
I'm still trying to figure out in what scenario this is useful. I'm thinking shaman for potions, enchanter to enchant stuff. But I haven't bought the expansion yet. Not only because money's tight but also because I was SO excited for APs and I feel deflated from what it turned out to be.
For people who potentially want to switch mains, it's pretty good. It's faster to level up a persona than to redo all your slayer, heroic AAs, tradeskills, clickies, etc. Keeping your current name is also a pretty nice benefit in that case. The original announcement said "Swap between different classes quicker". Maybe we all misinterpreted what that really meant. For people who want to maintain multiple useful characters and deploy them as needed, the downsides will often outweigh the benefits IMO. (It's also unclear whether they consider this feature "done" or whether they will add to it in the future. Adding a separate place for personas to store their gear and a way for personas to gain vitality or otherwise share XP would go a long way towards tipping the scale away from traditional alts.)
It seems to me that Alternate Personality is a bonus feature that may be useful to some and ignored by many. Having a Jekyll and Hyde plan to play with could be fun for some, particularly those who managed to complete content early in the expansion, but want interesting stuff to do until the next expansion. In my case as a more social player my mains will probably never use the feature, however I have an alt account of Telebinders, so, to have my wizards alt as druids will mean that twice as many way out locations will in time be available.
It will keep the players longer inside the game and inside an expansion. Just like alts, APs do reproduce the leveling hamster wheel and do give the players more to do. As many players usually are done with a new expansion in just three months, they could switch to an AP and repeat the procedure, without the need to do the progression tasks again. Four AP slots are unlocked already. Do the math: 3 months x 4 APs = 12 months. What a coincidence ! That does mean that players can be busy for twelve months instead of three, and expansions do get bloated up by the replay factor of APs, which is much cheaper to develop than adding more content like more zones.
You contradict yourself. As APs don't have to do the progessions tasks, there will be no repetition of the procedure. It is all done and finished. Only thing left is to level the APs and partially gearing them up.
It is not a contradiction because it does refer to the leveling procedure and not progression. Progression can still be repeated optionally.
I'd love to love AP but I can't. If I could switch them in a less restrictive way and have their equipped gear go to void storage when switching, I'd go all in. But as they are right now I see no reason at all to ever touch them. DPG killed a huge chance of making the game more fun and rewarding. I just don't feel like juggling the equipment of multiple AP in my bags and run to a fastcamp/homecity to even switch
The tasks can still be repeated for fun and they do grant task experience. It is not a feature for everyone just like most of the previous expansion bonus features including all the keyrings. The tradeskill depot is just for crafters, hoarders and bazaar sellers. But all those features can become usefull at a later point like in a few months or years. The problem with APs is mostly that the players do not really know what their use is, that they are seriously bugged and half-baked, and that Darkpaw has a very poor communication style and conflict management. That had led to wild speculations and fantasies that didn't come true.
The problem is that players were asking for things to make alts...which had already been leveled, geared, and AA'd in many instances...more useful with things like sharing gear (heirloom) and sharing achievements, but instead gave us a buggy, hastily thrown together system they could monetize that makes actual alts we've already spent time on LESS useful.
I can see AP as a movement aid for the non-teleport class mains. Switch to D/W to teleport, but a bot group could include a D/W. Maybe it is not the optimal configuration. Also, switch to rogue to sneak. I don't see using it myself. Maybe if I could consume my heard of ALTs.
The amount of experience you get from repeating those tasks is minimal and can easily be not worth the amount of work it takes to complete them the second time around. Just because you can do it multiple times doesn't mean it will help with the leveling process or be worth doing.
If alts are less usefull than bugged and half-baked APs, that would mean that APs are a successfull new feature.
You sound like a Bethesda/Fallout/Starfield CEO telling them players they're doing it wrong Pretty sure the players know that AP don't serve any use at all in their current form. They are inferior to an alt in every single way apart from shared flags/keyring. You might as well say they are basically useless. BUT: As mentioned, it only requires two things to make them great (...in my opinion.)
If I have 1 persona unlocker and unlock a mage on one server, will that be unlocked on another server or can I pick a different class?
