Feb 13, 2012

Posted by in Blue Milk & Cereal | 51 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You Rolling An Alt?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Today marks exactly 2 months since Early Game Access for Star Wars: The Old Republic opened up. If you began playing on that very day, playing just a couple hours several days a week, it’s been enough time that you could have a character at level 50 by now. So for those of you who are level 50, and I’m guessing many in the AAJ Army have at least one, did you decide to level an alt?

There are some complaints on the forums that people are “bored,” but a quick study shows that these players generally raced to level 50 for the most part, and expected unlimited gameplay options once they got there. It’s just not going to happen in a brand new MMO. Especially when BioWare made it clear they were betting big on the level-up game. With individual stories for each class, and the Legacy system in place to support exactly that, it shouldn’t be a big surprise they want players to play many characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Damion Schubert: We really want to put in systems to encourage replay. The Legacy System, which we hope to get in, will hopefully be in that venue. I am not ready to talk about what exactly it is and how we do that, but we are really betting heavily on the level up game. We are really betting heavily on the story aspects of the game, and we really want people to enjoy that journey, and to feel like that journey is interesting and exciting. We actually want to incentivize people to try the different classes so that they experience those other stories, and they play the game again. So that really put a lot of pressure on us to make sure that leveling up your second character and your third character is not grinding, and that it still feels like a fresh and interesting experience. We’re less interested in doing a Dark Age of Camelot “hey bypass all the content” in order to get to max level to do the endgame content because of what we think is important about our game and is our unique selling point: we want you to try that content. Maybe there is a way in the future, but that isn’t even a sparkle in our eye at this point. 

Now, I’m a fan of sticking to one character whenever possible… and due to my play time, that’s all I can usually do anyway. But I have dabbled in some other characters especially during Game Testing. Oddly, I find leveling an alt in TOR to be somehow more repetitive than leveling an alt in previous games. I can’t put by finger on it… the class quests are all different, but they make up only a small part of the content. If you pick the class that shares your main’s starter world, then nearly everything else you do is a duplicate of what you’ve already done, right from the start.

So I’m just curious how many of you guys are out there rolling alts, and what prompted you to do it. Are you simply bored at level 50 waiting for everyone else to get there, or are you genuinely interested in seeing the story for multiple classes? What is your experience of rolling an alt so far… different enough?

Are you rolling an alt at level 50?

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  1. I’m leveling an alt because I want to find out more of the class story lines! :) Plus I wanted to try my hand at being a healer.

  2. Waiting for the legacy system to be implemented.

  3. Leveled an alt to because I didn’t like the advance class that I chose as much as I thought I would.

  4. Something to do when I’m bored with grinding valor, plus I intend to play through all the story lines, and it will add more utility to my guild in the long run

  5. Leveled an Alt already level 50 as well. Since I didnt like my juggernaut role in pvp… it basiclly doesnt do damage or do damage but is squishy. Dont get me wrong this is the real way how a tank should be no like in wow I just didnt like it. So I leveled mercenary … and IT IS AWESOMEEEEEEEEEE

  6. I have 6 alts and a main at level 47. I have 1 of each class Sith/Republic except for trooper. Also I pick the opposite advanced class across factions so my main is a Jedi Guardian but my alt is a Sith Marauder for example. The only class I haven’t made yet is a Trooper. I’m trying to focus on getting that main to 50 then I’ll make the Trooper. But I AM Legacy level 7 already so getting a lot of that XP with all the alts!

  7. WerewolfGuardian says:

    Not quite sure how to answer. Have I rolled alts? Yes. Am I 50 yet? No. I have a number of characters and play what fits my mood.

    • Yeah, same here. Why wait for a char to be 50 before starting an alt?

      • I’m the same way. I’ve got 1 main and 7 alts (all 8 classes). My main is level 36 only (lol), but all of my alts are at least level 10. For the most part, I’m doing the oposite advanced classes on the sith side from the republic…except for JC / SI. I’m Sage and Sorcerer because I like to be the healer. Sage is my main.

  8. ah I forgot:

    “What is your experience of rolling an alt so far… different enough?”

    No ! Not at all I was bored to hell from the story second time I was skiping basically everything except the class quest and some first sentences or strange dialog options.

    In anyway if you make a new character its better to be the other fraction at least you will see the other content as well.. I am planing this for my third the thing is I do not know what to level maybe sentinel.

    Anyway about the story I didnt like the BH story, didnt like the titles and the story was blah uncompilable to the sith warrior which story was amazing. Beeing a sith you feel like a part of the empire of something big beeing a hunter meh even one of the lightside options ware to be a traitor ? :) Also I found 3 BUGS not kidding 3 BUGS on the BH story line I even get Stuck ones totally stuck with broken phase and unable to continue with the next compared this to the sith warrior questline which was with a lot better quality and as it looks a lot better testing.

  9. Story in SWTOR is a big motivator for rolling alts and I think Bioware has done a great job with that. Granted the starter worlds have a large amount of story overlap, but those first 10 levels simply introduce you to the game, how it’s played, and what your new character is all about. Considering how fast you’re off these planets they feel very much like a “tutorial zone”.
    I’ve always rolled alts in nearly all of the games I’ve played. Aside from experiencing each class story, I enjoy the flexibility of having a pool of characters to choose from. Some times I may want to Tank, other times I might want to heal or DPS. Having multiple characters allows me to do that.
    Another benefit that is very important to me is that each of my characters can have crafting skills that compliment each other. Being completely self sufficient in this way means I seldom if ever need to resort to the GTN for the things I want or need.

  10. I have always planned on rolling alts mostly because I want to see the storylines. I can see a few people wanting to roll alts just because they rush to the end and find there isn’t much to do. People are waiting on others to catch up or they blew through all the endgame content as fast as they could. Its all not a bad thing people should play however they want.

    I know a few people that are maximizer types that will dedicate themselves to one character to keep them at the peak and will never roll that alt.

  11. I always roll alts. In SWTOR it is for the class storys and crafting. I rolled 6 alts to cover all aspects of crafting/gathering/mission skills. I am not one of those that skills to 400 and drops it for something else. My Powertech BH is 46, the rest are 25 or lower.

    Crafting is one of the things I tend to like most in a game. Sadly the crafting in SWTOR is not very well done. most can get mods via commendations, so there is not much point to anyone that makes mods as commendations are easy to get. Armor (good armor) comes from quests, so there is no point to armormech. Biochem is really the only good one since stims and pots are only on a vendor and they are not cheap for a consumable.

    Reverse Engineering is annoying as hell too. I have had somethings proc after breaking 2 of something, whole others I can break 20 of and get nothing. Some kind of consistency would be nice. Plus tool tips on the green/blue saying what can be discovered from breaking it would be great too. Some things I am starting to wonder if there even is a proc for them.

    Suffice it to say I have 6 alts and am still starting to get bored already. Better do something to keep us interested or you will not be retaining subscribers.

    • DaveTheWaveUSMC says:

      I’m the same way, but totally disagree with you concerning crafting. Armormech is great for leveling your alts. At the rate I level, the gear I get from quest rewards, commendations does not hold a candle to the gear I can craft. It get’s a little expensive, but I’m happy with it.

      Working on my last Empire side alt for Armstech. I have 2 BH, 2 IA, 1 SW, 1 SI. I have every crafting crew skill covered. My SW was going to be my main, but I ended up liking the BH better. Got my Jug past the Chapter 1 quest line so I could open up my Legacy. I’ll fly space missions for some easy credits and he is my bank/AH mule now. My BH has Cybertech/Scavaging/Bioanalysis. I feed my other crafting alts with his gathering or sell the extra mats for big bucks on the AH.

      I have a republic trooper on another server, plan to keep them completely separate, although with the Legacy system, I may end up regretting that. I’ll probably create my entire set up on that side also ;)

  12. Main Inq = 50, IA = 30, SW = 35, BH = 30

    Class stories are great, however, I wish they would do something serious with the legacy, the big joke in my guild is by time they do something with it, it’ll be useless for our alts.

    I hope it at least benefits us along the lines of discounted repair bills, less durability loss, faster mount speeds, lower CD on quick travel, ability to use fleet passes way more often a day, etc. Shit like that.

    • register your Security Key (Smart phone or physical key) then go to the fleet and by Fleet Passes from the security key vendor. They are only 1k and and hour cooldown seperate from the Emergency Fleet pass cooldown. :)

  13. I level alts because I find it fun. I’m currently leveling 3 alts a 40 Sith sorc, 39 Sith Jug, and a 23 Gunslinger. I’m stopping the Gunslinger because I don’t find that class fun to level solo.

  14. Leveled a marauder to 50 and didn’t like the playstyle. Leveled a merc to 50 and love it. Now I’m casually leveling others. Like one other person said, I’m doing 4 sith and 4 republic. This way I get to see all 8 storylines and I don’t pick the same AC. So far really liking the operative and gunslinger so I am leveling those.

  15. Leveling an alt for the story. And it’s better to get my own underworld metal rather than asking for it from guildies.

  16. Main is 50(Jedi Sage-Heals) and leveling 2 alts currently (Vanguard and Scoundrel). made the Sage to heal for my guild. Vanguard is for an all trooper RP guild with friends from work. The Scoundrel is what I wanted to play since the game came out, and is by far my favorite class even though he is only level 12 :). Stealth Healer with CC and its freaking Han Solo. Best class ever IMO!

  17. I’m currently leveling out 4 Alts to my already 50 JK Guard..
    JK/S(27)
    Sm/Gun(26)
    JC/Sage(27)
    Tr/Comm(21)

    and I have the other 3 alts alreay setup and ready to go, but mot leveling them based on the latest speculation on the Leagacy system, so they may change out.

  18. Yes – for the stories mainly. I also want to experience the other styles of gameplay. I usually play a tank in MMOs and my main is a Sith Juggernaut, so I want to see how the SI Assassin and BH Powertech play as well. I’m also toying with some healing characters as well.

  19. pwnttothemax says:

    have a lvl 50 jugg, heavily into pvp. re-rolled an agent and that’s been okay (only lvl 6 tho). once i get bored with lvl 50 pvping i want to try out a cross-faction character though. that, for me, is enough future promise to continue with subscription fees

  20. Yes I rolled an alt when I hit 50. I don’t raid/pvp I usually skip the heroics and flashpoints etc. I’m a solo-player. i mainly just chat in mmo’s as i work my way through them. I do craft too but honestly swtor’s Crew skills need some more work although i am at 400 on my mains artifice

  21. Yep, and here is why.

    I out leveled my friends. <_<;

  22. ScytheNoire says:

    What do you mean “are you?”

    I’m already working on my third 50, currently have level 41.

    The end game is so horrible that there is nothing to do but start a new character and see their story line. Just wish I could skip all the same boring crap on the worlds.

    All those people who predicted that all there would be to do is roll alt’s were spot on. BioWare’s design was always about making alt’s, not about having a single character.

    • What is this game missing at end game that you expected? This game has everything expected for an mmo. Pherhaps the current state of mmos is not what you enjoy?

      • The end game is there, it’s just the quantity is lacking. Normal Ops are a joke, but they are aimed towards PuGs. HM Ops are a little more challenging but if you have done the normal ones a few times then they seem a joke too. Haven’t experienced nightmare so I can’t say on that but I’m guessing it’s not much harder than HM.

  23. Yes. With the 3 modes of operation difficulty and our guild running 16 mans it makes sense to be able to raid with an alt in the easier difficulty and use your main in the progression runs.

  24. I answered the poll with a “no” because I rolled my alts at level 1, 7 distinct chars, right away. I didn’t go for 8 because my imagination ran dry. :-) My Sorcerer proved most fun early on, and she recently reached 50. All of the alts have their part in my game play.

  25. I already have 8 toons rolled on Shien. 6 Republic and 2 Imps. All different advanced classes.

  26. you’re doing it wrong if you’re repeating all the same stuff as your first pass through. do some space. queue warzones, play your new story. skip the stuff you don’t feel like repeating [some stuff is cool to redo to get different outcome if you’re aligning the new character differently]

  27. Yes becuase i got bored with the endgame stuff because either there wasn’t enough people there yet or people didn’t want to do that much stuff so I rolled another republic alt. Even thugh world stuff is the same i still am interested in the class story though so that is the fun part for me.

  28. I was apprehensive about rolling an alt at first (I normally roll multiple alts) because all the side missions would be the same. But then I realized that although I was 50, the majority of the people I wanted to play with were not.

    Now I haven’t logged in to my “main” in days, but am leveling two characters roughly around the same level as my friends. I’m not finding the story as repetitive as I feared, and having people to play with makes all the difference in the world. Plus having a 50 who can make 200k in about an hour makes money management something I don’t even have to consider, so I can happily waste my money on whatever vanity item I stumble across.

  29. I don’t have one for SOME reason maby its cause i have a whole viriaty of characters and I am interested in all of there store line maby Im not a fast leveler or something but id like it to be a bit ,ore like lotro where is didn’t take like 50,000 points of xp to get form lv 9 to lv 10.Any way im not buying it that they try to make levleing easy I mean come on the class quest give almost no xp.

  30. I’ve got 3 char past 40 and even tho I want to see all 8 class story and play all adv classes… I don’t think I can repeat the generic faction quests any more. I’ve been using rested xp and sensible save-bonus-series-for-alt tactic but I really need the legacy system to take the grind out of my 4th char and on… Other wise I’ll probably just watch YouTube for class stories. Lol

  31. Yes and no. Yes, I’m rolling an alt, and no I’m not doing so at 50, having already several of them in various degrees of “level 30-something”.

    I really enjoy the various stories, and the differences in playstyle between the ACs. It is looking like I’ll be keeping this set roughly in line all the way to 50, switching between them every few days. Once we get the fuller version of the Legacy system in 1.2, I will probably make another one if there is anything interesting available.

  32. Yes

    Have a Trooper Commando lvl 50 and just got a Mercenary to lvl 50 yesterday

  33. gamerladyp says:

    I’m having trouble getting motivated to grind daily quests with repetitive dialogue when I can go play several different storylines. I have more than one alt on both Republic and Empire.

  34. Alexandrian says:

    The one change that would really help I think is the ability to completely skip planets. Even just doing the class quests requires a lot of flying around. There is plenty of xp around to do so, especially if you are doing flashpoints, pvp etc as you go. I’m not sure how you could resolve that with the rigidity of the class stories though; some either/or choices of planet would really help. I try and do a bit of this by doing alternate ‘bonus series’ on different characters.
    For the record, levelled a Jugg to 39 intending it to be by main; rolled a BH when I had a few minutes to kill and instantly thought ” wow, this is really fun” in a way I had never done on the warrior. So I levelled my Merchant up to 50. Now I’m finishing my Jugg off as the guild could do with a tank. At some point I’ll probably roll a ‘Pub just to see it, but I followed my Wow guild to the dark side and spending the time to level an alt that can never play with them seems kind of a waste.

  35. “Oddly, I find leveling an alt in TOR to be somehow more repetitive than leveling an alt in previous games. I can’t put by finger on it… the class quests are all different, but they make up only a small part of the content. If you pick the class that shares your main’s starter world, then nearly everything else you do is a duplicate of what you’ve already done, right from the start.”

    There is somewhat a bit of a truth in there, though it is somewhat naieve. The biggest change from, say WoW, is the actual ability to play through the quests again and get a different result or experience. And I don’t ever recall WoW having an as engaging class story.

    However, I do agree that after Alderaan (?) the game does turn a bit too linear. One would have thought you’d get several planets to choose from every few levels. But at the moment you know exactly what planet you’re going to be next.
    WoW did have several zones for every few levels. Though the content of those zone couldn’t possibly match the quality of these zones Bioware has set up.

  36. Rolling an alt so I can fill multiple rolls. I skip through most of the world quests because I have seen them before. Not too interested in the class quests because one way or another they have all been spoiled for me.

  37. I am indeed rolling many alts. I took my sweet time getting to levlel 50 but quickly realized there’s nothing I really want to do. I won’t pay for a game just to log in to do dailies or run the occasional random raid. But the leveling process in SWTOR is w/o equal, I absolutly love it. The crafting is super cool and useful also. I really feel there should be improvements you should be able to make to your character during and after the leveling process other than better gear. Talent trees: NO, Alternate advancement such as in EQ: YES!

  38. I’m leveling an alt (a few actually) for many reasons:
    A. My guild isn’t very active (gonna find a new one) and most omy friends aren’t 50 so I’m kinda waiting on them for operations.
    B. I want to play though every class story because the content is so good!
    C. I want flexibility in operations. My main is speced tank, my primary alt is speced healer, and my secondary alt is speced DPS.
    D. By rotating through multiple alts I’m trying to max out rested XP. This way I can focus more on class story, less on side quests I’ve already done, but still level effectively without having to grind pvp.
    E. I want to build up legacy XP. Some say they are waiting for legacy to make alts but I’m banking on the idea that the debs are assuming people have started alts already and either the benifets won’t require a new character or you will get one time option to implement changes that would have been possible.

  39. I have several alts… Thing is, I do not really know which AC I prefer and then there is crafting… cybertech, Armstech and Artifice for mods, Armourmech for Armour (cutomizable !!! ), Biochem for the kick and Synth for the JEdis.
    Also Sentinal or Knight? Commadno or Vanguard? And most importantly. Scoundral or Gunslinger? And we haven’t touched the Empire yet (Different server though and verrrrryyyyy slowly. Mostly to have something different when I do not feel like UPSTANDING CITIZEN anymore. Anyway. I always suffer altitis, but with Swtor… it has grown serirous.
    Cheers
    Morrgan

  40. Beside my main I’m playing 4 alts. There is one planet between each of them.

  41. i want to see the different story lines. i also get board doing dailys and waiting for people to do hard modes

  42. I started with a Sith Inquisitor, Sorcerer Advanced Class, Heal spec. After hitting 50, and finishing (most of) the planets & Bonus-series, and ofc the class-questline, I rolled alts. BH, SW, IA, an after a while a JK as well. Reason: Storyline, I want to experience them all. Some planets are very dull, but some planets are very nice to rerun (their stories are great as well). And I’ve even decided to try different roles on same classes, so I have a 2nd SI, which is Assassin-tank spec. Haven’t decided on, after that, making another sorcerer or assassin, but then dps-spec, but I prolly might just do that.

  43. RevanRules says:

    Yes I will roll a few alts to get full storyline of game and gain legacy points for each character.

  44. I got a Lvl 50 Sith Sorceror(healer) and a LVL 50 jedi Gardian, Iliked both historylines, and leveling them up was grat fun, but for the rest of my alts (sniper lvl 45, and rest around lvl 20-30)it has become very very boring for having to repeat so much world quests, Im legacy lvl 35 and i whish they introduced a very big bonus to xp on class quests once u get to certain point, so u can focus only on those but i doubt it.

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