I guess it is? It's just another character who carries a lot of your stuff if it can't fit into your retainers, armoire, armoury chest, inventory and whatever other storage items we get. I had a packed inventory in the old game but in the current game I'm pretty much fine, so I expect most people won't have any real trouble managing their stuff.

Still, as a gatherer/crafter, I do look forward to additional storage. It's way easier than having to log out of one character, log in as another, deliver gear between, log back out, log back in, etc. I've only filled one bag so far with the new system but I've yet to get all of my stuff from the old game (you have to speak to an NPC and retrieve them one by one). The Armoury Chest is amazing when it comes to making life easier.

There's no real reason to have an alt in this game outside of storage and the storage is surprisingly generous due to the armoury chest allowing for 25 of each type of gear. I have armour for every one of my classes in that thing and it's not even close to full (weapons aside, I think I have 15-20 of them out of 25).

In the old game, I knew something like two people who had an alt they actually bothered with. xD One was just to have around as a White Mage in order to raise people should his entire party die.