A plea to SquareEnix: Linkshell - Quality of life improvements and current problems.

[Shirai]

Every capacity change influences the infrastructure, no matter how minor you think it is and neither of us knows exactly how the network is going to behave at such a change.
Don't just assume that nothing will happen because "only 2 or 3 linkshells" are actually going to use this and don't assume that what you are asking for is an easy thing to do.

[LordMedivh]

I will have to agree with most of the people here and my own linkshell. I have played this game since release and never understood why they had a Linkshell limit in the first place. I can tell back in the very old days the servers could not handle that much data at once. FFXI is one of the first and most successful massive MMORPG back in the day. The game runs off of very old school coding.

In my honest opinion and the way the game works, I will not see any issues with the linkshell being increased on people who can hold them. I can understand we can downgrade our alts and not have them in the LS but even without that it is still an issue today. Our LS is probably one of the biggest linkshells to date and it is extremely rare to find a LS that is that huge on any Server today since the game is not as populated as it use to.

What I remembered back in the very old dev days in 2003-2007 is the game had a limit on a lot of areas but since the downfall of most of the population and now mostly play 14 now it seems that the game can easily handle more LS members. I am not seeing how it would affect the server load times. I do see a lot of people having some lag issues but I have no issues on my end running a decent connection (20mb is good for me at this moment.)

Overall all they have to do is adjust the limit on the LS holders since this should not be a major issue. This is just a Hex edit for them to adjust the limits to a Linkshell. We don't need a revamp of the linkshell or do we need to follow what FF14 has. I feel an increase in linkshell size or even overall remove that limit will fix this issue. The chat lines and such are regulated still and it is very hard for anyone to actually spam up LS chat. It is very hard for myself to spam without having that 5 second lag before it posts to the chat logs.

I overall do not see any major issue if they increase this or not and I can't see of any major issues the game will suffer. It might take awhile for members to load up the LS since that does it to me too at times with a high connection. Overall increasing it to a higher size would fit best for this option. We are overly known on Reddit and I am not going to see us start slowing down on accepting old school players or even the better new players.

[Feary]

lol at this point in the game, you might as well just allow yell across the game. 64+ 100+ ppl in a linkshell is like 1/5 the server's active population at any given time. lol

at that point, what is the point. to get a head of shout/yell limitations.

i dont see 64 being a clique when most all content can be done with 6 or less.

ive been in linkshells that large and co ran a dynamis linkshell nearly a decade ago that would cap the entry every other run. i do understand the importantance the social aspect that this has. however,
i just dont see the practicality in this being further developed on because it is obviously the exception not the rule.

[Feary]

I will have to agree with most of the people here and my own linkshell. I have played this game since release and never understood why they had a Linkshell limit in the first place. I can tell back in the very old days the servers could not handle that much data at once. FFXI is one of the first and most successful massive MMORPG back in the day. The game runs off of very old school coding.

those servers are probably dedicated to assisting 14, these forums, and/or the se management site. if not all at least half since server merger.

[Zenoxio]

While the problem listed above is my primary concern there are also a few others problems that are worth mentioning, so I will put them in this topic as well. These ideas were brought together by Zenoxio, a mod over on /r/ffxi and a Pearlsack in the Linkshell.

- Ability to invite players to LS from anywhere
- Basic permission/rank system so a LS doesn't just die out when the leader vanishes
- Ability to break pearls/kick players while they are offline

I repeat - I know some things have technical limitations on your part SquareEnix, but this is just some of the things I really hope can be worked around somehow. I want our community to continue growing, so we can help more and more new players get started and feel like they have a home. Thank you!

Yep, I can't urge this enough to SE. If you want to see your game community bolster, please consider working out these limitations.

[aBaDmAn91]

The limit of 64 is not enough, SE should really do something about it.

[Alhanelem]

I haven't noticed any loading time increases in the past few years. Thats... odd. I still will remain hopeful.

He's talking about the time it takes to load all the data when you move to a new zone. The more stuff you have in your bags, the longer it takes for them to load in.

[Tiktaks]

lol at this point in the game, you might as well just allow yell across the game. 64+ 100+ ppl in a linkshell is like 1/5 the server's active population at any given time. lol

at that point, what is the point. to get a head of shout/yell limitations.

i dont see 64 being a clique when most all content can be done with 6 or less.

ive been in linkshells that large and co ran a dynamis linkshell nearly a decade ago that would cap the entry every other run. i do understand the importantance the social aspect that this has. however,
i just dont see the practicality in this being further developed on because it is obviously the exception not the rule.

I know for /yell when they increased it to multiple cities, it pushed it to the max server stress without causing problems. SquareEnix has openly stated this in a dev post and I don't see /yell changing again anytime soon. As for Linkshells however, what I hope to see is that the cap can be increased even maybe up to 100 people max or so, pushing it to its absolute max like they did /yell. There seems to always be a little bit left they can push it and they have been pushing a lot of out dated mechanics out per patch, my only hope is to have the Linkshell on their list of things to come.

[LordMedivh]

those servers are probably dedicated to assisting 14, these forums, and/or the se management site. if not all at least half since server merger.

That was the point I was trying to come across but you answered it correctly.

If I remember correctly they did upgrade their servers back in 2006 or so if I remember correctly. I know the servers today can handle this adjustment.

The inventory issues as in lagging to other zones. I can see the difference on the auction house. I don't know if this is due to my inventory but when I zone to other areas I haven't had much issues. My mage character has all his bags maxed out and no lag from zoning. The opposite of that is my level 99 character lags more and he has 80% less inventory lol.

If they remove the limitations of the linkshell, I don't know how it will impact the servers. They still use the old school chat system where spamming is impossible. (Back in 2003 there was no such thing as spamming in chat due to not high enough technology of the server handling that much chat requests lol)

If I remember correctly the chat system runs off like this. It takes a second or 2 to have your chat posted in your LS and the other person who sees that chat takes about 5 seconds or less to see that chat. How I know is that I run two games at once off of two difference PC's and I can see the lag between both sides.

If they remove that limitation It won't hurt the servers because the chat logs are limited to how long it takes to post that chat and also you have that 250 character limit per each chat line. (I don't know if its 250 but around 150-200 or whatever).


Because of the character limits per each chat line this won't even hurt the system at all. As being from a hardware engineer the game barely pulls much bandwidth anyways to even become an issue today.

My average bandwidth on this game is around 3GB a month. Overall even if there is population or not but removing the LS limit would not hurt the game. Specially on how many people are online per day. If servers can withstand 3500 people a day even though our biggest population so far is what? 1600 for Asura, this limitation should not even make a dent on the server.

[Tiktaks]

That was the point I was trying to come across but you answered it correctly.

If I remember correctly they did upgrade their servers back in 2006 or so if I remember correctly. I know the servers today can handle this adjustment.

The inventory issues as in lagging to other zones. I can see the difference on the auction house. I don't know if this is due to my inventory but when I zone to other areas I haven't had much issues. My mage character has all his bags maxed out and no lag from zoning. The opposite of that is my level 99 character lags more and he has 80% less inventory lol.

If they remove the limitations of the linkshell, I don't know how it will impact the servers. They still use the old school chat system where spamming is impossible. (Back in 2003 there was no such thing as spamming in chat due to not high enough technology of the server handling that much chat requests lol)

If I remember correctly the chat system runs off like this. It takes a second or 2 to have your chat posted in your LS and the other person who sees that chat takes about 5 seconds or less to see that chat. How I know is that I run two games at once off of two difference PC's and I can see the lag between both sides.

If they remove that limitation It won't hurt the servers because the chat logs are limited to how long it takes to post that chat and also you have that 250 character limit per each chat line. (I don't know if its 250 but around 150-200 or whatever).


Because of the character limits per each chat line this won't even hurt the system at all. As being from a hardware engineer the game barely pulls much bandwidth anyways to even become an issue today.

My average bandwidth on this game is around 3GB a month. Overall even if there is population or not but removing the LS limit would not hurt the game. Specially on how many people are online per day. If servers can withstand 3500 people a day even though our biggest population so far is what? 1600 for Asura, this limitation should not even make a dent on the server.

Still not 100% sure on how it all works and what servers are ran with what, but hopefully this shouldn't be hard for SquareEnix to do. I won't assume anything till an official response though!