BfA has already slaughtered playing alts and the introduction of the echo vendor kind of made it worse. At least prior to the vendor, you just accepted that Tuesday upgrades were mostly a myth. That meant that once you finished the billion chores on your main, it didn’t feel as bad spending time on an alt instead of spam running M+ fishing for corruption procs.
The echo system makes it so that any echo I earn on an alt is an echo I don’t earn on my main which makes the decision to play an alt that much less appealing. This might not have felt so bad if there wasn’t some god awful, 0 purpose, vendor rotation but alas here we are. With account-wide echoes, I’d be more incentivized to play the game (which is what you want$$$$) by gearing an alt while simultaneously building an echo reserve to divide among all the characters I choose to play.
I assume the idea is that, by keeping echoes character-specific, that precious time-played metric might be higher becau$e people will take time to gear and echo farm on every toon but, in my experience, this has actually had the opposite effect. I may spend more time on my main, but in cases where I’d be playing an alt I am just logging off instead.
Overall, I’d prefer it if Blizzard just moved towards more account-wide things in general - currencies and reputation being two of them. If you look at a game like Guild Wars 2, one of the most enjoyable aspects is that most things are account-wide and so constantly alt-dancing is fun and doesn’t feel detrimental to your other goals.
Please consider not only account-wide echoes but more account-wide currencies. You can do other things to control the pace at which gear is acquired, in general, but it is grueling to maintain alts in this game when the goal should be to stay logged in while having fun (seems like Blizzard has forgotten those two are not mutually exclusive).
P.S, reiterating that the echo vendor rotation is dumb as hell
3 Likes
I’ve literally geared up 4 toons to 470+ since the echoes vendor came out. No I don’t spend all day in this game, probably not even 10 hours a week. In no other expansion was I able to do this. Even in WotLK when I was pushing realm first content and playing dozens of hours a week I could only maintain two relevant alts. If anything I’m finding the amount of gear and avenues to obtain them have made this expansion one of the most accessible to alts.
2 Likes
I dont think its the alts that have it bad.
its the returning / new players. Getting the time gated essences takes very long.
1 Like
I am firmly against anything account wide. Each character is an individual and the game should support and advance that. I was disgusted a couple of weeks ago to see a title, freshly earned by a character I have spent hundreds of hours building and crafting, pop up on character that was barely 45 minutes old.
1 Like
Being 470 means nothing if it’s all the wrong gear which is their entire philosophy this expansion. They created this illusion of all this gear by throwing endless amounts of crap at us.
I can be 470 as Ele with heavy mastery and it would be a disaster compared to being 460 with gear that actually helps me.
You’re seeing quantity and saying “gearing is easy”.
Then don’t use it.
1 Like
This garbage dumpster fire of an expansion is almost over.
We can take solace in that.
1 Like
You missed my point. It shouldn’t have even been an option because I never earned it on the character.
The time gating is a little crippling, but catchup mechanics are still miles ahead of previous expansions. From launch, it took what, 10 weeks to get a 15 cloak? Now you can do it in as little as 3. Despite what everyone seems to think, unless you are literally expecting to hit parses, you do not need to be at the cutting edge of cloak resistance levels, and for PvE content at least. We did not need to be at 90+ corruption resist to kill Nzoth, and neither do returning players. Besides this is an MMO where character progression is arguably the most important aspect. Why would you expect or hell, want someone who has taken a break from the game to just return and be on equal footing with those who put the work in without themselves doing so?
I will concede that some elements do need to be fixed, like the essences from EP should no longer need EP since it’s outdated content.
I am out of likes but I like what you said. I remember a time when WoW was so fun that you’d want to do it all over again, even without any catch-up mechanics. Now, it’s still fun, but only on like one or two characters IMO (and on the second one, you want to cut the line because it feels much longer than it used to be).
Being social helps. I believe that if you make friends in the line, WoW will become 10x as enjoyable.
1 Like
And my point is that there is SO much gear thrown at you that you can’t get “all the wrong gear”. As it stands you have:
- 460 gear from heroic Ny, which is so easy my last pug with 4 people who could barely break 25k dps managed to clear.
- 460 from clearing a +11. Seriously a +11.
- 430s from M0s that are basically faceroll and equivalent to normal dungeons in previous expansions.
- A free piece of raid gear every now and then from warfront/weekly quest
- A free piece of mythic raiding 475 per week for, and I can’t stress this enough, not even timing a 15.
- Gear with guaranteed corruption, specifically the 470 & 465 rewards, for doing SOLO content, which with a 15 cloak, is a complete joke.
- Crafted 470 gear with a guaranteed socket for under 10k, which you can farm in 30 mins through atal’dazar.
- Don’t forget the random emissaries which award 445 gear for about 5 mins of your time.
These are the options I had to gear up from Wrath - WoD:
OMG just stop with the account wide crap already. What part of each toon is its own thing do people not fricken get?
1 Like
And when you raided you knew exactly what piece you’d get. When you capped PvP you’d take your conquest to the vendor and select your piece. Are you just writing things or you can’t see the difference?
I do my fair share of activities including mythic raid and PvP and I’m wearing 425 boots because this game is so poorly designed.
I like what you said, how can I get my hands on some of that 470 crafted gear? I’ve been trying to get a good trinket for a long time, but I’m not sure how crafting professions work nowadays.
Well you see it’s all random so you either spend 2k on mats and strike luck the first time or spend 100k because you keep crafting mastery legs instead of vers, for example. Roulette style just like everything else
Oh it’s random? That’s disappointing, but thank you for letting me know. I think that there’s too much RNG in this game. I like that when you go to do a raid boss, you can see what they drop, but it’s never a sure thing, which can be upsetting if RNG is against you.
I think the same result can be achieved by reducing the cost of echoes and giving us additional sources for earning them. Essences/corruptions are far too expensive right now and the vendor rotation is beyond stupid.
Would be nice as well. 4 essences alone on alt is 10k echoes and the journey hasn’t even started.
1 Like
No thanks.
If anything put rank 1, 2 of essences on the vendor
Raiding gear has not changed. If you stepped into mythic Ny’alotha, you know exactly what you’re going to get, just as you did back when raiding was the only method for gear acquisition. The only thing that has changed is you now have more avenues to gear up to it. You using 425 pieces while being a mythic raider is either A) an extreme outlier or B) user error. We’ve already gone through one whole cycle of corruption rotations so there is very little excuse for not being able to replace those boots even if they have something like TD 3 on them.