Hmm, I wonder if there is some fundamental misunderstanding here. I don't think most people think first life characters are useless or unable to contribute at all, especially if it's a healer or a tank. For me at least it's more about the feeling of progression and the prospect of how to go about it and how much you need to do to reach certain goals.Absolutely, I felt like we were going in circles so I dropped it, but thanks for pointing this out. All of the alts I started in the last 5 years have come from HC. We’ve even asked guildies to keep a tank and healer first lifer alt in the wings just in case we’re short for raid nights. Yet, apparently, the game is not alt friendly.
I think a good way of looking at it is actually quantifying what is an acceptable amount of time to "complete" a character or a particular part of a character? Never is an acceptable answer when it comes to absolutely picture perfect gear imo, I think it's fine to always have something more to strive for. But when it comes to the canvas that you build on - that is the past life base for an individual character.. I think the several years seems crazy.
Do you guys think the amount of grind to catch up to the completionist characters is currently in a good spot? If you had to start over from scratch right now and had no access to the obnoxiously priced otto boxes, would you? I probably wouldn't and that's part of why it's so hard for me to convince or even ask friends to play DDO with me.
^The above is not a rhetorical question, it's an actual question. I think it's perfectly fine if we disagree on this.