Multiple Characters vs. Sticking with one - Thoughts?

[Kipling]

Unless everyone else in your group is also leveling alt characters (to evade coil lockout), what's the point? DL is good enough for anything not-coil, so you're basically mythgearing up a second job so you can... run the coil with randoms?

It seems silly to create another character explicitly for purposes of spamming the narrow retail-release endgame content more rapidly, but it's your time, I suppose.

The point is more for upcomming content. I'm one of those people who levels healers, tanks, and DPS because I dislike not being useful. I see so many people in MMOs who only level DPS etc and then end up not going to content. Never made sense to me. I guess what I'm saying is - If I end up ever needing to use my alt tank or whatever, I want it to be decent.

[Enygma55]

Its your time, spend it however you like. I'm ok with having a decked out allagan DRG and a DL only PLD than to lv a 2nd char just to try to get allagan/AF2. Grinding 2 chars when they release future content with better gear will only strain you more and make it feel more like a job.

Gear holds you up but playstyle and skill makes up a large chunk of ur dps and survivability. When I see people shout for Relic +1 dps only for stuff like AK so you can clear it in 20 mins instead of 25, it makes me sad inside. Takes people probably twice as long to fill out the party than to actually run the instance. Probably on average i see 2 wipes before a win with Garuda SR runs with 1 healer.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Gear holds you up but playstyle and skill makes up a large chunk of ur dps and survivability. When I see people shout for Relic +1 dps only for stuff like AK so you can clear it in 20 mins instead of 25, it makes me sad inside.

There's a part of me that only thought about doing this because dumb shit like that is becoming more and more common.

[Hyan]

Some people would disagree XIV does this solely on the grounds of myth/coil forcing you to limit your focus to 1 job, maybe 2-3 at best.

Well I guess we can conclude this isn't the case for a tiny portion of the playerbase then. Everyone that wants to stretch themselves further than 2-3 jobs but *gasp* can't.

I think it's silly to completely dismiss all jobs on one character concept merely because not all jobs can be equally geared at all times. Yes it can be an issue I'm not saying it isn't, and no I don't think most people really give a shit to let it ruin the whole system for them.

[Kiarax]

I definitely wish I had leveled multiple characters. As is it takes 1:30~2:00 to clear coil and cap my myth, beyond that I have absolutely nothing productive I can do. WAR will always be my main but I fucking love MNK too. It sucks I can't work on gearing it any further unless I neglect my WAR. Even if I did, I run the only meaningful content on my WAR anyway so it's not like I even get the opportunity to try and push my MNK any further anyway since it can only be run once a week.

Whilst I can let it slide since everything PvE is a joke right now I'm really concerned about PvP in 2.1. Square are incompetent enough for me to be certain that gear gaps will be massive, if that holds true for PvE gear or PvP gear is time based (in a similar 1-job fashion) then it will completely destroy what little fun PvP might be. What really baffles me is why SE are so adamant to defend the system though. Fixing gating to be class based would harm no one (those with no issues with the current system would see no difference) and would remove a huge problem for some. It's currently the #1 thing keeping me from logging in and I know plenty others in the same boat. Luckily the issue is being brought up more and more as time goes on, maybe SE will open their eyes eventually.

[TheDirtyHobo]

Well I guess we can conclude this isn't the case for a tiny portion of the playerbase then. Everyone that wants to stretch themselves further than 2-3 jobs but *gasp* can't.

I think it's silly to completely dismiss all jobs on one character concept merely because not all jobs can be equally geared at all times. Yes it can be an issue I'm not saying it isn't, and no I don't think most people really give a shit to let it ruin the whole system for them.

To add to that, BC currently drops 6 pieces of gear split amongst 8 people once a week. Let's round down and say you, on average, get one piece every 2 weeks. You can also buy, again rounding down, a mythology piece every other week. 2 pieces per 2 weeks, takes 11 slots to fully gear a job, so ~11 weeks, or 3 months max.

Honestly, 3 months to completely deck out a job in the highest end gear available isn't even that bad. I see it more as preventing people from fully gearing multiple jobs before the next patch even comes out. Salvage took significantly longer than that to get a full set of armor for 1 person when running every night, but I don't remember people rushing to make alts to do Salvage on.

[Hyan]

To add to that, BC currently drops 6 pieces of gear split amongst 8 people once a week. Let's round down and say you, on average, get one piece every 2 weeks. You can also buy, again rounding down, a mythology piece every other week. 2 pieces per 2 weeks, takes 11 slots to fully gear a job, so ~11 weeks, or 3 months max.

Honestly, 3 months to completely deck out a job in the highest end gear available isn't even that bad. I see it more as preventing people from fully gearing multiple jobs before the next patch even comes out. Salvage took significantly longer than that to get a full set of armor for 1 person when running every night, but I don't remember people rushing to make alts to do Salvage on.

Especially considering we are looking at a new CoB tier per every 6 months.

[blowfin]

Understand the reasoning behind it, but don't play enough to have the desire for an alt at the moment. Getting LNC to 32 for B4B is painful enough between having burnt most of the quest EXP and the quarrymill FATE swarm.

Also, I was lucky enough to have rolled bard before being really aware of it's utility, so I'm pretty useful for just about everything.

I'll probably take a tank to 50 on my main next, but not on an alt.

Salvage took significantly longer than that to get a full set of armor for 1 person when running every night, but I don't remember people rushing to make alts to do Salvage on.

Actually, plenty of people burnt up MNK for Salvage, they just didn't feel compelled to do it on a mule.

[Alkimi]

I've decided to level DRG on an alt, for a few reasons:
- It's something to do
- For me it's a good way to learn the job properly rather than having everything thrown at me as a lv50. That's probably just me being terrible at melee jobs though.
- Can just gear it up gradually with it's own myth cap.
- We've recently formed our own FC and we need the points from quests!

I'm taking it slowly using the story missions, dungeons and quest hubs rather and trying to avoid spamming fates except where necessary. I know it's slower but I really can't stand fate spam, it just makes me want to log off and do something else.

[Spider-Dan]

Actually, plenty of people burnt up MNK for Salvage, they just didn't feel compelled to do it on a mule.

He is (we are) talking about creating another character specifically so you could do an event more often, not leveling another job (on your main character) to use for a particular event.

There's a huge difference between leveling BRD for meripo and creating another character so you can have more opportunities to lot Dynamis/Limbus/Salvage gear... to use in meripo.

[blowfin]

He is (we are) talking about creating another character specifically so you could do an event more often, not leveling another job (on your main character) to use for a particular event.

It's a bit of both really, people are doing it to get around the lockout, but there are also examples in this thread where people have stated it's about utility and not having to share mythos with another job.

Every case is probably a little bit different, but I don't think you can discount that some people would be leveling an alt to become more flexible, and then gear it faster than they can do it on their main.

[Carth]

I've made it known around here that I have two characters. Don't care about coil lockouts or Myth currency, I just like having two characters to play with all the time for the sake of variety.

The Myth/Coil farming is true. Both my characters are coil level now, and they're both in the process of forming statics. The jump from Ultros to Hyperion fucked up my coil progression, so my main has been sitting pretty for awhile as I geared up my alt.

However, There's quite a bit of disadvantages to having two characters. For one thing, you have to level your cross-classes again. This can be bypassed with efficient planning of course (My main is a PLD, and my secondary is a WHM), but the fact remains you're potentially doubling your workload and having strong cases of de'ja vu. The biggest issue however is until you reach Coil/Myth, there's literally no objective reason to have an alt. At all. You're actually putting yourself at an disadvantage because you don't have a decked out job to farm philosophy tomes for darklight gear, and you're starting at the bottom where all the shout parties couldn't give the slightest fuck about you.

Also, you can't mail stuff to your alt. And you don't share friend lists or linkshells. Big annoyance there.

The real problem is this game is dry as fuck and there isn't a lot of content, so SE has to put artificial barriers on content to stop players from completing it so they feel compelled to keep their subscriptions up. Leveling an alt won't change that, because they'll be put in that situation as well. You just may have to take 10 hours per week to cap everything instead of 5.

[Kainos]

Why not just level a craft so u can hq gear for your other job?

[Grieverbk]

I had initially planned to this, breaking up DoM and DoW between 2 different characters, still have the second character setup (sitting at lvl 1 though)
I'm not sure what it was exactly that killed this notion, but it may have started when I leveled ARC to 34 for cross-classing on BLM.
I guess I figured, well, it's more than half way to 50, I might as well put it on the list to finish, and the idea just took off from there.
Made more sense to me than leveling the same job twice.
Then it just sort of went full tilt as evidenced by my signature.

The myth cap doesn't really play a part right now as my primary focus is my BLM and SMN, which for the most part, shares gear.

[Rocl]

Why not just level a craft so u can hq gear for your other job?

Grats you wasted one day of one week leveling a craft and now you've got the rest of forever waiting for Coil/Myth to reset

[Kainos]

Grats you wasted one day of one week leveling a craft and now you've got the rest of forever waiting for Coil/Myth to reset

Only maxes out legacy should complain it's ridiculous for new ppl to lol an alt for sidegrades

[Azull]

Play other stuff and don't burn yourself out would be my suggestion.

[Spider-Dan]

It's a bit of both really, people are doing it to get around the lockout, but there are also examples in this thread where people have stated it's about utility and not having to share mythos with another job.

i.e. get around the myth cap (lockout)

Fundamentally, it doesn't make sense. Either you are leveling an alt character to run with alt groups (which means you just have too much time) or you are leveling an alt character to occasionally bring with your main group in place of your main character (because flexibility). If you don't have a problem benching your main character for an event that drops BiS gear (in the name of Helping The Team), why can't you just spend some of your guaranteed weekly myth haul on a secondary job for that main character?

It's illogical to insist that every single mythstone be spent only on your primary job at the same time you are willing to sit your mail character out of coil runs with your main group.

[Therin]

I thought about leveling a lalafell SCH until I realized I'd have to do the main quest again. Fuck that.

[Rocl]

(which means you just have too much time)

while i don't disagree, it seems stupid to blame people for wanting to play the game