Start forcing logouts after extended playtime (with sufficient warning, of course)

Bumping to see if we can get anymore ideas going.

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Originally Posted by Raist

I know ... sounds extreme, but didn't seem to get much response from another idea I've been posting since last night.

Edit: Please keep in mind that this and other ideas we've tried to bring up are meant solely as temporary measures until SE can get a proper fix in place.
(thanks to Supertatortots for helping me realize I neglected to clarify the temporary nature of this idea in the OP)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ers-free-slots

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ow-to-fix-them.

Seems like no one wants to talk about reasonable solutions, so figured lets try something off the wall to see if anyone gets involved in the conversation.

After a player has been logged in for an extensive amount of time, start issuing them a warning to log out within a certain time frame or they will be automatically logged out.

Once that timer runs down, boot them.

I understand this may be a bother for some players who routinely play long hours, so the trick would be to allow a reasonable amount of time to accommodate those active players, and will need to allow them sufficient time to complete a task they are in like a mission fight, and get to a safe logout location.

It may seem extreme, and it can be altered as SE sees fit, but this approach will help in eliminating a lot of the unnecessary AFK'ing and send them back into the queues behind the people that have been affected by their AFK status.

The original thought was to issue a sort of CAPTCHA call/response mechanism requiring players to respond, designed to deal with AFK activity in a way that may not be easy to bot, but that may require more elaborate coding. This can be a cyclical check against last log-in time and if it's been long enough, start the notices and count down to auto-kick.

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Well it sounds a hell of a lot more reasonable the someone spending even 10 minutes spamming the login server. Alas, the server upgrades are halfway done and for them to pull resources to get this coordinated (whether it be coding or whatever) doesn't make sense at this point. Don't misunderstand, I am would be happy with this, but they are in the middle of a bunch of other mess they didn't properly plan for and it may not be worth the effort/resources/time to do this.

Similar to implementing a true Que or kicking AFK'ers, those fixes all take time and right now they are focused on the hardware problem which HOPEFULLY will make everything else go away...

It'd upset people to get booted if they're actively playing, even if it is for a long time, but I think they should boot people out after being AFK for too long. The servers know if they're getting no input from a player. If a player does absolutely nothing (as they would if they're AFK) for an extended period of time, they should get booted out to let other players in.

(I don't know for certain if the game already has such a rule. I know many games do, but I've heard of people staying logged in here to avoid the wait to get in, so it sounds like either this game doesn't have such a rule or the timer on it is ridiculously long.)

The only thing you need to do is add AFK detection and auto-logout after a certain threshold of being AFK.

There is absolutely NO reason to kick active players.

Why penalize people who play long periods? I work 3 days on 3 days off and guess what I do when I'm off? I play Final Fantasy. Booting active players is just plain stupid. A simple AFK timer or an in game captcha (as annoying as that may be) could be a temporary fix until servers calm down. You and I both know that once the free time is up player base will drop. I spam log in just like everyone else and I've managed to get a job unlocked and have 2 20's. simple answer Is SE botched a little. it's inconvenient right now but it will be fixed.

We are paying for a game. Beta we didn't pay for. To tell someone that is paying they have to log off so others can log in isn't the way to fix the problem. That will cause them to lose paying customers. On the other hand kicking people who are AFK after so long would be better. They aren't playing they are taking up your spot.
They said they don't want to use auto afk because FFXI doesn't have it? Well hmm this is FFXIV we can't turn ourselves into little roadside markets like FFXI which is why it didn't have the auto kick. They just need to fix the issue. Not make it worse by booting players who are actually playing

nice.. thanks for the feedback guys, both the positive and negative. Good support for your positions too.

That's the real intention of these couple of threads I put up. Trying to get some reasonable conversation going about ideas for a short term remedy and/or preventative steps SE can take. If nothing else, we may be able to give them some indication of what we would be willing to accept as countermeasures both in the short term and the long.

Please, don't be afraid to present your ideas here, however crazy they may seem. If we can draw people in and keep it centralized instead of all the duplicate spamming, maybe we can actually get somewhere with SE.

Thanks again for your time and consideration.

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Originally Posted by Delusional

The only thing you need to do is add AFK detection and auto-logout after a certain threshold of being AFK.

There is absolutely NO reason to kick active players.

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I agree totally I saw someone sitting in a room in a building for hours I know he's one of these people who just are not gonna log out cause of the 1017 kind of sad that people are doing this but how can you blame them really when theres limited space on the servers, mind you these people probably have no jobs either or just leave themselves logged in all day which would be funny as hell.

I would play a different game if one dictated how long, and or often I played. If it was free to play I could see, but as long as customers are paying for game time I do agree that it would cause a lot of havoc (even more so now.)

That being said, I'm not against kicking folks that have been away for excess of an hour or two- but I really don't see it fixing anything to be honest. There are just that many people wanting to play right now, and even if you kicked afkers here and there, those spots would fill very fast.

One of the news posts said they were already looking into an afk kick timer, but first they are adding hardware to make the game accessible to more people. It's already been considered but is on the back burner for server upgrades at the moment.

Kicking inactive players is an obvious part of the solution that they said they'd look into. Why they aren't in a hurry to implement it I can't imagine to know. If they aren't in a hurry to add an idle timer then they sure aren't going to add timers and notifications to restrict the play time of everyone for a temporary fix, which I believe is far worse idea because of the aforementioned reasons.