The Unofficial "Why is this still a thing" Thread

[Skivvy]

Because RMT. Also because it makes stripping an account possible by players who share the same account. Not that it doesn't stop people from doing either of these with some free-trial account, it just requires effort.

I've never understood the RMT excuse (has this actually been said by SE?). What is the harm if RMT can send gil between characters on the same account? This can all be tracked by SE.

Also, account sharing is against ToS (aside from sharing with your legal guardian or minor child), so that shouldn't be a concern anyway.

[KisaiTenshi]

I've never understood the RMT excuse (has this actually been said by SE?). What is the harm if RMT can send gil between characters on the same account? This can all be tracked by SE.

Also, account sharing is against ToS (aside from sharing with your legal guardian or minor child), so that shouldn't be a concern anyway.

It's a thing with all MMO's, usually stripping an account is caused by players engaging in RMT, because they're idiots and gave their account info away. Some people play in the same household (eg teen children, spouse), and you don't want to buy 4 subscriptions if you only have one computer capable of playing it anyway. It's a bad idea anyway.

But typically in Freemium games, you want to avoid players creating more "free" accounts to use as mules, and one way you curb that abuse is by attaching costs to transferring items through the mail, but you often have a common bank inventory (eg retainers in the case of FFXIV). However in FFXIV you get additional retainers for additional characters on the SAME server, thus it allows players to get additional retainers without paying for them (or by doubling the number of retainers you can have that you pay for,) by using the additional characters as essentially additional inventory space, and their additional retainers.

At any rate, the actual worry about this is kinda moot. If SE blocks players from sending stuff to their own alts, with some misguided notion of not letting the main character interfere with the alt character, perhaps the real problem is that SE should have made an actual "bank" inventory that was shared, or allow sharing via housing (another thing you can't do, invite your alts to your own FC without at least one other player to do it. AFAIK)

[alimdia]

It's a thing with all MMO's

No it's not? I've played many MMOs and not one of them restricted either creating alts or using alts as storage, this is the only one that does it and I think the only reason they don't change it is because they fear they'd lose money from additional retainers.

[Makeda]

It's a thing with all MMO's, usually stripping an account is caused by players engaging in RMT

Yeah let's see...

I also have played or still play: WoW, Wildstar, Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars 1 & 2, Everquest 2, Tera, Blade and Soul, Age ofConan (for about 1 hour... ick), City of Heroes (a moment of silence please for a fallen friend), Neverwinter, Champions Online, Black Desert, and a few random things here and there...

This is the only game that is so alt-hostile.

I get that you can play every class on a single toon, but you can't play every race at the same time on the same CHARACTER... so I and others have alts.

And in ALL of those other games, I can send things around between various characters.

Yet it is this game that has had the most problems with RMT of them all. Guild Wars 2 came close at launch... but a few days in they banned 30,000 accounts in one hit, forced a password change for all users, blocked any password that had ever been used by ANYONE from being used by anyone ever again (*)... and that was it...

* (so if you had the password "12345", the system would not let me have that password)

The RMT issues are not alt related... they're account security related.

On launch day of this game, I was watching as people I was talking to or standing next to in game vanished, then logged back in minutes later and started spamming RMT offers...

Me... I got an SE Token, that 'one-time' thingy...

If everyone had that, we'd be done talking about RMT here... (*)

*(Hackers have recently showed proof of concept for cracking into two-factor authentication, but the process is complex and involves gaining access to a Wi-Fi network and a two-factor system that is using that same network: as in... if somebody hacks your two-factor... it means they're sitting outside your house in that black van with the guys in mirrorshades in it... you got bigger problems at that point... one of which might be "seeing things" that aren't there... ).