Feeling punished for having alts...

[Melichoir]

It's not detrimental. It's actually a reasonable and free way to get more storage..... 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.

Gonna just reiterate - The problem isnt mailing to your alts in of itself. The problem is how if you were to allow a direct trade to alts, the rational pragmatic thing the entire player base to do is create more alts to get more storage space. That is a purely rational decision people would make, as you are saying. But in doing that, people will also rationally say "Why should I pay $2 a month more per extra retainer when I can simply pay 1 for 14 extra retainers." So most people do not purchase retainers for extra storage space.

That is a direct revenue loss for SE and the Devs. That loss translates into impacting the game - Either by cutting development in places or compensating the loss into bigger sub fees. This is the 'downstream' effects of just one change in the system. Ironically, You are actually agreeing with me and my point about alt banks and providing SE a financial incentive not to allow mailing between alts.

As for punishing players, the reason why they probably dont is because its not cost effective and hard to prove. So they compromise. Knowing that there are loopholes in the design, theyve put up walls that make it difficult or inefficient to use alts as storage for most players. Theyre likely operating on the concept of simply saying "Yeah, we know you can do this method and turn alts into storage, but most players would rather just spend a few dollars more and not deal with the hassle."

Beyond that, how do you expect them to 'stop' a trade between alts? Lets say you want to transfer items between alts and you have a friend act as the intermediary. What is a realistic way for SE to stop that? Create a special invisible flag that denotes whom the item originally came from? How long does that flag stick around? Does it stick around if the item gets placed on the MB. When its purchased does the flag go away? Or how bout the item is traded through a few people. Not to mention now you have a new and completely separate background tagging system that the servers have to manage and track.

Lets think this in reverse though. Forget the monetization issue - why dont they just straight up allow you to mail/trade to alts? Afterall, it would be a QoL improvement. What reason would they exactly not allow it - especially if the "It stops RMTers" is bunk and RMTers are getting around the system anyways without issue? I mean, we're not gonna assume that the devs are sitting there being like "Yeah screw these players who want alts! They suck! hahaha so fun to make things bad for them," right?

[Iscah]

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.

I don't know if it counts as spaghetti code or just practicality, but they're not going to track ownership of items like that. You put it in the chest; it stopped being yours.

[dinnertime]

I'm not going to repeat myself after this because this will just go on back and forth and nobody will agree with each other. And no I'm not agreeing with anything you've said. By alt banks I meant alts being used as more storage, not another paid inventory system that is shared between all characters.

As for punishing players, the reason why they probably dont is because its not cost effective and hard to prove. So they compromise. Knowing that there are loopholes in the design, theyve put up walls that make it difficult or inefficient to use alts as storage for most players. Theyre likely operating on the concept of simply saying "Yeah, we know you can do this method and turn alts into storage, but most players would rather just spend a few dollars more and not deal with the hassle."

Again another assumption. The only "walls" they've really placed is being unable to add anyone who is offline. If they're truly bothered with losing revenue, they will actually make those walls, but they haven't.

Beyond that, how do you expect them to 'stop' a trade between alts? Lets say you want to transfer items between alts and you have a friend act as the intermediary. What is a realistic way for SE to stop that? Create a special invisible flag that denotes whom the item originally came from? How long does that flag stick around? Does it stick around if the item gets placed on the MB. When its purchased does the flag go away? Or how bout the item is traded through a few people. Not to mention now you have a new and completely separate background tagging system that the servers have to manage and track.

It's already a thing with untradeable items, which are coded to be untradeable no matter what other than the person of origin who's obtained it. There's also coding where a crafted armor/weapon has the name of the crafter. I'm sure there are ways they can make it so any item you obtained in one character is untradeable to another character you own, but it's not worth doing to be honest.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

> Points fingers at others' assumptions
> Their arguments hinge on assuming SE passively endorses it, because they don't go 100% on closing every loophole.

[dinnertime]

It's more like they don't care really, but go off.

[Halivel]

Congrats, you're not a Scholar or Astrologian player then. Scoot along. Also, please - I'm using example of bigger problems than this alt nonsense.

Digging it, and I will probably say the horrible thing for some, but I'm in love with how AST is now. The way it's done currently finally encouraged me to level it without curses and endless hate for the class I liked on an aestethic level but just couldn't force myself to play it because of its horrible (for me) gameplay. Now I enjoy it and it's fun to play it for me. I can see why people who liked it before don't like it now, but it doesn't mean there are no people who like the job the way it is done currently.

But that's an off-topic, sorry.