Will alts have a place in Project Gorgon?

[Oxlazr]

So, time and time again I revisit PG and find I don't have anything in particular to do; I realise there's a lot of options out there, but I guess after an interlude the connections I once had with a particular character, what its goals and my intentions were, are gone.

With orcs and fae in the works, I wonder, will people actually play these characters as alts? Or will people stick with their current mains, or perhaps make new mains and forsake their old character, as I have done in the past?

As it stands - you can do everything on one character - even the permanent decisions are not mutually exclusive. I realise I can revisit old content with a new skillset on the same character - but it's not the same as actually playing a new character. I have all these.. perks (increased power, regeneration, a slew of helpful abilities, as well as all the non-grind content already completed) - I can't recapture the experience in a meaningful way.

And that's a bit of ashame, too - especially given how much variety has been given to the newbie experience (South Serbule, and the island, for example).

I realise that some people simply enjoy playing one character - and they'd like to do everything they can on that character; that's perfectly fine. I have no intention of hindering them for the sake of alts being meaningful - but to that end, what can be done to make creating alts meaningful in a way that doesn't hinder players that wish to stick to one character?

I had a couple ideas in the past - some kind of league system - on a 3 month rotation or some such - where characters created in this league are subject to special rules (I.e. true hardcore, excluding death by falling through the map, or characters created in this league spawn as random animals and can never remove that form.) Naturally I've considered the logistics, and this could be purely community driven if enough players were up for the challenge.

The second involved some kind of "quirk" system - when you create a character, you can pick a set of options that hinders that character in some way to provide a benefit of some sort. (Not a good example - but i.e. your character deals 25% less damage, but gains NPC favour 100% faster).

Anyway, I don't intend to provoke discussion on the pros and cons of permanency, or in any way denying others certain skills in favour of making alts more purposeful. I'd like to think there's ways we can have the best of both worlds.

What do you guys think?

[cr00cy]

Well, i think one way to make alts more appelign to make, and play, are mentioned several times specializations. If, for example, blacksmith coudl specialize in either weaponsmithign or armorsmithing, and you couldnt pick both on one character this woudl be one way to make alts more appleing.

Other way would be to lock progress behind certaina ctivity that is limited per character. So for example: to progress(levle up/buy reipes/skills) skilslet you need certain item. But you can obtain only limited amount per character in certain time period. We alredy ahve something similar (winterprize).

Yet another way would be to allow our characters to "work" when we dotn aply thme. Somethign simialr to hang outs, but tied to crafting/gatherign proffesions. We coudl basicly set our charcter to eitehr gather mats, or craft somethign when w play another.

[ShieldBreaker]

I play mainly as one character, and have not taken any permanent choices. I like that on my alt I only focus on 2 skills, instead of all skills. I have wondered if am I really suppose to be dwarf and when the dwarves arrive I'll switch to one most of the time. Depends on fun factor mostly I guess.

You would have to be careful to strike a balance so that playing as one character doesn't feel like you are missing out or at a huge disadvantage compared to people running alts as well. But if encouraging players to work their alts, keep them around longer and maybe induced them to get VIP memberships that would be ideal for everyone.

Also choices are probably going to be exclusive and the future races more unique than current ones. So Fairies have those quirks built in, they can fly from the get go, not sure what their downside is but it is planned to be there, we just haven't heard what it is yet. So the quirk idea kind of already applies to the new races.
They also get new starting areas so it will hopefully give you the experience of really playing as a new character again.

[Oxlazr]

cr00cy

I'm not sure the specialisation thing would go over well with many players, as this ruins the "everything on one character" aspect some people enjoy.

The winterprize situation is a decent consideration, but it feels like "more work" rather than more fun; making a character to get timed resources again would quickly lead to player burnout, in my opinion.

Finally, the work solution - while cool in theory - essentially forces players to have alts to be competitive, which isn't exactly what I think we're after here.


I'm concerned that the new races won't really make alts all that much more appealing - I think the problem lies with the huge amount of skills - and how many of them are fairly essential to level up for any character. If people play the new races, I feel they'll be rerolling a new main, rather than making alts to play around with.

The trouble, I think, comes from skills like alchemy, fishing and the like (skills that give power or HP)- and whichever is relevant to your core skills (i.e. the ones that give bonuses to combat skills) being less fun to level a second time merely for that purpose. Your alt character will always have access to your main character - and this might not be a good thing - as it leaves those skills feeling especially tedious to level as you're not achieving any practical progress with them beyond those few skill points you're trying to pick up.

It makes it difficult to really commit to an alt, though I think a few things could be done - Maybe some sort of character trait that makes it so you passively obtain those bonus levels at certain thresholds (or through quests & exploration) rather than crafting, but that character cannot craft at all.

A sort of.. adventure-only character. I think that would make alts a lot more playable, at least.

[Hood]

Alts have a stronger place in the game if the Storage Update (soon(tm)) expands or shares all storage across all characters.

[Spiritfingers]

I can't think of any reasons why I would play an alt. I use one alt for storage only. There is no way on this good earth I'll be playing as a Fae or Orc and have to do all the favor I've done again. Maybe others will use alts for role playing purposes or they just can't stand the way their character looks and wouldn't mind starting everything over on a new race.

[Hood]

I can't think of any reasons why I would play an alt. I use one alt for storage only. There is no way on this good earth I'll be playing as a Fae or Orc and have to do all the favor I've done again. Maybe others will use alts for role playing purposes or they just can't stand the way their character looks and wouldn't mind starting everything over on a new race.

I started over bc I couldnt stand the way my character looked. Many will do this just for that reason alone. But the Orc and Fairy and Dwarf races are all supposed to have very attractive and wildly beneficial racial bonuses that we will want to begin again.

[Spiritfingers]

I started over bc I couldnt stand the way my character looked. Many will do this just for that reason alone. But the Orc and Fairy and Dwarf races are all supposed to have very attractive and wildly beneficial racial bonuses that we will want to begin again.

Are any bonuses going to be added to current races? Unless the new races have extremely powerful racial bonuses, do you think anyone who has maxed cheesemaking, or poetry or has become soul mates with almost every npc will start completely over? I guess you could use your other characters with maxed skills to make stuff and then play the new racial toon for combat only. Eric would have to make transferring items between characters on an account way easier than it is now.

[Hood]

From the little that Citan has said in the past, the new races will have very noticeable benefits. I believe Fairies can fly, for example.

[alleryn]

I guess you could use your other characters with maxed skills to make stuff and then play the new racial toon for combat only.
This is the approach that makes sense to me.


The trouble, I think, comes from skills like alchemy, fishing and the like (skills that give power or HP)- and whichever is relevant to your core skills (i.e. the ones that give bonuses to combat skills) being less fun to level a second time merely for that purpose.

Eric's suggested that there will be multiple paths to reach the max of 125: I think i saw this somewhere on the blog spelled out more plainly but since i can't find that at the moment, it's also mentioned here: http://stratics.com/threads/project-gorgon-official-news-june-status-report.300137/

(My plan is that there will actually be more than 25 synergy levels out there for each combat skill… but only the first 25 levels of each skill will count.)
My suggestion would be to also put a cap on bonus power/HP/etc earned from non-combat skills. This way you wouldn't have to level everything on an alt to get "full benefits". You'd just have to level enough to hit the bonus power/etc cap and to earn your 25 bonus synergy levels.

[Spiritfingers]

After learning how the direction of the game is becoming more clear, I'd like to change my comments. There are tons of reasons to play alts now with ever increasing cost of leveling combat skills past 60. It would be way more affordable to have a healing spec toon, a tank toon and a dps toon. The tank/heal specs would be more affordable up to lvl 60 content.

[lilibat]

Since I was getting frustrated I was thinking about coming back and playing my druid alt but I don't fancy doing all the crafting again. I love crafting but doing it over would be zero fun.

[ShieldBreaker]

I wonder if the distilled knowledge we usually get off of Pennoc is actually something that we are going to craft for ourselves. You get the materials and draw off your experience. You can then sell it to other players or draw it off an old alt and give it to a new one. And you don't have to every run out of room to get xp, just draw yourself down one level and get more xp when you do more fighting or crafting. This would to some extent solve the problem of not wanting to redo skills from scratch.

[Spiritfingers]

It would definitely make things easy if we could transfer some knowledge to alts. Who really wants to get all the npcs back up to soul mates. Maybe if the transfer between character's chest had more like 50 slots instead of 8, it would be so much easier to play alts w/o needing to re level stuff.

[alleryn]

Maybe if the transfer between character's chest had more like 50 slots instead of 8, it would be so much easier to play alts w/o needing to re level stuff.

Agreed. The small size of the account-wide storage also encourages people to multi-log instead of using alts on one account, which sort of lessens the value of having more character slots -- which as i understand it is meant to be one of the benefits of VIP status.

I think it would be a good idea to add value to having alts on a single account somehow. Maybe hangouts could contribute some small bonuses to other alts on your account.

[Spiritfingers]

Agreed. The small size of the account-wide storage also encourages people to multi-log instead of using alts on one account, which sort of lessens the value of having more character slots -- which as i understand it is meant to be one of the benefits of VIP status.

I think it would be a good idea to add value to having alts on a single account somehow. Maybe hangouts could contribute some small bonuses to other alts on your account.

I didn't realize VIP had extra character slots. It wouldn't matter if you gave me double the regular numbers. The way the game is now, there is no way I'm even using an alt except for storage...if needed. Well, there is one exception. Since the game is going the route of specializing, I can see myself leveling alts for new combat skills.

[lilibat]

I completely agree with the shared storage issue. But also we need more character slots, and I'd be more than happy to pay for them. I want a druid and a bat and a puppy and a cow and a regular character and... you get the idea. In FFXIV one character really can do everything but that's not true in PG because of restrictions and how expensive it is going back and forth with animals forms.