Is Anet Deterring Players from Playing Many Characters?

YES!
See Kind of a Big Deal!

I stopped playing GW with each character when nightfall heroes came out. I REALLY didnt feel like lvling heroes to lv20 for each character and forgetting which heroes my green weapons were on.

I have 5 PvE Characters. One has beaten everything. One is over halfway through all of the rest. The others arn't even halfway through a single campaign. Op's post is the reason. Too repetitive.

I like to think of my characters as traveling in a group. You just pick which one you take for the missions, etc.

The way the HoM, title system and all that is set up, GW now definitely favors you playing one char over and over. And if it only is one char that identifies item for all others to max his/her wisdom title.

I still play my other chars now and then, but I focus on my necro main first. As she is done with everything one can do besides consumption titles, I usually now play the char that adds the most to the current party and has not done the mission yet.

I see this as a negative side effect of the rampant title craze.

I don't think they are deterring players from playing many characters.
They are just doing like almost every other games that exist.

But some titles should be account-wide like the wisdom and treasure hunter titles (who has the time to open and identify 10 000 chests and golds on more than 1 character ?).

You can transfers your skill points using the skill point transfering thing, a star if i am not mistaken.

Definitely, the game currently treats having 1 character and a lot of mules, and punishes having 10 characters. It's all disvantages. More skills to buy, more items to store, more points to grind... the only disvantage 1-professions had was that some professions may hae been required in some areas more than others, like an assassion or a mesmer never taken somewhere, but now that vanished too. Thanks to ursan Blessing they enter everywhere now.
For PvP players it isn't a problem either. All they do is saved in account titles, everything they unlock is unlocked or the account, and everything they get may be get with any characters using the also account wide Balthazar and tournament points.
That leaves 10-character PvE players in disantage. Tey have to choose wich character will get the titles, otherwise the earned points will 'spread'. And palying with the 'non-main' character feels like wasting time.

1.- Part of roleplaying is inserting your character in a story and play through it. I don't mind letting people travel to any outpost unlocked in the account to help someone, as long as they do not get rewarded unless it's also their time do do that thing.
For example, you may hep someone make a quest, but you won't get recognition of that quest unless it is in your quest log.
For all missions would be the same. You could enter, but you won't get the mission done unless you have made the required previous missions and primary quests in the required order.
That way would be the proper way.

2.- There are two kinds of titles:
- Achievement titles: Earned by making particular separate actions that you don't have to repeat again, and you won't get more points for doing them again. You make The Wall once. You explore Pongmey Valley once, you get Obsidian Flesh once.
Those titles are mainly counters of what you have done: Missions, Quests, Exploration, Skill acquisition, Vanquishing...

- Grind titles: They are increased by separate points that can be earned in multiple ways, and it doesn't matter the way, all the points are the same, and you can repeat and repeat again a single thing to increase those points. You may make 100 times the Facet Norn run, and you'll get points all 100 times.
Those titles are all the rest: PvP titles, lucky/unlucky, drunkard, sweet, party, wisdom, treasure, promotion, reputation and faction titles.

So, at least all non-achievement titles should be account wide. There will still be things to do to fill the Honor monument completely, and titles to get to get the max rank of Kind of a Big deal.

3.- For skills points, we have now Stars of Transference.


Well, in other games, PvP characters earn separate rewards. and GW is not like very other game.
In Granado Espada, for example, it's your account(Family) the one that makes things, not single separate characters. And the rewards are completely shared. Only personal character development is separate (Level, skills, etc) and everything else is achieved by the account.

Very true. They should do away with heroes altogether and allow you to bring along other characters on your account as "heroes." That way, you can unlock outposts across different characters at the same time, and switch your main character whilst in an outpost (or even better, mid fight!). It'd add a bit of variety to the game (lets say you created an ele to start off with, but then get bored of playing it part way through, you don't need to start again to try out a different profession) and you are less likely to lose track of who has what weapon!

May reduce the lifespan of the game a bit, but I figure I still have about 15 years of game time left to get all my 16 characters through everything, and GW2 will be out by then so...

No.

Only person who is stopping you, is you.

If you don't play for fun, quit.

If all you are concerned about is titles, then yes anet is forcing you to only play one char. For repeating content in PvE, I'm more or less neutral. Yes you are seeing the same thing and the mobs aren't any different, but the play style is a little different. In terms of PvP, I think there is still plenty of encouragement to play multiple character classes.

BTW, I've finished all 3 pve champaigns and EoTN with 2 chars, 3 others have beaten proph and factions.

Are worthless, and take about 8 minutes of HFFF per skillpoint to get. Assuming that, like me, you use macros for quick and efficient HFFF.

so why do you farm the skill points?

Well I have 16 and can get fun out of everyone

Its people who are looking to max titles in a way to save time

I have them through the missions in n/m,but not all in h/m .this does not bother me one bit....

Why???.......I play for fun and if I like a char then ill keep hiim not reroll him..

So guys its just your individual thoughts on your playstyle..craving for titles ect

So stop all this if anet did this or that ..enjoy the game to your own liking thats what matters.

If you think its boring then leave and come back later ..Dont know how many guys i know who left but came back because they found G/W fun to play.

If you dont like the little Grind.yes little then try some other mmorpg then you will really know what grind is

Only reason why I take characters through campaigns once I already beat them, is for armors, or just to have places for them to farm... otherwise I won't bother taking them all the way through. But it should stay that way, obviously it wouldn't be fair if every character had access to same towns/outpost as your others... that wouldn't make much sense. I am sure the whole Mapping to Town idea is what makes it that way, which is a good thing they made it so you have to unlock areas for each character.

I also have 10 lvl 20 characters of each profession, and I liked taking them through the games they needed to get armors, or to get to farming areas... Also, It is always fun to try something new for a different experience. Playing one character all the time without experiencing other professions would be really really boring. You have to try all professions before you can get a good GW experience (or atleast most), thats also what I like about Guildwars... MMO's usually only allow you to put countless hours into one character to try to reach somewhat near max level, and only allowing you to experience one profession, which in my opinion sucks highly. MMo's making you put countless hours into the game on one character sucks, it usually ends up coming to the conclusion that you will almost never experience the game to fullest, because you get bored of the early part of the game trying to get level up. Guildwars stands above others for this reason, and gives you the full game experience without putting 2-4 years into one character, which usually never gives you the time to try out other professions... or you just don't plain feel like putting that same amount of time invested into another character.

I do agree that some pve titles should be account based though, like Treasure Hunter/Wisdom, mainly ones that cost alot of money. Titles that don't cost money, should stay the same, which is character based. I got almost lvl 6 Treasure and lvl 5 Wisdom on my Assassin, and alot of my chars have lvl 1-3 Treasure and lvl 1-3 wisdom... which kind of sucks, because all those times of opening chest and ID'n golds on other chars could have contributed to my Assassin titles, not to mention the money spent on those extra keys that eventually added to a useless titles on those other characters. If it was account based, I would be max level of both by now... which would be a good thing, and would have saved me alot of time and money. I also don't bother to open up chest or ID golds anymore on my other characters, which sometimes sucks when I choose to pass up a chest right in front of me, that might hold something of alil value.

To be honest, there is no sense in crying about things like these, because the game it really good the way it is, and I don't think anyone plans on making changes that would change the game as a whole. As for character based titles, there is no sense in changing them to account based now, as everyone has already put the time and money into titles for their characters... It is also not much of an issue in the game. If you want max titles, you have to go and do it, no way around it. Titles is a really good part of guildwars, as it gives people more to accomplish and it keeps them playing the game. Otherwise, most would eventually stop playing the game because things were a bit too easy and too quick to complete.

I would rather say that titles that cost TIME should be account based. Titles that just cost money like the Sweet tooth could saty character based. They are just gold sinks, after all. Without purchasing rares from others, Treasure, Lucky, Unlucky and Wisdom titles cost more time than anything. I had to leave th character a LOT of time in the circles to get to Rank 4.

Yes, but not just for titles.

3 pages of storage goes a lot further for 2-3 characters than 9. (I've taken to using my PvP char as extra storage). Don't expect this to change, just an observation.

Making guild membership account wide instead of per character, so unless you get lucky, you're limited in guild activities to whatever the guild focuses on. I've never understood the logic behind this decision. It really seems like a misfeature to me.

All your characters are part of the same guild because you are considered a single player, and the EULA states that only a single player can play per account.

So, by making so many titles character-based when the activity is completely unrelated to the profession of the character (any character can ID an item, even if it was acquired from another character or even from another player), they are going against their own view of the game.

I do not believe that Anet dictates how many characters you have. Its all up to you. However, when people roll up 10 toons they know they aren't gonna do squat with half of them anyway so I don't understand why the QQ. If you like collecting half baked toons because you enjoy having one of each class no one is stopping you. There are some people with 10 toons who do all the campaigns protector on each one, but it is very time prohibitive. I don't understand why people make 10 toons and then get jealous when they see someone else with a high level Koabd rank and declare they are being punished. The titles are not related to how many toons you have.

Some of us just get bored of one proffessions playstile after a time and want to try something else on for size, often time we'll have several classess we favor a lot and periodically switch between them depending on our mood. The QQ is becuase with the HoM ANet seems to be giving lots of incentives to those who put all their time into just one single character instead of several.

For example lets say I like playing on 3 characters mostly, idk, an ele, ranger, and monk. Now perhaps to earn money for armor and weapons I do a fair bit of farming with the ele in elona, by matter of course this has let the ele have max sunspear rank, whereas I do a lot of cartography with the ranger and he has legendary carto, and maybe I do lots of chest running on the monk and he's got max treasure hunter and wisdom. Now between those 3 I would be one title away from r1 KoaBD which would carry a lot of weight in completing a HoM. But since I like to switch things up and play different characters those titles are spread out so I essentially get nothing towards a decked out HoM.

Now I'll be the first to admit it's not that great of an argument to be complaining, as all that stuff is purely vanity, and the only time it really stings is the decreased effectiveness of PvE skills. But it still irks a lot of people when they don't have all the titles (and implied rewards in GW2) as others who've been playing just as long but picked one single character to play all the time.

Essentially the HoM system forces players to stick with one character to max out all those titles or have a rather dreary empty looking HoM even though across characters and time played they have an equal amount of titles as the person with the fully maxed out HoM rainbow pheonix and the works.

because given anet's absolutely wonderful track record of these kinds of things, there's probably a title in the works for it somewhere...

Well that kinda defeats the point of this discussion forum. I've got loads of ideas about how the game could change so I'd enjoy it more. I'm not saying I don't enjoy playing it, but that doesn't mean I can't offer an opnion about how things could be "improved."

For example, why do I have to run up to an Asura and double click him/her when I want to start collecting Asura points? There's no scenario I can think of where I wouldn't want Asura points. It's just annoying when I charge into a zone and start hacking through half of it before I realise I forgot to click on the little blighter at the start.. Anyway, sorry for heading off topic a bit.

Shadowmere has summed up the HoM issue very eloquently.

QFT

FTW

Kthxbye



To OP: Search is your friend.

Can I get a merge or close on this 1?

I thought I'd just extract this little snippet:

That's called character progress. I don't see having to buy the items/skills for each individual character a bad thing since that's what they have you do for nearly every single other RPG (Mass Effect would be a slight exception, due to the achievement bonuses). What you've just classified as a "punishment" is pretty much playing the game.

The only "disadvantage" you have for playing one character for most of the time is that your PvE skills won't be as effective. And if people consider PvE skills a "necessity" to gameplay, then that's a whole other problem.

That doesn't make any sense at all. WoW's EULA says (or said, when I played waaay back when) the same thing, but guild membership was char-based, not account based. In a game where individual guilds tend to focus on one aspect (or a few closely-tied) aspects of the game (GvG, HA, etc..., or HM/Titles, elite/"endgame", farming, etc...) you can't, for example, have your PvP char in a PvP guild and your Endgame chars in different guilds so that you don't have to do one thing or another completely on your own.

Thing is, its pretty fair by your example your ele, ranger and monk will still get their respective rewards for their achievements so you can role and ele ranger and monk in GW2 and keep playing the way you like. As far as adding up the titles across the toons and saying you close to koadb is flawed because many people have koabd on three toons so for them to do 15 titles for their 3 toons and you to do 5 for your whole account is not fair.

If you really wanted to you could beat all the campaigns in 4 days, maybe less. Who cares about titles? How hard is it to stick an unid gold and your unsalvaged runes in the chest and take care of them later?

Umm... duh? What do you think the HoM is? It is a giant sign that says... GO PLAY ONE CHARACTER AND MAKE THEM AMAZING AND FORGET YOUR OTHER CHARACTERS YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF FLESH!

But then again, I could be over exaggerating... wait, nope.

Your either very bad at sarcasm, or very bad at humor.

I havent worked out what one yet.

You are very bad at seeing the obvious, and I have figured that out.

Almost. The HoM is a giant sign that says PICK YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER AND MAX IT AND THEN GO HAVE A LIFE BECAUSE YOU ARE DONE WITH GW1 (UNLESS YOU WANT TO PvP YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF FLESH)

I don't care about the titles what I do care about is having to repeat the game 10 times. I completed Prophecies once and then ran the other 9 characters. Since Factions forces you to repeat the entire game I have only completed it with one character. Nightfall I have done one characters. EotN I have completed it with 10 characters so I can turn books in for armor. There is just no way I am repeating this game that many times.

ANET is defiantly saying pick a favorite character. The good part is that I don’t care about titles so I am going to play all ten characters.

Anet hasn't deterred me from making multiple characters.

seems like they are trying, but I can never stick with 1 prof too long without getting bored of it.

In my opinion, I don't think so, because, I am now proud owner of 3 survivor characters, 1 idomitable. waits for the next skill caping weekend. yihar! I think i am going to slowly starts all my characters from the beginning again. lol, FACTION! whoopie! survivor in a day. now who says there are grind! a day!

Honestly, I feel the Hall of Momentos (or whatver it is in GWEN) should be account-based instead of character based. It seems stupid to have to get all the different quilts for all the different halls and have to get all the different mini-pets for each of your character.

I would like to see account-based titles too, but not too many. Maybe have some like, if your account was made 1 year ago, you get the title GW Fan, 2 years ago, etc, etc.

I DEFINITELY would like to see the outposts discovered once become discovered for all of your characters. I think that makes no sense for each of my characters to have to explore the same world 6-7 times.

I mean...think about. When you make a new character, it's automatically in your guild. Guilds members talk to each other, pass on information, tada, you now know where "insert town here" is. But it's not like Guild members just give you a lightbringer title, so I don't think most titles should be account-based.

I feel like they have with the HoM and titles, but otherwise, no.

When titles came out, I pretty much ignored them since they were vanity items. At this point, I'm ignoring them because it's a huge effort to max them on one character, and I don't really feel like picking favorites.

When I first got GW:EN, I had the choice of playing several characters and ignoring the HoM, or ignoring all but one of my characters and filling one HoM. I choose the former. I have seven characters right now, and I consider them all equally my favorite. Again, I'm not going to pick one character and just run with them while leaving the others to rot.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the singular development of all my characters.

To answer the question: yes, Anet is deterring us from playing multiple chars.

The evidence : 20 minipets to fill your HoM. 20.

Even with 20 char slots, in 5 years you still won't have enough pets to fill the HoM of 1 char of every class. That would take 10 years. So, yeah, Anet suck balls, as usual.

Personally though, I think the HoM is misleading, as I can see the transferable (beneficial, whatever) stuff being account based, rather than character based.

Anet Want's you to have one roleplaying character and a whole bunch of PVP characters. Isn't that what they originally intended? I'm fine with it. I have all skills unlocked, i can make any character with any build for PVP and my one PVE character can handle everything the world trows at her thanks to PVE skills.

If that was their intention the damn well coulda made it clearer ><

Nope, as many have already likely told you (I'm not reading all the pages)

It's more than reasonable to expect each character to actually play the game.

If you wanna just get to fighting, then play pvp.

If you don't want to play the game, don't.

But discovering outposts and earning titles is part of the game.

Some titles are shared across the entire account, and some aren't, for good reason.