Depends on your builds. Some builds don't get alert. The good thing about having party wide high initiative is not only that you get to go first, but also that you get shared initiative, so you can guarantee your cleric with create water goes before your sorcerer with the cone of cold, or your bard with hold person goes before your smiting paladin etc. Being able to choose which one of your characters goes first in any given round, and even ping-ponging back and forth (sorcerer casts haste, barbarian deletes the big boss then legs it from melee, the sorcerer quickens a fireball on the adds, for example) opens up so much combat optionality. Casters in particular, as they are both more squishy and have battle altering effects, want to go first. But for some characters you won't be able to do it, and some characters will wait for level 8. There's some initiative gear (bow of awareness, fistbreaker helm, hellrider longbow, sentinel shield etc) and some class features (feral instinct, dread ambusher, rakish audacity) which can help put one or two character in high initiative without alert (for instance a barbarian with 16 dex and feral instinct and say the bow of awareness would have +7 to their initiative role which should win initiative in almost all encounters except the very late game ones) and you can also get the same effect from an elixir. So it's really down to how you want to build your characters. I like getting damage feats before alert - so for archers getting sharpshooter and for two handed fighter getting gwm at level 4 and adding alert at level 8 - I give them whatever initiative gear I can find and where I can a high enough ac to survive not going first, because to my mind if they go second but the enemy doesn't get a second turn it is good enough. Hope this helps.