I would love a game where your character can do any and everything, if you put enough time into it. I feel there should be an MMO where you have one character slot, and can do whatever you want without class or job restriction. It will make you responsible for your actions like real life. Someone said it is fine to be a nice guy on your main and a jerk on your alt...no, not okay. MMOs need strong communities and player bases to live. If everyone just uses it to vent and shout war and flame the game will go down hard and fast. Global Agenda does this right IMO balancing alts, where all your characters share one name, but can make up to 8 alts (2 of each class). FFXI was great, today I play a Black mage, tomorrow Warrior. FFXIV should be great also as if I wanna use a bow, put on a bow and be a ranger, wanna cast magic grab a staff and nuke. Annnnyway. I really think there should be a MMO where you have to be a skilled, social person to get by, and do well, and to do that you need no alt options, skill based and restriction-less gameplay. One day...
the red part i disagree with. Having alts with different personalities can be fun for both sides. Ive played alot of mmos where there is a guy "you love to hate" and people will band together to hate him or her together. A game needs bad guys, not just the non speaking mobs on pve. Drama can keep a game going and heat up competition amongst the players and sometimes in the long run, break barriers. I ended up being friends with a guild i could not stand before (and many others hated them too). I realized they are playing a game and playing the part of the bad guy. So having multiple alts for the mood thing is fun and can create group situations. I like going on my archer and being one of those ppl that kill lowbies...why? cause its fun to hear QQ and its fun to have the "good guys" team up and come get me for vengance, makes things fun for both sides.
I like playing a role player, meaning i like being specified from the start, i like organization and knowing what class i need for what group, instead of going "does this person have X skill so we can use em as tank? or are they gonna be another DD? do they have heals?" And i like playing other roles by rolling alts so i can learn what they do and how they work in a group setting. The best learning experience i had as a healer was rolling a tank and understanding what they do, now i can heal a tank even more efficiently then most healers that do not understand what a tank does.
Too many benefits with alts to get rid of em. I think some games are best with alt capabilities and some should have a more restricted alt set up where the game is designed for a do all character.
Lots of people play only one avatar in an mmo that allows alts. I am one of them (except for bank mules)
I prefer an mmo without alts but the game should have mechanics that would allow me more freedom than most games now have with the class system (tank, healer, buffer, dps, or limited hybrid of those 4 roles). The Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) system prior to the NGE (new game experience) did have that potential. However, if you wanted to be very strong in combat and an accomplished crafter or merchant, you needed two characters due to the cap on skill points. Originally, only characters with Jedi avatars had two toons, one of course being the jedi. Fallen Earth has similiar skill point caps.
I think you can blame group content in most modern mmos on the current alt system. If Dungeon A requires 1 main tank, 1 off-tank, 3 dps, 1 crowd-controller, and 2 healers AND ONLY that combination works to complete Dungeon A, then people want to make alts because they want to fill different roles on any given day to help their guild quickly form the needed group and do the dungeon run without asking for unfamiliar pickup players (the dreaded PUG groups). In contrast, the PreCU SWG didn't have such tightly delineated roles so just about anyone could join a group and do an instanced mission run without being told that their "class" wasn't needed (assuming you were a master in at least one elite combat art).
In reality, the PreCU SWG system didn't have an infinite number of combat avatar types. Even with the skills system, most folks settled into popular skills templates as experience dictated what skills combinations tended to be most effective for PvE or PVP. However, the instanced missions were not as rigid in combat requirements as current dungeons now appear to be. Therefore, a player with a given template on a single main could almost always participate in group content, unlike modern mmos.
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the red part i disagree with. Having alts with different personalities can be fun for both sides. Ive played alot of mmos where there is a guy "you love to hate" and people will band together to hate him or her together. A game needs bad guys, not just the non speaking mobs on pve. Drama can keep a game going and heat up competition amongst the players and sometimes in the long run, break barriers. I ended up being friends with a guild i could not stand before (and many others hated them too). I realized they are playing a game and playing the part of the bad guy. So having multiple alts for the mood thing is fun and can create group situations. I like going on my archer and being one of those ppl that kill lowbies...why? cause its fun to hear QQ and its fun to have the "good guys" team up and come get me for vengance, makes things fun for both sides.
I like playing a role player, meaning i like being specified from the start, i like organization and knowing what class i need for what group, instead of going "does this person have X skill so we can use em as tank? or are they gonna be another DD? do they have heals?" And i like playing other roles by rolling alts so i can learn what they do and how they work in a group setting. The best learning experience i had as a healer was rolling a tank and understanding what they do, now i can heal a tank even more efficiently then most healers that do not understand what a tank does.
Too many benefits with alts to get rid of em. I think some games are best with alt capabilities and some should have a more restricted alt set up where the game is designed for a do all character.
Lots of people play only one avatar in an mmo that allows alts. I am one of them (except for bank mules)
I prefer an mmo without alts but the game should have mechanics that would allow me more freedom than most games now have with the class system (tank, healer, buffer, dps, or limited hybrid of those 4 roles). The Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) system prior to the NGE (new game experience) did have that potential. However, if you wanted to be very strong in combat and an accomplished crafter or merchant, you needed two characters due to the cap on skill points. Originally, only characters with Jedi avatars had two toons, one of course being the jedi. Fallen Earth has similiar skill point caps.
I think you can blame group content in most modern mmos on the current alt system. If Dungeon A requires 1 main tank, 1 off-tank, 3 dps, 1 crowd-controller, and 2 healers AND ONLY that combination works to complete Dungeon A, then people want to make alts because they want to fill different roles on any given day to help their guild quickly form the needed group and do the dungeon run without asking for unfamiliar pickup players (the dreaded PUG groups). In contrast, the PreCU SWG didn't have such tightly delineated roles so just about anyone could join a group and do an instanced mission run without being told that their "class" wasn't needed (assuming you were a master in at least one elite combat art).
In reality, the PreCU SWG system didn't have an infinite number of combat avatar types. Even with the skills system, most folks settled into popular skills templates as experience dictated what skills combinations tended to be most effective for PvE or PVP. However, the instanced missions were not as rigid in combat requirements as current dungeons now appear to be. Therefore, a player with a given template on a single main could almost always participate in group content, unlike modern mmos.