Alt viability concerns

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Wgrace, Feb 15, 2023.

  1. Wgrace Active Member

    Coming to the realization that having alts is more or less a pipe dream if you care at all about your characters being strong. Please for the love of god:

    Make mercenaries, mounts, familiars, and all of their training levels account-wide or at the very least just keep them all heirloom and let their training level carry over when you move them around between characters.

    Having to re-level the same mount/familiar/mercenary which takes absolutely forever pretty much makes it impossible without spending a completely disgusting amount of money on expediting the training with DBC.

    I understand this up-sale trickery is probably making money, but so would attracting the occasional new player and not bleeding subs as a result of people quitting over pay to win crap like this. I'm not asking for the training and research systems to be abolished; I realize that's a fantasy that will never happen, but I really don't think that allowing it to carry over to your alts is too much to ask. I know I'd play a lot more and frankly I'd probably even spend some money in the cash shop if I felt like I'd ever have more than one viable character and I know there are a ton of other alt-a-holics out there like me who would too.
  2. Terrius Well-Known Member

    I'm definitely the exception that proves the rule, as I have 3 toons fully merc'd, Familiar'd, Mount'd, at RoR H2 resolve done without DBC.

    Even from the above position I wholly agree, it's disheartening to have alts this year especially with how mandatory getting all your stats just perfect is. At least in VoV there was a semblance of "you can have alts, they just might underperform a bit". In RoR it's more "Alts are useless unless you are lucky/have a lot of DBC".

    The mount/merc/familiar grind isn't just bad for alts, it's bad for returning players too. I really wish there was some sort of catch-up mechanic for getting them leveled up, for alts and new/returning players.
    Tyrval, Wgrace and Tyger like this.
  3. Wgrace Active Member



    I can't even imagine doing that without DBC. The timers on some of the levels for researched/trained stuff is like literally months for a single level up lol.. You must have just recently gotten there after starting at the launch of VoV @_@
  4. Melkior Well-Known Member

    The longest training time is 20 days for a level. It may feel like months but it's actually less than 1. So not literally at all! Overseers gives you reducers. I have never paid DBC for a single upgrade and every alt I play regularly maxes their familiar, merc, and mount each expansion using those. I just run all 20+ missions (10 current tier, 10 or more charged) every single day. It's slow going in the beginning but you eventually build a stash of them for the next expansion.
  5. FuRiouSOne Well-Known Member

    Im starting to question this stash you speak of. The only stash I have is 20+ barding slot unlocks lol. My mount potion stash is growing fine but merc and familiar stash non existent 3 months in, new expac is 9 months away...

    Im lvl 37 overseer and do my 20 missions per day too.
    Melkior likes this.
  6. Melkior Well-Known Member

    Isn't RNG fun? Oh wait, no, it isn't. I'd show you a screen shot toon by toon, but it's way too much of a pain to host all those things elsewhere to make that happen. I will say the fact you aren't level 40 tells me that this is a relatively new endeavor for you. I've been doing this since OS were released. It varies week to week as all RNG items do, over the course of the year you will get them. Especially when you aren't at a deficit needing to level current ones.

    One other note. Everyone has different thoughts on this. For me, I have found the reduces always drop from the bonus crate, not the initial one. So I maximize my bonus chances by running as many Celestial and Fabled quests as possible each day, and fill in the rest with legendary. Other than the bonus quests, I NEVER run the treasured ones. Also be sure to use your celestial mercs to max the bonus success chance. I jump from toon to toon to make sure every one is run daily with a celestial merc. I have enough copies of the agents to make that work.
  7. FuRiouSOne Well-Known Member

    I did most my lvlling in VoV, was 30ish start of RoR. Yes I do 5x fabled charged (rotate 5 per day due to cooldowns) and 10x celestial/fable non charged daily and have most all agents to cover them on 3 toons running all missions with celestial mercs. Found doing fable charged do give more pots then legendary due to the 60%+ I can get for bonus chest,
    Melkior likes this.
  8. Berserkerkitten Well-Known Member

    I mean, there's also training your spells and skills to anything above expert level, which I'm pretty sure can take well over 20 days. Broker isn't really an option with everything costing millions upon millions, with the most valuable stuff never showing up there, anyway, because people auction it off for literal billions.

    I'd love to have more stuff account-wide. In Guild Wars 2, every mount, every wardrobe item, every pet, it's all account-wide. It's easily the most alt-friendly MMO I've ever played.
    Kattt and Aethos like this.
  9. Moss Well-Known Member

    By the way I've noticed a huge drop in the overseer reducers drop rate for the last 2 weeks.

    I've done the same overseers quests every day for months and never before I noticed so low drop rate, going from 5-10 a week to 1-2.

    I noticed it on two different accounts for two consecutive weeks and I doubt it is rng related. Overseers were probably considered too generous for the marketing team.
    FuRiouSOne likes this.
  10. Terrius Well-Known Member



    Oh yeah, completely forgot about this. Indeed without ancient spells at least for your main ones that are the most beneficial/do the most DPS, you can say goodbye to any hope of being effective on alts. :( I was very lucky in VoV so my alts are pretty much all GM/ancient'd.
    Berserkerkitten likes this.
  11. Terrius Well-Known Member


    Well one alt had Molor at lvl 20, so that meant the new mercs were equal in stats and I got to skip one merc worth of pots. Everything else was just all overseer potions, I just wish Overseers weren't so tedious and annoying.
  12. Melkior Well-Known Member

    I do them on 2 accounts as well. And I've even noted markedly different drop rates between them for periods of time. Right now I don't seem to notice any dropoff myself, but I can track for a week and report back.
  13. Hartsmith Well-Known Member


    That totally bites, but honestly my experience has not had any reduction in them. So that would suggest rng. However, the status baubles from the Heritage quest has seen a reduction in the size of bauble, going nearly a week in a row of just the smallest amount. :/
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone and Pixistik like this.
  14. Athenia Well-Known Member

    Overseer reducers are truly RNG, and RNG is a cruel mistress. I just finally got a couple of them after a long dry spell.

    I agree that upgrading your spells above Expert has become incredibly more difficult compared to how it used to be. Years ago there were many more players so Masters were more easily obtainable. Now not so much - they're very expensive on the broker when they do show up. My main has been slow-to-upgrade given the cost of everything, and my alts are stuck at Expert because of that.

    I wish Expert would be enough in these Heroic 1s, but it's not looking like they are.

    This has been my experience. The course you need to take for each character to get them playable in RoR H1s is just so heavy with multiple steps and sources you need to go down in order to have a hope of being viable. Those steps aren't straightforward either. They're scattered in multiple points all throughout the game, so much so I made a player made book to help others avoid the absolute overwhelm I felt coming back.

    Even with knowing where to go though, you're still at the mercy of waiting for Overseer RNG to grant you the merc/mount/familiar reductions you need for H1 viability.

    When I say viability I mean basic, bare-bones, you're actually useful on a base level. I got my healer up just past resolve with the best things I had with her at the time, and I tried backup healing a group yesterday. Well, I wasn't even a backup healer - she couldn't do anything. I was there for cures and buffs and it was super embarrassing on my part.

    I think I'm just blown away by how brutally useless your character is and how difficult it is to try and reach minimum stat requirements. Not even talking resolve here - mainly crit bonus and fervor.

    Fully agree. While I do appreciate the layers that are brought to the game, they've become unruly and are really starting to become a detriment to the game.
  15. Heresford Active Member

    What do you hope to be able to do with your alts and with how many of them? I haven't grouped since the days when tanking a pickup group could be done with a master crafted geared toon using a mix of experts and masters as long as he knew how to pull and hold aggro. I kept a Ranger, Wizard, and Templar around to rotate, but I wouldn't expect to be able to do any of that now. I'm able to rotate between them all doing solo content, but I think that if I wanted to group with one of each class, I'd probably be ready sometime around August.

    I'm geared up enough on my main to give it a try, but I'm not sure my tanking skills would be up to the current state of the game. My Templar now is maxed out on buttons to put abilities on. I'm not sure what it would take for me to feel comfortable grouping with him again.
  16. Wgrace Active Member


    I was imagining spell research when I saw months in my head, although 20 days is still pretty steep.
  17. Wgrace Active Member

    I mean... I really don't think it's too much to hope for to be able to do at least ALL content minus raiding on every alt that you finish the campaign on.

    The sad thing is that probably sounds like insanity to veteran EQ2 players at this point, but to every other gamer out there playing ANY other mmorpg, if they read this they'd be like "well yeah wtf duh". It is truly absurd and in fact it isn't even normal for EQ2 if you think about it. The vast majority of all content across all expansions wasn't like this. It's only recent expansions this b.s. started.

    So, to answer your question I want the option of doing any and all content on any alt that I reach max level on and finish the campaign with after getting myself in at least solo instance gear and expert spells (Assuming I earn the appropriate upgrades along the way starting at the easiest heroic content up through the hardest obviously). This is an entirely reasonable expectation.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  18. FuRiouSOne Well-Known Member

    Same...
  19. Heresford Active Member


    I'm not sure where the groups do and don't overlap, but I wonder if the high-level, end game raider crowd would disagree with this. I say this because I think getting the game to this state would require letting go of some items and abilities that were achieved over time.

    From my perspective, I absolutely agree with you. That was the status quo back in 2009 when I was still grouping regularly. I was playing 5 alts at end game level and I could have swapped any of them in and out in a group. Of course, this was before mercenaries, before mounts that could be leveled, and I think before most of the attributes beyond the 5 core ones. There were single adornment slots, etc, etc. You get the idea. I've only ever tried out one other MMORPG, but the mechanics, gear, and abilities are much, much simpler. I think going back to Echoes of Faydwer when (I think) AAs were introduced, all those items that originally gave you a bit of a performance edge quickly became absolutely necessary to be viable in the game. Over the years many of these things have been introduced, and now all of them are essential to successful grouping. I've said this over and over, but I wouldn't introduce anyone new to this game unless they were more interested in questing than grouping, and were willing to spend their game time playing lower level content for a good long while.

    Right now I rotate between my main, seven level 125 alts, and one level 90 alt. I spend a good deal of time cycling between them to gear them up and level their mercs, mounts, and familiars to end game rather than playing them, just so they are ready to go when I do take them through the RoR timelines. Getting them to Heroics isn't even a goal.
    Kattt and AOE1 like this.
  20. Athenia Well-Known Member

    I just hope to do heroic content and help fill groups since the player population right now is quite small. I'm working on two alts so I'll have my main as a tank, then healer and mage DPS alts.

    That's pretty much it, lol. I do try and be at my best (I'm now finishing levelling an adorner for easier access to runes) but I'm not aiming for anything hardcore at all.