[Suggestion] FFXIV Alt-Friendliness

[Isala]

I really still think you're oversimplifying the issue.

The purest, and simplest form of this is "If you can't do your job, your customers will find someone who can. Your excuses are not their problem."

If you feel that's oversimplifying things, I honestly don't know what to tell you.

[TheRealDesastr]

It does take a huge amount of time to even get there, and you have to pay extra per month for the retainers. I honestly don't think it's that big of a deal myself, but if it's something that needs to be done in order to make the game more alt-friendly, it's a sacrifice that's fine. But not technically something I agree with.

I'm looking for ways to add alt-friendliness without giving advantages, not take away the technical advantages already given, I dunno. There's, to be honest, not much of them.

[Xelanar]

As an altocolic myself, I agree and I wish the game was more alt-friendly too.

Accountwide MSQ progress.
Accountwide list of unlocked glamours, including shop items.
Accountwide mounts and minions.
Trading untradeable items between characters on the same account.
Accountwide shared housing.

Just to name a few. For a game that respects player's time as much as FFXIV does, it sure is inconvenient when it comes to alts.

[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.

[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.

[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.)