Alts Vs. Multiple jobs

What benefit is it to level multiple jobs on a single character when you can only get one piece of loot every week. As on the other hand I can level multiple characters and raise their item levels at the same rate. To me this is out of balance. Wouldn't it be better to put a loot lock based on job and not character?

You do end up having to pick one main per major patch if you want to progress as fast as possible with one character, but having multiple classes allows you to much more easily switch your role between patch cycles. You won't have to repeat story, unlock dungeons, level alt classes for your cross class skills, ect. It would be a daunting amount of work to switch classes if you had to start from 0.

The other thing, is unless you are working on the most current raid tier, all content is easily completable in the previous patches item level cap, so spreading around your upgrades isn't going to be as much of a hindrance. But, if you are doing the current raid tier, you may end up gearing an off-spec or two depending on drops.

Think of getting one kind of gear as a power-up to your character. Getting multiples of them gives you a stronger power-up. They restrict it by character to prevent you from overgearing multiple jobs at the same time on tge same character, basically. Alts have the benefit of having getting loot every week multiple times, but having to constantly keep running the same dungeon over and over and having to relogin every time you want to switch jobs sounds a bit tedious.

Sounds nice in thought, but in practice it wouldn't work.

Imagine, I run as PLD then run again as WAR to get double tank loot for the week. You could counter and say that they could separate the loot by class. That would then increase the loot pool of each chest, which is ultimately a terrible thing. (Still looking forward to how the loot system changes in 3.0, as YoshiP said it would)

It would also make content obsolete much faster. Take WoD for example, if every class could get an item a week, WoD could literally be useless in a matter of 5 weeks.

That being said...the fact that we can be multiple classes at once doesn't mean much at end game raids. The typical person will specialize in one and leave the others in the dust. Not sure if there is a way to alleviate that, if we should even consider that to be a problem.

It works if you seriously have the time to gear/level up all cross class and able to cap poetics/run WoD and Coil on all your characters.

For me, it is just better to have 1 well-geared character rather than many gimped characters as I don't have the time to take care of so many.

I have two characters. I can't even imagine having more than that. Its alot to even get to level 50 im only at level 34 Just do level up is a long process. but i like having one male character and one female character to fully enjoy the game and for rp purposes. ITs fun but its very time consuming. So its going to take me awhile to reach end game

In a perfect world (imo), there would be zero benefit to leveling alts as opposed to just leveling up all the various jobs on one character. The ability to do so is a major selling point for this particular mmo.

While I don't think this will ever be 100% the case (alts give extra retainers, etc) I definitely agree that it is the ideal the devs should be designing toward.

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Originally Posted by AzraelX

I have two characters. I can't even imagine having more than that. Its alot to even get to level 50 im only at level 34 Just do level up is a long process. but i like having one male character and one female character to fully enjoy the game and for rp purposes. ITs fun but its very time consuming. So its going to take me awhile to reach end game

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Indeed, I have a second character as well but I just couldn't keep up with content on both characters anymore - it is now just a gil generator (treasure maps, retainer ventures, desynth). But I'm wondering why I even bother as there's not much gil sinks in this game =/ I just broke 45mil but there's nothing to spend it on.

The ability to play multiple jobs is great in that you don't need to start a whole new character if you want to play a different job. HOWEVER, this does not mean you should be able to gear ALL of them out at the same pace with the latest and greatest equipment (WoD lockout, Poetics cap, etc). You can still put in the time to gear every class to at least i110 from soldiery drops. That's still pretty good.

The ability to gear multiple jobs with the latest and greatest gear is a big benefit of having and alt. You'll need to put in double the weekly work, but it allows you to do it. Alts also allow you to raid on different jobs, which might appear to some people.

When I first started I used multiple alts until I learned what cross class skills were. Just seems the most efficient to have one character that is everyone.

1) Crossclass skills. These are important.
2) Eventually if you're diligent about getting your weekly loot and tomestones, you'll run out of good pieces for your given class. For example, if you main BRD there's really only 6 pieces of gear you can buy with poetics that are any good for you. 7 if you carboncoat a ring. this means after about 9 weeks, you're done. It's been about 6 months since poe came out. Also, you potentially get 8 pieces of coil loot a week for 8 players, but often (VERY often) pieces will drop for classes that aren't present. Also, often the same piece will drop multiple weeks in a row. One static on my server has nearly gotten enough PLD swords from t13 to gear all their members, while another hasn't gotten any.
3) Crossclass loot. A lot of gear is shared between WAR and PLD, NIN and BRD, DRG and MNK, WHM and SCH, and SMN and BLM. It's MORE efficient to gear up two classes as one character than two classes as two characters. There's even crossover between WAR/PLD and MNK/DRG since a lot of WARs want some DPS accessories.
4) Unlocks. Not having to go through content twice (aside from relics) is a HUGE plus.
5) EXP bonus: Leveling a second class on the same character is faster than leveling a new character because of the exp bonus you get for having a lvl 50 class already.

I do a bit of both.

My main has every disciple of War and Magic to 50, but I also leveled a few alts.

I didn't want to neglect DRG, but sometimes I feel safer running stuff as BRD, and I felt I was better at it as well, so I leveled my BRD alt so that I could keep my DRG geared 100% regardless of weekly caps or lockouts etc and then not have the feeling that I should gear BRD rather than DRG just because of self consciousness. I ended up leveling DRG on my BRD alt as well.

Then I made another alt as a WAR so that I would practice tanking more and am now leveling DRG on her too cause tanking makes me too nervous so I haven't been able to get her through the end game, even though its stuff I've tanked on my main. lol That was mainly just for fun.

Then I also have an alt DRG on a different server from those three.

I have more characters than those but... XD I only really consider them alts if I have them to 50 with at least one Job.

I will say, I'm NEVER bored. There's always something that I need/should do.

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Originally Posted by AdamFyi

Alts have the benefit of having getting loot every week multiple times, but having to constantly keep running the same dungeon over and over and having to relogin every time you want to switch jobs sounds a bit tedious.

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But it's not tedious.

I actually enjoy the changes of pace considering I currently have 3 characters to 'end game' content 2 are completed with the story so far and doing coil with the 3rd catching up to finish the story once again within the next couple days. What one persons 'tedium' is another persons 'enjoyment' (and the other 5 of my characters I just log in to TT, chocorace, do seasonal events and play the daily/weekly cactpot ;P) Why? because I enjoy it.

I've enjoy having different looks (which you can't do without fantasia) and playing under various characters. Sure I spend the majority of my time on my 3 'main' characters but every one of them gets there share of game time in ;D

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

It works if you seriously have the time to gear/level up all cross class and able to cap poetics/run WoD and Coil on all your characters.

For me, it is just better to have 1 well-geared character rather than many gimped characters as I don't have the time to take care of so many.

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Who says any of your characters 'have' to be gimpy? It's (as you say) all about what you have time to put into it :) I have 2 well geared characters with a 3rd gearing up as we speak :) It's all about what each individual find fun :D

I don't think I'd have the same attachment to multiple characters that I have to my one guy. He's been with me for five years now and that means a lot.

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Originally Posted by psyhcicwars

What benefit is it to level multiple jobs on a single character when you can only get one piece of loot every week.

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Single Character = Cross class abilities, armoury bonus, untradable greeded loot for faster gearing
Alt = Having an alt

There is no benefit to an alt. You'll level the alt faster...theoretically. But only once, due to story missions -- you still have to unlock all the story quests over again, and all your abilities like synthesis and such. I made an alt for Arcanist and Maruader...but after realizing the sheer amount of stuff i've done on my main character that i'd have to redo...i decided it just wasn't worth the trouble.

No matter what it is you're doing, the benefit will always be greater to have it done on one character than split between multiples. DoW, DoH, Crafting, PvP, Grand Companies...there really isn't a reason for having an alt other than the seperate character model.

Back in 2.0/2.1 when there was much less to do and I had much more time, I did play 2 characters. When more content start coming out and that content started to get gated behind story missions, I didn't have the time to run 2 stories to keep both characters up-to-date on primals, coil, capping tomes, etc.

People play 1 character instead of multiple because they have to play their RL character a lot.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

Indeed, I have a second character as well but I just couldn't keep up with content on both characters anymore - it is now just a gil generator (treasure maps, retainer ventures, desynth). But I'm wondering why I even bother as there's not much gil sinks in this game =/ I just broke 45mil but there's nothing to spend it on.

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Save it for the expansion. Once Airships come out, who knows how much those things will be worth and if they're linked to the FC house size (mansion for example) you could be looking at over 100million on it.. I kinda hope it is so it becomes a rarity.

Besides, from the sounds of it, it looks like you have a considerable amount of gil, but it just came about as a consequence of playing the game and not an active form of farming it.. Which is nice, but if that is the case, you will burn through it rather quickly once expansion comes out I think.. so there's no harm to saving up every last bit you can :D