THe mailbox system is pretty archaic

I dont normally get a lot of letters unless Im asking friends to gather stuff for me in my absence and they send it by mail or the usual monthly letter from SE thanking me for being a continuing subscriber, but I wish the mailbox system had those little checkboxes or even better; a delete all option. Its very tedious getting the items out, going over to read, clicking each letter 1 by 1 and hitting delete...

Thoughts and opinions?

The game suffers from what I call "menu hell" pretty badly. A lot of very slow systems that require a bit too much fiddling to use comfortably, and way too many submenus. The worst, regarding the mailbox at least, is when you try to retrieve something a half second before you're supposed to so you have to wait an extra full second to do so. Then you can't delete the letter from the inbox anyway, so you have to switch tabs and do it there. Just ugh.

edit: too friendly with the comma key

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

The game suffers from what I call "menu hell" pretty badly. A lot of very slow systems that require a bit too much fiddling to use comfortably, and way too many submenus. The worst, regarding the mailbox at least, is when you try to retrieve something a half second before you're supposed to so you have to wait an extra full second to do so. Then you can't delete the letter from the inbox anyway, so you have to switch tabs and do it there. Just ugh.

edit: too friendly with the comma key

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Or when you want to retrieve something from a letter and you get the occasional "mail processing error", and you have to go to another letter, then back to that letter to actually retrieve them

I think the mail system could benefit from some expansion. A delete all read letters option is a nice QoL request, but I'd like for mail exchange to go beyond the friends list. Make it so people in the same FC can mail each other as well at least.

Honestly many of their systems are, at least from my memory, intentionally made this irritating as some... measure to combat RMT traders?? Or at least that's what I recall it being many years ago when I first began playing.

It's still a poor excuse though. Mailbox and many other menus need a load of QoL adjustments - making a system as basic and simple as mail, jittery and unnecessarily difficult for legit players solely to combat some RMT boogieman is not good design whatsoever.

To be honest I wonder if the RMT excuse is just that... an excuse, and if either the servers somehow will explode if we mailed each other more frequently or they feel the ability to mail alts would hurt retainer sales.

In 8 years playing WoW for example, where you can mail alts, guild members, random players, whoever you like... I've never once been mailed by an RMT seller or seen any issues arise.

It is very likely that "spam mail" can be sent if you can send mail to anyone so long as you know their username, no matter who from. It is also obvious annoying people can be blacklisted. However, each time spam mail is sent the player would want to go see what the mail even is and must then head for a postmoogle or mailbox. When it turns out to be spam that would annoy the player, especially if they are expecting mail from someone when they get the spam. This is why it is best to require recipients be on some sort of list, to avoid all the hassle.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...i_minagawa_on/

That's why the mail is so slow and archaic here.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

To be honest I wonder if the RMT excuse is just that... an excuse, and if either the servers somehow will explode if we mailed each other more frequently or they feel the ability to mail alts would hurt retainer sales.

In 8 years playing WoW for example, where you can mail alts, guild members, random players, whoever you like... I've never once been mailed by an RMT seller or seen any issues arise.

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Let me tell you, You've been lucky it was a persistent problem on my server

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

To be honest I wonder if the RMT excuse is just that... an excuse, and if either the servers somehow will explode if we mailed each other more frequently or they feel the ability to mail alts would hurt retainer sales.

In 8 years playing WoW for example, where you can mail alts, guild members, random players, whoever you like... I've never once been mailed by an RMT seller or seen any issues arise.

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Play any MMO, RMT is a problem. The way to combat RMT tends to involve multiple things:

1. Intentional throttling of anything that text can be sent through. (otherwise all a bot has to do is run through a crowded area, log the names, and then go to a mailbox to spam everyone every few minutes.)

2. Limiting what can be sent or traded without going through the markets/auction house, otherwise you'd have RMT just constantly sending everything through it.

3. Making menus verbose enough that it requires reading, (eg many identical item icons require mouse-overs) and not simply manipulate the client.

In all the years I've been playing MMO's (which goes back to the original beta test of Ultima Online), if there is a hole, it will be exploited, and will not be noticed until it impairs the performance of the game.

Just because the mailbox seems slow, doesn't mean it's intentionally slow, it means there's a lot of checks. A lot of Japanese software (be it games or applications) are menu-hell's, but it only looks that way to us because you can't represent long words with one kanji character.

Every time a menu is opened or closed in this game, it tells the server. Every time something changes on the screen, that's an update from the server. The only stuff never actually transmitted to the server are things on the system menu. That's why when you switch to another PC your shortcuts/HUD and System settings aren't saved.

The only thing I love about the mail system in this game, is I don't get spammed by gold sellers like in other MMOs.