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Multiple characters, is it worth it?
quixoticish
Member Posts: 54 Arc User
I've just returned to the game after a long absence, and at the moment I have two Federation characters, a 24th century one and a 23rd century guy who commands all of my retro bits and pieces from anything pre TNG.
I find myself logging into one, doing a couple of dailies, setting up the various R&D, Admiralty and other queues, doing the Q missions, doing the same on the other character, then logging off.
The last time I played all of these bits and pieces didn't exist in the game so I'm starting to err toward the idea that multiple characters are just going to be a timesink where I log in and do lots of clicking around without actually really doing much else, then logging out.
Am I hampering myself if I don't do these queues all the time on every character I have? I'd love to roll a Romulan and a Klingon but I'm not sure if I can devote the time daily to doing five or six consecutive logins to sort stuff out on each person I play as.
Are there any major advantages to having more than one character on the go these days, or do most people concentrate on one?
I find myself logging into one, doing a couple of dailies, setting up the various R&D, Admiralty and other queues, doing the Q missions, doing the same on the other character, then logging off.
The last time I played all of these bits and pieces didn't exist in the game so I'm starting to err toward the idea that multiple characters are just going to be a timesink where I log in and do lots of clicking around without actually really doing much else, then logging out.
Am I hampering myself if I don't do these queues all the time on every character I have? I'd love to roll a Romulan and a Klingon but I'm not sure if I can devote the time daily to doing five or six consecutive logins to sort stuff out on each person I play as.
Are there any major advantages to having more than one character on the go these days, or do most people concentrate on one?
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"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
for admiralty my tip. resolve 1 or 2 missions per day. doing 8 every day is boring to me ..
Multiple characters can be a lot of fun exploring the different disciplines and factions. They can take advantage of reputation sponsorship tokens, account bound equipment, and zen and event ships. They can even just turn in contraband if nothing else while not being played.
Given my own experience with alts and some comments from others though, don't make too big a job for yourself. Some have 1 main and 2 alts, some have 1 of each discipline in each of the 3 factions that are all mains. Whatever balance works for you to try out some different aspects of the game while not overdoing things.
I couldn't imagine playing just one toon but that's just me but do keep in mind it can be a fair bit of work getting an alt up to snuff depending upon your own standards of what a reasonably developed end-game character is.
You may want to save an alt until the next recruitment event possibly coming this summer with the next expansion (?). Previous events have had some very nice rewards.
You don't have to play each alt through all the story missions, once you get doffs, a couple of minutes a day and they'll level up in a few months; and you get the income.
Quite a lot of gear is also 'account bound', so if you do change your main's build, quite often you can pass stuff on, like crafted weapons, especially when you've spent a small fortune upgrading them.
I might be a bit biased
As someone with alt-itis, I like to make a character of each "type" or starting zone, etc. So for STO, the minimum would be a Fed, a 23c Fed, a KDF, and a Rom. But since I've been playing for awhile, I've over time made Fed-Tac/Sci/Eng, KDF-Tac/Sci/Eng, Rom/Fed, Rom/KDF.... and then made new alts for Delta & Temporal recruits... whee!
Yeah, it can take a chunk of time even just to DOFF & Admiralty for a bunch of alts (I don't always keep up with all of them), on the other hand it's a way to get more Dil & EC, have more characters to fly different ships or try different weapon types & gear sets.
Depends on what you enjoy, honestly.
Some will religiously log into every character each day to make sure stuff is ticking through while others will ignore an alt once it hits a certain stage.
I have one with crafting to 20 in everything but the rest stop at 15 as there's no need to go higher once you have the trait. Similarly many of them havent got cannon crafting levelled at all as I simply don't like those as weapons on a ship, never have.
Most sit in mothballs unless there's something like the dil weekend on where I dust off a couple more to use a claim. Likewise with some events that give 50k dil reward I may use a couple more to give the dil stash a nudge upwards.
Another thing I'm doing is dusting off an alt when an endeavour is tied to a story arc, I'll probably mothball them again.
Splitting factions comes with an extra cost as you'll be locked from most of the t6 ships.
Still, I do like playing around with alts, got altitis pretty bad.
With re-engineering it is no longer as big of a deal as before but multiple alts allows you craft more items at once in the hopes of getting good mods, even with the re-engineering it is still a plus, 20 toons each crafting 3 items every five minutes means you have 60 chances of getting a weapon with good mods every five minutes instead of 3, an even if you don't get any good mods, you have 60 items for salvage....every five minutes
We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!
I had fun leveling them up in different ships, playing the different faction stories, picking a theme for the captain and different endgame ship (or ships) for each one.
Now that they're at endgame I only do as much daily grind as a feel like. I do the ship events but skip some of the queue and arena events and might only run a featured episode once instead of 4 times. I only do as much of Admiralty and doffing as a feel like, on 0 or more characters.
I don't consider any one captain my "main", that changes over time, but I am often only playing one of them on a daily basis.
Long answer short: there is no downside once you get into the mindset that you don't "need" to play all of your characters every day. You can leave them parked for months at a time.
Eventually, once I've hoarded enough EC I'll buy the Vengeance for the neglected fed and put some time in with her and put the others on hold. She hasn't even completed Coliseum yet. Mainly because I started 3 characters at the same time and aside from a few minor differences, there's not much to see story wise between the 2 and half factions.
Ressources sure do pour in faster with multiple toons due to DOff/Admirality systems.
I also spread my research on my different toons, at the moment, for each schools, I have at least one toon with lvl 15 +, so it helps getting decent research capabilities faster.
Edited: Just a note, consider investing in an account bank if you are going to use multiple alts to feed a main, it makes it way easier.
Now I have a good number of friends in STO who have also been playing for a very long time, mostly from release or from just after the game went free to play. These poor friends suffer from a terrifying and unhealthy condition known as: Alt-Itus.
The symptoms of Alt-Itus may include, but are not limited to, decreased DPS. regular character switching, spending more money, and long hours spent repetitively grinding the same content for the same rewards.
By focusing your time and resources on a single character you can amas enough gear to make them perform excellently in any situation. My main little science captain out DPS'es many of my friends tactical romulans, out tanks their engineers, and out sciences their science toons.
In theory this should not be a thing. The tactical captains should out DPS him, and the Engineers should out tank him (and out DPS him), and certainly there are people out there that do both, but they are few and far between, the reason is simple, years and years of playing the same captain and pouring all my resources into him simply made him better, and me better at playing him, then he and I would be if I had Alt-Itus.
Now all of the above said. I hands down loose at space barbie. My friend Ratty has me beat at that every time, and he has tuns of alts, and more importantly he has tuns of fun. So while Alting might not be for me, it could be for you. We all get our enjoyment differently.
Exactly. I've had more fun playing story episodes than queues, and also more fun with flying different endgame ships, using different ground and space captain skills and kit modules, etc.
I'd rather have 10 different kinds of fun than focus every day on optimizing one build, only to be driven to madness when the devs change the game's behavior again.
In my defense... I mostly focus on certain characters rather than try and maximize all of them. I've at least got them serviceable at endgame but focus on... 4-5 right now, 4 of which I consider "faction mains". 1 Fed, 2 TOS Fed, 1 Romulan, and 1 KDF. All spread across all three career paths.
As for having alts... at least one of each faction as each faction has access to story content that the others don't. Although you could just have a TOS Fed instead of a normal Fed as TOS get ALL of the Fed story on top of the early TOS missions.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
I have a couple of mains that I log in more regularly on, and just do the other characters whenever. I also have some static builds for my occasional characters that I like, so I can just log in and go with them, while I tend to experiment more on my mains.
I've recently learned this lesson, and it has increased my enjoyment of the game. I've got 13 (I think?) toons, and I used to try to keep them all caught up on everything. Now, when I start a new toon, it's for a specific theme, and I just relax and play that toon exclusively for a while, while he or she is leveling up. Once at endgame, they might get shelved for a while.
But I'm enjoying myself, and I've got no stress about keeping everybody caught up.
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
Similar story here- I had a longer reply typed out but for some reason it got lost in the ether, best thing about 10 toons is that it makes refining enough dil to convert Zen in a meaningful quantity a realistic prospect. With just one toon it would take over a month just to make 1,000 Zen and half a year for your guy's portion of a mega bundle. This is how I managed to afford every T6 bundle there is without spending real money on Zen, combined with only converting when the exchange rate bottoms out during a Phoenix event.
Each of my girls (real Amazon brigade here!) is a different race, their only shared characteristic is their mouth corner positions are set all the way up to give them a fixed smile. Between the ten, all six energy weapon types are represented- this means that whenever a new console or set comes out, at least one of them gets use out of it and further differentiates each one.
The only downside is when it comes to fleet ships since each would have to be bought individually, however because of their different races and careers I can get each one a different ship without doubling up anywhere. I've spent quite a bit of time mulling over what ship to get each one (since some use cannons and some use beams)- I've only expended two of the ten fleet ship modules I bought for this task. No, I'm not going to blow 5 of them on a certain Lukari ship either.
All good points. Also you can make alot of Dil easy in some instances. Like Dil Weekend with Mining Claims. I have 8 toons so I can make 80008 Dil in 8 minutes of mining each day. Same with fast Events like Crystalline Entity.
But the bad part of many toons is less time to actually play the game. I could take 3hrs a day JUST doing doffing, admiralty & one Borg RA on 8 toons. Also if you start wanting expensive ships on each toon, then you can be spending a lot of EC/lobi/Zen too if you can't resist temptation.
I first made 3 toons to try each career (back when there was more difference between them than just a couple Captain Powers) and then a Klingon... and then a Caitian... and then a Romulan... and then a Delta Recruit... and then a AoY recruit! And when Cryptic does another _____ recruit, I'll probably do that too.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
I think I'll roll another 24th century Fed alt at one point to replay the story missions. He can be some kind of freelancer and only fly the non Startfleet ships. I'll also give the Romulans and Klingons a go, new content is always fun to worth through.
For example, I have a Bolian dilithium miner (created solely as an additional dilithium miner) who has an all-Bolian crew, who never wear Starfleet uniform. Someone was kind enough to gift me a Tuffli freighter to Complete The Look. My headcanon, is that he's simply a miner, who somehow has access to Starfleet holodeck training archives. Another alt, a KDF tactical, I'm levelling up solely through doing the Deep Space Encounters. I only did enough of the story missions to level them up to where the DSE's could be entered, and will only do story missions I can't skip. Another AOY alt I created over the weekend (intended as another dilithium miner) I'm seeing just how much EC I can grind, and how much I can rank them up, by replaying In the Shadow of Cestus (to try and get some of the TOS-era gear to then have in the 25th Century when I need to jump them forwards to do the mining) If you're playing the Romulan Arc for the first time, keep in mind, that that is Tovan Khev's story, not your character's story. Your character gets given command rather than him, but in terms of the story, he's been written as the axis of the story. Many hate him, I don't (I actually think he's pretty cool) because I see it as his story, not my character's. Bearing that in mind, makes him less insufferable than many complain of
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"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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