[Suggestion] FFXIV Alt-Friendliness

[TheRealDesastr]

To be clear, the only things I remember distinctly about alts in WoW are the following:

1. The only 'shared gear' was Heirloom gear. This included 'shared gear' via transmog. If I wanted to wear something on another character, I had to go fetch it.
2. Having leveled 28 jobs (when Alliance/Horde are concerned, back when job list had 14 jobs), I still had to level each and every alt. No shortcuts, per se.
3. There were no 'shared mounts' either. Purchase one, or get rewarded, and that character had the mount.
4. Bank space was not shared either.

What I remember about alts in Blade & Soul (and other F2P MMORPGS):

1. Crafters and banks had a few limited shared slots.
2. Paid Glamours (requiring actual bought-with-money 'crystals') were sometimes shareable, more so in Blade & Soul, less so in other MMORPGS
3. Advancement for alts was not easier
4. One picked up mounts the old-fashioned way - purchase them in-game with in-game currency, mostly.

Other games were less 'alt friendly' and more 'alt required if you wanted to play another class'.

Your mileage may vary.

Your statement about WoW would be totally wrong now (I'm assuming you quit prior to the changes, which is alright, I'm just correcting so we're all up to speed and there's no misinfo!) - it would be true prior to Mists of Pandaria, but now and for a while, all transmog (glams in FFXIV terms), mounts, and pets are shared. It's an extremely alt-friendly game in terms of collections.

As for advantages, I'd not want any advantage more than we have now for alts, just collections like glams, mounts, emotes, pets, and hairstyles.

If some of that has to be limited, so be it, but something is better than nothing. Island Sanctuary stuff, for example, boggles my mind that it's totally character-locked and we can't give it to alts. Or sell it. I guess not selling it makes that stuff more 'rare', but this is Islands we're talking about...

[seraseth]

I would prefer all but the consumables (eg dye) to be account wide.

If I remember correctly what they said way back when, it was another example of their spaghetti code system. The database that they used for tracking and sending out the mails on each new alt was *not* scale-able, like at all. So rather than redo the system to something new that functioned properly, they actively tried to make as few items account wide as possible, so it wouldn't overflow.

[TheRealDesastr]

It's a shame that so much can come down to 'spaghetti code'. No housing in WoW is due to that issue, and no alt-friendliness in XIV is due to that issue, too. I can only hope there's some way to work on that at least over a period of time so we get a little bit more than the abysmal system we have now.

[Isala]

It's a shame that so much can come down to 'spaghetti code'. No housing in WoW is due to that issue, and no alt-friendliness in XIV is due to that issue, too. I can only hope there's some way to work on that at least over a period of time so we get a little bit more than the abysmal system we have now.

I'm so damned tired of that excuse. "We can fix it because of the spaghetti code!" Cool. Does than mean you're going to let me pay less for your admittedly defective product, then? No? Then this isn't an excuse. Fix your damn game.

[Isala]

I understand it's hard to wrap your head around if you've never developed software or functioned as part of a team that supports a piece of software with a very old and expansive codebase, but it's really not as simple as "just fix it" with a product like FFXIV that's over a decade old and built off of the nightmare that was 1.0 let alone something like WoW that started development in the late 90s/very early 2000s and probably still has code dating back to that time.

"Spaghetti code" gets harder and harder to avoid when you have potentially dozens or hundreds of different programmers building on the same project for decades. Every change has to be carefully scrutinized before deployment to make sure it won't break 7 other things.

As someone with years of programming experience, that is still not my customer's problem to care about, nor should it ever be. That's like saying "Well, you know, it's really hard to build a car off of all these legacy design choices, so we can't actually make your vehicle work at full capacity, since Jimbob's design from 20 years ago isn't fully understood."

FIX. YOUR. DAMN. GAME.

[Isala]

I really still think you're oversimplifying the issue.

The purest, and simplest form of this is "If you can't do your job, your customers will find someone who can. Your excuses are not their problem."

If you feel that's oversimplifying things, I honestly don't know what to tell you.

[Ruris]

To be clear, the only things I remember distinctly about alts in WoW are the following:

1. The only 'shared gear' was Heirloom gear. This included 'shared gear' via transmog. If I wanted to wear something on another character, I had to go fetch it.
2. Having leveled 28 jobs (when Alliance/Horde are concerned, back when job list had 14 jobs), I still had to level each and every alt. No shortcuts, per se.
3. There were no 'shared mounts' either. Purchase one, or get rewarded, and that character had the mount.
4. Bank space was not shared either.

With respect, I think someone who is clearly not playing WoW shouldn't be typing out utterly inaccurate information about the game.

Thanks.

[Toutatis]

I think I'd also personally want things like retainers/leves/housing plots/islands limited to one character per server or shared across all characters on a server.

In terms of glamours/minions/mounts etc. though, I don't care at all and think all of that should be account wide if they can find a way to make it work in the system which is probably the limiting factor here. Sketti.

Sharing retainers isn't a good idea. Low level and end game characters do not have the same needs in terms of inventory. The retainers of my baby alt just starting the game vs those of my character with all jobs at >90 have vastly different inventories. It's free storage space too, why ruin it? They could just make a chest like the fc chest for sharing between characters (swtor had that) for those that can't do it with an fc.

[TheRealDesastr]

It does take a huge amount of time to even get there, and you have to pay extra per month for the retainers. I honestly don't think it's that big of a deal myself, but if it's something that needs to be done in order to make the game more alt-friendly, it's a sacrifice that's fine. But not technically something I agree with.

I'm looking for ways to add alt-friendliness without giving advantages, not take away the technical advantages already given, I dunno. There's, to be honest, not much of them.

[Xelanar]

As an altocolic myself, I agree and I wish the game was more alt-friendly too.

Accountwide MSQ progress.
Accountwide list of unlocked glamours, including shop items.
Accountwide mounts and minions.
Trading untradeable items between characters on the same account.
Accountwide shared housing.

Just to name a few. For a game that respects player's time as much as FFXIV does, it sure is inconvenient when it comes to alts.