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Can't transfer account-bound items between your characters... working as intended
farranor
Member Posts: 559 Arc User
Just a heads-up that if you get some account-bound items, you can only actually transfer it to other characters if you buy some account bank slots first. I mean, it doesn't say that anywhere, and every other online game lets you transfer account-bound stuff in the mail system, but it's totally fine. I'm sure you wanted to spend 1000 zen anyway. This is not a bug of any kind, and there isn't even any need to tell players that they should make Omega tech upgrades on their main and not their alts. It's like buying a sandwich and then realizing that the box has an access fee before you can open it: perfectly acceptable and not awful at all.
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dont like it?
you know where the door is dont fall in love with the door handle on the way out have a nice day
No, I don't like it. That's why I would like it to be improved. Don't you think it would be better if it were improved?
If nothing else, maybe there was someone who was planning on building Omega upgrades and now knows to send them all to their main.
Honestly find another free to play game that offers account bound status to items and lets you transfer them for free... good luck with that.
I'm no fan of Cryptic... but the account binding of most stuff works well in this game... and they let you keep your unlocked sub account bank slots when you let the sub go. Of all the slimy things they do this is one that really isn't bad. I mean really if you have never subbed for even one month how bad should anyone feel for you.
Its not that hard really... Sub for one month and get some account bank slots. OR spend 1000 zen its 180,000 D if you want someone else to buy it for you. or 22.5 days of refining on one toon, much less if you have more then one toon.
If this was like most F2P games you would have no account bind status as a F2P or you would only be allowed account bank status if you where subbed. Cryptics F2P setup is good. There are something you simply HAVE to unlock... EC limit / Account bank are pretty much the only 2.
I'm confused... sub for a month and it won't cost me anything? Doesn't a subscription cost something?
Transfer them for free? The whole issue is that you can't transfer them for free.
At the very least, it should warn you that the "bound to account" feature can only be used if you have an account bank. Where I work, I make sure that the documentation is very clear about features that have prerequisite requirements.
so what you propose is do everything every noob wants?
just because they disagree with how things are here and want it to be like some other game?
if they want it to be like some other game go play that game because there are far more people who like STO as it is then there are those who want it to be something else.
What you propose is to reject any and all suggestions out of hand?
It's not like I'm asking for something gigantic, either. I just think the account-binding mechanic should be a little more transparent, letting players know that the only way to use that mechanic is to have an account bank. Do you really think that's too much?
I'm sure there are far more people who are generally satisfied with the game than there are people who are generally dissatisfied, but I'm equally sure that players who think STO is 100.00% perfect as is are not in the majority. I don't think asking for some text that warns players that transferring account-bound items requires an account bank should be considered a request to delete STO and turn it into another game.
If your favorite bookstore is pretty great except for one shelf with all the biographies that's way too high for anyone to reach without a ladder, would you consider asking management to get a normal shelf? What if another customer overheard you and told you to get longer arms or leave? What if the manager said that that shelf is fine, it's just not accessible in the usual way?
Constructive criticism is how things improve. Rejecting all criticism is how things stagnate.
It is the way it is because people would find a way to exploit it via mail how? dont ask me i dont go around trying to exploit the game.
Further you dont even have to spend money to get the zen for account bank slots just grind some dil and exchange it for zen and buy it.
Its not an issue. You can't transfer things for free that's right. Its something you should unlock anyway if you play this game enough that you care about more then one toon.
You have 3 options to unlock an account bank.
1) Pay 1000 zen ($10 bucks)
2) Farm 180,000 D... you obviously have more then one toon... so 2 toons 12 days and its "free".
or the best option
3) Sub for one month for $15*** then cancel. You will expand the inventory space on ALL toons you have active that month. (so time if for this new delta rec thing and roll toons with expanded space) You also get 10 Account bank slots. Both unlocks STAY with you once you cancel. I think you also get more Boff slots and perhaps even a few more toon slots included and they don't go away if you cancel.
*** As a Sub you will also earn 500 free zen... so you can look at it this way... Pay 1000 zen or sub for one month costs you the same thing after you get the 500 zen.
We all understand what you are saying... I just don't think anyone at all agrees. I don't like a lot of the ways Cryptic tries to make money... but this one is FINE and OK. It offers a great feature that has VALUE for a reasonable cost. 1000 zen is easy to farm and have someone else pay for if you insist on not or can't spend the 10 bucks. As I was saying earlier NO Free to play games offer you account bound items and free ways to transfer them.
The account bank is great to have and makes your life in this game much easier. If your playing this game enough to need an account bank... then I'm ok with Cryptic asking you for 10 bucks to enable to feature. Be thankful that they offer away to let other players pay for it if you like. 180,000 D isn't really all that much in the grand scheme... as I said 2 toons 10 days. Its not a hardship.
But once i learned how to grind up dil in large quantities and trade it for zen i was able to get the things i wanted like the EC cap unlock and the account bank.
If you want some advice how to gain dilithium so you can trade it i and many on this forum would be more then happy to give you advice on how to go about doing it.
But to say change something because you want it to be like a different game isnt the way to go about things as ive mentioned many of us like the game as it is.
So if you would like advice on how to gain dilithium feel free to ask and either myself or someone will give you solid and sage advice.
First of all, thank you for calming down and engaging in actual discussion. I sincerely appreciate it.
I didn't think of the possibility of exploits with the mail system. I don't know how such "is the mail addressed to the same account?" checks would be implemented, so I don't know how they would be circumvented. It's certainly possible that the mail is out of the question for this reason.
But what about adding a few words to make sure people know that transferring account-bound items requires an account bank? Would that have any negative effects?
Zen/dil is still an opportunity cost. 1000 zen I spend on something I didn't expect to need is 1000 zen I don't spend on something I might have wanted, like inventory slots, or a ship, or whatever.
The mail will never happen. Its designed the way it is because this is a feature they want people to spend money for. Its that simple. Just like the EC unlock.
They have provided a way to earn both for "free" by having other players buy it for you. Just sell your D for zen to other players though the exchange.
Its simple believe it or not Cryptic is in this to make $. That isn't a crime and there F2P is the most flexible in the industry. (very few MMOs have account bound items at all frankly... those that do operate the same way... only in most of them account banks are sub perks that can't be unlocked by F2P players at all)
No one is trying to give you a hard time here. Just trying to make it clear, they aren't going to change this, they have it set up that way to make money.
On the mail note.. no this has nothing to do with mail exploiting. (the mail used to be used by people as a work around to store lots of stuff by mailing it and not picking it up... they linked exchange sales slots to stuff held in mail to fix that)
Really if you are going to play this game the best option honestly is to sub for one month. The inv space / account bank ect are worth it.
This is what you get FOREVER once you sub for 30 days.
An Additional Character Slot
30 Bonus Inventory Slots (added as you level) (on all your toons)
60 Bonus Bank Slots (added as you level) (on all your toons)
20 Bonus Account Shared Bank Slots
2 Additional Bridge Officer Slots (added as you level) (on all your toons)
You get this for the 30 days before you cancel;
500 Bonus ZEN - Access to a mission that lets you refine 1000 extra D each day (for 9k a day)
One Captain Retrain Token per rank (if you have promotion missions to turn in still if your subbed you will gain one Respec token when you complete the mission... and of course get this perk on toons you roll in that month, so if your rolling a new delta toon wait till then)
Lol i was never angry or upset sir i think alot of us on the forums have seen stuff similar to your post that we just get a little fed up and go on the offensive without thought my bad
I wish myself they did have a better way of things but as it is gaining account banks is quite easy through the dilithium / zen exchange .
But as far as the price of 1K zen i think its steep but then again i can make that amount in a few days i can clear (when im not being a lazy romulan) around 10-15K zen a week sometimes more.
So its really easy to get zen without spending real money to obtain it i know it looks daunting but it isnt to difficult to get dilithium.
As far as getting other things just grind dil trade for zen and be patient and you will get all the things you want.
I do spend a little money from time to time but usually around 10-20 bucks....my wife would castorate me if i spent more lol
so ive had to learn to grind dil and trade it for the things i desire if you want some advice on where to get dil id be happy to tell you.
Ok i will divulge one good way : The Dyson sphere ground battlezone you can make a nice amount there from a few hours grind .
there are many many other ways to get dil
but yeah if there is a way to exploit through the mail people will do it ...quickly.
so just be patient and grind dil ....i do think they could do something different but until they do or if the account bank is the only way to transfer account bound items
Also includes a free way to upgrade and expand both it, your inventory, and the character's warehouse to a limited extent using in-game currency before needing to buy further expansions off their Cash Shop.
It's heavily PvPvE though.
Doesn't cost anything to earn Dil, convert it to Zen via the Exchange, and then buy a set of account bank slots. yes, SOMEONE paid for that Zen, but if you acquire it via this method YOU didn't - ergo it's 'free' for you.
I'm no fan of a lot of Cryptic's current decisions, BUT they ARE a company, and the company has to make money to stay in business. They do give a fair amount of things free for playing (more than any other F2P game I know of atm; and none of the mission content is behind a paywall.)
Again, they do have a method for you to acquire account bank slots for 'free'. It's up to you to play the game, and do what's needed to accomplish that though.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Yeah, all those whiners and naggers not praising this game in the highest tones, it annoys me as well
No. This game is free to play, it is Cryptic's/PWEs choice to not charge anything. These attempts to infuse "guilt" in free to play players are laughable.
@ OP: As all those wonderful people tactfully mentioned you need to buy account bank slots. However I didn't know that since the mailing system explicitly states that you can send stuff to yourself. In fact, I didn't even know that pure F2P players don't have a account bank because I played when a subscription was mandatory and so the "gold" status probably carried over. Nothing says however you cannot use the mail system for that, only that "account shared inventory space" costs a subscription or store purchase so your criticism is absolutely valid.
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Its very clear in many places in the game that you can not mail bound items. Bottom line there not going to recode the mail so that it checks and makes sure the bound things your trying to mail are in fact going to an alt.
Many of us played when this game was sub and Cryptic doesn't remove things that are unlocked by a subscription.
So for a newer player to complain about being "forced" to spend 15 bucks makes most people laugh. One they can earn the account bank by simply converting some purple rocks and buying some zen from another player.
The other thing is... if you are a F2P player and never subbed before. Why wouldn't you sub for one month. You unlock a ton of inventory space... even more Standard bank space on every toon... you gain a free toon slot. More bridge officer slots... and most people that know better never complete there Promotion missions cause if you accept them when your subbed you get a free respect token.
So for 15 bucks you can gain anywhere from 20-100s of dollars of unlocks for 15 bucks. If they don't want to do that all well... so they play the game with no account bank... the account bank didn't even exist until the game was around for a few years... and the idea of "account bound" came after that. The game is very playable without an account bank if you really don't want one.
Clearly the OP created a ton of Omega Upgrades before even checking to see if they could in fact mail them. To me it seems if they are playing enough to have Crafting toons and other toons they want to upgrade it only makes sense to unlock the account bank one way or the other. (This thread is no different then the ones created by people complaining they lost X amount of EC cause they where somehow unaware you had to unlock the EC credit cap)
Well it wasn't clear to me after 4+ years of playing, so I find th attitude most in this thread displayed really inappropriate. I do feel the EC limit thing is communicated better by hovering over the EC value in your inventory. A remark that account bound items need account bank space is to my knowledge not communicated for example in the item description. So it's valid crticism in my book.
Wether or not the game is "worth" to spend money on is up for anyone else to decide. You can invest 500 hours of gameplay and still be free to play, that's a choice promoted by this game. Wether or not it is appropriate to express rage over this is another matter, of course you can convert dil and what not, but the OP didn't display any form of entitlement - I know there are different kinds of threads on the matter. In this case though I was a bit staggered at the responses he/she got.
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Your point is fair... a hover over tool tip explaining account bank space is on the zen store might be a good idea.
The op however was pretty entitled... the title of the thread ends with a "... working as intended?" The Op ends with this line " It's like buying a sandwich and then realizing that the box has an access fee before you can open it: perfectly acceptable and not awful at all." Which is just a silly reference. The op should be thankful the devs decided to make omega tech account bound instead of toon bound completely... I mean in the past Cryptic has taken stuff they don't want on the exchange and just made it BOUND. (rich D tickets for instance they are account bound now... but for the first year they where around they where bound to what ever toon pulled them from a box)
Every MMO ever has bound items. Some allow you to transfer bound items between toons... most don't. Cryptic does, after you unlock the proper bank space. Perhaps a hover over isn't a terrible idea. However they do communicate in every page that talks about there subs and what the perks of subbing are... I think it is even mentioned in the Account bank description on the zen store that you can use the space to transfer account bound items.
Anyway the OP has there answer. It is working as intended. The way to unlock it is not painful if you would rather not pay your own money... and if you do choose to pay your own money to buy zen you would be better off subbing for one month. Which costs the same thing in the end. (in fact less as I think now they only sell zen in 20 dollar increments... I could be wrong on that one).
I considered it sarcasm. Maybe a bit snarky but it didn't hit me as a entitlement rant, but that probably differs.
You are right the answer was given and that's fine. But the hostility displayed was inapproprite and I felt the need to voice that, that's all.
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You remind me of an old coworker of mine who used to say "easy money" from time to time while he worked - like the manager just sent out free cash every two weeks for no apparent reason. Or the ad a local college ran to promote its shuttle services: "one small fee and then it's free."
I'm pretty sure all those sources just say that there's an account shared bank. It doesn't say that the account bank is the only possible way to transfer account-bound items. I thought it was just a convenient way to share items between alts without having to repeatedly mail everything around. The account-bound items don't mention any restriction on how you can implement that level of access.
It's not clear at all that "bound to character" means the exact same thing as "bound to account" unless you've unlocked an additional, specific feature. I didn't want to send the items out of the account, so there was no reason to expect it to fail.
A heads-up to let me know that I should mail the mats to the character I wanted the upgrades for is all I wanted, but apparently obfuscation is an acceptable tactic. If there had been any kind of hint about this, I wouldn't have needed an account bank. That necessity arose solely through lack of information.
Fair enough. You have a point... Cryptic doesn't document anything at all, all that well. (say that 3 times fast I dare you. lol)
Honestly the account bank imo is pretty much required if you are going to run multiple toons anyway. To go further with the idea seeing as we are talking about it... they should unlock for silver accounts an account bank with 1 slot in it or something. It would drive people mad but at least they might understand what it is for earlier... and in your case I guess if your really never going to use it again there you go.
Really though being able to hold up to 500 mil EC in your shared bank... and transfer things like Rich D tickets and Bound weapons is worth what it takes to unlock it. If you ever open some lockboxes for profit the rich D tickets are fantastic. If you open 20 boxes (of the newer varieties) you will end up with 1-2 boxes of them which = 10-20 tickets. You can then store them in your account bank and run the 1 min mission on alts you aren't playing at the time... 5k D for 1min is pretty sweet, and the best use of the account bank I have found. (other then storing all my lobi crystals - nothing better then sending people a screen shot of a bank with thousands in LOBI in it when they say something about p2w.. its pefrect for trolling people ) lol
Especially people who may not be forum regulars.
I'm aware that whatever the OP was trying to transfer probably isn't even worth the effort, but the OP didn't call for the rude response you supplied.
- Access to a mission that lets you refine 1000 extra D each day (for 9k a day)"
The mission is after 800 days.
Fleet leader Nova Elite
Fleet Leader House of Nova elite
@ren_larreck
Thanks I stand corrected. I started day one and subbed past the F2P start before I cancelled. Didn't realize this. Thanks for clarifying it for anyone reading.
but hold on cryptic is sure to change it because you are unhappy and feel entitled in some way, problem solved...not!
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.