Port Jeuno congestion...

[Camate]

Since there seem to be quite a few comments and feedback on the proposed changes, we’d like to share our current thoughts and direction on the topic.

• Reinstatement of taxes and the temporary suspension of the auction house
In regards to taxes, we received a lot of feedback about reinstating taxes not only in Port Jeuno, but in Ru’Lude Gardens, or all of Jeuno, as well.

Also in regards to the auction house, since there are quite a few cases where players would check the AH while waiting for shouts or while chatting with their linkshell/party, we believe this is also one cause of congestion. Of course, we do not believe that this is the main cause, however.

• Create multiple Abyssea-related NPCs and seal storage NPCs
As was pointed out, often used NPCs are another reason for area congestion. We understand making multiple NPCs would act as a congestion countermeasure, however, the amount of content that would need to be developed and tested is comparatively high, and we would like to take our time to deal with this properly.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t want to do this, but as a result of us duplicating or moving NPCs, there is a concern that game freezing or other problems might crop up, so this isn’t the type of countermeasure we can implement right away.
　　
• /yell area expansion
We determined that expanding the areas that are covered by /yell would have a positive effect on relieving congestion.

Looking at the current level of usage and lag conditions, we are looking into adding covered areas. However, as previously stated, since this places stress on the server, it isn’t realistic to make this possible for every area.
　　
• In-game bulletin board
This was addressed previously in another thread, but since it is the same answer, I will just pull the quote from there:

-In-game bulletin board
-Since there isn’t a large amount of space where we can save text data, this is something that would require quite a lot of development resources to implement.
-Also, depending on the platform, there will be some players who will be able to use this and some who will not. Please consider this as something that we cannot implement.

• Whitegate/Al Zahbi/Chocobo Circuit bazaar taxes and auction house charges
We are currently looking into these areas for possible adjustments. However, considering that we are planning to revamp content such as Nyzul Isle and Einherjar as well as expand the FoV/GoV areas, we feel that there is too high of a risk associated with changing these other aspects.



While we consider the above points, we will add Ru’Lude Gardens to our list of possible adjustments, and monitor it a bit.

We are also concerned that Ru’Lude Gardens would then become more congested then the current Port Jeuno situation, so we feel that the primary task is to lay the groundwork for making it easy to separate these areas.

We realize that each World has different trend and differences in peak times, and not everyone is going to share the same sentiments about this. However, based on the fact that it may not be congested for you currently, but that there is a chance congestion may develop again, please let us know your feedback.

[Wesa]

(A lot of very thoughtful stuff that would eat up a lot of space if I were to quote it.)

There is a lot of sense to this. My first thought when I read about this was about how much "stuff" is concentrated in Port Jeuno. Fortunately, the default bazaar location for Carbuncle appears to be Upper Jeuno, so the congestion isn't so bad as to be causing the serious problems the OP reported. Nevertheless, I keep my HP largely set to Lower Jeuno, rather than Port Jeuno, in part because of congestion in the latter and in part because the AH and NPC shop in LJ are closer and the Porter Moogle is there—and it's much, much more convenient to keep my HP set somewhere in Jeuno than anywhere else.

What I believe is the major congestion issue in Port Jeuno is the Abyssea NPCs. Since so much of the game is Abyssea-driven at the moment, people want to be as near to the NPCs that support it as possible. In general, the crowds around Joachim and Horst are unbelievable. I would guess that they are gathering parties/alliances, but it's hard to tell. In addition, though, I suspect a lot of people set their HP to Port Jeuno because they want the quickest immediate access to these NPCs as possible. Then they have to zone out to hear shouts and yells, so the entrance/exit to the PJ MH area tends to be incredibly congested as well.

Based on my beliefs regarding the matter, I think the following elements of Thala's post to be the most useful for addressing the issue:

• The presence of the Abyssea NPCs solely in Port in Jeuno means that PJ becomes a magnet for people. Distributing additional Abyssea service NPCs to other Jeuno zones could help reduce load.
• If Jeuno in and of itself becomes a problem, extending invitation range could encourage people to start using locations other than Jeuno as the default. If making party/alliance invitations global is problematical, would it at least be possible to extend the ability to make these invitations from Jeuno to Windurst, San d'Oria, and Bastok and vice-versa?
• Similarly, extending /yell to these three regions would help in making it possible to coordinate potential events without having to concentrate in Jeuno.

[Unctgtg]

How about if people are afk for over 2 hrs in port jueno, have them teleported to another area.

[Dfoley]

Fill in the blank for me, cause i obviouslly am missing something...

Camate:
We dont want people to agrigate in a single zone because .... " X "

Is it lag? Is that the big bad scarey reason we dont want everony to have convenience of a 'nexus' zone?
Is it due to a max number of players being allowed in one zone?

Anything done to try and remove a 'nexus' zone is just going to cause people to all aggregate to a new nexus zone. I guarantee you people will start clumping up in the 3 home cities (aka south sandoria) because they have void watch - abyssea - and ah.

[Juilan]

Since there seem to be quite a few comments and feedback on the proposed changes, we’d like to share our current thoughts and direction on the topic.


• /yell area expansion
We determined that expanding the areas that are covered by /yell would have a positive effect on relieving congestion.

Looking at the current level of usage and lag conditions, we are looking into adding covered areas. However, as previously stated, since this places stress on the server, it isn’t realistic to make this possible for every area.
　　

Just add the zones with abyssea warps (less heaven's tower and chocobo circuit) to the yell and lower it to 15s... can cut lower jeuno and upper jeuno since if we can sit in port windurst sandy or bastok we wouldn't just be in port.

I personally miss my rolanberry markets or w/e the servers are used to was fine... or even put it into the chocobo circuit as someone suggested.

These simple changes could easily move more than 300 people from Port Jeuno within two weeks.

PS: I want your pumpkin hat on my avatar!

[BigPapaBlueJay]

There are abyssea NPC's in Ru'Lude Gardens already, but are rarely used due to bazaars and shouts not being visable. I believe a simple solution to congestion would be to disallow shouts in Jeuno and force the use of yell, as well as implementing a tax in Port and Lower Jeuno as well as Ru'Lude Gardens. This would only inconvenience players in the sense that they would need to travel to Upper Jeuno for Bazaars, but should alleviate congestion throughout Jeuno otherwise.

[Juilan]

Fill in the blank for me, cause i obviouslly am missing something...

Camate:
We dont want people to agrigate in a single zone because .... " X "

Is it lag? Is that the big bad scarey reason we dont want everony to have convenience of a 'nexus' zone?
Is it due to a max number of players being allowed in one zone?

Anything done to try and remove a 'nexus' zone is just going to cause people to all aggregate to a new nexus zone. I guarantee you people will start clumping up in the 3 home cities (aka south sandoria) because they have void watch - abyssea - and ah.

Because SE added instance content that was easily doable with a half wit pick up group and then merged servers furthermore the diversions we set in place were too much of a time sink for the plausible reward. Therefor we need to find ways aside from adding better content, with a reasonable drop rates (drops above 25%), that take people away from the hub because that takes too much development time.

[FrankReynolds]

A little off topic, but it would be awesome if you could enter / exit the chocobo races or the mog house at any city. I know a lot of people use Horst to tele them to a maw, and then use the book / NPC in that zone to get to their home nation. If I could set my home point near the AH /tele guy in my home city, and still be one zone away from Port Jeuno, I would spend a lot less time in Port Jeuno.

Also, I don't know if this is possible, but if people didn't have a limit to how much the could post on the AH, they wouldn't need to stand in town to bazaar all the time. They would probably only use bazaar to sell specific things in specific places, like at guilds where people don't want to run back and forth to the AH.

[Reyn]

• If Jeuno in and of itself becomes a problem, extending invitation range could encourage people to start using locations other than Jeuno as the default. If making party/alliance invitations global is problematical, would it at least be possible to extend the ability to make these invitations from Jeuno to Windurst, San d'Oria, and Bastok and vice-versa?
• Similarly, extending /yell to these three regions would help in making it possible to coordinate potential events without having to concentrate in Jeuno.

Pretty much agree with this. How difficult would it be to implement cross region party invites? There must be some reason it's not already in the game. Half the reason people go where the shouts are is because you're going to need to go there for invites anyway as the group organizes.

I think having /yell and party/ally invites universal in all cities would pretty much make this a non-issue.

[Frapp]

While I certainly do not speak for everyone here, but one of the main reasons why I continue to keep setting my home point in Jeuno instead of my home nation (or anywhere else) is simply because Jeuno is the most difficult city to get to.

Allow me to explain.

From your home nation, you can:
Warp instantly to Aht Urhgan for a mere 300 gil.
Warp to any outpost you have done the supply quest for, for a fee (or free, depending on Mog Tablets)
Warp to (almost) any available Voidwatch zone.
From one of the starter zones bordering your home nation, you can get to the past, and warp to any battlefield location using the appropriate NPC.

To get to Jeuno:
Warp to Aht Urhgan, then use either Warp Taru to land you in Jeuno.
Use an Outpost warp and walk the rest of the way.
Use any number of long-recast, non-refillable, non-repeatable quest or reward items.
From a starter nation, take an Airship, and use the time to make a sandwich (Okay, maybe this one isn't so bad... but I digress).

The point is, if I could get to Jeuno as easily as I can to anywhere else, it would definitely be one major reason why I would keep my home point at my home nation.

Another major point that I believe has been mentioned already is the bazaar situation. Almost every single bazaar I check, not only in Port Jeuno, is selling only Dynamis currency, Alexandrite, or something for 99,999,999 gil. Very rarely do I ever find people selling actual stuff.

I've played around with the idea of a Vana'delian bank of sorts that would work like the Auction House, but deal exclusively in special currencies, tabs, Therion Ichor, etc. Perhaps the Bank could work similar to the Beastman Seal brothers (their names escape me at the moment) to trade currencies for other forms of currency, or for even an adjustable rate of gil. Enough people are trying to sell their currency, and are doing so in the most populated safe zone on their server. If they could easily sell the currency, there might be less people AFK Bazaaring their currencies, and thus less congestion.