Account-wide Cosmetics

[Ranaku]

The devs already said, XIV isn't a game that is designed to be alt friendly since it's designed to be played with only one character. That design philosophy is also shown in the fact that you can't send stuff to alts via mail. So yeah, this will never find it's way into the game, you have higher chances with putting faith into the housing system than accountwide stuff.

[Ayuhra]

I believe the starter edition vs complete is about which expansions you purchase (“starter” vs “complete”) whereas the payment method gives you additional characters (“entry” vs “standard”).

The monthly price for “entry” package is identical to the “standard” which includes 8 characters, if you pay 3 months at a time.

I don’t know whether that is available to a “starter edition” account, but if this is of interest maybe double check if you’re playing long term and want extra characters. Hopefully you can get something!

Link for info: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/product/

I might be using the wrong terminology then. The account subscription that is cheaper, the one that allows 8 characters, does not allow them all on the same server. So I prefer standard sub.

Standard is what I pay when I play literally any other MMORPG (except Guild Wars 2) so meh.

I strongly suspect the reason stuff isn't account wide is (in addition to money) the fact that there is something deeply wrong with how XIV manages character data. Like 'Lovecraftian' wrong. Like 'You get a peek at what they are working with and bound too and your mind goes mad from the revelation' wrong.

It seems every item has way too much data associated with it when its stored in your character. Most games could easily handle an account wide 'collection' (like, a simple yes/no collection list for every item in the game for every player would probably fit on an SD card) but for some reason XIV can't, even though that would be something extremely easy to do. It may have to do with how complicated item states were and it was implemented in a janky way in 1.0 to keep track of dye, materia, spirit bonding, durability, and glam state, and location, and we are just stuck with that.

I'm sure this is at least partly the reason. The way the game seems to handle character data and inventory is a disaster. I'd like to see that change. Imagine what this dev team could do with a more robust and future proofed game engine.

[kaynide]

All good, I know what you're talking about. See image below:



Not trying to sell you on it, just I myself didn't realize I could get 7 extra characters for free. The only condition is paying 3 months at a time instead of 1.

[GeminiReed]

The devs already said, XIV isn't a game that is designed to be alt friendly since it's designed to be played with only one character. That design philosophy is also shown in the fact that you can't send stuff to alts via mail. So yeah, this will never find it's way into the game, you have higher chances with putting faith into the housing system than accountwide stuff.

There's a huge gulf between "Not being designed for" and "actively hostile towards". And according to a recent Yoshi-P interview it is firmly the latter. I near about unsubbed at that point. Regardless, as long as their attitude remains poor I'll continue to not buy single character cosmetics.

[Ayuhra]

All good, I know what you're talking about. See image below:



Not trying to sell you on it, just I myself didn't realize I could get 7 extra characters for free. The only condition is paying 3 months at a time instead of 1.

Oh I see what you are trying to say now.

It wouldn't be paying extra if I bought three months at a time. I didn't usually do that because I was playing casually most of the time, a month and here and there because I was playing WoW as well.

I don't....think I'm going to be going back to WoW any time soon so I have been considering the three month rounds.