Transferring items between alt characters

Now, I already know what all of you are thinking, so let me address that first:

I know you can pretty much do everything and anything with a single character, and there's no need for alt accounts on the same world. I got no answer for that, other than I like to try different characters and settings.

Anyways, the main question of this topic:

Is there any way to transfer items between characters on the same account? You cannot send friend requests to your own characters while they're not online, and you can only send mail to those on your friend list. This has probably been asked before, so any information would be helpful, thank you.

As far i know, nope you can't.

Have a friend help you. Send it to your friend and have your friend send it to you. It's a roundabout way of doing it but it's probably the only option.

I was hoping not to involve third parties like other friends or a guild chest or something... I do hope they rectify this soon, for convenience's sake.

Yeah, I'd love to have the option.

I made a new character for 2.0 and now all my 1.0 items are trapped with a legacy character's retainer. I don't really want to have to go through the whole quest line again to retrieve them.

At this time, third party is the only way you can do it. Usually a member of your FC will have no problem with being your middle man. But it depends on how much you feel like trusting them.

No direct options at all. The possible workarounds are:

1. Use a fried to send / trade the items and gill via (possible risk of loosing the stuff, hassle with bothering the friends everytime you need to transfer anything).
2. Use your own "private" FC (need friend one time to invite all your aliases to your FC, cost 15k, can't join another FC but much more flexible afterwards).
3. Use Market to sell the items to your alts (risk of someone else purchasing the item before you switch to alt, unable to transfer gill this way, if you use really high price to prevent someone from buying your items you'll loose gill on sale tax - up to 5% - but on other hand if you need to transfer only few items might be still cheaper than spending 15k on FC)

All these work-around solutions are nice. However, I'd really like SE to implement the most-obvious solution: enable us to send mail to our alts.

I don't want to make one super-toon. I like having a stable of different-looking toons, each with unique abilities.

Sure, I play my CNJ most of the time. And when I get her to 50 and she's maxed-out her crafting, I'll use her to shower gil and high-quality gear down on her "younger" sisters and brothers.

This adds a new dimension to playing the game - one that I enjoy a great deal.

So, come on SE! Give us the ability to send mail to our alts. We'll love you for it, man. :D

This needs to be addressed rather quickly. The argument that you only need one character to do everything has no meaning in a modern mmorpg. Especially since most players are probably going to be paying for the privilege of having up to 8 chars per server.

In my case, I'd like to have a specific gathering alt, who will do nothing but gather materials as Disciple of the Land. There are numerous reasons to want to do this, but it doesn't matter. I want to do it. But not being able to then mail mats or put them in an account wide retainer is literally going to KILL the possiblity of playing this game long term, and I can guarantee I'm by far not the only one. I do not want to just play one character.

Why would you guys even consider spreading out the classes when they all share skills? I'll just assume that you guys have no idea how considerably gimped you guys will be without cross classing skills, especially if you are a crafter or gatherer. Also not having essential 5 abilities from other classes will only hurt your raid members and bring down the team.

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Originally Posted by Sanyani

Especially since most players are probably going to be paying for the privilege of having up to 8 chars per server.

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According to what statistics? No min-maxer will be making more than 1 account because of cross-class skills, and no casual is going to waste time redoing the entire main storyline quest and transfers all their work when they can switch out their gear/class with a click of a button. Are you actually claiming that RPers are the majority of the subscribers?

1 character = economic saving, ease of switching classes, and great for the lazy.

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Originally Posted by Leafcore

Why would you guys even consider spreading out the classes when they all share skills? I'll just assume that you guys have no idea how considerably gimped you guys will be without cross classing skills, especially if you are a crafter or gatherer. Also not having essential 5 abilities from other classes will only hurt your raid members and bring down the team.
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1 character = economic saving, ease of switching classes, and great for the lazy.

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1000 characters

I don't get this at all, i constantly see this in FC economic saving? what is easy about leveling five plus classes then jobs with no Quests after about three classes? sorry i don't buy any of that alts are still far easier to level a few classes per alt and crafting well big deal seeing as it takes a decade to level just one.

As you can tell i'm casual but i will be leveling alts because quests dry up after about 2 classes, fates and dungeons i can only do for so long they are too repetitive.

I think it is really silly not to be able to send mail to your alt. Honestly! Why are there players telling other players that it is silly or whatever to how they want to play? There will be people who want to try out the different races in case one of them does not work for them....and maybe a different starting area. That too can be fun if you are tired of the same area starting out. How about those who have mains but want a character they can just mess with, not super max out it all? Or maybe a character to HOLD stuff if you are all out of room?

No play style is wrong. It keeps players in the long run!!

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Originally Posted by Anders

Sure, I play my CNJ most of the time. And when I get her to 50 and she's maxed-out her crafting, I'll use her to shower gil and high-quality gear down on her "younger" sisters and brothers.

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Not really as you'd be unable (unlike with multiply classes on the same char) to use any of the already spirit bonded /used or "unique" (dungeon / chest deops in colours) items anyway on any alt so pretty much pointless even if you'll manage to send it over in a first place.

This seems reasonable thing to want to do, especially if concentrating doh/dol on a different character to Dow classes, and you want to send crafted gear over. Cut down on armoury chest clutter as well. A more expensive, perhaps over the top, work a round is a second service account.

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Originally Posted by Endorphinz

I know you can pretty much do everything and anything with a single character, and there's no need for alt accounts on the same world.

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More bag space. :P I'm out of bag space with so much junk.

Exactly... No inventory room. I started crafting- found out how impractical it is and then started ditching all crafting and old gear on my alts. I think I'm stuck doing one more level on weaver since it won't let me abandon it.

personally I play on multiple characters because I don't always feel like letting my whole FC know that I'm on or sometimes I'll start a new character to do the intro area with a friend. I don't see why i shouldn't be able to send my alts gear or craft mats if I want to. It's just silly to think that one character would EVER have the room to store full sets of gear for ALL classes AND all the mats needed for all the different crafting classes.

Another reason for Alts is roleplaying. Having a specific character built a particular way with different jobs is part of the story you tell about the characters. My RP group even has developed some individualized stories relating to their soul crystals in some instances that is personally relevant. We make alt characters for a change of pace in the RP, try other classes and to play with different characters. My RP group is pretty close and I'd trust them to share with my alt if I used them as a middle man, and in fact this method even makes sense as my two characters can never actually meet in game.

Although if you make multiple characters that are supposed to be related and know each other, it would be nice to even maintain that illusion by sending messages and gifts between the two. I think it would be even cute to screen those messages an such :3 it's all just in how you play. Different games have different methods and you do have to make do with what's available unless it does get changed.

So ultimately just saying I see the benefit of both ways and yes, more inventory would be nice but you can also pay two dollars extra for another retainer... Whatever happens, people will utilize whatever systems, but I do believe that they implemented this to stop real money trade in game in the first place, since you have to friend someone in order to mail them and be physically present to trade. So... there are a lot of things to consider even when making small adjustments like this seems to be.

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Originally Posted by Leafcore

Why would you guys even consider spreading out the classes when they all share skills?

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They don't all share skills. Certain combinations share skills. If, for example, you had one character doing DoW classes, another doing DoM classes, another doing DoH classes, and a fourth doing DoL classes, archer is the only class that you'd duplicate in order to provide cross-class skills, as it's the only class whose cross-class skills cross the DoW/DoM boundary. (Then you'd duplicate whichever combat class is your favorite on your DoH/DoL characters, but they'd only need it for unlocking leves, so it's not like it has to be maxed out or anything.)

Anything duplicated beyond that would be just for whatever you find fun enough to want to repeat.

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Originally Posted by Leafcore

According to what statistics?

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I'm guessing just based on the fact that that's what a Standard Subscription gives. (I don't actually know how many players keep their Standard Sub, though, versus how many drop down to an Entry Level Subscription.) Anyone who keeps a Standard Subscription is paying for the right to have eight characters per server.

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Originally Posted by Leafcore

No min-maxer will be making more than 1 account because of cross-class skills,

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(I'm assuming you meant "more than 1 character" here, since that's what's relevant to the discussion.)
I've heard from plenty of hard core min-maxers who make multiple alts and get all their cross-class skills on each of them, because with multiple alts you have multiple chances at the top dungeons, more chances for loot, etc. It's a way around lockouts and caps.

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Originally Posted by Leafcore

and no casual is going to waste time redoing the entire main storyline quest and transfers all their work when they can switch out their gear/class with a click of a button.

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A lot of casuals make alts precisely in order to redo the main storyline. The main storyline is the fun part of the game. Everything else is just grinding. There are plenty of players who like to play the fun part of the game more than once. This is the primary reason why I have multiple alts myself, (with RP being a distant second).

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Originally Posted by HEC

you'd be unable ... to use any of the already spirit bonded /used or "unique" (dungeon / chest deops in colours) items anyway on any alt so pretty much pointless

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Despite quoting it, you clearly missed the part where he said "and she's maxed-out her crafting". The whole point of leveling up crafting is so you can craft stuff. That's brand-new, never used or bonded, fully tradeable HQ gear we're talking about. Of course his alts can use it.

[OT]

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Originally Posted by Terrini

Although if you make multiple characters that are supposed to be related and know each other, it would be nice to even maintain that illusion by sending messages and gifts between the two.

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On the subject of maintaining the illusion that alts know each other and work together, each of my alts have retainers named after and whose appearance matches my other alts. So even if I never get a chance to actually adventure together with multiple alts at once, I get to RP that they're meeting up with each other whenever I summon my retainers.

Like it or not this is one of those rare games that wasn't designed with multiple characters in mind, which is why it's an extra service to have more than one.
RP purposes and extra inventory space I can understand perfectly well, but if you do that you gotta put up with the problems that creates.
Also something a lot of people seem to ignore is the game is HEAVILY skewed in other ways towards focusing on a single character over having multiple alts:
1) If you wanna replay the story, all the cutscenes are available for review. The only ones that you can't see are ones you didn't experience.
2) You get an EXP bonus based on the level difference between two classes. This, combined with dungeons, leves, and FATEs means your next class to 50 will actually be FASTER than the first.
3) More often than not in dungeons and quests and levequest bonuses, you'll end up with gear you can't use.
4) There are numerous bottlenecks that make leveling a second/third character far more tedious

Dis necropost... welcome to the past, I suppose. >.>

My daughter has a character under my account and I would like to be able to pass items from my character to hers, this is just one reason to have mult char on same account. For those "why have more than one character people."
I grew up poor, I guarantee that had mybro and I had this game we would have only been able to talk our mom into one account.

She is 5 by the way, and her favorite thing to do is hunt ladybugs and squirells outside gridania. :-)
Happy dad

People are also forgetting that you're getting a whole new set of coil gear or tomes for every character you have. This makes doing bcob easier if you can switch classes to more easily fit a raid group's needs.

My first character was healing in a raid team. On that character I levelled all jobs to level cap, one of them being PLD. I enjoyed tanking so much that I decided I wanted to main tank in raids, but didnt want to leave the team, those being friends of mine. So I made a second character and level capped it, decked it out, formed another raid team, and main tanked all content in that raid team while healing in the first raid team on my first character.

Regardless of whether characters were created with the advantages of being able to swap class instantly and having cross class abilities, there will be valid reasons why people want an alt. Subscribers should not be disadvantaged in any way by having alts. We pay to play, we have the ability to create new characters, mailing items to our own characters should be available. Square Enix needs to fix it regardless of personal opinions as to why we shouldnt need them. They are just opinions and the need for mailing to alts is a fact.

Why did you bump a thread which hadn't had any new posts in 7 months?

Eh, whatever. I'll bite.

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Originally Posted by SamAkemi

They are just opinions and the need for mailing to alts is a fact.

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It's also a fact that allowing mailing between alts would allow the usage of bank alts for storage space. Storage space is restricted for a reason - whatever it may be - so they will never add a system that allows you to break the limit (for free).

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Originally Posted by Vandril

they will never add a system that allows you to break the limit

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SE already limits the number of characters we can have on a server. They even have two different subscription levels according to which character limit you want (and are willing to pay for). That's as much limitation as any other MMO needs. Why would SE need more restrictions there than anyone else? (It's not even an actual restriction, because you still have the same amount of storage space spread across the same number of characters, the only difference is how hard or easy it is to transfer between them. Even if you never transferred anything, your other characters can fill their storage space with their own items.)

Considering the basic account service is specifically set up to allow same servers alts, the fact that they don't allow this is kind of silly. Beyond that the whole you don't "need" an alt argument carries little weight. Need is subjective and opinion. You don't "need" to play games but you do. And square is charging money for same server alts so said storage is hardly free at all.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

SE already limits the number of characters we can have on a server. They even have two different subscription levels according to which character limit you want (and are willing to pay for). That's as much limitation as any other MMO needs. Why would SE need more restrictions there than anyone else?

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Who knows? But they obviously have some sort of reason. Maybe they actually rent server space? Something like cloud storage? Hard to say...

If SE ever tells me, I'll let you know. :P

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

It's not even an actual restriction, because you still have the same amount of storage space spread across the same number of characters, the only difference is how hard or easy it is to transfer between them. Even if you never transferred anything, your other characters can fill their storage space with their own items.

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Except it is a restriction, and alts will allow a majority of players to get around it. Yes, you're right in that it's the same inventory slots per character. If one were to play each character just as often and collect a similar amount of items on each, then the inventory space will be filled with each own character's stuff.

But let's face reality: most players won't be using those alts for that. Let's say alt mailing was introduced. Those who only play one or two characters will suddenly make 6 or 7 more. Just like in every other MMORPG that allows mailing to alts, these additional characters will be used almost solely for storage space; as bank alts. It would quickly become the norm to have a full array of characters so that you can have a ton of bank alt space. The average player will fill out there character slots for this purpose. I mean, why not? It's a dollar more a month for more space than you can ever use. Best part is, many of these characters will remain unused and their inventories empty, because the other characters before it have yet to be filled up.

It's all just one giant mess that wastes a lot of space on the FFXIV database (all the unnecessary character data). And, for reasons truly known only to them, SE considers data storage to be this huge premium. They will simply never waste it like this.

Not to mention that it would kill their income from extra retainer services, but that's another matter entirely. <.<

Anyway, in nearly every other MMORPG I've played, I was an altaholic. I sympathize with the desire to use your main's fortunes to make the lives of your alts easier. Something should be done, but SE will never do it if it allows bank alts. Maybe it could be as simple as only allowing mailing Gil cross-character and not items?

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Originally Posted by Vandril

Who knows? But they obviously have some sort of reason. Maybe they actually rent server space? Something like cloud storage? Hard to say...

If SE ever tells me, I'll let you know. :P

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For someone who doesn't know, you seem quite convinced that such a restriction actually exists. This game does certainly have a lot of hardware related limitations, but all the ones I've heard about relate to their game servers rather than their database servers. Passive storage of logged out characters is a different beast than active character inventory that you're carrying around while playing.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

Not to mention that it would kill their income from extra retainer services, but that's another matter entirely. <.<

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Not really. Players will still prefer to have their inventory available to the character they expect to use it. Stopping by a retainer bell is a whole lot easier than logging out, changing characters, logging back in, finding the item(s) your other character wants, going to a mail moogle and sending the items, logging out again, switching back to your first character, logging in again, and picking up your mail. While it's true that the ability to mail stuff to our alts would make bank alts possible, it wouldn't make them as convenient as retainers are.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

Maybe it could be as simple as only allowing mailing Gil cross-character and not items?

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Defeats the point if you're trying to let one character take care of all your crafting, providing the gear for all your other characters. Gil isn't the main thing that needs transferring.

This is why I'd really like to see account banks, similar to Aion. Character A places an item in the bank, Character B logs in, goes to the bank, takes the item.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

For someone who doesn't know, you seem quite convinced that such a restriction actually exists.

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That's because me not knowing the reasons why SE wants the restrictions has no bearing on the fact that there is, in fact, an inventory restriction. Inventory is limited, therefore it is restricted.

I'm honestly not even understanding what you're trying to get at, here. Are we even talking about the same restriction?

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

This game does certainly have a lot of hardware related limitations, but all the ones I've heard about relate to their game servers rather than their database servers. Passive storage of logged out characters is a different beast than active character inventory that you're carrying around while playing.

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They haven't done much to differentiate between the world servers and the database servers (both of which may even be handled by the same physical machines, for all we know) when they talk about their hardware limitations as an excuse not to implement certain changes. Inventory space, for example - which, unless I misremember, they've time and time again denied adding to due to worries of character data size - would hit database servers far, far harder than they would the game servers, especially considering the whole "all inventory data is backed up every few seconds" gig.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Not really. Players will still prefer to have their inventory available to the character they expect to use it. Stopping by a retainer bell is a whole lot easier than logging out, changing characters, logging back in, finding the item(s) your other character wants, going to a mail moogle and sending the items, logging out again, switching back to your first character, logging in again, and picking up your mail. While it's true that the ability to mail stuff to our alts would make bank alts possible, it wouldn't make them as convenient as retainers are.

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Which doesn't change the fact that their income from the extra retainers would take a huge hit. Sure, many will keep their extra retainers for the convenience. But the flip side of the coin is also true - a ton of people would be happy to stop paying an extra $2+ for their subscription fee every month in exchange for inventory being a little more time-consuming.

It wouldn't outright remove the profit from additional retainers, but it would drastically impact just how profitable they are.

But, as I stated previously, all of this about retainers is rather beside the point. I only brought it up as another reason why Square would likely never implement any further systems that would facilitate bank alts.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Defeats the point if you're trying to let one character take care of all your crafting, providing the gear for all your other characters. Gil isn't the main thing that needs transferring.

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Not quite true. You could always buy the crafted gear with the gil sent from your main, and then sell the gear your main crafted, instead. You can also buy from your other character on an alt from the market board, no? Then you can just sell yourself the item after sending the gil to your alt. It sounds like it would solve the problem quite well. The only time I can imagine this being an issue is if you're trying to transfer some piece of gear or item with a worth in the millions of gil - market board tax wouldn't be so negligible, then.

All in all, it would allow the same-account transfer of Gil via mail and items via market board for a small tax, all the while discouraging bank alts and thus not breaking the inventory limitation.