Character items VS Account items??

And apparently yours are "name them whatever the hell you want, because how hard is it to check what's in there, 'just, you know, remember,' and click the other tab if you're wrong?"

Which I suppose is a valid strategy, just less than optimal -- given that the whole purpose of labeling anything in the first place is to avoid confusion and make it easy to identify at a glance. I could label the salt and pepper with a "1" and a "2" and just remember which was which, but isn't that missing the point?

If it were totally up to me? Drop the number of inboxes from three to two -- a "character" inbox and a "global" inbox.

Each character has their own inbox, accessible only to that character, and anything sent to that character, whether by another player or by the system, goes into that inbox. So if you send a mail to my rad/rad defender "Doctor Roswell" on Virtue, I'd have to log onto that specific character to see it. Likewise, when that character gets mailed some new reward (let's say Sands of Mu) by the system, that's where it goes, because that's his copy of it. If I claim it, only that copy gets claimed. If I delete it, only that copy gets deleted. And because that stuff is all addressed to the character of "Doctor Roswell" specifically, I'd know that all the identical items sitting in the inboxes of all my other characters would be safe and sound, because I hadn't claimed/deleted the ones addressed to those characters.

Similarly, my global account "@Doctor Roswell" would have a global inbox accessible by any character on the account. If you, or the system, sent a mail to my global name, I could see it and claim anything attached to it when logged onto any character on the account. And since those are for (i.e, "addressed to") my whole account, I'd know that if I claimed anything attached to a mail in my global inbox, it would be claimed globally. If I deleted a message there, it would be deleted globally. Kind of like how no matter which computer I log onto my Gmail account from, if I delete an email from it, it's still deleted even if I use a different computer to access the account later.

It's a mail system. Address the mail to where and who it's supposed to go to.

Or if that's too much of a broad, sweeping change, how about just adding a disclaimer to the stuff you only get once per account? Let people know that once they claim the reward, that's it, just to avoid confusion and mistakes. Either an "Are You Sure?" pop-up when someone tries to claim a reward, or just a line in the email itself that says, "WARNING! This item is awarded to your account as a whole. If you claim it now, it will not be available to any of the other characters on this account."

No, my system is let the Devs decide what to do. There are things I don't like about the current system for delivering rewards, there were things I didn't like about the way Vet rewards were delivered. As long as it does what it is supposed to and is not broken, I will put up minor inconveniences and go play the game.

Except that it is impossible to label everything so that is easy to identify at a glance, until people know what it is. Right now there are people coming to the game for the first time, that are asking where they get new spells, where is the gear, and how to join a guild or get a quest. They do not know the labels used in this game, until someone tells them. And the labels that actually match ones they are used to, like Auction House? That is much worse because it doesn't work the same as Auction Houses in other games, but has the same label.

Until those people learn what the various labels are in the game, they will ask questions that others will not understand, and there will be confusion about what is meant.

The same thing applies to new labels that are added to the game. Yes Certificates and Vouchers mean almost the same thing, something you turn in to get a different item. But that is a reason to use them, not to avoid them. Because the 2 things they dealt wither are very similar, the only difference being how many characters could use them. All the players needed to do was learn which was which. The use of the 2 sides did not change when you logged onto a different character. And the best part about those 2 labels is, they couldn't be confused with other things in the game. You don't get Certificates or Vouchers as rewards. You purchased them specifically and they only had that meaning.

But people complained about having to learn how those 2 labels worked. Just like if I came to dinner at your house and needed to learn that the salt was labeled 1 and the pepper was 2. As long as the next visit doesn't result in me getting a large dose of sugar on my fries after asking for 1, the labels work. ( I seriously do not understand why people had a hard time with Certificate and Vouchers. It was a new system, with new parts, so of course there were new things to learn. Just like I had to learn the difference between Shards and Threads. And what SO, DOs, and TOs were. And every other thing in this game as it was added. You learn how the word is used in the game, then use it that way.)

So you want to change the name of Account Items to Character Items, and move everything that is now under Character Items to be under Global. So have everything that only 1 character can use, like Enhancement Boosters, mixed in with Enhancements or other things mailed to your global account name.

The immediate result would be people complaining that they lost stuff because it disappeared after one character used it. Global means everybody can use it after all. The Internet is global, it doesn't disappear for you just because I used it over here. Shoot, I can be using it here on my desktop, and go fire up my laptop and use it there at the same time. How can something that is labeled global disappear after only one use? IOW, people saying it is count-intuitive to have something that is only useable by one character labeled as global. They would have to learn what the label means, just like they have to now. And even after learning, they would complain that they think it is backwards.

The second problem I would have with it is, you are mixing rewards in with regular mail. I use my in game email to move IOs between various characters. The UI is already hard enough to deal with (My biggest complaint with the in game email system.) without adding in having to sort out the IOs I want on this character from the rewards I don't want them to have, oops, claimed that one on the wrong character. And unlike IOs, I can't put it back in the email system so the right character can claim it.

I am pretty sure that is why they went with 3 sections in the first place. Rewards separated from regular emails, no way to accidentally claim a reward when moving around Inf or enhancements. Then rewards split into stuff claimable for the entire account, and stuff claimable only by one character. So they can have a Claim All button on one and people can't accidentally claim a reward on the wrong character because it was mixed in and they missed it. So really, 3 tabs is slightly more complicated, but in reality much less confusing and prone to causing problems in the long run. Same principle that Z ran into when he asked about consolidating the AT forums. Less forums to look at seems like it would be easier, but in actual usage his changes would have been harder to use. And he understood that argument when it was presented to him.

I would have no problem with having a popup warning. As long as it has the little radio button so I can turn it off and tell it to leave me alone. I don't believe it would stop the complaints, but it wouldn't hurt. Assuming the coding could be done without borking the entire email system, not something to assume lightly with 10 years of programming code to deal with.

Much more succinct than my excessive verbosity.

Not only that, but while it's in the mail tab, they are not mail systems. It would take a lot of coding for the Character and email to be merged, is my guess.