Something I would genuinely LOVE is if I could "combine" characters...

[Rongway]

This is a big ask. Bad, unexpected, unpredictable things can happen when you start messing with state flags in the ways they would need to be messed with to combine two characters' quest journals into one, and it would require lots of testing. It took them at least two years of work to give us a New Game+ system that didn't involve just resetting every quest flag and making you start fresh.

[MsQi]

This is a big ask. Bad, unexpected, unpredictable things can happen when you start messing with state flags in the ways they would need to be messed with to combine two characters' quest journals into one, and it would require lots of testing. It took them at least two years of work to give us a New Game+ system that didn't involve just resetting every quest flag and making you start fresh.

Yeah, the sheer number of possible errors would keep this from happening. I assume this also means permanently deleting a character in the process. No matter how clear the instructions and number of notifications people manage to make mistakes on such things.

Account wide things would be nice, but that could eat up cash shop profits unless those items were excluded.

[Terin]

Yeah, the sheer number of possible errors would keep this from happening. I assume this also means permanently deleting a character a process. No matter how clear the instructions and number of notifications people manage to make mistakes on such things.

Account wide things would be nice, but that could eat up cash shop profits unless those items were excluded.

I mean, coding is coding. Any sort of new feature is as likely to introduce bugs as anything else is.

As far as deleting characters, I can't imagine that being the route they go, although it's certainly an option. If so, it would need to be an out-of-game option, something with several prompts stressing as much. But really, I think going "Account-wide" with stuff just makes a lot more sense, all things considered. But I'm certainly not glued to the idea, though!

[Rongway]

I mean, coding is coding. Any sort of new feature is as likely to introduce bugs as anything else is.

But we're talking about state flags. Even in a much smaller game I would advise against messing with flags if it can be avoided. And XIV hasn't been immune to unexpected flag side-effects. A year or two ago one of the patches had an unintended interaction with a state flag that caused people to see a dragon from an old cutscene in an unrelated new cutscene (or something like that--I'd need to check the patch notes for the details).

All coding can introduce bugs, but not all coding involves 2^n test cases that potentially need to be checked.