Petition to SE - Make More Cash Shop Items Account Wide

[TheGrimace]

He basically gave the same "reason" they always give for why items can't be account-wide, the whole "limited keys" song and dance fiasco. And once again, there was no attempt to find a solution to the problem. It's clear this current trend is unsustainable. They need to work on solutions instead of excuses.

[TheGrimace]

Additionally, they announced that those attending the Fan Festivals in 2018/2019 will receive an account-wide Fenrir bike, which they showed on a Live Letter years back but did not add into the game due to the bike not looking right at reduced speeds. Now that they have increased the mount speed in ARR areas and demand was so high, so we're able to actually see the bike added to the game. Those not able to go to the Fan Fest will be able to purchase the bike on the Mog Station- since it's account-wide and likely only seats one person, we can assume it will be $24.

That leaves the minions they have yet to reveal. These will also be available for purchase on the mog station. Will attendees receive a code for these across all accounts? Will those of us who have to buy on Mog Station receive them across all accounts, or will we take the more likely approach and only receive them one per character? We don't have anything to go on yet, but I think it's worth it to prepare for the worst.

[Theodric]

He basically gave the same "reason" they always give for why items can't be account-wide, the whole "limited keys" song and dance fiasco. And once again, there was no attempt to find a solution to the problem. It's clear this current trend is unsustainable. They need to work on solutions instead of excuses.

A solution is simple. Keep the old system in place for older items...

...and let any new promotional items be tied to a special in-game NPC. If your account is flagged for acquisition of those items, you can purchase them as many times as you like on any character. If it isn't flagged, you simply can't buy them.

[TheGrimace]

Oh, I think that would be a great solution. I think that was actually recommended earlier in the thread. More to the point though, it just feels like SE isn't interested in adopting such a system because they make too much money this way.

[Soge01]

Once you buy an account-wide item, a relation is created in the system between your account and that item, represented by a key. That's data that needs to be stored in the system with a potential upper limit of (amount of users) * (amount of items). That's crazy. So they're limiting how many items you can get account-wide, thus reducing (amount of items).

Wait, so there is an actual limit to how many items a single account can purchase!? o.O;

[BillyKaplan]

Wait, so there is an actual limit to how many items a single account can purchase!? o.O;

I wouldn't say "an actual limit", that depends on system resource and design. But as things stand now, there's a sort of limit to how many account wide items you can purchase, yes.

[whiskeybravo]

He basically gave the same "reason" they always give for why items can't be account-wide, the whole "limited keys" song and dance fiasco. And once again, there was no attempt to find a solution to the problem. It's clear this current trend is unsustainable. They need to work on solutions instead of excuses.

The only real reason I can think of.. They didn't originally plan on having a cash shop, right? Seemed like it was kicked around for a while before we actually starting getting dyes and stuff on there. So.. With that in mind, it could possibly be a reason why it's limited the way that it is.

[Paladinleeds]

If you think about it though, every item in the game has an ID. I'm assuming every service account has an ID too. Isn't there any way they could simply link the 2 ID's together and not need a new numeric key as a result?

[BillyKaplan]

Isn't there any way they could simply link the 2 ID's together and not need a new numeric key as a result?

That link in and of itself is something you need to save in the database. Sadly it doesn't seem like they save it too efficiently.

[KisaiTenshi]

If you think about it though, every item in the game has an ID. I'm assuming every service account has an ID too. Isn't there any way they could simply link the 2 ID's together and not need a new numeric key as a result?

Consumables and digital intangibles (yes I know that's an oxymoron) are probably treated differently. eg, one-off items are simply put in a dispatch queue to be handed out at next login, and once they're gone, they're gone. Digital intangibles need to be re-issued, so their purchase needs to be stored somewhere, and my guess right now that is in SE's "store" and it's basically treated like DLC, as we've seen it with the pre-order codes for HW and SB, and the things for fanfest.

The only way they'd be able to solve this permanently would be to disconnect the FFXIV subscription, mog shop, any everything connected to FFXIV from the store, thus creating duplicate efforts and that just goes against business common sense. Rather some middle ground would be needed where the login server manages the subscriptions and account-wide codes, but redemption of such codes doesn't go through the SE shop, rather it goes through the game itself. They don't do that right now because the game sends essentially unencrypted data (compression != encryption.) So that would be asking to complicate things for one thing that isn't even core to the game.

So really this is an engineering hump that someone at Square-Enix is unwilling to put money into solving without some payoff and Yoshi-P's hands are likely tied. Or it's just business and the bean counters see more profit from this. This also kinda explains what happened to our Veteran rewards in 4.1.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...f0d5dc926e72db

Items obtained only through veteran rewards
Starting in Patch 4.1, players will be able to use their achievement points to purchase achievement certificates by speaking with Jonathas in Old Gridania ( X:10.6 Y:6.3). Certificates can then be used to purchase rewards of your choosing. The number of certificates in your possession can be confirmed via the Achievements window.

It's likely they were told that they can't add any more account-wide items by the SE store team so this meant the end of Veteran rewards.