Server-wide /shouts

[Flash]

I enjoy the /sh in the cities. It keeps me occupied while enduring the never ending wait for party invites. If we were to create a separate channel for this, we would loose our tradition of window-box-cram that I've grown accustomed to throughout the years.

[Kegsay]

Whilst it's possible for SE to add this I'm sure, I can see one major stumbling block. Each shout would be sent to everyone who has the option (presumably) turned on, which means 1 shout could result in ~3000 or so packets being sent from the servers to every character. Now assume you have at least 1 person saying something every second, and the extra load on the servers becomes unmanageable. I wouldn't say it's a PS2 limitation, they would just receive a packet and display the text, and a client can accept large numbers of packets before performance degrades (see: Besieged).

[Mirage]

Because of the PS2 limitations.

Explain what sort of limitations the PS2 has got that would prevent an additional chat channel.

-edit-
Didn't notice this until now

Whilst it's possible for SE to add this I'm sure, I can see one major stumbling block. Each shout would be sent to everyone who has the option (presumably) turned on, which means 1 shout could result in ~3000 or so packets being sent from the servers to every character. Now assume you have at least 1 person saying something every second, and the extra load on the servers becomes unmanageable. I wouldn't say it's a PS2 limitation, they would just receive a packet and display the text, and a client can accept large numbers of packets before performance degrades (see: Besieged).

I'm not sure that they would have to send the extra chat channel text in an additional packet. The way it is now, I'm pretty sure many chat channels are sharing the same data packets across the network, and the client itself is filtering which chats to display or not, just like how widescan data is sent to all clients, regardless of them being on a job that actually has access to widescan.

As for the actual amount of data, I'm pretty sure it is very small. It's probably something like two bytes per character, plus message headers. I would be surprised of a 100 character message took more than 256 bytes, one quarter of a kilobyte.

I do understand that it would add up with around 800 clients receiving for example a regional shout vs the amount that would receive a normal shout. (around 400 if in port jeuno, i guess). I do however not think this is something the servers couldn't deal with. The biggest increase in chat data would of course be in the jeuno region, I do not think any other regions would notice a significant increase in amount of chat data transferred.

another edit,
Right now, on Sylph, there are 385 players in Port jeuno, and less than 150 spread over the other 3 jeuno zones. With a regional Jeuno shout, I think many of the port jeuno players would spread over in the other 3 areas, leaving the total amount of players in jeuno more or less the same. I feel pretty confident that the chat server can deal with sending a message to 150 more characters without facing overloads.

There might be more problems on servers that have significantly higher populations.

[Teakwood]

Right, because every interesting idea for making the game better has to be shoehorned to fit your one-size-fits-all sig, sorry, we forgot.

On topic: I think this would be a fantastic idea. Perhaps region-wide rather than worldwide, with a restriction on how many lines you can post to it every X number of minutes to prevent spamming; this would prevent the problem of people congregating in Port Jeuno even though there's no -mechanical- reason for them to do so anymore.

[Octaviane]

Because of the PS2 limitations.

Your answer to everything that you don't like or want is the above statement that is present via your sig in every post you make. Almost 2000 posts target PS2 users and your perceived thinking that PS2 limits or is responsible for everything that is wrong/missing in FFXI.

Yes PS2 DOES have limitations, but get with the program. It ain't going anywhere anytime soon. SE will make that decision to stop support without your input when the time is right.

Bring on the chat channels + filter = not having to limit my play time by standing around in Port Jeuno with 700 other people.

[Camate]

Though we need to do some more testing, and we are not sure whether it would be possible yet, we are looking into the possibility of making/displaying shouts throughout multiple areas.

To be a bit more specific, we will be looking into grouping certain areas server side so that a shout from one of the areas in that group will be heard from each of the other areas.

For example:
If Ru’Lude Gardens/Upper Jeuno/Lower Jeuno/Port Jeuno were to be grouped together, making a shout in Ru’Lude would be heard in the other areas (Upper Jeuno/Lower Jeuno/Port Jeuno). However, this would ultimately quadruple the server load, so we will definitely need to pay close attention to this.

[Mirage]

It's good to hear that you are looking into this. It's understandable that server load would increase, but at the same time, i guess some types of server load could decrease as well, if people can be spread out over more areas and still see the shouts they want to see.

Then there is also the option of a separate type of regional shout where you are limited to shouting only once per X minutes. That could help with keeping server load down, and ensure that people pick their regional shouts carefully, and don't waste them on meaningless chatter.

[Godofgods]

Though we need to do some more testing, and we are not sure whether it would be possible yet, we are looking into the possibility of making/displaying shouts throughout multiple areas.

To be a bit more specific, we will be looking into grouping certain areas server side so that a shout from one of the areas in that group will be heard from each of the other areas.

For example:
If Ru’Lude Gardens/Upper Jeuno/Lower Jeuno/Port Jeuno were to be grouped together, making a shout in Ru’Lude would be heard in the other areas (Upper Jeuno/Lower Jeuno/Port Jeuno). However, this would ultimately quadruple the server load, so we will definitely need to pay close attention to this.

Good plan if possible. Grouping all the jeuno areas together wouldnt matter much. Its not a long run to shout in each zone. What you do want to do tho, is group the area in each town where the abyssea npcs are with port jeuno. That will truly help releive the port jeuno conjestion. That way you can be in any nation and have teleport access and shout acess. With that theirs no need to be in PJ itself. So grouping them areas together would be best.

[Sama]

I don't know about other servers, in Asura, half of those shouts are made from drunk players, why the rest of the people want to hear that and I have idea how the Dev Team can filter those garbage argument from all the shouts.

The JPs stayed in white gate mostly because of that.

[Airget]

You know how there was a KI you could receive that would give you a message to tell you when a ballista match was starting up? Would it be possible to potentially make "signboards" in the zones where people would normally gather. If a person is holding a certain KI, they will receive a message when a new post. Limit it to 1 post a person with maybe a 15-30 minute duration for the longevity of the message.

Possibly have it work in a strictly "keyword" sense with this like "seeking allies" "CoP" "Mission" "Red Mage" or "seeking allies" "Abyssea altepa" "Ardor stones".

I think the whole trick is trying to develop something where people from other zones don't miss out on the opportunity of a pickup group but at the same time make it so it doesn't stress out the server so much. Judging from the response of the Community Rep I would think that the above suggestion may be the proper way to create a system that would put the least amount of stress on the server.

Overall I can imagine how it would be with a "global shout" basically you have the base of the shout, then you have to send the data across all other zones. if you consider how much people spam the servers would prolly crash every 10 minutes from players just shouting nonsense across the global shout.