Buying character slots?

[Knahli]

I admit, I admire your... patience. I don't RP but I would totally LOVE to have my non-healer classes on a different character or maybe just have my 3 favorite Races all leveled up to healers or something else instead of always using a Phantasia every few month because I feel a bit different, but I can just can't bring myself to go through the whole MSQ and even worse all the dungeons to unlock the roulettes again...
Your characters are all very characteristic and I totally get why you enjoy it so much and I think it's a wonderful way to make the game never get boring to you. I notice whenever I get somewhat bored and find myself login on less, a lot of time it's because I grow a little tired of my character, I start changing my glamour and always end up using a phantasia to switch race and afterwards I play a lot more again, simply because I just... well I don't even know, but I just enjoy it again.
And there are some races I'd like to play but I know they are not for me as a main, like a male char for example, but having a male leveled alt as something I totally wouldn't mind... but yea... I don't have the patience and/or time to do the whole MSQ and unlocking part again... :|.

Ahhh... that embarrassed me a bit, haha ;; Thank you, and I'm glad that someone who isn't in the same boat as me can still feel as they can understand where I am coming from, or why people would find enjoyment in it despite the hassle it can admittedly be. Frankly I enjoyed the FF story and I've re-watched a number of cutscenes on occasions through alts, so maybe that's part of the reason why it seems more bearable to me. Don't get me wrong, it can be tedious at times - especially when without a mount at the beginning - but to me at least, I think I would be more worn out from leveling alts on the same character through fate and dungeon grinding; so in the grander scale of things, the MSQ option feels a bit less taxing to me somehow.

It shouldn't be that expensive. Are you planning to play all those 16 characters each month and all the time? You could always cancel one sub to activate the other sub.

The idea you are referring to reminds me to swtor. They have the character slot, but they do have a limited too. You can't make over 12-13 characters in a server. They still limited F2P players to the limited character slots sub player has.

To be perfectly honest I don't even play all of my eight characters that regularly. I go through phases where I will give some more attention than others but will otherwise focus my interests around the two or three characters I would consider my Main Group. My lalafel for instance doesn't get that much attention but I will occasionally log in for events and the like or just to take silly screenshots with my friend's lalafel because, like me, she loves that sort of thing and when she has any random idea I'm free to login at any time and go about helping her. Having a secondary sub... I'd need a VERY good reason to log in on any character there because it would come at the expense of a whole month's subscription. I can't just do so on a whim like I would at present so that makes the price tag 100% not worth it to me I believe.

While it's not a case of making a character, playing them once and then getting bored(albeit remaining sentimental), it's certainly not that I actively juggle all or even most at once - I am not that insane, haha. Nor do I remain on top of gear progression and the like. I have grown a little tired of following that so religiously considering how irrelevant it is for non-raid content anyways so even those in my 'Main Group' are somewhere between i210 and i220.

It would never be a one time fee. Look at the extra retainers, it is $2 per month. It would be a monthly fee per extra character if they did add this feature, they have to maintain that extra data each month and will charge you for it monthly.

While not ideal, I would still accept this. With retainers, you can choose if you want to re-sub them for that particular month and you can activate them at any time. So that way, even if they are technically locked out one month later on down the line, I need only pay for the character(s) I want unlocked at the time if I am not interested in playing x or y character who also remain locked. Granted you can't choose 'which' retainer in that example, but I would hope characters would be different were this route taken. I'd still love a one time payment option, regardless of how steep it was(I'll easily pay the same price as a mount honestly), but beggar's can't be choosers so I wouldn't rule the additional sub out.

[JumperX]

snip

then the two accounts idea could be good. Just have one account activate per month. they will need to select which one you want activate in that month. If they tell me, " WELL my friend and I want to play the character I have on the other, OMG I can't decide!!!" then that is a problem because it shows the incapability to decide what they want.

[Niwashi]

Character information is still stored server wise, and seeming you're talking about more alts specifically on Balmung, do you realize the information bloat that would happen on the RP server if that were possible? Remember, they back up their entire database at an incredible rate, so storage isn't the only issue, it's backup.

Well, if this is really getting in the way, they need to fix their backup process. Of course, they need to have backups of everything, but only the characters who are actually logged in are changing and need to be re-backed up frequently. As already pointed out, no matter how many characters you have, only one can be logged in at a time, so only one should need it's back-up copy to keep being constantly refreshed like that.

Also, being able to roll on other servers gives you a chance to meet new people, so why not take the opportunity to branch out some?

This part I agree with, though. If you're going to have that many characters, it doesn't hurt to branch out a bit. Meeting more people along the way can be a good thing.