Incentive to leave on high pop servers?

[Thegreatmonkey]

In ff14, they try to get people to leave high pop servers with a free transfer. Is something like that here or plans going to happen for it?

[Kitty_Cat]

Offering a free transfer would only make it even more appealing to the players who often transfer alts to resell in-demand items on the lesser populated worlds from Asura.

My world has one particular player who does this for certain items and equipment, reselling them for massive profit.

I think what they have already in place is good enough, locking Asura was a smart move too, if you want to move then you should pay.

[Uroah]

Punishing everyone for the devs incompetence is not "good enough"

They failed to account for economic incentives and allowed it to become a problem. It's their fault not ours.

Charging to escape a server that they failed to monitor correctly is the pinnacle of greed.

[Catmato]

Having little to no queue times or competition for camps is a pretty good incentive.

[Voidstorm]

Should just auto-lockdown any server with an active population over twice the lowest population server, and simultaneously open up Free Transfer to any server with <75% the lockdown'd server's population.
That way all servers have a somewhat manageable populations. Nothing too dead or too crowded.
Set it to only do the active population (paying) once every conquest tally or once every update so it isn't freaking out locking and unlocking servers every few seconds or minutes.

[Alhanelem]

I said this back when the lockouts first happened, if you want people to transfer you need to give them a reason to do so, that, at a minimum means offering free transfers off of the applicable servers. Further incentives would also help such as removing any limitations on what you can take with you, offering temporary bonuses for XP/CP/EP, etc.

[Svens]

Stuff that would actually incentivize me to transfer:
Free transfer off locked server
Mog Bonanza Weapon Kupon
??? JSE +2 earring from Sortie of my choice

Stuff that SE thinks will incentivize me to transfer:
Reduced price transfer
1 Alabaster/Murky Matter
Old Case +1
Impish Box
Sortie KI
Moogle Amplifier

[Catmato]

Free transfer away from locked servers seems like a no-brainer. I wonder if their system just currently has no way of handling that.

[Uroah]

Why would they ever even consider giving it away when they can charge $20 for it.

[Catmato]

Because just locking the servers isn't solving any problems.

[Uroah]

Because just locking the servers isn't solving any problems.
They don't want the problem solved. They want the theatrics of solving the problem while charging you to side step it.

A fixed problem means no more revenue. That's a business no-no.

[Xephalos]

I'd transfer to another, less populated server for a klondike bar... and an Nyame Armor Set.

[Voidstorm]

Servers being locked down means less server transfer money coming to SE since RMT can't make round trips and have more limited one-way trips.
This is a business no-no, more than a limited time free transfer to get regular players on locked servers to move.

I imagine SE can't just do a server specific free transfer campaign, it would need time to develop which they rather not do.

[Uroah]

You would think that but you'd be wrong. The back and forth trips are dwarfed by the panic flood to get into a closed server before it closes. and new accounts setting up shop on phoenix before it pops off.

Nothing moves money faster than artificial scarcity.

[Alhanelem]

You would think that but you'd be wrong. The back and forth trips are dwarfed by the panic flood to get into a closed server before it closes. and new accounts setting up shop on phoenix before it pops off.

Nothing moves money faster than artificial scarcity.

That's why you don't tell people in advance before it happens. There was no "panic flood."


Your comments in this thread are ridiculous. SE makes more money by big populated servers being accessible and available. If the point of closing character creation on a server was to make money, they would just randomly do it here and there throughout the game's life span "just for fun" to make a few extra bucks.

Except that would confuse and tick people off way more than doing it in association with the actual cause and would make them LESS money.

Just because SE is a corporation doesn't mean that every decision is purely about maximizing profit. THere is a limit to how far people are willing to tolerate certain issues. I'm sure SE could make plenty of money even if the last serious human player left the game and it was entirely just bots paying subs. But that wouldn't be better than having actual players there too. Sometimes doing the right things to ensure stability and user experience are the best ones for profitability as well.

[Unvordal]

I paid during the last discount to get off of Asura when it was locked to play with friends over to Phoenix, but then it started getting flooded, and now with the free-to-play expansion, there are a few others that would like to join, but I'm just not ok with paying again. This feels like a problem they created without a meaningful solution.....

[Alhanelem]

In the grand scheme of things it has truthfully been good in some ways, because even Shiva, which has long been one of the smaller servers, has seen a significant uptick in concurrent users- like 100-200 more every night of the week since the last server lockdown. I mean technically it's still one of the smaller servers, but it is still more lively than before.

Do I think they could have done this in a better / more fair / more reasonable way? Yes. But is it distributing the population and managing the increase in popularity of the game over the last 6 months to a year? Absolutely.

They can still address this. Make transfers off the closed worlds free, let them take more gil with them, and consider other incentives like bonus content currency or EXP/CP/EP for a limited time. That would free up space on those servers much faster.

[Beastorizer]

Less populated servers are pretty chill.

You are able to get more done, because there is less competition for mobs.

I am one of the weird ppl who left Bahamut on my main for a less populated server. Chat isn't as busy, but there are still a sizable group of ppl playing.

Personally, I was never a fan of over-crowded areas. I like when barbershops are less crowded.......Malls, grocery lines, etc........Although there is a social aspect of MMO, there is also a productive aspect.

Just one man's opinion.......I do think we should get an exp bonus or something. Then ppl would probably over-crowd that server, haha........