Some of these are a really rough, often time-gated, grind that just demoralizes players and makes the game feel less rewarding. I like the new gear system for alts, but when some essences are a month or more away just in time (some people cannot play every day), it is pointless to bring your alt on the adventures. Did Bliz every say why they do not want this for players?
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People who only play 1 toon want their progression to matter? Why should 1 person who put in 100 hours in one toon. Be equal to a person who played 100 hours on 1 toon but has 5 toons equally geared? That 2nd person doesn’t have the skill to run all 5 toons equally, but how will I tell the difference without addons?
because blizz decided not to make them account bound. simple as that.
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I get that but there are also 2-3 OTHER grinds that help to devalue multiple alts. These should be the real gates for expertise and power, not a time gated “kill 10 rays” get 100 rep a day essence.
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They’ve remained pretty silent on the “Why” part, and I highly doubt they’ll ever say why. No matter the answer, it will just fuel the flames even more. They’ve been pretty adamant they are not going account wide.
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Because character progression is per-character
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thanks - I want not sure if there was a discussion on this topic. I should have known to expect this response.
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This isn’t effort.
You can put in four times as many hours in earning the essences, but as long as the alt does the minimum 10 minute daily for 3 weeks in a row they’re the same progress as your “main”.
This is why BFA is terrible.
I think the Dev’s should be DK’s:
Suffer Well.
lol
But power, and Essences at the end of the day — when you’re getting them by defeating a raid boss, clearing a Mythic+, buying them off a vendor after earning the currency to obtain them — they’re not that different to trinkets, items, or things like the Legendary ring or cloak we’ve had in the past. They’re core player power.
From Whathazitcostus’s Millennium interview
Also as to why they’re not account bound.
It takes you a month to earn any essence at this point, time played metrics look good on the spreadsheet.
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Blizz has commented on it before. Basically they view alts as individual characters, not extensions of mains. Alts start as a relatively blank slate and they don’t want to mess up a sense of progression by making too many things account-wide.
They’ll add catch up mechanics and such to reduce grinds, but they still want alts to have to earn their own things. Hence no account-wide essences or reputations.
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feels like the player is the important part in the equation = not the toon
Blizzard views them as character progress (like raid gear) and not account progression. So they didn’t make them account bound and they said they have no intention of doing so in future updates either.
I wouldn’t mind so much if more of the essences were like meme beam R2 where you do one challenge task and get most of the work, or if the essences were fairly minor upgrades.
The problem is that nearly all of them are timegated or huge grinds, and they’re significant enough to fill in major holes in spec rotations and resources (most of which used to be otherwise filled). This isn’t like grinding for gear, it’s grinding for spellbook we used to have but got taken away.
Like, Lucid on resto basically just brings innervate back up to where it used to be, and it’s the difference between a wipe and kill on Orgozoa. Suppression on guardian gives back the slows it used to have baseline. Meme beam gives balance on-demand AOE we haven’t had since Hurricane was removed and Starfall was made useless.
There was an interview with Ion the other day and he basically said they tend to make access to content and non-power progression account wide and power progression to not be account wide. And essences fall in the later.
The requirements were lowered for many and there are BoA rep gain methods for both mech and Nazjatar as well.
Blizzard: Lmao whats an alt
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Blizzard: We want to make the game for alt friendly so you can help your team and guild fill multiple roles.