When playing an alt, most know the experience of wishing to venture into a zone or dungeon or expansion feature that you long ago unlocked on your main but quickly discovering that your alt has yet to unlock that content. You cannot access Sanctum of Dominion because jumping into the center of Oribos merely teleports you back up. You cannot do dailies in Nazjatar/Mechagon because you haven’t completed the associated quest lines. The examples are many.
My proposed solution is a “Progress Sync NPC” located in Stormwind/Orgrimmar that functions similarly to the Experience Eliminator. Upon speaking to the NPC, you are presented with the option to sync your quest progress on the current character with your warband. You are able to take a fresh max-level character, sync progress to your warband, and then you are left only with the task of gearing up before this new character could easily become your new main. It is effectively an account-wide skip option.
[Are you sure you wish this sync this character’s quest and story progress with your warband? Warning: This choice is permanent and cannot be undone.]
Yes, there would be limitations (e.g., order halls, class/race quests, faction, etc.) that could make implementation tricky, but wouldn’t it be great to eliminate the same breadcrumb quests being presented on every alt you create and the walls you hit when trying to play content you have previously unlocked? In a version of WoW that is becoming increasingly account-wide, it seems a natural next step. What do you all think?
Another hack job they could do for raids is just having an NPC in the expansion hub that can teleport you directly inside of each raid instance. Especially in the more offensive expansions for getting into the raids, like BFA.
This option is available for LFR variants, but not for normal-mythic difficulties. It would be nice once an expansion is relegated to “legacy” if its content would become more readily accessible for warbands that have already cleared/accessed it.
every time i get a new alt into an expansion it’s like running around the world to 10 different npc’s to click their “skip” options, but they’re still not full catch-ups and miss about half of the annoying things to unlock. Like the robot upgrades in zereth mortis, the little questchain to be able to deposit archaeology fragments in korthia, some rep vendors are locked behind questlines even if you have the rep, class hall/sanctum/garrison upgrades, etc
There is no reason why an option like this should be permanent. There is already a system implemented to sync quest temporarily, Party Sync. They should improve Party Sync so you can sync with your Warbands to not repeat quests, or Sync with character templates with a given chain never completed so you can repeat a given quest chain in the future.
I think narratively it makes little sense for it to be a temporary selection. Once a character has synchronized progress with your warband, they are propelled forward in time to when conflicts are resolved, factions view them as heroes and trusted allies, and the phasing throughout Azeroth and beyond is altered to account for their actions. Reverting this disrupts the narrative and thrusts the character backward in time. It creates a disjointed experience in which you are leading the charge in the morning and then being thrust back into obscurity in the afternoon with the click of a button.
This extends to reputation/unlock issues. If temporary, I could complete quests for maximal reputation gain one day and then sync with the warband to complete dailies in previously warband-unlocked areas/features on another, only to reset to one of these “character templates” on the next day and repeat. Why would players engage with late-stage reputation grind systems if they can simply revert to a “character template” and repeat the main quests which give substantially more reputation?
In my view, Blizzard would have to either make it so that quests no longer offer rewards after you de-sync (altering the process to more of a replay option) or save progress for each character on every sync/de-sync so you could still earn rewards for the content in which you have yet to earn them. This seems far more complicated than a simple one-off sync with your warband to bring a new character in line with your most-progressed character for each expansion.
The mere fact that you are syncyng breaks the narrative. There is no character’s actions because you have skipped everything when using sync. The character is not traveling in time, not forwards nor backwards. You the player are jumping to the later chapter in the TV season and then you are going back to watch the chapter you missed. Or to watch the same chapters again, because Sync could be used to replay quest campaigns too. Anyway, the narrative is already a mess when you can start the leveling campaign, reach 80 without completing it, jump to Karesh campaign skipping the rest of the story, go back to the leveling campaign, do Undermine in between…playing the narrative in order is already a living hell! Having an UI with the list of campaigns in chronological order that allows you skip what you did or go back to do what you want to do…will only improve player’s narrative experience.
That…has already being solved. Is a feature of Party Sync. If you Party Sync with another character and repeat a quest that your character already completed…You won’t receive any reward from that quest. Gold, Reputations, Items…Nothing. The reward for completing quests with Party Sync is a box with a green item for a transmog set exclusive for Party Sync.
As I said…That’s how Party Sync works. That would be far more complicated than a simple one-off sync with your warband..if it wasn’t already implemented.
You can Party Sync with another character in your group. You can even pay a second account so you can Party Sync with yourself. What I am saying is just use that system that is already in game and is working without any of the issues you are talking about, and allow us to Sync with template characters instead of real characters. And to sync with our whole warband.
It seems we are talking about two different things, Gobloworr. Your objections appear to demonstrate a confusion between my idea and what you wish Party Sync would be and a misunderstanding for how I envision the Progress Sync system to operate:
Progress Sync would merely be a system to allow a new character to align its progress with your main/warband as if it had already played through all the content you have previously completed. If you want to roll a new character and make them your new main, you simply level, talk to the designated NPC to opt-in, and then gear up and play.
There is no replay feature, no undo button, no UI or story presentation revamp, no ability to pick and choose what specific content you wish to play with or without rewards, and it is not designed to encourage group play between newer/low-level players and older/high-level players. It is exclusively a forward-looking, self-contained system to remove the frustrations from playing a new character on their existing account, so you are not stuck navigating through the mire of unlocks and progress gates you have been through countless times before. It operates like any other skip option already in-game, but applies account-wide, not only for the given quest or scenario.
Your idea is to expand the Party Sync system we already have; my idea is to expand the skip options we already have.
Ok, forget about the idea of using it to replay content. It is true that you idea is not that. That was my idea of how we can start with something like this an improve it to get more.
Your idea is to sync warband progress with one character for all quest unlock. I agree that we need this specially given how skip options is very inconsistent.
The thing is…Why not have that using what we already have in the game, Party Sync? Instead of making a Sync with the quests completed from another character…Make a ‘Party’ Sync with the list of quests completed in your warband. Get rid of all the current skips they have that are implemeneted case by case and instead make an evergreen system that will work in current and future content.
And there is no reason to not have an undo button when this system already has an undo button. Your confussion about how complicated would be to implement a system to sync or desync quests, or how Blizzard would implement it to get track of what quests the individual characters have completed, or how they will make players not to get multiple rewards…are questions that have already been solved.
Because a quest sync system already exists. But it is serverly underused. And as I said, forget about those ‘Character templates’ to repeat campaigns. That was just an example of how this system is underuse. Because they could improve Party Sync to allow us to sync with template characters…or, to implement this progress warband option…improve Party Sync to allo us to Sync with our warband
That would be very useful. I want to go through some of the older content (or finish off Dragonflight). Doing it with an alt that I actually want to level up anyways makes the most sense, but it also means repeating tons of quests…
Only good way right now I can do it is maybe assign a character per expansion because I think there’s not much point in playing through one without Chromie.