It's your server

[Diavolo]

Some of the most rudest, meanest, angriest players I've ever had the misfortune of coming across either in-game or on various forums have all been from Asura, or have all moved to Asura.

Some of the nicest, most helpful players I've come across are also on Asura. That's just the nature of the beast, you'll have more of every type of player on a larger server, both the good and the not so good. Personally, I like variety in my life. I might get bored if I agreed with everything everyone said.

Might just be me but low server population = more $ for s.e. Everything from gil making to cp takes longer which in turn produces longer subscriptions. With the fee for world change its a win win for them.

That's an odd argument. Gil and CP can be made just easily, if not more so on a quieter server. When the player base dips to a point where forming pick up groups, linkshells and transactions via bazaars/auction house becomes painfully slow players tend to consider cancelling their subscriptions. There's no evidence to reference other than forum threads/posts such as Rooj's, but I'd imagine it's easier to keep players happy on a server that's constantly around the 1,000 online accounts mark than it is on a server struggling to get 300 accounts online and, well, happy players don't usually think about cancelling their subscriptions at the end of the month.

Merges are generally bad, I saw more people quit after merges than any other time.

Losing your name, losing the names of random people who you were familiar with. The server no longer seems like your home, you wander around and all the familiar names no longer exist. They decided some time ago to not do merges, here or on ffxiv.

That's purely anecdotal. People will always have an opinion about major events, like forced name changes in this case, and often times a good chunk of the negative comments tend to be reactionary with emotive language - making decisions when you're angry isn't always the best idea. Sure, someone might quit because they despise the idea of losing their name, but in the grand scheme of things that's a really small price to pay for a livelier game world that will be far better suited at attracting new/returning players in addition to serving the existing player base.

Is that sibling/roommate/friend/significant other going to want to give the game another whirl if they know they'll have to pay $13 to resubscribe on top of $18 to server transfer? I've seen more than my fair share turn the game away because of it and it's unfortunate because I know they'd have enjoyed it with a more active population.

Considering that I have had to wait at Ambuscade, Tenzen, Salvage and a few other places here and there over the months I've come back, I'm gonna say that Asura has to see this more frequently.

Ambuscade was absolutely terrible for everyone, regardless of server size, simply by design and the congestion around it on Asura today is far less annoying than it was even back on Cerberus where the population was often only a quarter of the size or smaller. The fact you bring up Tenzen also makes me laugh because I suspect everyone on your server is just like everyone back on Cerb, sticking to just that one HTBF regardless of how many other parties are lining up for it. Things are thankfully a bit more varied on Asura.

There is no overcrowding issue on Asura or anywhere else, not in the slightest. If it comes to the point where content is too crowded for the server's population see that as a positive and not a negative. We'll bring it up with the devs, the same way we complained about Ambuscade, and watch how they start to mold the game around a larger player base rather than a smaller one for a change.

Honestly i see FFXI a game for play with your old friends a small group of 4 - 5 players.

Most of the shouts look only for GEO, BLU, SCH, BLM and COR the DD classes are taken before shout. Lets be realistic the game do not have content for support big allies anymore.

The game doesn't have content for big allies anymore because we made it this way. Only we can turn it around. Do you think that will happen on servers housing 300 accounts at any given time?

Let's all put our feelings aside here for a minute and think this through: are there enough active accounts today to bring to life 16 giant MMORPG worlds? The simple answer is no.

Dont get me wrong i would love to see FFXI like at 2007s with 2000 players online all time, with a solid economy, with shouts happening for Kirin, VW, ZNM, Dynamis etc

More like 8,000+, at least back on Cerb.

[Castanica]

If anyone or OP thinks Square will let any server get to 2k+ concurrent you're crazy, not going to happen. Would be impossible now.

The game was totally different when it had large numbers per server, the amount of people who did engame alone was minuscule. Almost everyone just leveled as 100% of their content. Only the JP players did sky and some hnm and were walking around in osodes with all the NA people thinking they were buck rogers.

[OmnysValefor]

Tenzen and OU, same battlefield, actually have some useful pieces, unlike most HTBF. Tenzen is also easy.

Personally, I like Ifrit.

And yeah, waiting at Ambuscade, or other places happens, but purely by numbers, it has to happen on Asura more.

[Rooj]

This discussion has gotten me wondering if SE has determined the number of instances available on each server by an active population ratio. So perhaps Asura and Odin have a lot more instances available whereas these 200-300 pop servers only have like 1, lol. I mean that would make sense from a development/economic/company standpoint. Cause I've yet to run into these imaginary overcrowding-can't-enter-content problems on what is supposedly the most populated NA server.

It would be quite hilarious if the folks who complain that 300 is too many people to "compete for content with" and are in love with their low pop server are actually screwing themselves out of getting into content quicker LOL

[Selindrile]

It would be quite hilarious if the folks who complain that 300 is too many people to "compete for content with" and are in love with their low pop server are actually screwing themselves out of getting into content quicker LOL

Some may be... but I simply do content with my long time LS, I haven't shouted for content since.... I can't even remember, the server population has no effect on that for me, I generally prefer lower populations if I have such an LS, I likely wouldn't without such a thing.

[Zeldar]

Well the system they implemented a couple of months ago for ambuscade seems to have worked out well. I think anyone still complaining is going off of their experience in month 1.

[OmnysValefor]

It would be quite hilarious if the folks who complain that 300 is too many people to "compete for content with" and are in love with their low pop server are actually screwing themselves out of getting into content quicker LOL

As far as I'm aware, there are only three copies of most instances in the game and I never see more than 18 in Legion when I /sea Legion.

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I recently had a 8~ minute wait at the book and it's likely there there were just 2-3 soloers/slow groups in there. It happens time to time, but it's nothing like the first month.

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Something occurred to me. There's lots of hate around here for taking optimum strategies. I have a question for you, what strategy do you take to Ambuscade? There's two strats for fast kills:

2-3 good THFs or better-geared dancers
Extremely overgeared melee leveraging Tomahawk, Angon, Frailty and whatever else they can do.

The first is easier, because it can be hard to find a warrior/dragoon, let alone a really good warrior/dragoon.

Or do you take a strat that deals with 2-3 waves of adds regularly?

And finally, I saw this little tidbit on reddit just now, since we were talking about dragons

I've got good gear and the best spells for AOE setup but with a ring and all ROV KIs I'm only getting maybe 8-10 an hour max. Seems low but no matter where I've gone that's the average. Usually do C cavern or Ravine but is there a better place? Can't do Zitah on Asura as its always full.

[Rooj]

And finally, I saw this little tidbit on reddit just now, since we were talking about dragons

I saw that post, it's just not true. As I said in another post, I'm surprised by how few people I can find at puks/dragons during Gain Exp. Actually, there's Gain EXP right now, let's go look!
Sorry for the volume and quality I don't make videos. https://youtu.be/WP0XwCNHeeo
This is around 7:10 AM CST on a Sunday morning. Not the most active NA time but still JP peak time.
I'm going to assume since you're on a low pop server, that most of the people are soloing instead of teaming up, since that's one of the prevailing mentalities amongst small servers. There's no reason not to team up though, so people are just making it harder on themselves for no reason.
Also I find it funny killing single target just as fast as those who require AOEing, heh. I'll try to make some more appropriately timed videos, not like I can control when Gain EXP happens. And I forgot to show the quest log as proof that it was even active.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm surprised by how few people I can find at puks/dragons during Gain Exp. Actually, there's Gain EXP right now, let's go look! ... https://youtu.be/WP0XwCNHeeo

[I truncated his post]

Now that is funny. I wonder what the reddit poster would say to that. I mean, Asura is the NA server and Unicorn is the JP server but I'd still expect Asura to have more activity at any given time. I would expect Wednesday afternoons and Monday nights to be a bit more packed.

Thanks

[Zeldar]

I'm in the same boat as Selindrile. If I want to do something, all I need to do is ask my LS. We may already have plans for that night so I sometimes need to wait a day or so, but it gets done. I join pickups sometimes just for fun and to meet new people, but mostly I roll with the linkshell.

As for favorite Ambuscade set-ups, my favorite is with a war.... tomahawk makes this fight easy mode. We usually also use a GEO, no matter what the setup. Other than the WAR, WHM, and GEO, the other 3 slots get filled with anything.
Some other setups involve THF and DRG of course, but you forgot BLU ! Blu can deal all 3 additional damage types rather easily. Our runs last night were BLU, DNC, PLD, WHM, GEO, and SMN. We weren't setting any records but the mob only lived long enough to pop 2 groups of adds. Not as fast as having a war, but we were still killing in under 4 minutes.