If you have the time this is a fun game if not....then its cheaper to buy a game and play it for 6 mo and get your money out of it.
Corrections sorry since I can't edit now.....mage/healer/tank epic 2.0 and in the workings of just starting scout epic 2.0 that I started last week and should have my epic here very shortly. Also on the factions I know you are wanting to say 3 factions for JW but really doesn't take that much time to do all 3 compared to other factions alone.
I think I wrote it already, but I like to remember again. The timesinks are all for Epic 2 and asencion. For raiders it is necessary, but with gear of solo proving ground and the new weekly you have an explosion of stats. Add some mastercrafted purple adornments and heardbond. You reach easily 20 k pot, around 700 k ability modifier and 30 to 45 favor. This is absolutly enough to run a KA heroic dungeon and it takes you 20 hours in total, not per day! You can reach these values now without stepping one time in Obulus frontier. If you want to raid, ok it is easier now, but it takes still some time. If you are a casual the game is quick and easy today.
Getting a toon it's epic 2.0 is not the real issue. While that takes some time you can do most of the work in a week or 2. The issue is trying to then get that toon up to speed for raiding or high end play. Ascension 40 levels about 392m xp if you got a good group you can grind at about 3m/hr = 130 or so hours to get all 4 classes to 10. lets hope you have enough riles and status to keep buying those tears to keep this rate up. PG runs you need at least 925 coins for ring and adorn - can be done in about 8 hrs if you have enough alts. Ethereal coins for main 4 expert runs a day = a good group takes about an hour. A mediocre group 2hrs. Ya you got 30 pot, but you have 0 CB and 0 Stam increases need to grind them out too. So by my calculations if you want to bring a toon up to raid/high end content specs you can plan on spending some where on the order of 70 days putting in 2hrs a night on this one alt and 1 hr a night on main to get its ethereal coins. I hope you don't plan on doing anything else in the game for the next 2 and 1/2 months except work on this alt.
True, I've done all this. I know what it takes to be high end but if you are playing high end you are playing more than just "casually" like the OP is. It doesn't take very long to hit 10-15 points into CB, infuse some gear, and hit your 4150+ CB cap. With the 2.0 orange and PG ring orange, that boosts hp well enough for heroics for any casual out there. Here are the points I don't agree with that the OP is mad about: 1) Alts are dead - not true, I and many other I know are starting to play their tanks/heals/dps classes with all the newer things that came out recently to make alts a little more viable (not at the same level as our mains but like I agreed with someone earlier in this thread, it SHOULD be that it takes some time to catch up to mains - however, still not impossible to do heroics). 2) Crying that the JW TIMELINE (that happens to have 3 factions) is too long - First off, as I put in caps, it is considered the timeline you have to do, NOT faction count overall. Secondly, the time it takes to do it, even playing casually, shouldn't take more than 1 day...2 days max (playing 2-4hours/day). 3) Faction bauble is worthless - If it still takes out only 1 faction for fighters, I wouldn't call this "worthless". I bet it would take you longer doing Shields of Maldura faction than it would take you doing all 3 factions in JW. I promise you it would take you way longer doing Bastion faction than it would take you to do the 3 factions in JW. I promise you it would take longer doing the Othmir faction than it would take you to do the 3 factions in JW. <insert same sentence here for Scout's Rime>.
I am pretty sure that next expansion will also have a Collectors Edition for like 250€ again where you can claim a bauble granting you 50 tithe points in pot/cb and sta (one per character/one per account) <-- depends on daily greedfactor.
I think what people are missing here with the Epic 2.0 and their alts is that this is supposed to be something very, very special. This is not supposed to be something that every alt of every player will complete. Not because it can't be done, but rather because it takes a very significant amount of time to complete. This in and of itself makes the weapon special, and it should be. If you do it on 25 alts, then you deserved it on 25 alts. If you did it on your main and on no alts, then you deserved it on 1 main. The mentality of "it exists therefore I deserve to have it" is a failure in societal beliefs that needs to go the way of the dodo bird. Stop making everything in to a participation award, and accept the fact that you don't get what you don't put the effort in to obtaining. If you don't like doing what is required to get the reward, then you quite simply don't do it. I don't like walking a mile during lunch every day, but I do it because I know I will for ever be over weight if I do not. I don't just sit around and complain that exercising sucks and should be eliminated from the requirement to losing weight. This is what is called reality. It's not a hard concept. People just don't want to accept it.
You should have just stopped at this point. The rest is just... Recent changes have relaxed the situation that existed where working on alts was an excruciating grindfest, so that makes me happy.
The population of the servers speak for itself. The path this game has taken is down the route of dead. I personally will not return to eq2 until they scrap this time gate junk. People play their class for a reason. Ascensions are rediculous. Spells are all pay to win with grandmasters. RIP eq2 for now. No one will make alts that are worth playing unless they can cheat to do it or sit at the cpu 24/7. All these guys for this system use those cheat stuffs out there.
First of all, I have never played end game content and I have had fun playing this game for years. I only play regularly on 2 - 3 toons at once. What is the point of having 2-3-4 different accounts with 20-30-40 different toons on each? I have wondered this and have asked around and get different answers. For instance, do you need 5 Sk's to have one for each of your five favorite races? Or perhaps a male and female version of each? I would just like to know, from a casual gamers perspective, it seems like a gigantic waste of precious play time.
I don't waste time on 'end game' content any more either. I haven't felt like putting up with all the baggage in years in most of the games I play. 'End game' is actually mostly irrelevant to a lot of the people I've interacted with in regards to some of this. Here's the best, most honest response to that question. "Because I want to." Or, perhaps, "Because it amuses me to do so." Personally, I like having two of the same class, each on different accounts, for RP reasons. But the actual reason different people do different things with their time and money is their business. Some of us have a lot more time to play than most do. Most of us have come to be accustomed to a certain standard and consistency of content progression over the years. Many of us are not happy with the rather dramatic change in how the devs seem to think we should be playing the game in the recent expansion because it goes against what we've become accustomed to. It's not much of a stretch to see why some people would complain or express concern about different aspects of the changes even if other players don't understand their play style.
Personally, I like having a variety of characters that I can run through heroic zones. Not the kind of numbers you're talking about, but around a dozen on 2 accounts. Sometimes it's so I can fill a class that's needed in the group, but it's mainly so I can get more coins and loot (when they're heirloom) for my main(s). It used to be pretty common that people would run a half dozen or more toons a night through the dailies. Maybe KA was designed to stop this type of "farming", idk, but it seems that it did. Grouping heroics has dropped off significantly since KA launched. I think it's due to the disparity between characters deity points (potency primarily) and resolve requirements. These things have now been pretty much handed to us with the summer weekly and FG Heritage rewards on live, so hopefully more people will return to running heroic groups again. Epic 2.0 and Ascension levels can almost be put in a different category, since these aren't really needed for heroics. For raiding, you definitely want these. In my experience though, I've never maintained more than a few toons that were raid worthy.
Aezazal, I agree with most of what you are saying. I personally would run 3-5 toons through an expansion. Tank/DPS/Healer/utility that way I had a toon that could fill in any needed role in a group. For the most part I was also able to keep these toons effective for fill in spots in most raid situations. That is until KA came out. The time it takes with the gating on ascension xp and the nerf to xp grinding I have found it very difficult to keep my Main and 1 alt in up to raid status, and my alt just barely qualifies for t3 raiding. As the mains grind out Ethereal and PG equipment/adorns and all the stuff that goes with it I find he is falling further behind the curve. My only hope is that with the next expansion they correct this issue. If not I see everyone that plays high end content being stuck on one toon and one toon only unless they can devote 4-5 hours a day to game play. Switching mains will require months of grinding and work to get caught up to be an effective raid toon.
I haven't seen anyone claiming they want their 30 or 40 alts to have max ascension and epic 2.0's, so not sure why you'd even bring that up in this thread.
I would like my alts to have one maxxed ascension, since that is where the dps is for the zone and likely the next expac The level 5 boost helps bc it means I only have to spend roughly 6 to 8 days per toon grinding the same zones, which is less eyegougingly boring than 12 to 15 days. However, I am still working on my main x4 (I am on 3rd class) and every time I log in knowing the only thing I am doing is running KA/ToT daily missions I want to cry and it removes the desire to buy the next expac. So yeah. Timegates ftl.
