We all know that since the birth of Ascended items and laurels, Alts have been hit every patch release. More and more content is locked to ‘once per account’ Rewards that are not, are tied to laurels that can only be earned once per day per account, with a bonus 10 per month per account. Laurels themselves are essentially soul-bound on use in terms of usability, as any rewards you purchase with them can only be used on one character.
Unfortunately with the way the achievement system is, there is not much hope for us alt lovers. Any change that would increase the number of laurels gained would likely be unable to distinguish between a player with many characters to gear, and a player with only one increasing the progression difference even further.
Many devs have said its something they are looking into, but nothing has really been done or even hinted of yet and my best guess is that they don’t want to devalue laurels by making them more available for everyone just to please people with alts.
Introducing the Bonus WvW Laurel.
Every 24 hours of game time in WvW will reward the player with a bonus laurel. Obviously this isn’t a HUGE bonus because it is based off playtime not real-time and on its own this wont help our alt issue.
However, if a player plays with two different characters on the same account, each character would contribute 4/3rds of an hour per actual hour played in wvw. What this translates to is 18 hours of in-game time earning the bonus laurel instead of 24 hours.
This contribution amount could continue to increase if you play with more characters allowing people with many characters to earn the bonus laurel more frequently. This intern allows them to pay for the extra items they need to gear their alts more easily.
Obviously a threshold would need to be implemented so that people don’t just log in for 5 mins on WvW per alt to get laurals for their main quicker. Attached is a quick excel example with 3 alts being played. Obviously the numbers are just pulled out of my head, its just the concept I am trying to provide.
As you can see the time taken to earn laurels decreases when more characters take part in wvw. The thresholds applied are an even split of playtime between all characters so that if you have 3 characters you like to play it will take you only 15 hours to earn your extra laurel providing playtime is even so the system can not be abused. In my example with 3 characters, you can see that as a player tends to focus purely on one character the Effective hours earned towards the bonus laurel decreases.
Obviously this system requires you to play 100% even across all characters to gain the most benefit which sounds restrictive but is not the point. The idea is that a reward which is very restrictive can now be obtained quicker by players who use more characters, which is something not currently available in any way shape or form. A byproduct is that as it is implemented through WvW it bolsters the rather poor rewards WvW offers per time spent when compared with PvE.
Thanks for your time.
