Playing alts in TWW

Community WoW Community Council
1

My name’s Omega, and I’m an altoholic.

I love playing alts, I love experiencing the WoW content from different role perspectives, from different class persepectives and different spec perspectives. Unfortunately in the past, playing alts has been very much a grind to try and get them to a place where you can start to “enjoy” them - but this is something that Blizzard has been working to change over the most recent expansions and even moreso coming into TWW - with warbands, etc. BUT there are still some issues that I would love to see changed, or if not changed at least an explanation from the designers around their reasoning behind avoiding these changes, so we can have an open discussion about it.

Please make it discounted when it comes to upgrading the gear on our alts.

I understand Blizzard probably feel they’re addressing this in some ways, with the bound to warband gear, and the ability to take your alts straight into higher delves, etc. And those are FANTASTIC changes. Super excited for them! BUT if I want to enjoy my alts, having to go through the whole gear grinding up process at the same slow pace as on a main, for as many alts as you want to play (i want to play all of the classes!!) is just so painful.

What I’d like to see:

Reduced crest costs for alts when upgrading gear up to, or close to, the ilvl of your main. Even if this was capped at something like maximum champion, so for season four it costs 1/3 of the crests when upgrading up to 515.

Remove flighstones. In a world of trying to fix currency bloat, this currency just feels horrible. Mostly useless on main if you’re playing the game, and an extra grind on alts especially late season when trying to combine sparks for crafted gear, etc. IF NOT REMOVED, at least make it warband transferrable.

Speaking of warband transferrable. Make crests transferrable. Maybe like with buying the upgraded crests, you need to have a minimum ilvl so that crest isnt useful anymore before its tradeable. Make you lose some in transferring it, I don’t mind. Just let me send some of my extra to my alts. Same goes for bountiful keys for delves! PLEASE let me use these on my alts.

Warbound gear is great. A fantastic bonus, it’s going to be great getting those juicy drops. But I want to gear my alts and enjoy them by playing them. Not completely reprogressing at the pace I had to for my main, but at a way that it’s fun!

Questions I’d like to ask?

What is the theory behind valorstones/flightstones?
Why are they so against trying gear upgrade discounts for alts, when it’s something the community has been crying out for?
Is there a possibilty of crests being made warband transferrable?

Thank you!

9 Likes
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I remember back when reforging existed, one of the main philosophical arguments was that when a new upgrade item drops for you in raid (and now M+ included), that you should be able to basically instantly equip it and gain the instant gratification of that. It was given as the reason for reforging being removed despite removing hit and expertise in the same patch.

But crests and flightstones now violate that philosophy. Its sometimes fixed by having an upgrade person inside the raid (accessibility and proximity of their location per boss may vary). But unless you prefarm all of your crests for an entire week going into a raid, you physically can’t “just equip an item” (and maybe add quick enchants to it that you can keep in bags via scrolls). Now you have to go farm enough crests (optimistically a 30m time commitment for just a single upgrade step, meaning several HOURS per week in total) and/or flightstones.

Worst of all, you can’t prefarm your flightstones going into a week either. You can start the week at 2k, and thats not enough to cover upgrading say a 2h weapon along with 1-2 other pieces of gear during that week. And usually the flightstones per crest reward ratio means you actually end up MORE limited by flightstones on main, than crests. A Hero Track 2hander going from rank 1 to rank 6 takes 2,200 flightstones by itself.

and at the start of a season/week, its physically impossible to prefarm your crests in a place that doesnt drop upgrades. Even if you want to prefarm before raid, you’re doing that in M+ which will have numerous upgrades for you too, which make you do even more chores of M+ to be able to crest/flightstone upgrade them. It just adds significant time AFTER every item to gain the actual power benefit of it. Its the opposite of the old design philosophy of items and a notable step backwards in feeling of fun/satisfaction/joy when gearing.

5 Likes
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For context in the last expansions I’ve felt it was very hard to maintain alts at decent level without spending way too much time each week. I’m someone that likes to play alts but current systems makes it hard for someone that can play a lot like me to maintain more than 3 characters without only focusing on gearing all the time.

I’ve tried to think of the best way to make the crests system more alt friendly and for me it seems that making it faster to earn crest up to what your best character has farmed makes the most sense.

But crests for me are not the single issue with alts, the great vault is also a pretty big long term investment and the way you want to gear your alts as you will not doing mythic raiding on your alts (if not even on your main). I feel the great vault should be much more alt friendly and I’ve said it before but I will always prefer a bonus roll type of system (which you can just make it work at 100% if we don’t want to deal with rng) as it can be used on specific content and to catchup on alts that you haven’t played for a week while the great vault puts much stress on you to play your alts every week.

I’m a bit neutral on flightstones but like many I feel they’re just overkill and probably just a currency bloat. They might have a use but the good side of them doesn’t seem obvious, I don’t think using flighstones really make anyone happy about it.

3 Likes
4

Just revisiting this to say, unsurprisingly, i still feel the same way.

2 Likes