My Alt is an Idiot

[Carin-Eri]

Excellent thread!

10/10!

[Jojoya]

Literally joke's on me for having an itch to play a Miqo'te, I guess. Seriously, I'm an idiot for trying to make an alt, that's the whole point of the thread.

Again, not an idiot. Telling me that you want to see what it felt like to play as a Miqo'te without using a Fantasia on your main makes a lot more sense to me than saying you wanted the alt to play with friends. Race choice does make a difference in how the game feels as you play. Not unusual for me to feel a weird sense of needing to adjust mentally as I switch from one of my lalafell characters to one of my Roegadyns even though the game is otherwise the same.

Auriele... I don't have a problem with how the aether currents work, nor do I go around sequence breaking when I first went through any of this. My issue is specifically about having no alternatives for my alt. Nothing in your argument addresses that.

But you haven't given a reason for why there need to be alternatives for something that's a simple task compared to most game play. All you've told us is that you don't want to do something you've already done before.

Repeating things you've done before is the MMORPG life. Just about every player could come up with things they don't want to do again but feel the rewards should still be given to their alts. If everyone got their wish, alts wouldn't have anything to do.

Since alts aren't needed to experience everything in the game, the developers haven't found a need to have account-wide content completion or rewards. The few things that are account wide are either additional real money purchases not included in the subscription, or the items earned through the old veterans rewards program. We can't even get them to make a personal house account wide for alts despite the one per server per account restriction.

I'm never even asked for instant flight, just... something to make life easier on an alt. I truly feel like an idiot for making an alt. Square offers no quality of life assistance of any kind (even though it wouldn't hurt anyone), and some of the sentiment I'm getting from the thread is "deal with it" so yeah, lesson learned: I'm not making any more alts.

Don't feel like an idiot. You tried something. You've decided it's not right for you. There's no shame in that.

There's also no shame in making a suggestion for change but you also have to be willing to deal with dissenting opinions if you make those suggestions in a public forum. The public forum is a great place if you want others to review your ideas and discuss pros/cons.

If you just want to submit a suggestion without the additional discussion, I would suggest submitting it through the in-game Help Desk. If I'm being honest, I suspect that it's more likely to be forwarded to the development team if you submit it there than by submitting it in the forums. Any of us would be lucky to have one of the moderators or Community Team members find our genuine suggestions in the middle of all the non-constructive trash that gets posted here let alone forward them to the developers.

[DiaDeem]

Again, not an idiot. Telling me that you want to see what it felt like to play as a Miqo'te without using a Fantasia on your main makes a lot more sense to me than saying you wanted the alt to play with friends. Race choice does make a difference in how the game feels as you play.

But you haven't given a reason for why there need to be alternatives for something that's a simple task compared to most game play. All you've told us is that you don't want to do something you've already done before.

Since alts aren't needed to experience everything in the game, the developers haven't found a need to have account-wide content completion or rewards. The few things that are account wide are either additional real money purchases not included in the subscription, or the items earned through the old veterans rewards program. We can't even get them to make a personal house account wide for alts despite the one per server per account restriction.

Don't feel like an idiot. You tried something. You've decided it's not right for you. There's no shame in that.

There's also no shame in making a suggestion for change but you also have to be willing to deal with dissenting opinions if you make those suggestions in a public forum. The public forum is a great place if you want others to review your ideas and discuss pros/cons.

You know what? Thank you. This was a really reasonable take, and I appreciate you took the time to write it.

And no, you're absolutely right. I did mention catch up mechanics but I didn't really suggest anything, which is in fact the usual complain, and suggest nothing issue that we often have here, and that's on me.

Writing this at the top of my head... having something for the currents like Azys Lla does it, entirely tied to MSQ progression with no world currents could be nice? Then maybe once you finish 4.5 all (base) Raids/Extra Dungeons unlock automatically or something? Maybe you get one free Job boost to use on whatever you want...?

When you put it like this, it sounds more like this would need an entire comprehensive rework, and that would take some time.

To be fair, last time I had properly caught up alts was during Stormblood, and I also had a lot more free time back then. I wasn't expecting it to be this grindy for Endwalker, and I got really frustrated. I also just have fun making needlessly complex posts with images and whatnot, but I guess that's besides the point lol.

Once again though, thanks for this post! I must not forget to also propose solutions and not just do the complaining part next time.

[Zeastria]

Account shared features i wish existed:
✩Make Glam from the store - shared.
✩Make all+owned mounts/minions/music scrolls/emotes..ect - shared.
✩Aether currents / shared fate progress - shared
✩Titel/Achivements - shared
✩Housing - shared

[Iscah]

- I have no issue with the currents themselves. Whether I frontload them (as I've been doing for 9 years) or do it as your sacred order dictates, it's IRRELEVANT to this thread and topic.
- The issue (for the 100th time), is that there are no mechanics to help alts catch up with dungeons, raids, flying, gear, or anything at all, and are treated as if the player behind them was brand new.

And again, my issue isn't even particularly about the currents, but about the fact you're complaining about how they should make it quicker for you to catch up while inventing work for yourself that is above what is necessary.

[Gordita]

This was a nice post to see, to change it up for a moment. Nice break from the complaining and bickering that happens here

[Astrus]

The "issue" as I understand it stems from the fact that XIV doesn't expect or really want you to have more than the one character per server.
A majority of the underlying systems seem to be built with the expectation that alts are not something people do.
Seding mail? Not to your alts, unless you managed to bug them onto your friendslist or something you need a middle man.
(Past) Seasonal events? Do these on each character or sink money into replica items from the shop.
Sharing the one private house you can get per world per account? Nope.
A good portion of the cash shop items? Single-character with no option to pay more for an account-wide option.
Community contest rewards like the Cloud hair? Single. Character. Go win more contests on your alts.
Creating an alt character on a congested world you already have characters on? Wait for the lock to lift like everyone else. We can't have you bypass the lock if you already have a character on that world. You might break the time-space continuum and log both in simultaneously or something.

The way the MSQ-lock interacts with alts (which is to say it doesn't) is just another point in that list.
There simply is no consideration of "this is an alt, different rules apply here" - it's a concept that doesn't exist as far as the game is concerned.

Their "solution" to this is Fantasias and since those are printing money they really have no incentive to make this game any less alt-unfriendly.
It's like they looked at their competitors, saw them charging money for character renames and race changes and figured they'd copy that, without considering that those competitors encourage alts so nobody has to race-change their one character just to look at something different every now and then.

Short of putting up with the limitations or dropping the prospect of alts there's really no solution to be offered. The problem is baked into the game if you will.

[BelegErkhten]

is that there are no mechanics to help alts catch up with dungeons, raids, flying, gear, or anything at all, and are treated as if the player behind them was brand new.

There are, its called a story skip and they cost anywhere from 10-20 dollars on the mogstation.

[Bun_Vivant]

There are, its called a story skip and they cost anywhere from 10-20 dollars on the mogstation.

I've used story-skip three times to skip Stormblood, which I dislike replaying.

I've never skipped Shadowbringers though, which I quite enjoy.
Bringing back the night is epic.

[Jojoya]

Short of putting up with the limitations or dropping the prospect of alts there's really no solution to be offered. The problem is baked into the game if you will.

Not necessarily. But coming up with solutions would be dependent on analyzing the reasons why players create alts. Are those reasons due to game design (can think of a couple situations where alts become an actual need, not just a want) or if it's because it's just an optional form of play they enjoy.