Home › Game Forums › WildStar
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How do I transfer items between characters?
I had the impression that it was as simple as attaching an item to a mail message. But when I try to mail anything to another alt, it just says, "Can't Find Player" and cancels the message. I tried three times with the same results, and even went to the character selection screen to make sure that I was spelling my alt's name correctly.
Is there something non-obvious that I'm missing? Or does it not let you transfer items between alts?
Comments
Make sure that the items are not soulbound, some don't even say that.
Try sending a small amount of cash to your other character, even 1 piece. See if that works.
I just tried sending a mail message--with nothing attached--to each of my six characters. Two worked, out of six. Three gave the same "Can't Find Player" error message as above, and one gave an error message saying that you can't mail yourself.
I tried looking some stuff up about it and it sounds like you can transfer items across faction, but have to use the auction house to do it. And that means you have to do it from the capital city for the faction.
Why they bothered to implement a mail system that lets you attach items, but not send them to who you want to send them to, is beyond me. Perhaps Carbine's idea of a "hardcore" game is putting stupid things like this in to harass their players.
I don't know of any game that ever allowed you to send items cross faction in the mail. Nor trade cross faction, unless it was done with a neutral AH of sorts. Sounds pretty normal to me for it to say "Player not found"... there is no one named that in your faction.
yea had that prob too once, i actually think there are a few minor postboxes around the world or maybe their effective range is fucked up, so they won't let you send items.
for the record, i guess you know but anyway: you need to be at a postbox to actually send items, normal text can be send and received anywhere, anytime.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I don't know what games you play, but my experience has been that most MMORPGs make transferring goods between alts vastly easier than this. The only exceptions that I've played significantly are WoW, Anarchy Online, and Wizard 101. Only one of those three even has factions at all, so it's not a faction thing. WoW made it a comparable nuisance, and AO made basically everything into a nuisance, not just transferring goods. In the case of Wizard 101, it's due to a design choice to not allow transferring items between characters at all, in any manner.
Even games such as A Tale in the Desert, Puzzle Pirates, and Uncharted Waters Online where transporting goods from one area in the game world to another is a major mechanic make transferring goods between characters much easier than this.
Even if there were any good reason (I'm not aware of one, nor even any bad reason apart from inertia) to allow transfer within a faction to be easier than transfer across faction while the latter is also allowed, "Can't Find Player" is a terrible error message to give. If the reason it won't allow the mail to go is because the player is on the other faction, then give an error message of "can't send mail to the other faction", not one that makes it sound as if the character doesn't exist.
Logically, why would an Exile mailperson deliver to a Dominion citizen? They'd get shot-on-sight when attempting to do so. Same goes in reverse. The person isn't found because they're not on a mailing list of that Faciton; the system is set up to send/recognize players of that server of that faction only (thus it doesn't view/see anyone from any other server or other faction). It -the computer and program- very much "can't find player" because it doesn't see the player because it was told -by the programming- not to.
I would have to agree with the logic of "Why would you transfer from one realm to another"...
If you are exile, you are that...
If you are dominion, you are that...
No switching items back and forth.
Hell, I remember DAoC, once you chose are faction, you were locked out of all other for that server. I am surprised most games don't do that now.
I don't want to defend Wildstar's mail system (I actually hated it with this "fill in subject, text, etc"), but there are good reasons to limit cross faction/ server mails. Most servers will have imbalances between the factions you could abuse if those limits wouldn't exist.
Back in the days, when I played WoW, I used those imbalances to get many items and materials cheaper and sometimes even to make a bit of gold by using the neutral auction house to trade them between factions. I played on a server with huge faction imbalances, so the prices were very different on both sides. Same could occur with cross-server item exchange.
So Carbine has to either limit such transfers or implement a cross server/ faction economy. And they actively decided against such a economy model afaik.
The error message is not overly smart, but could result from the fact that the system just looks on the same server and the same faction, cause everything else is forbidden. If there is no such player with that name, the error message is correct
Why doesn't the argument about not delivering mail apply just as much to auction houses? Indeed, I think it should apply more strongly to auction houses than to mail. To deliver something to auction houses, you're going to a capital city, the most pro-faction place in the game. Mailboxes are often in far-flung areas where the faction has only loose control, and that would make cross-faction mail make more sense than cross-faction auction houses. Lore doesn't provide a reason to allow cross-faction auctions but not cross-faction mail.
I'm also of the view that interesting game mechanics should trump lore whenever there's a conflict. The right way to design a game is to start with interesting game mechanics and then build the lore around it, not the other way around. You seem to either disagree with that or have no interest in trying everything, as you don't argue against game mechanics of cross-faction item transfer. But that's a different discussion entirely.
There already is a cross-faction economy. The auction houses are unified, so one side puts an item in and the other side buys it.
But if you really want to go lore-heavy, why do soldiers have to buy their own gear? Real armies don't do that. It would be suicide, as most of your soldiers would get killed before they got any decent gear to be able to help fight the war.
You can send email to alts from other sections in SWTOR. You can't send it though to other players. So there in at least one game that makes it easy for altoholics.
Edit. Also incoming Legacy storage brings inventory shared between alts of both sections as well.
Sith Warrior - Story of Hate and Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxKrlwXt7Ao
Imperial Agent - Rise of Cipher Nine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBBj3eJWBvU&feature=youtu.be
Imperial Agent - Hunt for the Eagle Part 1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQqjYYU128E
There are plenty of games that make it easier than that. Depending on why you play alts, FFXIV may or may not be the easiest: you play all classes on a single character, so it's a couple of seconds to switch to a different class. Guild Wars 1, Guild Wars 2, and TERA all have bank storage shared between all characters on an account, which makes it easy to bulk transfer a bunch of stuff between characters.
If the auction house is really cross faction then you are right. There is no reason to limit mails then. I heard so many different things about the actual implementation, so probably I'm just misinformed or just not up to date. For that case I classify it as another annoyance in the mail system
I never said something about lore though. So I don't know why you mention it responding to me. In my eyes it would be very absurd to justify anything with lore in a game like Wildstar