Houses and alts

[Solarra]

I would definitely like to be able to share my house with my alts. Anything that would ease the demand for housing should be considered at this point.

[Nerfworthy]

It would be nice if alts could share a house on the same account without adding them as tenents... we only get 3 tenets... it would suck to have alts take up those slots

I agree, this is actually a better solution than my initial suggestion.

Alternatively though, if you need a house on your alt.... I'd suggest just getting an apartment for the basic needs. Or asking a friend if they have any free tenant slots and are willing to share with your alt.

This is kinda more or less what I decided to do for now, I bought a house last night for my husband's main (he's been homeless and sharing mine) and he made my alt a tenant in his house so I can at least have the teleport and help him decorate/tend the garden etc. It's not a perfect solution but it'll do.

[Bloodkraft]

They use the default rmt excuse...

I don't remember the exact thing they said but they kept blaming rmt at ARR launch as to why it was important to keep alts completely separated. Even though rmt just form fc and get around that separation easily.

Originally (from Alpha), the game was designed around the concept of a single character per account, they were trying to get away from so many alts, like in FF11. That's why we can change classes and appearance easily but can't share with other characters on the same account. They changed and allowed alts, but never fixed the sharing between characters and I'm not sure if they can since it goes back to the original design.

[worldofneil]

They changed and allowed alts, but never fixed the sharing between characters and I'm not sure if they can since it goes back to the original design.

I think it's by design (for unknown SE reasons).

When 2.0 launched there was a short while where you could friend yourself and then in turn send yourself mail/items. To do this someone simply disconnected while inside an instance and then after it timed out, logged in as another character. They could then send the original person in the instance a friend request. Swap back, exit the instance and accept it. So the system definitely has the ability to do this.

However, shortly after this became public knowledge, SE patched it and removed that ability to send a friend request to yourself. I have no idea if they removed alts from friends lists of people who already did that as I didn't do it myself (didn't have an alt at the time).

[Asheloux]

As someone with a personal house, I REALLY wish my alt could be a tenant in it. I don't plan on getting a second house for them but like...it makes me a bit sad that I can't.

[MicahZerrshia]

Originally (from Alpha), the game was designed around the concept of a single character per account, they were trying to get away from so many alts, like in FF11. That's why we can change classes and appearance easily but can't share with other characters on the same account. They changed and allowed alts, but never fixed the sharing between characters and I'm not sure if they can since it goes back to the original design.

Yoshida specifically said it was to prevent RMT from transferring gil and items around too easily. Also why we have no shared storage. Easily changing classes is another a carry over from ffxi and many other ff games in general.

They have also never not allowed alts. I had 5 characters on 1 account in v1, 3 of them maxed out and they all carried over, it was also stated during v1 that we would be allowed 8 free character slots per server as legacy players. So the "they started only allowing 1 character" is simply not true. At least not after Yoshida took over, idk about Tanaka, I didn't start til beta v1.

They were trying to get around people using alts for storage is all. They just wanted to make more money by selling extra storage space and used rmt as a way to artificially cap our inventories. I mean it is good business when you look at it from a revenue pov. In ffxi you paid $1 per slot iirc and effectively raise your storage by 100%. Now for $2 you barely scratch the surface of inventory space if you include the personal armory chest and the 2 retainers that would come with that alt. Simply rolling 1 extra character would remove the need for extra retainers completely. Hence why there is no transferring between chars "because rmt". It's simple business. They needed to recoup their losses of version 1 and it was a brilliant way to do it.

When you played v1, like I did, and followed the news closely, every restriction they placed on characters almost always seemed to go back to rmt in one way or another. They truly have tapped that rmt scapegoat for all its worth.

tldr:
They could easily have changed the concept of sharing between chars when they recreated the game. They chose to keep it in because it was too lucrative to remove it and used rmt as an excuse to artificially cap our inventories.

[Leloa]

They should just let people with many characters share houses and then give them time to choose which house they keep and empty the ones that are going to reclamate for others to use :-D houses for all!

[Rinuko]

They should just let people with many characters share houses and then give them time to choose which house they keep and empty the ones that are going to reclamate for others to use :-D houses for all!

Then they need to change the restrictions on garden patches. The reason I have multible houses (FC + Personal house) is so I can be more efficient with my gardening. 3 patches is not enough for me. First world problem i know but it also a reason some people have multible + the enjoyment of decorating.

[Spirlia]

Yoshida specifically said it was to prevent RMT from transferring gil and items around too easily.

Could that not be fixed by banning the whole RMT account...? And also, all the RMTs sharing a guild makes it easy anyway. It's a silly excuse.

That being said, if they allowed alts to be tenants (WITHOUT a tenant space), it would probably solve a few problems. And it would be great. And I don't think that alt should have the ability to buy a house just to be a tenant like someone suggested, since they wouldn't need that ability for any other tenancy.

[MicahZerrshia]

Could that not be fixed by banning the whole RMT account...?

It could, but like I said its a great excuse to use to artificially cap our inventories and force us to purchase more retainers for extra storage. It's great from a business standpoint but incredibly frustrating from a player one, especially for those who cannot afford the extra cost of retainers on top of their subscription.

There are a lot of things that were done with rmt as an excuse. They used it a lot for to justify design decisions during the transition from 1.0 to 2.0. I think some of it they just couldn't do on the time crunch they had. They did have to work super hard and long hours so I can see why they would let some things fall to the wayside. It just feels a little dishonest sometimes and coupling that with everything they said they were going to add and never mentioned again, I have a hard time believing anything I hear until its actually implemented in the game.

I just really wish they were more forthcoming. I think they don't give us the benefit of the doubt many times as a whole and only really hear the very vocal minority which would get upset and complain...loudly. But if they just said, we cant do this or that because we tried and it wouldn't work or it was too full of bugs or something and just be more transparent overall, like other companies do quite successfully, that would instill more trust from and loyalty the silent majority of the playerbase.

Their silence on this housing issue when it comes to alts is one of the big things right now. Is it a technical issue or is there another reason? Because rmt do not make sense and its one of those things that make zero sense and is constantly questioned. We need more transparency.