Feeling punished for having alts...

[Shurrikhan]

Feeling punished for having alts...

Can only pick one or the other:

• QoL via all jobs on same character, or
• Multiple sets of weekly lockouts, and currencies, and bank slots via separate characters.

I can't say I agree that such should be the case, but it's still a better position than you'd have in most MMOs. If you want to play seriously across multiple armor classes, then like any other MMO, you take alts. Otherwise, you have some XIV-unique QoL.

[Avidria]

There is no good reason to have an alt.
The reason I like this game so much is because all your alts technically exist on one character. Everything is already shared, story progress included.

For a while a played an alt because I had friends in two different datacenters, primarily because some of them live in EU and thus, played on an EU datacenter. My options were make an alt, or pull out my wallet and server transfer every time I wanted to play with one group or the other. Which would be both silly and impractical.

Just because you don't see any good reasons for alts doesn't mean they don't exist.

[Sated]

I really wish housing was shared, especially considering my alts cannot have their own houses.

I also wish glamour was stored better, like Blizzard's transmog systems. Something account-wide and progress-tracking. If it bound to you at any point you've unlocked the item's look on your account and can access it when creating glamour plates with no need to physically store or hang onto the item. Any cosmetics purchased from the Mog Station should also be account-wide - and until a better solution to glam storage is found, should also go in the Armoire.

But for actual content I don't mind doing MSQ again and job quests again (it's part of why I play alts), and if I do want to skip something there exist services for that. I also do my EX and weeklies on my alts, and the holiday events on my alts - that's part of actually playing them, because what's the point otherwise?

The QoL stuff though... it's bad enough on main, just feels worse on alts. General improvements are needed.

[Dzian]

I can't see how you can say you are being punished. The entire game is built in way that you don't have to create alts, unless you wanted to play on a different data centre or with a different character look. Granted, i think housing should be shared across all of your characters on the data centre.

The thing is, even for story replay-ability they have created New Game Plus so more and more there is less incentive for us to create and play alts. Which to me can only be a good thing.

For most people it's just a cosmetic thing. If progression was shared account wide it would free up a lot of cosmetic options. Maybe my tank paladin could be a big hulking roegadyn. While my bard is might be a aura. And my astromogian an elezen.

Glamour is the endgame of XIV as everyone knows and some glamour looks better on some races than others. Which is why alts often appeal to people.

Yes there are fantasias but coughing up $6 everytime you switch jobs is beyond crazy it's not even an option.

[gman1311]

Then don’t have an alt

[LaylaTsarra]

Then don’t have an alt

Alts are fun. I have a few of them. Personally I wish there was more support such as being able to friend them, share a house, maintain a shared minion and mount bank. I would also like to see more done with MogStation and it's support for account wide content/sales.

[Raven2014]

The OP is actually quite accurate in using the word "punished".

To people who said "because the game ain't designed that way" you miss the point. While the structure of the game make it content more 'accessible' on one character I don't think it's equivalent to "encouraging people to play on one char", much less "discouraging playing alt". To be frank, if it wasn't for the ability to make more character, I would not use a standard sub at all. The default sub give you 8 character slots at a higher price, so saying the system isn't "designed" for it doesn't really fly. Also to be able to play different class is just one of the many reasons people have alt. Glamour, race, weekly allowance ...etc... which are all possible here, so again, "not designed for it" doesn't fly.


But the strongest argument here is you don't even have to look for specific "alt support" and argue it's not meant to be. There are things that are lacking not because the game is not capable, but because the dev specifically went out of their way to prohibit you to do so. The most commonly requested and arguably most severe hindrance to having alt in this game is the lack of ability to transfer item between alt. For those of you who either are new here or weren't present when it was possible, it's actually possible to mail stuffs between your alt. The mailing restriction is due to you can only mail people on your friend-list, and since 2.0 there have been instance here and there where players found ways to friend their alt, and thus allowing them mailing stuffs back and forth. And each and every single of those time, SE patch out the method in short order.

As for the reason why you can't just friend your own alt? Last time I check I think they used " 'cause it encourage boting" as the excuse. Well, I let you be your own judge on how flimsy that excuse is, considering bot has no problem transferring stuff with their exclusive bot-FCs anyway.


So yes, given the fact that it's a high-demand yet extremely basic QoL feature for alt as well as already being already possible in the game (since 2.0), the fact the dev went out of their way from keepign you doing so indeed is a punishment. Again, that maybe a strong word, but it is also accurate.

[JWag12787]

So yes, given the fact that it's a high-demand yet extremely basic QoL feature for alt as well as already being already possible in the game (since 2.0), the fact the dev went out of their way from keepign you doing so indeed is a punishment. Again, that maybe a strong word, but it is also accurate.

I doubt they went out of their way to do so.
Very few MMOs progress the story, or allow you to do most of these things.
A few games have started to, and some allow you to do basic things like mail, etc
But playing alts on other games was more punishing, because you had to progress through quests and story on EVERY alt to play EVERY class, rather than a single class.


Is it punishing? Yes. Though I say no more than most MMOs (though, as I mentioned, most other MMOs are doing things to improve that QOL (SWTOR's legacy system, for example)

[Raven2014]

I doubt they went out of their way to do so.
Very few MMOs progress the story, or allow you to do most of these things.

Again, it's something that the game can already do, it's something the players used to be able to do, yet they release patches (on more than one occasion) to specifically to stop us from doing so. That's "going out of their way to inconvenience the player" by definition, completely irrelevant to what you can or can not do in other games.

And I don't know what you're talking about, I had played quite a few MMO in the past 15 years, and I can't remember even one of them doesn't let you communicate between alt by "default". So much that I remember the first time I created an alt 5 years ago, the lack of ability to do so striked me as the most odd thing about this game.

[Merryl]

I would probably have more alts if I could share gil, housing, and be able to keep my progress in story. Seriously nobody wants to do these side quests ever again..ever never...