Suggestion : account-shared alliance ranks

Tripwyr · February 2015

Sypher wrote: »

Winnamine wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

The idea is, the process of making a new account and getting back into the fight shouldn't take 3-4 months+

And my totally rhetorical response is "why not?"

If such and so effort took that long the first time, why should it be cheaper/easier the second time?

Besides encouraging replayability and alt creation. The assault/support grind is inconsistent with other grinds in the game.

Leveling 1-50 takes a few solid days of grinding.

V1-V14 takes 1-2 weeks of solid grinding.

Maxing a craft takes ~4 months?

While the PvP grind takes some people 1 year+ I know some people who have been playing since release and still haven't hit AR24 to unlock A/S 10.

This discourages alt creation and repeatability. Which is a fundamental aspect of prolonging a games life span.

Sypher
You level at the speed of.... what's slower than tortoise?

That's not the only thing I'm slow at finishing

Important edit.

Winnamine · February 2015

Sypher wrote: »

Winnamine wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

The idea is, the process of making a new account and getting back into the fight shouldn't take 3-4 months+

And my totally rhetorical response is "why not?"

If such and so effort took that long the first time, why should it be cheaper/easier the second time?

Besides encouraging replayability and alt creation. The assault/support grind is inconsistent with other grinds in the game.

Leveling 1-50 takes a few solid days of grinding.

V1-V14 takes 1-2 weeks of solid grinding.

Maxing a craft takes ~4 months?

While the PvP grind takes some people 1 year+ I know some people who have been playing since release and still haven't hit AR24 to unlock A/S 10.

This discourages alt creation and repeatability. Which is a fundamental aspect of prolonging a games life span.

Sypher
You level at the speed of.... what's slower than tortoise?

That's not the only thing I'm slow at finishing

That's not what I heard.....

ToRelax · February 2015

joshisanonymous wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Talcyndl wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

And my totally rhetorical response is "why not?"

If such and so effort took that long the first time, why should it be cheaper/easier the second time?

Because if people remain stuck on their main characters (out of an understandable dread of redoing the AP grind), the population imbalances are going to continue and get worse.

Assuming that the only way populations can be balanced is by people switching factions. That seems like a crappy way to balance such a thing to me, though, not to mention people do make alts already. People have switched factions and you can see a good number of signatures with more than one VR14 listed.

Sanct16 wrote: »

Imagine that crafted sets were bound to the character that crafted it.

Having PvP ranks bound to the character you got the AP on is pretty much the same.

That comparison makes no sense at all since crafted items are meant to be sold/traded.

I still see absolutely no reason why this is necessary, other than to save people effort (that effort being the horror of having to play the game as if it's an RPG). If that's the only reason this stuff should be account wide, then you might as well make literally everything account wide. Once you cap out a character at VR14, infinite CP, and rank whatever, all newly created character are exactly at the same place. You'd essentially end up with a FPS style game and completely empty PvE zones. I really don't even understand why CP are account wide for the same reason.

CP are account wide for the same reason many want alliance ranks to be account wide (at least per faction).
It is not meant to be capped, so you always make progress playing.
If CP were not accoutn wide, it would be less encouraging to play other characters because your main character is just so much stronger, even if you would rather play another class now. But if you still play another character, you don't make progress on your main character, so you have no really strong character after some time, compared to other players.
The alliance war skill lines can be capped easier, but it still takes a lot of time on that character and a lot of players playing alts a lot don't have a single character on rank 24, which puts them on a serious disadvantage in 1.6.

This is exactly how it has worked in practically every MMO since MMOs have existed. If you're all about making alts, you're not gonna get the same kind of pay off for the time you've put in as someone who wants to commit to one solely one character. What's wrong with that? Why do we need people to be making alts? I understand that account wide CPs means people will be more likely to play alts, but what good does that do anyone? And are we saying that no one plays alts now? Or that that's the only way to balance out PvP populations or to keep PvE areas full? I'm sure it's meant to address these questions, but I'm not at all convinced that the best way to do that is to destroy the sense of character development with CPs and, as people are suggesting, APs.

EDIT: As far as having no real strong character, this also has a lot to do with how much people play. One person might play only one character but for 5 hours a week, while another might play four characters for 10 hours a week each. The latter will still have stronger characters than the former, but not as strong as someone who plays 40 hours a week on one character. There are many more variables involved than simply some exact timescale that's equal for all players.

Because playing alts keeps people interested in the game, discouraging them from doing so is -> less profit.

Read what I wrote in it's context man, I am completely fine with it if there are things you can not help your main character ith while playing alts. Like leveling up, I'd also be okay with finding character bound gear, although I don't like it.
But Alliance Rank and Champion Rank are not meant to be capped by most players, so don't punish them for playing alts before they capped them.

Sypher · February 2015

Winnamine wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

Winnamine wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

The idea is, the process of making a new account and getting back into the fight shouldn't take 3-4 months+

And my totally rhetorical response is "why not?"

If such and so effort took that long the first time, why should it be cheaper/easier the second time?

Besides encouraging replayability and alt creation. The assault/support grind is inconsistent with other grinds in the game.

Leveling 1-50 takes a few solid days of grinding.

V1-V14 takes 1-2 weeks of solid grinding.

Maxing a craft takes ~4 months?

While the PvP grind takes some people 1 year+ I know some people who have been playing since release and still haven't hit AR24 to unlock A/S 10.

This discourages alt creation and repeatability. Which is a fundamental aspect of prolonging a games life span.

Sypher
You level at the speed of.... what's slower than tortoise?

That's not the only thing I'm slow at finishing

That's not what I heard.....

From who? @ them or you're lying.

newtinmpls · February 2015

Sypher wrote: »

That's not the only thing I'm slow at finishing

This could be a very good thing.

I note that some folks use "main" vs "alt" terminology as if there were one particular character that was the real/primary character and the others were somehow less important/real.

While that is certainly one way to play, it is not the only way.

joshisanonymous · February 2015

ToRelax wrote: »

Because playing alts keeps people interested in the game, discouraging them from doing so is -> less profit.

Read what I wrote in it's context man, I am completely fine with it if there are things you can not help your main character ith while playing alts. Like leveling up, I'd also be okay with finding character bound gear, although I don't like it.
But Alliance Rank and Champion Rank are not meant to be capped by most players, so don't punish them for playing alts before they capped them.

I didn't take anything out of context. I quoted the whole thing. You're against the idea that trying to play 10 alts would mean that none of them would be as powerful as 1 could be if you only played 1. And that's what I responded to. As for your response..

Doesn't this endless progression system (CP and AP) also keep people interested? Isn't that already being accomplished? Don't people already make alts regardless of the lack of shared progression? I just fail to see how one is being punished by being forced to develop every new character they make in an RPG. This is how RPGs work.

Winnamine · February 2015

Sypher wrote: »

Winnamine wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

Winnamine wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

Sypher wrote: »

The idea is, the process of making a new account and getting back into the fight shouldn't take 3-4 months+

And my totally rhetorical response is "why not?"

If such and so effort took that long the first time, why should it be cheaper/easier the second time?

Besides encouraging replayability and alt creation. The assault/support grind is inconsistent with other grinds in the game.

Leveling 1-50 takes a few solid days of grinding.

V1-V14 takes 1-2 weeks of solid grinding.

Maxing a craft takes ~4 months?

While the PvP grind takes some people 1 year+ I know some people who have been playing since release and still haven't hit AR24 to unlock A/S 10.

This discourages alt creation and repeatability. Which is a fundamental aspect of prolonging a games life span.

Sypher
You level at the speed of.... what's slower than tortoise?

That's not the only thing I'm slow at finishing

That's not what I heard.....

From who? @ them or you're lying.

Pics or it didn't happen?

ToRelax · February 2015

joshisanonymous wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Because playing alts keeps people interested in the game, discouraging them from doing so is -> less profit.

Read what I wrote in it's context man, I am completely fine with it if there are things you can not help your main character ith while playing alts. Like leveling up, I'd also be okay with finding character bound gear, although I don't like it.
But Alliance Rank and Champion Rank are not meant to be capped by most players, so don't punish them for playing alts before they capped them.

I didn't take anything out of context. I quoted the whole thing. You're against the idea that trying to play 10 alts would mean that none of them would be as powerful as 1 could be if you only played 1. And that's what I responded to. As for your response..

Doesn't this endless progression system (CP and AP) also keep people interested? Isn't that already being accomplished? Don't people already make alts regardless of the lack of shared progression? I just fail to see how one is being punished by being forced to develop every new character they make in an RPG. This is how RPGs work.

People already suggested shared ranks since... idk, but I can't remember any time whithout someone wanting it.

Now, however, the alliance war skilllines will suddenly become much stronger when maxed out. So more people say they want shared ranks because they like playing alts (or find it unfair for those who do).

It seems you won't change your opinion about this, however I have not heard any argument from your side yet, why ranks shouldn't be shared. Then again, you may think the same about my comments...

Alomar · February 2015

I don't think a shared alliance rank/passives account wide is a good idea, it takes away from one of the few "end-game" grinds that ESO has. While I'm far from a role-player I don't believe a rank earned on one character should persist to some brand new level 10, not realistic nor necessary.

Yet, I wouldn't mind seeing a character transfer option to help balance faction populations. For example, transferring to an underpopulated (determined by ZOS based on activity statistics) faction could be free and transferring elsewhere could cost a small fee, similar to WoW. If that's too complicated just charge for all transfers, lol.

MrGhosty · February 2015

I would be behind the idea of making the skill trees account-wide but the specific ranks should be earned as that represents what that character has provided to various campaigns. Even if you needed to place some stipulation to avoid pre-vet campaign from getting steamrolled but I can't see how dealing with caltrops at an early level would be any worse than facing a re-roll character with 100+ CP points spent.

xylena · February 2015

it's definitely all about the skills, i doubt anyone asking for this cares much what they do with titles/ranks

Talcyndl · February 2015

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Assuming that the only way populations can be balanced is by people switching factions. That seems like a crappy way to balance such a thing to me, though, not to mention people do make alts already. People have switched factions and you can see a good number of signatures with more than one VR14 listed.

Of course some people have made cross-faction alts. The issue is that most people don't want to because it would mean giving up very valuable PvP abilities. Even worse, the necessary Alliance ranks are now MUCH slower even for the master grinders because of some fixes and the overall lower population. You no longer can grind large amounts of AP during US daytime hours because there simply aren't enough people to kill.

The end result is a stagnant population imbalance.

IMO, ZOS should take multiple steps to encourage rerolls so that the players can "naturally" rebalance the factions. Some version of account wide Alliance ranks is one way.

newtinmpls · February 2015

Talcyndl wrote: »

You no longer can grind large amounts of AP during US daytime hours because there simply aren't enough people to kill.

Kind of in a nutshell this describes my total lack of enthusiasm for PvP.

Asgari · February 2015

xylena wrote: »

it's definitely all about the skills, i doubt anyone asking for this cares much what they do with titles/ranks

Actually, I don't really care about having to re unlock the skills. I more care about merging my ranks to one consolidated rank. Once you've unlocked combat frenzy on your characters there's nothing left for you to do.

I want my ranks merged but keep the AP character bound.