Feeling punished for having alts...

[Avidria]

I'm all for more consideration for alts. There is a lot they can do but whether they will or not is another story. I know back around 4.2 for the housing additions after the Shirogane Fiasco they talked about looking at letting alts share housing. Obviously that hasn't happened and whether or not it will is debatable. I own multiple homes and got them specifically because my alts couldn't share a house and it was permitted at that time to do so. I don't feel guilty in the least about it.

Relative to my offserver alts I create small FC's so I can stare a house with them and a few friends. That works fine offserver for me but really shouldn't have to be a solution to sharing a house.

I'd be all for a common bank for many items. The idea of sharing story would be nice and now with the advent of new game plus one can replay story if they want even without an alt. I've used skips on some and took others through story before skips were a thing. It's very frustrating for me to not have Mogstation items account wide for example but I do without for the most part.

Yeah I'm not holding out much hope, it would just be nice to be able to just hop on an alt and just *play* without worrying about having to do alllll the unlocks and alllllll the story and run all over Eorzea just to be able to do the stuff I can already do on my main. I got to around level 30 on my alt before I just decided the story skip was worth the price for not needing to slog through all of ARR again.

Lack of house sharing also made it a nightmare to consolidate all of my furniture once I stopped playing the alt. I had a house on both characters but some of that stuff is unobtainable event or cash shop stuff.

There's a tiny cynical part of me that says money is probably part of why they won't add this QoL. I hope it's just cynicism, but I know I'd be buying fantasias way less often and wouldn't have bought a skip if playing alts was more easy and fun. Then again, I'd also be paying the increased sub price if it was /shrug

Early morning thoughts lmao

[Centershock]

So, you realize I'm not the one making this thread about that, right? I'm not the one who keeps mentioning them. What I am saying is that this thread is laughable, given people are whining about how alts suck to play when they don't need to play one and there are much larger issues. I do play an alt, and would I say it was worth it? Not really. Alts are not mandatory or useful in FFXIV, unlike other MMOs, and that's fine.

While you're entitled to your own opinion about alts, calling it "laughable" and "whining" isn't really constructive to the topic at hand. If you don't feel that this thread is necessary, why don't you just say that and move along? You are clearly and intentionally invalidating our "alt concerns" because it's not a problem that you have because we find value in it differently than you do. It seems like what you are doing is more malicious than anything else. High horse. Please get off of it.

I, for one, believe that this game, while clearly alt unfriendly, should be just a bit more accommodating for us who do have alts. Perhaps have limited transferrability of items across all our characters. (i.e. be able to mail things to ourselves/alts, allow our alts to join the FC we're in/we created, etc.) I don't mind doing all the MSQ on alts again all that much when skip books (level and MSQ) exist. But small QoL changes would be nice.

[Trianna]

I really don't mind having to unlock stuff or replay the MSQ, that's actually one of the main reasons why I want an alt...
But the lack of possibility to transfer items to alt by mail or shared bank, it's the real pain.

It wouldn't cost a thing to let us add ourselves as friends or let us define a retainer inventory "shared" for the entire accout or even, a housing item like a company chest that allows you to trade stuff between characters.

[Anarnee]

There's no QoL for alts because that goes against how the game was designed in the first place. If they suddenly made things just for people with alts, then there'd be more of a reason to have alts and people would feel like they're now required to have alts to get maximum enjoyment out of the game, which would completely negate one of the main things that sets FFXIV apart from other MMOs. If you want FFXIV to be more like other MMOs, go play those MMOs. If you want to cap out two to twenty characters per week, more power to you. Just know that you're going to have to live with the fact that FFXIV wasn't designed for that kind of playstyle. You can totally play it that way, but it'll cost you, and it'll be extremely inconvenient for you.

This makes no sense. The game was made with a lot of flaws. The game was designed to not let us change jobs unless we were in a sanctuary. The game was designed to not let us call our chocobos out while we were in queue. The game was designed to not have a minimum item level for leveling dungeons.

They changed those things.

Yes, it is inconvenient. That is why we're asking the dev team to change it. I don't want to play other mmos, I'm asking for a change to the one MMO that I play. I pay for extra characters, I would like more features for the things that I pay for. I don't think we're being unreasonable. If alts were not meant to be a feature then they wouldn't be in the game.

But keep on with your strawmans. I don't mind if people have a valid reasoning to protest the request of a feature, but just saying you don't want it, just because, is not valid.

Either way you're keeping the thread on the front page so hopefully that will get us more attention.

[Videra]

While you're entitled to your own opinion about alts, calling it "laughable" and "whining" isn't really constructive to the topic at hand. If you don't feel that this thread is necessary, why don't you just say that and move along? You are clearly and intentionally invalidating our "alt concerns" because it's not a problem that you have because we find value in it differently than you do. It seems like what you are doing is more malicious than anything else. High horse. Please get off of it.

I, for one, believe that this game, while clearly alt unfriendly, should be just a bit more accommodating for us who do have alts. Perhaps have limited transferrability of items across all our characters. (i.e. be able to mail things to ourselves/alts, allow our alts to join the FC we're in/we created, etc.) I don't mind doing all the MSQ on alts again all that much when skip books (level and MSQ) exist. But small QoL changes would be nice.

I'll preface this: I was a grumpy bitch this morning, which - I'm not going to hide behind as an excuse, but just acknowledging where I was coming from at the time.

I do want to see alt Quality of Life improvements, I play an alt, but I really do feel like it's something that shouldn't be prioritized in the face of other desperately needed changes. Again - I'm not opposed to the concept, I'd welcome it with open arms, but the fact that we're getting less content, on the whole, makes me wary. Every single little QoL improvement will take from dev time that could be devoted to other things. And I really do worry about that prospect with how development has been spiralling downwards since Shadowbringers launch.

[yukiiyuki]

There's no QoL for alts because that goes against how the game was designed in the first place. If they suddenly made things just for people with alts, then there'd be more of a reason to have alts and people would feel like they're now required to have alts to get maximum enjoyment out of the game, which would completely negate one of the main things that sets FFXIV apart from other MMOs. If you want FFXIV to be more like other MMOs, go play those MMOs. If you want to cap out two to twenty characters per week, more power to you. Just know that you're going to have to live with the fact that FFXIV wasn't designed for that kind of playstyle. You can totally play it that way, but it'll cost you, and it'll be extremely inconvenient for you.

This man went further beyond your typical unsub therapist, ultimate white knight, that will send you play other game even if you just want some basic improvements, even if you love game so much that you don't mind play on different characters and go through same quests again an again.
Circus getting bigger and bigger.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

This man went further beyond your typical unsub therapist, ultimate white knight, that will send you play other game even if you just want some basic improvements, even if you love game so much that you don't mind play on different characters and go through same quests again an again.
Circus getting bigger and bigger.

We need more "unsub therapists" to counter "I want this game to become (insert X MMO here) with an FF paint job" people.

I also didn't know that pointing out that not favoring alts =/= punishing for having alts is being a white knight. What does that make people who overexaggerate things as they are to complain about them? Black knights?

[Melichoir]

This makes no sense. The game was made with a lot of flaws. The game was designed to not let us change jobs unless we were in a sanctuary. The game was designed to not let us call our chocobos out while we were in queue. The game was designed to not have a minimum item level for leveling dungeons.

They changed those things.

Yes, it is inconvenient. That is why we're asking the dev team to change it. I don't want to play other mmos, I'm asking for a change to the one MMO that I play. I pay for extra characters, I would like more features for the things that I pay for. I don't think we're being unreasonable. If alts were not meant to be a feature then they wouldn't be in the game.

But keep on with your strawmans. I don't mind if people have a valid reasoning to protest the request of a feature, but just saying you don't want it, just because, is not valid.

Either way you're keeping the thread on the front page so hopefully that will get us more attention.

Frankly saying they dont want it cause they feel itll change the core aspect of the game is just as valid as you saying you want it cause its QoL for you.

You dont have to agree with their point and can debate the aspects of it, but dont overly simplify their point to put yours in a better light.


This all being said, why is it that people want this stuff extended to alts? What is the point of having an alt currently? There was a fair argument for MSQ reasons, but thats gone cause NG+ is rectifying that issue. The cross world thing also helps solve some of this issue with having friends on different servers. It's not perfect but its an improvement. I havent personally seen a huge demand to be able to 're-level' everything you own as a good reason for alts, though Im sure theres a handful of people who would want that.

Now Im gonna be a bit cherry picking here to help highlight something:

I, for one, believe that this game, while clearly alt unfriendly, should be just a bit more accommodating for us who do have alts. Perhaps have limited transferrability of items across all our characters. (i.e. be able to mail things to ourselves/alts, allow our alts to join the FC we're in/we created, etc.)

This is why they dont encourage alts and why the consideration of the game design is important. They want you to rent extra retainers beyond 2 per character. If you could mail alts items or money, you could use your extra dollar or two sub to get yourself 14 extra retainers. This is also why they dont want you to easily invite yourself to an alts FC, because it makes it easier to abuse the FC system for more storage space among other things (like housing plots - which is also a s***-show and is something that does need to be addressed but thats a whole other topic). Having alts in this capacity and streamlining alts to function exactly like MMOs like WoW does would.

This game and many of its mechanics are designed specifically around a "one character" model. A lot of the auxillary services like more retainers is designed around this aspect. In WoW, having multiple alts made sense from that games design perspective because each character you made was locked to one single job. Youd have to reroll to play any new class. The ability to mail yourself stuff was probably a semi workaround for players that Blizzard went with so that if you started a new character it didnt feel as horrible starting from scratch. And part of the result of that were literal bank alts - alts who had 0 purpose other than have more bank space.

Now that model doesnt work for FFXIV because they designed the game to operate where you need only 1 character.

So when people say "Doing stuff that caters to alts is not in the games design", theyre not wrong. The game isnt really designed for alts. It was designed for a single character, but gave players the option to have alts IF they wanted to do something like replay the MSQ.

I guess the question I want to know is why do people want alts outside of reasons that would exploit or bypass mogstation or account features (such as more inventory space or replaying the MSQ)?

[Kytrin]

I guess the question I want to know is why do people want alts outside of reasons that would exploit or bypass mogstation or account features (such as more inventory space or replaying the MSQ)?

Hon, this question has been answered ad nauseam by more than one person in this very thread. Myself included. Seriously. It's starting to feel like we're shouting into the void at this point. For details, I highly recommend going back to read some of those entries. However, in summary...

HAVING ALTS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH EXPLOITS, RAIDING, INVENTORY, OR ANY OTHER SO CALLED 'CHEAT' FOR MOST PEOPLE.

It really doesn't.

I have two characters. Both characters have 9 retainers (I am not afraid to pay for more inventory to keep myself organized). I could not care LESS about two more free retainers on alts. I could care less about raiding multiple times a week. I don't care about the blasted mogstation either. I simply buy what I want for BOTH characters if I like it enough to spend the money twice. I don't even care specifically about MSQ now that I can new game+.

My entire reason for having two characters is because I had an old, retired, main I decided to reinvent into a new character with a new name and a new backstory. Sonja is a completely different person from K'rina, and I enjoy the difference in their personalities as I play through the game. That's it. That's the reason. And I see no reason why I should have to spend a fortune in fantasia and name changes because I want to play something other than my kitty.

By that same token, K'rina IS my main character. She's wealthier and further along with things than Sonja is. Being able to craft things on K'rina to send to Sonja without having to beg an FC mate for help or commandeer the FC chest for a while, is not an unreasonable request, and honestly I don't get why you and a lot of other people are so against it.

Unless you think we're all cheaters and exploiters who should have our accounts banned because we have the gall to pay for more character slots, use them, and then ask that it be a little less of a pain to do so? Because that's the impression I'm getting from all this outrage.

[Tlamila]

I'd really like to know how on earth does having extra retainer solves the trading stuff to alts problem.
You're saying I craft an item on main, put it on a retainer and it automagically gets transferred to alt?
I don't think we're playing the same game...