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Let's talk main characters and alts!
Kilsin
Member RarePosts: 515
Are any of your characters special to you and if so, what makes them special? Have you got any big plans for your Pantheon character(s)?
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Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
Not at all strawhat0981, this question is for anyone to jump in and answer. I would be interested to also hear from the players who don't care about their characters and the reasoning behind it just as much as I want to hear from those that do care for them and listen to them explain why.
Not a fan of games that promote altitis, where the same person can run and hide on alts if need be. Honestly I think ffxi did it best, choose your race, starting class and name, then you could unlock the other jobs of the game as you played and level at your own pace like and alt would be. Now if a player wants to be an ass the community will always know who this person is.
The only thing with this is your choice of race will matter alot, but i think thats a great thing it adds a sense of identity to you and your character that you cant get in current games, in most games everyone can be everything nothing speical or unique.
And yes some class/race combos will be stronger then others but play to your strengths and if done right there shouldnt be that big of a difference in strengths.
Pantheon has never promoted "altitis".
We will have meaningful and challenging gameplay that will be a handful for one character let alone more but if someone wants to create an alternate character, then that is perfectly fine, we won't be telling people how they should play our game and with strong, mature niche communities like that of EQ, VG and now Pantheon, there is little concern for the minority players who cause trouble.
Edit: Fixed quote.
Won't you be surprised when the barbarians show up at the gate then.
But then again, strong, active, in game moderation is the best way to control them, I just haven't seen this in about 10 years now.
But, not the topic of your thread. I tend to try a few characters out at game start, then pick one and take it to "level" cap as quickly as possible.
As most MMO's have "end games" that don't really interest me (or I don't have time for), I then work on one or more alts and if I stick with it, take them to cap as well.
If I have two or more characters at cap, I consider them both to be my "mains", I'm more of a presence in the game world as myself, these avatars are merely skins I wear to represent my activities.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Hmm... Sorry Keeno I don't agree with you...
I think it's really important that you can create alts, lots of them to try different class and race combinations, just like in EQ. Because people easily gets tired of their character and wants to try another one, without being forced to remove a high level character. A system which do so I don't have the freedom to choose how to play is not so great one. It can be a high risk to reduce diversity regarding how long they will subscribe to a game.
It's also great if you are not always accessible in the game if you have joined a guild for example, but can play other characters without being worried that your guild will disturb you all the time just because they want to do a raid again which you did every other day before.
Also most of us who played EQ has growned up and have families. It means many of us have very young individuals who maybe wants to try playing an hour or two. It's great that you can remove those character just in case they screwed up their communication with other players and didn't behave nicely as they should or they joined a guild which they should not have done.
I think in the end it should be up for the players to configure for each of their characters which friends/guilds/guild members/other players should have access to. I think this can be the best solution to suit most of us. I dislike being reachable 100% of my gametime or if I made a small misstake one time others will be able to harass me. This is also great to minimize that people harass you more than necessary. Sometimes I have joined groups full of assholes, which can be hard to avoid if they will be able to follow you where ever you go. WoW has a decent system where you can do so your friends have access to all your characters. Something similar whould be great to have which is configurable by you and not by others. Otherwise it will be a system which drives people away from the game.
Not surprised, it is something we intend to combat with the help of our community
That is a very popular way to look at characters and I play very similarly to you. I tend to get a main to the top and put the most effort into it until I get bored or have down time waiting for high-end things like raiding, group farming and so on, then I will pick a new character that I want at max level (usually for a reason like buffs, teleports, boxing etc.) and have fun leveling it up at a slower pace doing all the things that I missed with the first character.
Once I get a few to max level I switch between them like they are all mains to help where ever I am needed just to have fun but I will create baby alts to have fun and enjoy the early to mid stages of the game too, especially after sitting at end game for a while.
I think reputation is important in communities like this though and it would be nice if even your alts were somehow linked to your main (like an account bound unique surname for them all?).
That is if we need it, I really think our community will self-police and sort out their differences maturely, diplomacy like that is half the fun in my opinion!
Back in Vanguard I was a huge altitis fan.
Playing all classes gave me a good bost in knowledge about what to look for in each when I played my main. Especially on a healer that was really helpful and important.
Just friendly discussion
I usually have many more than two! I can't help myself, I like knowing the ins and outs of all classes and I am usually a guild/raid leader, so it pays to know how each class works but I also enjoy the fun and challenges each class has.
Exactly right mate, I had one of every class in VG, they all had such a cool feel to the different classes, it was like a new experience each time you rolled a new toon!
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I generally tend to have 1 main character, 2-4 secondary characters, and an endless supply (whatever slots are left on the account) of baby alts for knock-around and-or to be deleted and replaced by better or more fun character ideas. My main, is usually as close to a necromancer as possible, of which I do play and take, fairly seriously. The secondary characters are usually there on the basis of various character ideas, based to some extent on class-race-gender ideas available at character creation.
The rest of my characters are usually on the basis of ridiculously stupid ideas, such that likely would never be allowed to raid based on how they are built (ie. str-dex, heavy armor wearing, axe wielding built... but using a spell casting class to do so... possibly on the smallest gnomish female character I can make). Basically, anything and everything you should not do if building a character seriously... mage built dreadknight on VG for instance, and still did his job WELL although I never did get to raid with him. The knock-around characters are usually the ones I roleplay more so than even my mains in most mmo's. They just happen to be created in such a way that allows roleplaying easier, more silly, or more fun I guess.
And yes, the ability to roleplay alts any way you want according to the character ideas and without ruining one's reputation on your main, certainly helps. However, the majority of players are less than capable of playing 2 characters in such a way, as to hide the fact that they are the same player. So whereas alts could allow anyone to hide due to their being an asshat, less than everyone is capable of doing so without leaving tell tales. People are creatures of habit. Pay attention to multiple characters that you know are the same player, and you can see their habits generally carry over into their alts. Pay attention to multiple random characters, and you might just pick up on someone trying to hide who they are, but fail to overcome their habits and mannerisms.
Just in terms of fond memories I think I most enjoyed my Cleric and Druid from EQ. Loved to play a Cleric for all things group related and the Druid allowed me a mix of group and solo fun.
I am a huge fan of playing alts if the character classes are unique enough. I tend to get bored of games where the classes all seem to run together without being more specific in their roles or abilities.
For me DAOC was prob my favorite in terms of offering class specific skill trees and reactive combat skills. I remember my Hero had one skill line that started with an attack in response to an NPC "opening" that elevated to another skill and yet another finishing attack if it was all executed properly. Each execution was accompanied by an animation that made it all the more immersive. Conan had some of this as well with more graphic endings.
Del Cabon
A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.
I generally only have 2 toon's, My main will most times be a Cleric or Pally depending on the game and class restrictions, then once I have my main 1/2 to 3/4 to cap i will start trying out each class and pick the one that i find most fun to run as a Alt.
Uh-hu.
The four characters I enjoyed most in Vanguard have been:
Qaliathari Dread Knight
Qaliathari Necromancer
Gnome Disciple
Darkelf Blood MageBut guess what, 3 of these 4 classes dont exist in Pantheon anymore, and the fourth is a lot different now.
Dunno what I'll play if I ever play.
Aah...
I had my male dark elf necromancer as my original main
a male orc dreadknight (spec'd and equipped as a platemail caster) that eventually ended up as my main
a female wood or half elf as a phoenix shaman
a male goblin disciple
a female dark elf blood mage
a female gnome warrior
Only classes I think I couldn't get into were paladin, cleric and druid (probably because those were my irl duo'ing buddy's mains)
Another thing that it created was emergent game play. See, when it isn't reasonable for you go power up another character, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to progress the one your on. You toy with different ways to make soloing possible is one.
For instance, as a monk in release EQ soloing quickly became something that wasn't feasible through basic play. So, we figured out how to use our tools in interesting ways to get the most out of them. For instance, Instill doubt was a monk skill that acted like a fear. It was very difficult to raise and many monks didn't even bother, but some of us learned how to find the right mob that was susceptible, with plenty of space and we would combine using it with a high bind wound skill that allowed a monk to heal up at certain points and fear kite the rest of the time.
This exploration also led to group makeups. Sometimes you wouldn't have the perfect group, so you would use what you had and find content that would fit it. This led to some very interesting combinations and uses of classes to achieve success in a given environment. Everything from fear kiting and kiting with melee players playing the role of the "pet" or "DoT" damage, to shamans and monks becoming fast friends due to their ideal design of tanking, slows and healing. The list went on with different types of classes working together to find better ways to make exp.
This is why I am not a huge fan of alts in today's games. People hop back and forth easily thinking they need the perfect tool for every scenario and they end up convincing themselves that it is the only way to do things. My friends and I after EQ noticed this more and more over the years as everything had to be the ideal group makeup or people wouldn't even try and then... development of the games began to design around that concept as well.
I understand having an alt, I just don't think they should be catered to. That is, it should not be easy to have two characters, not because alting is being discouraged, but because there is too much to do on a main to try and do both reasonably. Alting in today's games makes sense because the content can be consumed in little time, so naturally making an alt and doing it from that classes perspective is an option. The problem is, if you appeal to that design, you can not have meaningful long lasting content as in order to allow alts to be reasonable, content has to be easier to consume which is contrary to this style of game.
The problem is that whether it is intentional or not, this issue is a slippery one that gets out of control fast, especially since we have years of games that have catered to alt based game play and so many people are going to expect that type of play as a default.
Again, I don't have a problem with alts, I just think that this game and its content should be designed and focused around the fact that a person will be playing only a single character.
I like to play around with Rogue classes, but often groups don't like Rogues in their party. DPS classes are nice for first time figuring out how the mechanics work.
Healer will be my main because it's all about grouping, and all groups need healers
I hate modern World of Warcraft. But the ONLY cool thing they did was dual spec. So the Tank can tank or solo, and the Healer can heal or solo.
To be honest, the perfect mmo would have classes that are designed to do both. Some abilities are for powerful healing, others are for powerful DPS, or even Tanking......To pull this off, you BETTER know your class extremely well.
Vanguard's Disciple class comes to mind.......Vanguard did all classes well.......all were deep and intriguing
Vanguard is about the only mmo I've played where I didn't play a Rogue. From what I understand they were valuable to a group in that game. Same with D&D Online, very valuable.
PS
I miss Vanguard, Pantheon better be a good replacement !
These days, with all the years of ideas and the advances in technology, I think it is possible we will see more than just a one dimensional role like "just DPS" again, which means that playing a singular class will have benefits as I believe their design goals is to create classes that each bring something unique to the group experience and DPS won't do that.