Please improve DDO - Player Segregation and Inventory Nightmares

[dragons1ayer74]

These are my two biggest issues currently with the game. I would love to see them addressed in some way shape or form.

Player Segregation
Possible Ideas for Solutions:
• Mentoring System : Allow me to play any character scaled up or down in power so I can play with my friends and still progress and contribute
• Lockout: Reduce or eliminate lockout mechanisms if I want to go into a level 13 base quest at level 7 and can handle it why not? Also if I am playing solo, I would rather be playing with others but alas this game is making it harder for this to happen instead of easier, and chatting with my friends who are also playing solo because we can’t adventure together in PVE but we group up for company why do we often getting messages like “all players must be same level range before entering dungeon message”, yeah don’t let me into the epic quest but why stop them or make them break group to rejoin later.
• Reduce Power Level Penalty Mechanisms, heck even in slayer areas these should be removed completely.
• Much better Grouping/LFM in conjunction with favor and group compendium
• Cross Server group options
• Overhauled Vet status (Vet 1 is 4th level or +1 level for a TR, Vet 2 is 7th level or +2 levels for a TR, vet 3 is 10th level or +3 lvls for a TR) and add permanent vet status 3
• Make Base XP the same for all difficulties or at least standardize reaper XP optimum and Bravery Bonus instead of the 2 level differential between the systems.
• Real alt love : Change systems Pastlife Feats/Reaper Accumulation/Crafting from character to account based


Inventory Nightmares
Possible ideas for solutions:
• Remove TR cache!
• Allow option for inventory and fully loaded hot bars to persist after TR’s
• More and better storage options: Collectors Chest, Cosmetics Wardrobe, Player Housing, Rare Item Trophy Cabinet, Scroll Case, Book Case, etc
• Make inventory favor rewards persist through TR’s
• Sell more character inventory tabs
• Sell more shared bank storage
• Sell more character slots
• Sell a loot “unbind” and/or “bind to account” store item that will make any bound to character bound to account
• Sell Auction House (and Shard Exchange) Enhancements (more sales allowed, longer auctions, available offline, etc)

[mikarddo]

I quite agree that those are the two major issues right now.

Segregation:
- Make RXP and Racial PL account shared.
This would allow me to keep a host of alts playing any one at any time to play with friends or in raids yet be able to progress meaningfully. I would play more, buy more and play more often with various friends meaning both I and they would be likely to continue playing for longer. I simply dont have the time or inclination to keep multiple alts in play as the game works now, so I simply limit myself to the one which means my options in any given session are very limited.

Inventory:
- Add the AH UI to the Shared Bank and give us more slots.
Say 3 times the slots we have now - and watch me and many others buy upgrades (30 more slots per upgrade) like crazy to avoid the hassle of far too many mules with no search system.

Just these two things would vastly improve the enjoyment of the game for me.

[Hafeal]

I generally agree with the OP and could not agree more with mikarddo (+1).

I quite agree that those are the two major issues right now.

Segregation:
- Make RXP and Racial PL account shared.
This would allow me to keep a host of alts playing any one at any time to play with friends or in raids yet be able to progress meaningfully. I would play more, buy more and play more often with various friends meaning both I and they would be likely to continue playing for longer. I simply dont have the time or inclination to keep multiple alts in play as the game works now, so I simply limit myself to the one which means my options in any given session are very limited.

Inventory:
- Add the AH UI to the Shared Bank and give us more slots.
Say 3 times the slots we have now - and watch me and many others buy upgrades (30 more slots per upgrade) like crazy to avoid the hassle of far too many mules with no search system.

Just these two things would vastly improve the enjoyment of the game for me.

[Qhualor]

1. Normally when someone suggests a mentoring program its to scale power down to the player someone wants to mentor. This suggestion sounds more like you want to play with friends, but you guys are at different level ranges. I would suggest a static group and level together.

2. Part of the reason why there is a lockout is because players can use their alt account to sit in a quest and just earn xp or friends will earn the xp while you backpack it or sit in a quest for them to earn it for you.

3. Power level penalty is just like it sounds. Higher level characters above the intended level range of the quest generally suggests the higher level characters can handle the difficulty easier. Without the penalty, you would see a different xp route to cap making it so more quests don't get played.

4. Not sure what you mean by better grouping in conjunction with favor. I do agree the lfm system needs improvements.

5. Cross server grouping has been suggested many times. I think it can't happen, but sure, why not? If it meant logging out and logging back in to join a group on another server I wouldn't bother with it.

6. Meh

7. Major work needs to be done with BB. Whatever change the devs dare to do with the xp system, if at all, will be an emotional roller coaster ride. The base xp for quests has a lot of variable factors involved such as estimated time to complete, CR and level.

8. A big no from me. This one is a 50 page thread just on its own.

9. Where and how do we store stuff during our TR process? Housing? Lots of mixed feelings here.

10. Permanent hot bars would be nice.

11. Been suggested numerous times. Again, lots of mixed feelings on this. At this point, we need an official response from a dev on these types of storage so we can use it as a reference next week when someone else suggests the same thing.

12. You want House K and Coin Lord favor to persist through a TR? Good luck.

13-15. Sure.

16. Since so many seem to be playing just 1 character these days, probably less of an issue now. The problem with this is it would be less reasons to run a quest looking for specific loot if you could just pass it around.

17. This one would interfere with VIP and Premium perks or would be better to enhance them more encouraging people to pay for the perks.

[Dalris_Thane]

I don't think that the DDO game engine can handle it, but the system I enjoyed the best was City of Heroes.

You could "Exemplar" i.e. click on a character in the party, and you'd "power down" level wise to their level. The game even remembered what abilities you gained at what level and reduced / removed them appropriately. Ditto for gear.

It wasn't perfect. An exemplared Level 4 was still significantly more powerful than a "true" Level 4, but it was... good enough.

You could also "Side-kick" i.e. click on a character in the party, and you'd "power up" to 1 level below theirs. The game inflated the stats of your abilities and gear in the reverse of the above.

That didn't work as well because the game didn't grant you abilities, etc... that you "would have gotten" by being the level. In DDO terms, your stats, skills, etc... numbers would scale up, but you wouldn't get the missing Feats, Enhancements, all that. You'd be carried for sure, and you'd be about Hireling level in usefulness.

Well, at least you wouldn't have their horrible AI... presumably.

To be fair, it's all pie in the sky (If I have the English expression right...) in my opinion. The devs haven't fixed Guard in 2 years (high defense with porcupining is a playstyle I use in many games). Something like this... I can't see it happening. The devs just don't have the resources.

I'd love to be wrong.

[zehnvhex]

Fair warning: Salt level maximum.

Cordovan has stated several times on the livestream that they see no issues with grouping right now because, and I quote, "They don't have any problems getting groups."

Yeah. Let that one sink in.

It's a lost cause. Sev is on record as stating that he likes his BB streak so that'll never go. They don't have the engineering capacity to do any kind of cross-server grouping. I'm fairly certain they don't have anyone available who can really do any UI work. Keep in mind it took how many years for them to give us the option to hide the ship buffs and we still can't even move the buff bar.

Steel has stated that merging servers pretty much won't happen because the technical hurdles way overshadow the results. They won't get within a hundred miles of merging past lives/rxp across characters because that would be waaaaaay too modern for them and their design is based on docs locked in a vault from 2004. Besides, the "We don't play anymore but will grip endlessly about the game anyways" crowd that still post here for some reason would have a stinkfit.

Mentoring/level scaling/etc...or at least giving you something to do with friends outside your level range is a pipe dream best left to EVERY OTHER MMO OUT THERE. Us filthy DDO peasants can just get bent.

Honestly, at this point I've given up. I used to encourage everyone I could possibly find to come and play DDO. I maintained threads on about 8 different gaming forums, would chat the game up to new people that joined our live DnD sessions, etc...etc...

There's just no point anymore. SSG is flat out not interested in growing the game. I asked them to do an AMA on r/gaming for the Ravenloft release. Crickets. I asked if I could buy a bunch of 250 point codes so I could run some contests on r/DDO and on fires. Crickets. I had 3 people join a few months ago for Ravenloft that and they all quit within about two weeks because trying to form a static where we all had the same time to play meant creating like, 9 different alts just to match up with our schedules. It was a nightmare.

SSG just doesn't care. I don't know if it's a leadership problem or a culture issue or what.

But hey, 5 new quests tomorrow so everybody that has already been playing for the past 5 years will have something new to do for 2 days.

[Lalangamena]

Mentoring/level scaling/etc...or at least giving you something to do with friends outside your level range is a pipe dream best left to EVERY OTHER MMO OUT THERE. Us filthy DDO peasants can just get bent.

the solution mechanic is very very easy to implement, since it is already exist inside the game.
negative levels debuff that you get from beholders and some undead etc...

if you want to mentor low level friends in a dungeon, you click the "mentor" button, and you get "level drained" to the level of the instance.
thus you are not exceptionally strong, and can enjoy the dungeon with your friends...

it is not that hard to implement. (probably easier than the reaper tree active only in reaper difficulty)

[mikarddo]

the solution mechanic is very very easy to implement, since it is already exist inside the game.
negative levels debuff that you get from beholders and some undead etc...

if you want to mentor low level friends in a dungeon, you click the "mentor" button, and you get "level drained" to the level of the instance.
thus you are not exceptionally strong, and can enjoy the dungeon with your friends...

it is not that hard to implement. (probably easier than the reaper tree active only in reaper difficulty)

Unfortunately, its not that easy. A ranged build with IPS thats level drained still has access to IPS. A level 15 Feind Warlock thats drained a few levels still has access to Hurl. Level drained is not even remotely that same as being that lower level.

[mikarddo]

I don't think that the DDO game engine can handle it, but the system I enjoyed the best was City of Heroes.

You could "Exemplar" i.e. click on a character in the party, and you'd "power down" level wise to their level. The game even remembered what abilities you gained at what level and reduced / removed them appropriately. Ditto for gear.

It wasn't perfect. An exemplared Level 4 was still significantly more powerful than a "true" Level 4, but it was... good enough.

You could also "Side-kick" i.e. click on a character in the party, and you'd "power up" to 1 level below theirs. The game inflated the stats of your abilities and gear in the reverse of the above.

That didn't work as well because the game didn't grant you abilities, etc... that you "would have gotten" by being the level. In DDO terms, your stats, skills, etc... numbers would scale up, but you wouldn't get the missing Feats, Enhancements, all that. You'd be carried for sure, and you'd be about Hireling level in usefulness.

Well, at least you wouldn't have their horrible AI... presumably.

To be fair, it's all pie in the sky (If I have the English expression right...) in my opinion. The devs haven't fixed Guard in 2 years (high defense with porcupining is a playstyle I use in many games). Something like this... I can't see it happening. The devs just don't have the resources.

I'd love to be wrong.

An issue with scaing down (or up) is that xp in DDO is extremely influenced by first time bonusses. So even if I could "level down" to run with friends I would most likely already have run those quests and thus get far less xp. I see no way to reasonably fix this that would not lead to other issues

[slarden]

Fair warning: Salt level maximum.

Cordovan has stated several times on the livestream that they see no issues with grouping right now because, and I quote, "They don't have any problems getting groups."

Yeah. Let that one sink in.

It's a lost cause. Sev is on record as stating that he likes his BB streak so that'll never go. They don't have the engineering capacity to do any kind of cross-server grouping. I'm fairly certain they don't have anyone available who can really do any UI work. Keep in mind it took how many years for them to give us the option to hide the ship buffs and we still can't even move the buff bar.

Steel has stated that merging servers pretty much won't happen because the technical hurdles way overshadow the results. They won't get within a hundred miles of merging past lives/rxp across characters because that would be waaaaaay too modern for them and their design is based on docs locked in a vault from 2004. Besides, the "We don't play anymore but will grip endlessly about the game anyways" crowd that still post here for some reason would have a stinkfit.

Mentoring/level scaling/etc...or at least giving you something to do with friends outside your level range is a pipe dream best left to EVERY OTHER MMO OUT THERE. Us filthy DDO peasants can just get bent.

Honestly, at this point I've given up. I used to encourage everyone I could possibly find to come and play DDO. I maintained threads on about 8 different gaming forums, would chat the game up to new people that joined our live DnD sessions, etc...etc...

There's just no point anymore. SSG is flat out not interested in growing the game. I asked them to do an AMA on r/gaming for the Ravenloft release. Crickets. I asked if I could buy a bunch of 250 point codes so I could run some contests on r/DDO and on fires. Crickets. I had 3 people join a few months ago for Ravenloft that and they all quit within about two weeks because trying to form a static where we all had the same time to play meant creating like, 9 different alts just to match up with our schedules. It was a nightmare.

SSG just doesn't care. I don't know if it's a leadership problem or a culture issue or what.

But hey, 5 new quests tomorrow so everybody that has already been playing for the past 5 years will have something new to do for 2 days.

The game is obviously in unofficial maintenance mode - unless they can make immediate profits from something they won't make an investment in the game. The game will continue to be a few packs per year and an expansion every now and then which is mostly just a beefed up pack. Otto's boxes on sale every few months. That is the future of DDO. Once profit starts to approach 0 they will shut it down and focus on lotro.

[glmfw1]

Possible Ideas for Solutions:
• Lockout: Reduce or eliminate lockout mechanisms if I want to go into a level 13 base quest at level 7 and can handle it why not? Also if I am playing solo, I would rather be playing with others but alas this game is making it harder for this to happen instead of easier, and chatting with my friends who are also playing solo because we can’t adventure together in PVE but we group up for company why do we often getting messages like “all players must be same level range before entering dungeon message”, yeah don’t let me into the epic quest but why stop them or make them break group to rejoin later.
• Reduce Power Level Penalty Mechanisms, heck even in slayer areas these should be removed completely.

I'd remove the lockout mechanisms - If any character from level 1 up wants to run with another character at any level from 30 down, let them. If someone at low level with a good build and lots of past lives wants to run a higher level quest, let them - if they survive, they deserve the XP. Keep the division between Epic and Heroic (noone under 20 in Epic Quests), but otherwise, where's the problem.
I'd keep the penalties on XP as they are... If you enter a quest at far too high a level, it will be far too easy, so your character hasn't really learned anything so why should they gain any XP. Similarly, under most circumstances, if you run a quest with people of much higher levels they do all the work and you contribute almost nothing, so why should you gain XP for the experience? Favour rewards are the equivalent reward of XP for learning the quest itself, and you still get favour. There are exceptions, such as the lower level Cleric who goes into quests where the 5 higher level players have all died, but the Cleric can cast resurrect them - this character has definitely contributed to success in a meaningful way - but occurrences like this are the exception rather than the norm.
In Wilderness Adventure Areas, it's unfair that, while running to a quest, none of your kills count due to a higher level player - a frequent occurrence in low level Epic Wildernesses. I'd leave the rules as they are in Heroic Wildernesses, and have the overlevel 50% XP cut apply to all players in Epic Wildernesses, if any players are over level, rather than the over level player getting 50% and the rest getting none. The penalty is still relevant, as the over level player can kill a lot more easily. The penalties in Wildernesses should only apply to kills counts, not explorer points, as kills are counted for the party, while explorer points are individually located.

[Cantor]

I'd remove the lockout mechanisms - If any character from level 1 up wants to run with another character at any level from 30 down, let them. If someone at low level with a good build and lots of past lives wants to run a higher level quest, let them - if they survive, they deserve the XP. Keep the division between Epic and Heroic (noone under 20 in Epic Quests), but otherwise, where's the problem.

The only reason not to remove the heroic/epic lockout is the artificially inflated epic xp numbers. Divide all xp numbers by 3 to 4 for epic quests and xp required for epic levels and you could eliminate that barrier as well.

[glmfw1]

The only reason not to remove the heroic/epic lockout is the artificially inflated epic xp numbers. Divide all xp numbers by 3 to 4 for epic quests and xp required for epic levels and you could eliminate that barrier as well.

True, but that would also mean adjustments to Epic Destiny Karma requirements and Epic Reincarnation - lots of things that interact with each other, and potential nightmare if something gets missed (or you could leave them as they are, I suppose, then there's somewhere for XP to go when you hit 30).

[zehnvhex]

Unfortunately, its not that easy. A ranged build with IPS thats level drained still has access to IPS. A level 15 Feind Warlock thats drained a few levels still has access to Hurl. Level drained is not even remotely that same as being that lower level.

Honestly, at this point, does anyone really care? We have such a ridiculous power disparity at any given level as is. Which do you think makes a bigger difference?

- A first life level 15 with 10 negative levels
- Someone natively at level 5 with 70+ past lives and 60+ reaper levels

One is allowed, the other isn't.

"But Zehnpai, if we allowed that, then the new de facto way to level would be to keep a level 30 banked on an alt account and just PL your character through levels!"

No it wouldn't. The best way to do raids/new content is to load up 5 boxed alts and drag them through for extra chest pulls. How many of you are doing that? Right now a Shadow Crypt opener is one of the most valuable alt's in the game to have and yet I'd be willing to wager less than 5% of the DDO population has one. Besides, if they were actually serious about adding mentoring, I would imagine they'd figure out how to deal with such things.

"But Zehnpai...."

I made several posts about this subject (Better adventure panels, mentoring system, better match-making). This is a near and dear issue to my heart. SSG does not recognize this is an issue and actively avoids discussing it.

[boredGamer]

Honestly, at this point, does anyone really care? We have such a ridiculous power disparity at any given level as is. Which do you think makes a bigger difference?

- A first life level 15 with 10 negative levels
- Someone natively at level 5 with 70+ past lives and 60+ reaper levels

I actually don't care at all about power differences, as I've mentioned in the past, I don't mind piking XP, and I can always feel useful in a group.

However - what you're proposing above is having a a level 15, with 70+ past lives, 60+ reaper levels with 10 negative levels, running with native level 5's ^^. It solves the level range and grouping problem, but greatly exacerbates the "piking / feeling useless" problem.

[Epicstorms]

IMO making reaper XP account shared is a simple solution and it will add a lot of alts to the game, as people will less focus on 1 single toon (as it is nowadays)

[Renvar]

These are my two biggest issues currently with the game. I would love to see them addressed in some way shape or form.

Player Segregation
Possible Ideas for Solutions:
• Mentoring System : Allow me to play any character scaled up or down in power so I can play with my friends and still progress and contribute
• Lockout: Reduce or eliminate lockout mechanisms if I want to go into a level 13 base quest at level 7 and can handle it why not? Also if I am playing solo, I would rather be playing with others but alas this game is making it harder for this to happen instead of easier, and chatting with my friends who are also playing solo because we can’t adventure together in PVE but we group up for company why do we often getting messages like “all players must be same level range before entering dungeon message”, yeah don’t let me into the epic quest but why stop them or make them break group to rejoin later.
• Reduce Power Level Penalty Mechanisms, heck even in slayer areas these should be removed completely.
• Much better Grouping/LFM in conjunction with favor and group compendium
• Cross Server group options
• Overhauled Vet status (Vet 1 is 4th level or +1 level for a TR, Vet 2 is 7th level or +2 levels for a TR, vet 3 is 10th level or +3 lvls for a TR) and add permanent vet status 3
• Make Base XP the same for all difficulties or at least standardize reaper XP optimum and Bravery Bonus instead of the 2 level differential between the systems.
• Real alt love : Change systems Pastlife Feats/Reaper Accumulation/Crafting from character to account based


Inventory Nightmares
Possible ideas for solutions:
• Remove TR cache!
• Allow option for inventory and fully loaded hot bars to persist after TR’s
• More and better storage options: Collectors Chest, Cosmetics Wardrobe, Player Housing, Rare Item Trophy Cabinet, Scroll Case, Book Case, etc
• Make inventory favor rewards persist through TR’s
• Sell more character inventory tabs
• Sell more shared bank storage
• Sell more character slots
• Sell a loot “unbind” and/or “bind to account” store item that will make any bound to character bound to account
• Sell Auction House (and Shard Exchange) Enhancements (more sales allowed, longer auctions, available offline, etc)

Mentoring: Use alts. Problem solved.

Lockouts: Lockouts are rare and only exist to prevent exploiting that had occurred in the past, in most cases. Heroic characters in epic quests can't happen because epic quests give epic XP which is typically 4 times as much as heroic XP. ANd they go to different XP "pools". Communication between players is a problem. I would love to see more chat channels, global chat, and the ability create "chat groups" vs. "adventuring groups". However, most players are going to discord for these features rather than waiting for SSG to develop them.

Power Level mechanisms: These are in place to prevent a low level toon piking XP without contributing. It would be easy to take a level 1, slap it into a Shadow Crypt Group with a level 11 and, poof, the character is level 8 in about 1 hour. Being AFK 95% of the time. Also, new players use the level ranges of adventure areas to understand what content is appropriate to them. None of these is a huge barrier to grouping, anyways.

Much better grouping/LFM mechanism: Now this is a big part of the problem with grouping. The LFM mechanism is poor. As is the quest journal and adventure compendium. An overhaul of these systems is very much needed. 100% agree.

Cross Server grouping: Agreed again. Forget server merges. If quests are instanced, let players join a quest instance spawned on any virtual server.

Vet Status: Meh. I guess so. Those early levels on new toons are easy to get. I'd rather see it be level 11. Then you could start at 1, 4, 7, 11, or 15 (via Iconic). You can roll up a toon in 5 min and be within 3 levels of any heroic character.

Change Base XP: Agreed. The difference in reaper and elite bonus systems and XP penalties is confusing and unnecessary.

Real Alt Love: Nah. No easy buttons. You will lose more big spending long time players by giving them nothing to do than you will retain or attract. Not to mention it kills a major revenue stream for SSG. Not gonna happen.

Inventory:

Kill the TR Cache - Agreed. It is a bane and terrible idea.

Allow option for inventory and fully loaded hot bars to persist after TR’s - Agreed. This is so annoying. Just have it grey out anything that no longer applies to the new character. But on LR's, especially, we are usually keeping a very similar set of hotbars

More and better storage options: Collectors Chest, Cosmetics Wardrobe, Player Housing, Rare Item Trophy Cabinet, Scroll Case, Book Case, etc - Agreed. A HUGE revenue opportunity missed. Sell this stuff in the store for 495 or 595 points each and watch people throw money at them. They add no power creep. Just fun. A TOTAL win/win.

Make inventory favor rewards persist through TR’s: Just replace them. Redo favor and get rid of house k and coin lords bank rewards. Just give the players the slots and be done with it. Switch the inventory from tabs to the shared bank UI with a search box and the ability to have many more slots. The tabs take physical space and that creates a limit. If you just do a single list with paging every 25, you can sell much more storage.

Sell more character inventory tabs: Agreed.

Sell more shared bank storage: Agreed.

Sell more character slots: Agreed.

Sell a loot “unbind” and/or “bind to account” store item that will make any bound to character bound to account: I disagree, but with a caveat. BtC should only be raid loot or raid crafted loot, imo. Anything else should be BtA or unbound. Run the raids to get the BtC loot. With the raid runes being BtA, it is fine because you can still run on one character and use the runes on an alt. But nothing else should be BtC, besides raid stuff. Fix the binding on anything non-raid loot/raid crafted that is BtC to be BtA.

Sell Auction House (and Shard Exchange) Enhancements (more sales allowed, longer auctions, available offline, etc: Agreed. Doesn't add power creep. Generate revenue from convenience and QoL.

[zehnvhex]

but greatly exacerbates the "piking / feeling useless" problem.

Not really. For one thing if someone is already grossly above your gear level, it really doesn't matter past a certain point. Whether someone is doing 10x your dps or 15x your dps, around 3x your dps is where you stopped keeping track anyways. We already have a feeling useless issue. We also have a "It's really hard to group with friends outside of keeping a stable of 20 alts" issue.

If we start working on solving the "I want to group with friends but can't because of arbitrary barriers in DDO" issue, the "I'm in way over my head" issue starts to lessen as well since you can do fun stuff with friends instead of the only option available to you is to join the posted LFM for R3 quests when you can barely manage hard.

Beyond that the idea is to show that de-leveling tech already exists in DDO. It wouldn't take much to tweak it to work. Some cooldown penalties to offset having more abilities to use and scale down of stats and you're good to go. So the issue would be even less.

All it takes is a little imagination.

[Renvar]

The game is obviously in unofficial maintenance mode - unless they can make immediate profits from something they won't make an investment in the game. The game will continue to be a few packs per year and an expansion every now and then which is mostly just a beefed up pack. Otto's boxes on sale every few months. That is the future of DDO. Once profit starts to approach 0 they will shut it down and focus on lotro.

Just to be clear, "maintenance mode" and "issuing a few packs a year and an expansion every now and then" are mutually exclusive. Maintenance Mode means no new content or development.

That's like saying: I'm not going to eat fast food ever again. But, I will eat at McDonalds a few times a month and hit White Castle every couple months. Um....OK.

[zehnvhex]

Mentoring: Use alts. Problem solved.

Hi, my main is Zehnpai. I like playing Zehnpai. I want to play Zehnpai. I also want to play with friends. But hey, I'll bite.

So on Monday night, John, Sally and Mark are on! We create new alts to play together since none of our mains are the same level. After a night of merry adventures, John, Sally, Mark and I are now all level 5.

Tuesday night, Sally can't make it, but Tim is on now! So we all created new alts. Another great night of great adventure and we get to level 8!

I now have alts at 5, 8 and my main is 30.

Wednesday rolls around. Sally again can't make it and Tim can't make it. It's just me, John and Mark. We decide to play the alts we made Monday. We are now level 10.

Thursday rolls around. Sally is on again and so it Tim! The whole gang is online! But oh man, we have some who are 5, some who are 8 and some are 10. Bummer. New alts time! We all get to level 3!

Friday night! Some people in my guild are doing ER GiantHold. I would love to join but I don't have any characters who are level 24. Tim is on though so we decide to play our characters that are level 8. However, a few hours later Sally logs on and wants to join us along with her husband Chris. We all roll new level 1 alts again!

----

It's now been 5 days and I have yet to play my main character who I enjoy playing the most. The "Just roll alts" argument is -awful- and has no practical use. Please stop using it as a counter. You're smarter than this Renvar.