Feeling punished for having alts...

[Arillyn]

Pretty sure back when ARR launched SE said they weren't allowing people to add their alts to their friend list was because of RMT exploiting it to move funds around. It doesn't stop RMT from doing that - they make FCs to do this. This just inconveniences the player base.

[Melichoir]

Pretty sure back when ARR launched SE said they weren't allowing people to add their alts to their friend list was because of RMT exploiting it to move funds around. It doesn't stop RMT from doing that - they make FCs to do this. This just inconveniences the player base.

Weird point to illustrate? Youre implicitly implying that using these loopholes are against what SE wants, but since RMTers still manage to get around restrictions, just let everyone do it? This is like saying SE doesnt want people to Bot, but RMTers do it, so therefore its only inconveniencing the player base and should be changed.

I understand the frustration behind not being able to share resources with alts, considering nearly every other MMO out there does so. At least from a shared bank perspective.

I get that frustration. It's not an invalid feeling, but the issue is how the game is structured and what changing mailing to alts would end up doing from an incentive stand point. (again this is just ONE point Im illustrating.)

Brainstorm for a second, lets say they did decide to change how mailing works and you can now mail to alts. Again, the rational thing for most people is to create bank alts. This means less retainer purchases. So either SE does one of two things if they want to keep that option open - Make storage account wide, so now all alts share the same storage space, OR raise the cost of the sub from 15 to something else (possibly 20 as a throw away average).

Both of those have pretty negative impacts, no matter how you cut it. If you make storage account wide, every time you have an alt, you 'divide' your storage space (so if you have 100 storage, an alt would make that 50 storage effectively between your main and alt, 3 alts would make it 33, 4 is 25, etc), eventually ending up with less overall storage than a person who only has one characters worth of items. You also screw over people who dont want shared bank inventory space.

If you raise tuition, you screw over people who do have the bigger account size for other purposes rather than wanting alts to play. Not to mention you create a higher barrier of entry for players which may disincentive people keeping their subs.

There isnt an easy solution. It sucks, but the way the game is designed has some advantages, as well as disadvantages. Changing how some of it works for QoL changes has knock on effects.

[Arillyn]

Weird point to illustrate? Youre implicitly implying that using these loopholes are against what SE wants, but since RMTers still manage to get around restrictions, just let everyone do it? This is like saying SE doesnt want people to Bot, but RMTers do it, so therefore its only inconveniencing the player base and should be changed

Because SE has a habit of putting things in place to try to stop RMT that doesn't stop RMT at all, but the byproduct is hindering players. Players have to get around moving things around by either FC (if their alt happens to be in the same FC), sending something to a friend to then have them send to the alt or setting up things on retainers to purchase to move it to an alt. Frankly it's stupid. If I could friend my alts I could make gear for my alt and send to them much easier, I could also make them a tenant of my house. Out of everything people are asking for in this thread, I just really want to have my alts on my FL, mainly so I can share my house.

And as an aside if SE really wanted to do something about RMT & Bots they would permanently ban some accounts of those using said bots and buying gil from RMT. But that's another discussion.

[dinnertime]

People are really calling alts being extra inventory an exploit? I have to laugh.

Maybe if the game had a better inventory/storage system and if they actually made a real glamour log then this wouldn't be such an issue for most people. The game is also littered with too many currency-like items that just clutter your inventory. Regarding the Armory Chest, at some point it won't be able to hold every weapon/tool for each job when they add more jobs into the game.

Alts are a cheap but pretty time-consuming option to the current mess the inventory system is. Transferring stuff between your own characters via FC chest is an exploit? If it was, then the devs would've done something to make it so the game detects and prevents transferring items from a character you own into a different character you own. Someone here will probably blame it on spaghetti code, though.

Mailing between alts is already possible. The system already allows it since it treats two different characters from the same account as two different people entirely. The only exploit here is being able to friend your alts through working against how the servers work.

I really don't get why you can't add your own alts as friends anyway. To prevent RMT activity? Might as well delete the trading system entirely. Trading via by mail is essentially the same thing, but more tedious.

[Eric_Riot]

Melichoir I have a question. You'er saying they do not give us the Mail to Alt option purely for money reasons. Are you also saying that you do not what this option added to the game?

If you could vote Y or N to have the ability to mail to alts what would be your answer? I don't care about why they don't have it, I care about "Noise" from the fan base to "Yes please give us this option".

Just curious.

[Eric_Riot]

https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxiv

Also 19 mill+ sub's.. what % of those subs have alts do you think?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxiv

Also 19 mill+ sub's.. what % of those subs have alts do you think?

No, it's not 19 million subs. It's 19 million registered users. Meaning number of accounts created. Not concurrent subscribers or players.

[Eric_Riot]

It's 19 million registered users.

Okay, of those 19 million registered users how many are alts?

"HOW MANY PEOPLE PLAY FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN?
We estimate that 1,845,284 people play per day, with a total player base of 19,424,044."

[Melichoir]

People are really calling alts being extra inventory an exploit? I have to laugh.,...

No, the point being made was that just because you want something doesnt mean it doesnt have detrimental effects. Using alts for bank space and what not is just an example of what that means. To summerize:

lets say they did decide to change how mailing works and you can now mail to alts. Again, the rational thing for most people is to create bank alts. This means less retainer purchases. So either SE does one of two things if they want to keep that option open - Make storage account wide, so now all alts share the same storage space, OR raise the cost of the sub from 15 to something else (possibly 20 as a throw away average).

Both of those have pretty negative impacts, no matter how you cut it. If you make storage account wide, every time you have an alt, you 'divide' your storage space (so if you have 100 storage, an alt would make that 50 storage effectively between your main and alt, 3 alts would make it 33, 4 is 25, etc), eventually ending up with less overall storage than a person who only has one characters worth of items. You also screw over people who dont want shared bank inventory space.

If you raise tuition, you screw over people who do have the bigger account size for other purposes rather than wanting alts to play. Not to mention you create a higher barrier of entry for players which may disincentive people keeping their subs.

To further that point, SE has put in place purposefully means to prevent easy trade of items to alt characters. This is because the game is designed a certain way, particularly because the game is built around being able to do it all with 1 PC. This isnt like how some other MMOs operate, like WoW, where youre expected to have multiple alts.

Beyond that, people keep repeating the same point thinking that it justifies the position. "Oh, I can do some things to get around those road blocks, so therefore it's stopping nothing and we should allow it." Or a variation about how RMTers do it therefore everyone should.

I just want one person to address the following with a legit well thought out response other than recycled "RMTers Do it, or I can use a few ways to get around it so it's all moot.":

If you remove restrictions on who you can mail to, the rational thing to do is make bank alts if you want more storage. This means that buying the extra retainer services would be greatly impacted. How does SE address this problem now because it is an issue of revenue now?

I really don't get why you can't add your own alts as friends anyway.

Might have more to do with spam/harassment filtering. A lot of the systems are intermingled specifically to prevent certain actions from the player side. So to add a friend, they have to be online, and to mail someone, they have to be a friend. So Youre not gonna get random mail for harassers or spammers, or tons of 'friend' invites every time you log in from Gold spammers looking to advertise. Or from people you dont know or dont like. Is it perfect? No not really. Is it complete trash? No not really either. It's just a heavy handed filter.

Melichoir I have a question. You'er saying they do not give us the Mail to Alt option purely for money reasons. Are you also saying that you do not what this option added to the game?

If you could vote Y or N to have the ability to mail to alts what would be your answer? I don't care about why they don't have it, I care about "Noise" from the fan base to "Yes please give us this option".

Just curious.

If they can resolve the monetization issue with out severely impacting other people, itd be yes. Why not. It would be a QoL improvement. Im not opposed to it cause "Nyah, dont mail to alts cause its bad and wrong and stoopid!!" Im trying (probably poorly) to say that just because we want things doesnt mean that it wouldn't come without a price. The whole mailing thing was just the most immediate example of why some of this stuff doesnt add up. And that only came from people suggesting "Well WoW does it, so it's no problem if FFXIV does it" which ignores the fact that how WoW and FFXIV are designed at a foundation level arent the same. And those differences affect how the game operates and is monetized. Losing monetization means either making up for it in other spots (higher sub fees or more mogstation exclusives) and cutting development and operating on an even lower budget.

[dinnertime]

No, the point being made was that just because you want something doesnt mean it doesnt have detrimental effects. Using alts for bank space and what not is just an example of what that means.

It's not detrimental. It's actually a reasonable and free way to get more storage. "Bank alts" aren't an exploit and there's nothing that prevents it. Extra retainers are also an optional service and they're not actively trying to prevent or discipline players from using alts as extra storage either just because it might affect their revenue there. Again, if they want to prevent these things from happening, they have ways to do so by making items untradeable to your own characters. The theories you've quoted are just theories and I doubt they'll do it unless you keep giving them more ideas to be stingy about the storage/inventory problem.

The only reason I've heard of as to why they don't allow friending your own characters (which is actually not the case. You're just not able to add offline players) is because of RMT. I don't even know if that's actually the statement they gave though. Still, that statement is really flimsy when there are workarounds to it and the 'problem' still persist, only because they wouldn't go for the actual root of the issue. There's really no point in keeping it up anymore and it's a stupid restriction in the first place.

Might have more to do with spam/harassment filtering. A lot of the systems are intermingled specifically to prevent certain actions from the player side. So to add a friend, they have to be online, and to mail someone, they have to be a friend. So Youre not gonna get random mail for harassers or spammers, or tons of 'friend' invites every time you log in from Gold spammers looking to advertise. Or from people you dont know or dont like. Is it perfect? No not really. Is it complete trash? No not really either. It's just a heavy handed filter.

Friend invites being spammed is something I've never witnessed in this game, and that is something gold spammers can already do whenever they wish. If that's really a problem, there should be settings to allow only certain people (mutuals from FCs, LS's or your own party/alliance, or mutual friends) to add you or have it disabled entirely, and only being able to add someone as a friend once at for a certain time, while having the option to add people who are offline available.