Account wide item limitations are no longer an issue?

Dear SE,

Recently in the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XLI you addressed why the codes that came with physical merchandise were no longer account wide:

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Originally Posted by Fazraye

Recently, players have noticed that the in-game bonus codes included with FFXIV-related merchandise have been character-specific rather than being account-wide. The reason is because there is a limit to the number of items that can be distributed service account wide, and it is currently difficult to increase this limit. We’ll continue looking into this moving forward, and will provide an update once we have progress.

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However, since then SE has released *4* account wide mounts on the Mog Station. 2 carbuncles, the panda and now the new Nezha Chariot.

Because you're specifically selling these mounts as account wide, it seems reasonable to therefore assume that you've fixed the account wide items limitation that was previously mentioned? Can we therefore look forward to future physical items being back to account wide again? If not... can we ask why you continue to sell account wide items whilst telling us that you can't do this any more?

I suspect I already know the answer to this, but will you now be converting the items that came with the "Eorzean Symphony" and "Stormblood Art of the Revolution - Western Memories" from single character to account wide so they're in line with every other physical item ever made?

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Because you're specifically selling these mounts as account wide, it seems reasonable to therefore assume that you've fixed the account wide items limitation that was previously mentioned? Can we therefore look forward to future physical items being back to account wide again? If not... can we ask why you continue to sell account wide items whilst telling us that you can't do this any more?

I suspect I already know the answer to this, but will you now be converting the items that came with the "Eorzean Symphony" and "Stormblood Art of the Revolution - Western Memories" from single character to account wide so they're in line with every other physical item ever made?

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perfectly reasonable to assume... if the previous limitation was 1~3 items. also, it was never stated that it couldn't be done.


honestly, though... i personally don't understand how there could be a limitation to this. but am sure there has to be a good explanation for it... i know back in the day using things like special characters or even upper-case letters would consume more RAM and storage space. they probably still do, but that isn't an issue in the common computer today. (but that was a thing that mostly only limited servers, and mostly only web-servers.) (i do also remember when fonts would consume more RAM and such too... that is, WAY back in the day when it took like 50floppies to install windows.)

maybe it could be something like that, but... if somebody would like to chime-in with some potential expertise here, that would be great -_^

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

perfectly reasonable to assume... if the previous limitation was 1~3 items. also, it was never stated that it couldn't be done.

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The insinuation in the statement SE released on the matter makes it sound like there is an upper limit to the number of account-wide items that can be distributed to each character, I’m presuming, when created on an account that has an extensive list of such items, and that their practice of making DLC account-wide is going to decline so as to not risk pushing this limit. However, their release of 4 account-wide mounts after said statement—2 of which were released soon after they said there was this supposed limitation—contradicts their wording that the limit is something to be concerned over with regards to physical merchandise and attached account-wide DLC.

Considering that account-wide Mogstation releases are far more frequent than physical merchandise releases (OSTs, artbooks, statues, plushies), there is at least reason to doubt their statement on how they are finding it difficult to provide such account-wide items. Since Stormblood’s release, there has been a total of 1 DLC released with external merchandise that was account-wide (Diamond Dust emote with the Shiva statue); there have been 4 account-wide items added to the Mogstation (Emerald Carbuncle mount, Topaz Carbuncle mount, Panda mount, and now the Chinese Feet-Firewheels mount). Each mount costs almost half of the price of a soundtrack (these are typically $49.99 USD, where as the mounts are $24 USD), and more than half of the recent artbooks ($39.99 USD versus $24 USD) and of previous plushies that came with DLC as well ($39.99 USD versus $24 USD).

I don’t know. Things just seem mighty cash-grabby for me recently. I used to not have issues with the cash shop, since I only purchase items that I know I will use frequently (and none of the items added recently would I ever see myself using); but I cannot deny how there is an increase in items being added there as of late (some of which are odd, like the burnt Hildebrand outfit—did anyone even ask for that?). While the prices have been long set in stone (at least with regards to outfits, bardings, and account-wide mounts—they started at $18 USD and $10 USD when the Chinese outfits/barding came over, and the account-wide mounts have always been $24 USD since Slepnir came out), I still think some are starting to be overpriced compared to their worth (i.e., the Eastern Bow/Pretty Please/Power Up emotes are relatively simple, not persistent, and not really worth the $7 USD in my opinion; the $12 USD Megaflare emote, while flashy, isn’t worth the price in my opinion).

I’m not sure if SE is hoping people will buy multiples of the artbooks/OSTs/plushies to have items on more than one character or not. While I don’t think the practice would be common, I cannot deny that there are instances in other fandoms where people buy multiples of items in order to get more extras. I can’t really speak on the technical aspects of server space and the like since I’m not a computer/server tech, but it seems unlikely that there’s an issue with regards to space when they continue to release account-wide items in the cash shop.

I don’t know; these are just my thoughts on the situation. I still haven’t purchased the Stormblood artbook because I disagree with the external DLC switching to one character only when they continue to put account-wide mounts up for grabs on the Mogstation. I don’t purchase external merchandise strictly for the DLC, but I still don’t like the change. I don’t see why it’s needed, and their statement has always been utter garbage to me.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

I suspect I already know the answer to this, but will you now be converting the items that came with the "Eorzean Symphony" and "Stormblood Art of the Revolution - Western Memories" from single character to account wide so they're in line with every other physical item ever made?

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I have a feeling it's how these things are stored.

Account-wide items are not stored with the character, they're stored in the service account (eg the thing you're paying monthly for) and because you can use the same service account for Windows, PS4, Mac licenses, it has to check everything every time the mog mail is opened.

If they've changed it so that items are only sent to a single character (a la Fantasia), then two things happen, one it only takes up one slot in the character's mailbox rather than one slot service-account wide, and two, they can make you buy it repeatedly. So a new character might get their mailbox filled with the cash shop items, and lose the items in the process.

It's more likely the latter (greed), being excused by the former.

Like, they could probably expand it easily, but it would require re-engineering the service account database, which would mean players would be inconvenienced once for this.

I don't get this because when I make a new account my mail box is over flowing so much so I have to log out to get all items queued up.

So ya king of sounds like b's to me.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I’m not sure if SE is hoping people will buy multiples of the artbooks/OSTs/plushies to have items on more than one character or not.

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I'm not sure how things are recently, but it has been/was a common thing for companies to try to get you to do this. For example one of Japan's biggest pop idol groups (AKB48) would host voting contests where they would release a music album, but that same album would have several reprints, each one featuring a different girl on the cover. 1 copy of an album with her on it = 1 vote for that girl. And it was absolutely encouraged to buy multiples of the same CD to cast votes for your favorite girl.

This sort of practice stemmed from targeting dedicated fans in niche markets for as much money as possible after Japan's last big economic bubble popped and general consumerism declined, except in niche fields like certain entertainment subcultures (like anime and video games). The short of it is companies learned that hardcore fans are willing to spend huge amounts of cash to support their hobbies, and they capitalized on it.

This article series puts it way better than I could: http://neojaponisme.com/2011/11/28/t...ture-part-one/

This is the specific part of that series that mentions the CD phenomenon with AKB48: http://neojaponisme.com/2011/12/01/t...ure-part-four/

So long post short: absolutely I wouldn't be surprised if that was Square Enix's end goal.

EDIT: for those that don't want to read the whole thing, I'll post the AKB48 bit

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The end result is that the otaku and yankii have an almost inelastic demand for their favorite goods. They must consume, no matter the economic or personal financial situation. They may move to cheaper goods, but they will always be buying something. Otherwise they lose their identity. While normal consumers curb consumption in the light of falling wages, the marginal otaku and yankii keep buying. And that means the markets built around these subcultures are relatively stable in size.

So as the total market shrinks, the marginal groups — in their stability — are no longer minor segments but now form a respectable plurality in the market. In other words, if otaku or yankii all throw their support through a specific cultural item, that item will end up being the most supported within the wider market.

The clearest example of this is AKB48. With the letters AKB in their name, this group of girls was unequivocally marketed towards older males based in the Akihabara otaku culture. Compared to past mass market groups such as Speed, the girls are intentionally chosen and styled to look like elementary schoolgirls and lyrically address older men with direct sexual references. (See the “cat-eared brothel” video for “Heavy Rotation” and the unambiguous “love knows no age” lyrics for “Seifuku ga jama wo suru.”)

The mass idol group regularly has an “election” (sousenkyo) where fans try to vote their favorite girl to Number One. Buying certain AKB48 CD singles gives the fan a vote in the AKB48 election, which thus incentivizes otaku to buy multiple copies of the CD to increase their “political” power. The CD is thus no longer a means of listening to music but a way to influence the future of AKB48. This has created a legion of fans who buy dozens and hundreds of the same AKB48 CD or even 5500 copies. There are now doubts about that story’s authenticity but it basically was an exaggeration of an existing principle. Regardless, the marketing strategy of AKB48 does encourage the purchase of multiple goods, thus amplifying the buying power of nerds beyond their small numbers. This means as a consumer bloc, the AKB48 otaku fans can rival the non-otaku consumer base.

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Originally Posted by DreadRabbit

I'm not sure how things are recently, but it has been/was a common thing for companies to try to get you to do this. For example one of Japan's biggest pop idol groups (AKB48) would host voting contests where they would release a music album, but that same album would have several reprints, each one featuring a different girl on the cover. 1 copy of an album with her on it = 1 vote for that girl. And it was absolutely encouraged to buy multiples of the same CD to cast votes for your favorite girl.

This sort of practice stemmed from targeting dedicated fans in niche markets for as much money as possible after Japan's last big economic bubble popped and general consumerism declined, except in niche fields like certain entertainment subcultures (like anime and video games). The short of it is companies learned that hardcore fans are willing to spend huge amounts of cash to support their hobbies, and they capitalized on it.

This article series puts it way better than I could: http://neojaponisme.com/2011/11/28/t...ture-part-one/

This is the specific part of that series that mentions the CD phenomenon with AKB48: http://neojaponisme.com/2011/12/01/t...ure-part-four/

So long post short: absolutely I wouldn't be surprised if that was Square Enix's end goal.

EDIT: for those that don't want to read the whole thing, I'll post the AKB48 bit

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Oh no, I am well aware of the practice. As someone who was part of the Kpop community for many years, and who spent far too much on multiple copies of albums in order to get all the extras, I’m well aware of the practice in Asian countries. I just don’t know if SE is expecting NA/EU players to follow suit (since our products generally do not include these extras that prompt people to purchase multiple copies of the same thing whenever a product is released) as a sort of cash grab, or if they are just bs-ing for the sake of bs-ing. I even mentioned in my comment that I am aware that this is a thing in other fandoms.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Oh no, I am well aware of the practice.

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My bad! :) I didn't want to assume anything specific. I guess my point was Square Enix is one of those companies that doesn't seem to try to differentiate between customers. Especially considering you and others pointed out that they always seem to contradict themselves on when they can and can't do things, and it just falls in line with what other companies tend to do.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I have a feeling it's how these things are stored.

Account-wide items are not stored with the character, they're stored in the service account (eg the thing you're paying monthly for) and because you can use the same service account for Windows, PS4, Mac licenses, it has to check everything every time the mog mail is opened.

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I guess it's possible, but it would make a lot more sense for the system to just check that once the first time a character logs in.

Simple check: Does this character need to be given an account-wide item?
Yes? Add it to their mail and trigger the mail notification -> Flag it as received
No? Just do nothing

If there is seriously some kind of bizarre 8th grade VB MyVar1 programmer limit to the amount of items an account can have, I just give up. There's no reason for there to be a limit to these things. Although SE has shown remarkable incompetence when it comes to system design with FFXIV. It may not be ALL their fault since they had to build on the 1.0 system, but come on... this one had to be obvious from the start.

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Originally Posted by DreadRabbit

My bad! :) I didn't want to assume anything specific. I guess my point was Square Enix is one of those companies that doesn't seem to try to differentiate between customers. Especially considering you and others pointed out that they always seem to contradict themselves on when they can and can't do things, and it just falls in line with what other companies tend to do.

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You’re fine. :3 I guess I was trying to be positive and give them the benefit of the doubt, and not outright accuse them of what I’m sure they would find to be a very acceptable practice. As a result, I still have not purchased the artbook because I disagree lol.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

I guess it's possible, but it would make a lot more sense for the system to just check that once the first time a character logs in.

Simple check: Does this character need to be given an account-wide item?
Yes? Add it to their mail and trigger the mail notification -> Flag it as received
No? Just do nothing

If there is seriously some kind of bizarre 8th grade VB MyVar1 programmer limit to the amount of items an account can have, I just give up. There's no reason for there to be a limit to these things. Although SE has shown remarkable incompetence when it comes to system design with FFXIV. It may not be ALL their fault since they had to build on the 1.0 system, but come on... this one had to be obvious from the start.

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Moogle Mail has a limit of 130 messages, and you can send 5 items per message.

I leave this message in my mailbox to denote when the game started up.
https://i.imgur.com/GIptsbV.jpg


Note how when you "Reward Delivery Request" on the upper-right button of the inbox you get the message displayed. This right away tells us that the reward system is something not processed by the game server, but rather some out-of-band process that has to be queued.

So it probably has to read through your entire subscription history, on every character and every service attached to the service account. If there is a limitation involved, it likely has to do with the number of characters on the account (eg 40, 8 per server max.)

In MMO development, or any client-server development, you have to take into account the bandwidth that is wasted by doing needless things, so if sending something to a character at time of purchase costs X bytes, but checking if the player has every possible account-wide cash shop item takes X^n bytes, then you're going to want to have as few account-wide items as possible.

I'm not going to defend this practice by SE, but from a software development point of view, you want to push as little data between servers as possible, and it's likely the account server is global, or at least where the database is. So anything that puts unnecessary load on that database you want to avoid. It's also entirely possible that the database is shared by more than just FFXIV, thus requiring other games co-operations. I do remember at some point seeing FFXI in there somewhere.... ah yes, if you click "List Subscriptions" it goes back to your Square-Enix account. So it indeedy looks like the service account is tied directly to your Square-Enix account, thus they likely have some corporate BS to deal with to put things at the account level.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Moogle Mail has a limit of 130 messages, and you can send 5 items per message.

I leave this message in my mailbox to denote when the game started up.

Note how when you "Reward Delivery Request" on the upper-right button of the inbox you get the message displayed. This right away tells us that the reward system is something not processed by the game server, but rather some out-of-band process that has to be queued.

So it probably has to read through your entire subscription history, on every character and every service attached to the service account. If there is a limitation involved, it likely has to do with the number of characters on the account (eg 40, 8 per server max.)

In MMO development, or any client-server development, you have to take into account the bandwidth that is wasted by doing needless things, so if sending something to a character at time of purchase costs X bytes, but checking if the player has every possible account-wide cash shop item takes X^n bytes, then you're going to want to have as few account-wide items as possible.

I'm not going to defend this practice by SE, but from a software development point of view, you want to push as little data between servers as possible, and it's likely the account server is global, or at least where the database is. So anything that puts unnecessary load on that database you want to avoid. It's also entirely possible that the database is shared by more than just FFXIV, thus requiring other games co-operations. I do remember at some point seeing FFXI in there somewhere.... ah yes, if you click "List Subscriptions" it goes back to your Square-Enix account. So it indeedy looks like the service account is tied directly to your Square-Enix account, thus they likely have some corporate BS to deal with to put things at the account level.

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Interesting, I wasn't aware of that button. Given its existence I agree with your interpretation of the way their system probably works.

Ok, so if we assume the existence of a global accounts server that's managing all of these accounts and would therefore be responsible for distributing account-wide items, then we simply go back a step in where the item distribution has to happen.

So our flow now looks something like this:
Login -> Account server checks for content -> Got some? Send it to the FFXIV server to add to the account file and flag it as received -> FFXIV server takes over and sends it to the various characters.

In this scenario the FFXIV server itself does have to keep a permanent record of account-wide items so they can be distributed to any new characters created, but this shouldn't be any more significant than keeping a record of any other items a player has accumulated.

As for the mog mail space limits, that's an easy one. You queue them to distribute the max number of mails at a time and then just send the next batch the next time the queue is checked. WoW's been doing that forever.

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback on the thread, but I don't think I explained very well what I meant.

I wasn't so much concerned with the technical reasons behind account wide item limitations, but simply are there still limitations or not?

SE told us that does to account wide item limitations that had switched the minions with Eorzean Symphony and the Artbook to single character only. However since then they've bought out 4 mounts that are account wide, suggesting these previously mentioned limitations are no longer in effect.

Will future in-game item codes therefore be going back to account wide? (and will those two items also be changed to account wide?)

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

SE told us that does to account wide item limitations that had switched the minions with Eorzean Symphony and the Artbook to single character only. However since then they've bought out 4 mounts that are account wide, suggesting these previously mentioned limitations are no longer in effect.

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It almost certainly just means that they decided to allocate the remaining account space to mounts they were going to sell on the MogStation (and of those included in really expensive merchandise like figures), rather than to pack-in extras they were going to include with other merchandise like books and CDs. I doubt very much that they addressed the limitation, sadly. They way they phrased it, it wasn't that they were at a hard stop, but that they were "rationing" the remaining space.

FWIW, I definitely think that codes included with all merchandise (including books/CDs/etc.) should be account-bound.