[Suggestion] FFXIV Alt-Friendliness

[LaylaTsarra]

Probably too far into the game to change it but it's really long overdue for alts to get some respect. Personally I don't farm much in game I have way too many alts and who gets it. For heavens sake you can't even share a house with your alts but you can share it with friends.

[Toutatis]

It's less about the storage space and more about preventing people from abusing ventures to farm high-level mats (and gil) across multiple retainers on all their high-level alts.

I take time to level up my character by playing MSQ as well as my retainers from lvl 1. Everyone can do so at no additional cost. If people don't want to put the time, it is their decision. It's fair and sending them on ventures is not abuse. You would just be encouraging people to purchase retainers (ptw).

[Toutatis]

It's fine if you want to put in hundreds of hours to do that in the current iteration of this system. If the game becomes more accessible for alts, I don't want it to be easy or encouraged to set up a big passive gil farm using multiple characters like it has been in other games I've played.

My comment still stands. You are encouraging ptw. Everyone can level up free retainers, gear them and for gatherers meld materia. It takes time and effort and it is fair. It's already possible to exchange mats btw. The RMTers would remain unaffected as they use separate accounts and pay. You'd just be screwing up the normal players who invested time and effort.

[Toutatis]

I could pay to boost a bunch of alts and level free retainers on them. It's P2W either way. I don't think paid retainers should be a thing either. I don't like it when playing alts offers significant and tangible benefits, that's my opinion and I'll stand by it.

You really don't want people to have fun. Different characters, different levels, different needs. Limiting people to two retainers would be stupid. I would just stop playing.

[Toutatis]

If the only way you can have fun is to unbalance the game for people who don't want to play the same way as you, then no, I don't want you to have fun.

If you just want to share your house and all your cute glamours and mounts and minions between your alts that you enjoy playing for RP and story reasons, for the sake of it, then I can get behind that.

lol so basically you are sayiing, I don't want to put the effort so one one should have access to that feature. People play differently, let them. retainers from normal players do not unbalance the game. Bots do (crafters and gatherers).

[TheRealDesastr]

To be completely fair, folks who want to do this all for gil would just be doing so for it already. I don't think sharing cosmetics at all would make a difference. Technically speaking, everyone would still need to go through the same path. Either buy a boost for BOTH story AND a combat class, OR just story and then level up the combat class. Supposing I don't care about any cosmetics, I'd do that, or just skip cutscenes and carry on, and then level up my retainers, have a friend trade me some of my gil from my main (you'd need to do that anyway, shared cosmetics or not), and get going with an army of retainers. Sharing or not sharing wouldn't make a difference to me, since I'd do it all anyway.

It's really already a 'problem' (if you have a problem with it - I personally do not.) I know of several people who have an army of alts who do that and take no annoyance to it, because the amount of time and effort it takes to do all of that (or money, so yes, ptw if you consider earning gil winning) is super substantial.

[DPZ2]

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

Thanks.

With all respect, I played WoW for ten years, starting in Burning Crusade. None of the things I mentioned were inaccurate over that time period. Snark away, but you clearly didn't play WoW back in those days.

Thanks.

[TheRealDesastr]

You're not wrong, I don't really mind it with the way the system currently works because like you said the amount of money/time required to really take advantage of it in that way is so substantial. I should've clarified in my initial post that I only think more restrictions to retainers, islands, etc. need to be added if changes are made to make it less of a pain to level a bunch of alts. (And if shared storage became a thing, there should be some restrictions to prevent funneling of weekly tome gear or raid gear to mains from alts. Maybe just keep those particular items character-bound.)

Do you even need to buy a story skip to level your retainers to the current expansion cap? I'm actually not sure, I assumed you just needed to get to a high enough level yourself which is possible without completing the story as long as you've purchased the expansion.

Oh that one I don't know, good question. I don't think so. I guess you could always just unlock PvP or even, if you're going super low, dungeons, and level up every single day that way. For my alts I just either endure having to skip cutscenes (don't worry, I paid attention to all of the story on my main XD) or need to story boost them to get to the areas I want for the minimal things I can get them to access. But yeah, I didn't even think of that, if someone really wanted to do that with retainers, they could toss themselves into a leveling dungeon every day. It'd take forever I imagine, and I think going through base ARR without the skip if you'd not want to spend anything would make it faster (you'd then get MSQ dailies and then also PvP), but doing that on every single character is... a lot (trust me. I know, lol. I don't do it for the gil, I do it for RP, but I swear it takes a long time per character even skipping Cutscenes.)

[ApolloGenX]

Charging for retainers in game is sleazy. We pay a sub. Does it ruin my gameplay? No, but it certainly impacts my opinion of SE.

[Isala]

Charging for retainers in game is sleazy. We pay a sub. Does it ruin my gameplay? No, but it certainly impacts my opinion of SE.

Beyond sleazy. Even the greediest F2Ps only make you pay a one time fee for your storage, not extort you for loss of your items if you don't pay.