Dear SE, please unlock Balmung

The afk-kick timer won't solve anything. It may be possible it won't even alleviate anything. People will find ways to bypass the kick. Or they already know the ways to do so from pre-2.2.

Start a craft. Start a conversation with an NPC. Start a dialogue with an item like the cutscene journal. Start the dialogue with an aetheryte. The list goes on.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

If I am paying the $14.99 to have up to 8 characters on my home server, then I should be able to make up to 8 characters on my home server.

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People paying to play with their friends on their home server, they can't because whatever reason.
It's insane. I felt more sympathetic of the person who made a topic about their friends constantly locked out than people wanting to be every single race/job
under the sun that can already RP and such because they can actually play. :/

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

People paying to play with their friends on their home server, they can't because whatever reason.
It's insane. I felt more sympathetic of the person who made a topic about their friends constantly locked out than people wanting to be every single race/job
under the sun that can already RP and such because they can actually play. :/

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Honestly if I had more friends that I wanted to play with me who weren't already playing or started to play already, I'd be paying for their transfers. I can't transfer 200+ people I know and play with along with the people they play with. But I can transfer in friends to play with.

It's the best server so it's hard to join.

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

People paying to play with their friends on their home server, they can't because whatever reason.

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Ask yourself: Why does home server ALWAYS mean "Balmung" in these complaints?
You never hear people on almost any other server except MAYBE gilgamesh complaining about this. There's over 5 dozen servers (i counted). Why does it have to be balmung?
Also, comparing the system of this game to WoW is faulty: the way our characters work and how much data they take up compared to a WoW character is astronomical. Just taking into account what our characters can do without getting into the nitty gritty of our appearance data means that each and every character is the equivalent of more than TEN WoW characters.
This means that a single character in FFXIV takes up more space on the servers than ten WoW characters, which means if 2000 people made 8 characters each, they'd be taxing the server's capacity in the same way as 160,000 WoW characters. Which means, conservatively, if we have 500,000 subscribers with 8 characters each (some have more, many have less) we're occupying as much space as 40 million WoW characters.
And that's *lowballing* it.

Well looking at the times for eternal bonding that are recommended to not be scheduled:

- Sometime between Feb. 23, 2015 7:00 a.m. and Feb. 24, 2015 7:00 a.m.
- Sometime between Feb. 24, 2015 7:00 a.m. and Feb. 25, 2015 7:00 a.m.
- Sometime between Feb. 25, 2015 7:00 a.m. and Feb. 26, 2015 7:00 a.m.

I am guessing that is 2.51. I will most likely be able to make my alt on one of those days. But regardless, this isn't a player community fault. This is a failing on SE's part. And it should be addressed, not have fingers pointed at legitimate players and said "You roleplayers are the problem". That is rude. I'd rather point the finger at the RMT, than innocent, legit players.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

Also, comparing the system of this game to WoW is faulty: the way our characters work and how much data they take up compared to a WoW character is astronomical. Just taking into account what our characters can do without getting into the nitty gritty of our appearance data means that each and every character is the equivalent of more than TEN WoW characters.
This means that a single character in FFXIV takes up more space on the servers than ten WoW characters, which means if 2000 people made 8 characters each, they'd be taxing the server's capacity in the same way as 160,000 WoW characters. Which means, conservatively, if we have 500,000 subscribers with 8 characters each (some have more, many have less) we're occupying as much space as 40 million WoW characters.
And that's *lowballing* it.

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How do you get these numbers? Based on the graphical character data?

Wait wait, so let me get this straight.

OP has six characters on Balmung, wasting spots that other people could use to play with their friends, and is moaning that they can't make yet another alt?

I have a great idea: How about you play the 6 characters you already have and stop whining about inconsequential things.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

This.
I keep seeing these types of threads, and it's only for this one freakin' server.
There are other servers! Go try them out! make new friends! Balmung is overpopulated for chrissakes! That's why it's almost permalocked!

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Originally Posted by Miitan

Wait wait, so let me get this straight.

OP has six characters on Balmung, wasting spots that other people could use to play with their friends, and is moaning that they can't make yet another alt?

I have a great idea: How about you play the 6 characters you already have and stop whining about inconsequential things.

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Why would the server lock have anything to do with the number of individual characters one person has on the server? They can only play one character at a time. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it. The overall concurrent connections are the issue. Seriously, a server should never be locked to alt characters; that makes absolutely no sense.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

How do you get these numbers? Based on the graphical character data?

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Unless she can post links to actual data, I'm just assuming this info is coming out of thin air and is sketchy, at best.

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

Character data does mean something and your honestly ignorant if you don't think it does. The data has to be stored somewhere in the server which can only hold so much data. Even if the characters only make up a small amount of data per character 15000 characters could easily take up 100k+ gb of space. And that's a low end estimate.

Yes, you may make up a small % of the population (I belive it to be more than 10-15) but your characters(RP players) take up a much greater amount than the rest of us combine.

And I didn't say I know how there system works, but I'm not stupid I know how memory space works, it doesn't take a genius to understand that.

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I don't think you have any idea how databases work. A single character takes up very little overall space, because on the server it is just a database entry with a bunch of fields filled out. I doubt 15000 characters take up even 20GB of space, let alone 100TB. lol

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Originally Posted by Miitan

Wait wait, so let me get this straight.

OP has six characters on Balmung, wasting spots that other people could use to play with their friends, and is moaning that they can't make yet another alt?

I have a great idea: How about you play the 6 characters you already have and stop whining about inconsequential things.

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Hey, as long as SE has it set that paying $14.99 a month, lets me have 8 characters on my HOME server, I have every right to make an alt. I'm not using any extra connections. 1 account. 1 connection. I count as only 1 player, regardless of how many characters I have. I am playing within the rules. I am not taking up space I wasn't already using when I made my first character on Balmung during the beta. And I am not going anywhere. My alt will be made. But I made this thread to ask SE, to address the server always locked issue myself and others are experiencing. So no, I wont shut up and go away. I have a legitimate complaint and I will voice it weather you like it or not.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Your post is laughable at best because you are trying to sound like you know what you are talking about.

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Not to mention the servers for character information are totally different to the world servers. World servers DO NOT store character information.

Please SE don't unlock I love not getting RMT spam.

If you want you can pay and transfer it doesn't stop you from doing that.

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Originally Posted by CrystalRainbow

Please SE don't unlock I love not getting RMT spam.

If you want you can pay and transfer it doesn't stop you from doing that.

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Preach!! I get 1 maybe 2 RMT tells a week if not longer.

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Originally Posted by CrystalRainbow

Please SE don't unlock I love not getting RMT spam.

If you want you can pay and transfer it doesn't stop you from doing that.

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Or here's a novel idea, rather than punish legit players, why not demand SE deal with the RMT bots?

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Or here's a novel idea, rather than punish legit players, why not demand SE deal with the RMT bots?

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Tried that, didn't work. Welcome to now, where rmt still hasn't gotten dealt with.

Also, play your alts. It's more sad for the people who have multiple rl/old mmo friends on balmung that want to even have 1 character, than it is for you who already have 6.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Hey, as long as SE has it set that paying $14.99 a month, lets me have 8 characters on my HOME server, I have every right to make an alt.

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Actually, the Terms of Service state that you have no rights in regards to this and that you are agreeing to abide by SE's rules and if that includes not allowing you to make an alt because the stars aren't in alignment at Head Office, so be it.

It's times like this when I miss FFXI's extra character fee. :D Wouldn't be the first time I've paid like $20.

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Originally Posted by Miitan

Actually, the Terms of Service state that you have no rights in regards to this and that you are agreeing to abide by SE's rules and if that includes not allowing you to make an alt because the stars aren't in alignment at Head Office, so be it.

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Well I'm not going away. As long as I pay my subscription fee, and it says "Maximum of 8 characters per server", I will complain. Guess what sunshine. Nothing will change unless people voice their grievances. I want SE to know, that the server being locked to even the people who are already on the server, is unacceptable, and that I am asking them to address the issue. So I'm not shutting up. I'm going to keep posting because that is my right.

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Originally Posted by Violyre

It's times like this when I miss FFXI's extra character fee. :D Wouldn't be the first time I've paid like $20.

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But I am paying the extra fee. They've got basically 2 plans:

$12.99 = 1 character per server
$14.99 = 8 characters per server.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

But I am paying the extra fee. They've got basically 2 plans:

$12.99 = 1 character per server
$14.99 = 8 characters per server.

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Huh, never knew that. Legacy ftw. But FFXI's system was that each extra character was $1. You want six characters? $17/month.

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Originally Posted by Violyre

Huh, never knew that. Legacy ftw. But FFXI's system was that each extra character was $1. You want six characters? $17/month.

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I'm not a legacy. I was in A Realm Reborn beta. The $12.99 is pretty standard for anyone. If you pay the $14.99 per month or pay for more than 1 month, you are allowed up to 8 characters per server. AH here's a link: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/product/

It's membership tiers. Entry level and standard. I went with standard because I like having multiple characters. It keeps things fresh, and interesting. It's fun to re-experience story, rp entirely new personalities, that sort of stuff.

I still think my idea is one of the best.

"accidental death" to a group of like 100-200 of you and your friends alts which would make room lol.

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

I still think my idea is one of the best.

"accidental death" to a group of like 100-200 of you and your friends alts which would make room lol.

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Wow :/

The best solution? SE works on the infrastructure. No matter if it's bots or AFK people logged in, it won't solve the issue. More and more players will be logging in. More and more players will want to create characters on the world. All the other comments won't fix it. It'll just pop up later.

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

I still think my idea is one of the best.

"accidental death" to a group of like 100-200 of you and your friends alts which would make room lol.

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I don't care if you dislike roleplayers, or me. But making threats like that, is crossing the line. It's not amusing and I hope the mods step in now. Because that was uncalled for.

A better solution, rather than open up an already over crowded server, label two or three servers per data center as RP servers. (While they are at it do PvP and PvE dedications) Right now there are no dedications like this to attend to the RP crowd so they hear about one or two servers, period, that are RP and everyone flocks there. Unfortunately at that point, to make it an actual viable option, they would need to provide free transfers (at least off Balmung) to said RP servers so they can start groups or take a group with them. The problem is over crowding of a few servers while others are near empty. This also goes for the Housing issues and lack of availability. Servers like Balmung have no empty plots since an hour after new plots are added while servers like Litch have entire wards empty for the taking.

Just my two gil.

MageBlack, that sounds good. I am sure many roleplayers would do it, as long as there's free transfers to a dedicated roleplay server. My own FC, actually transfered to Balmung from Gilgamesh. I never played on Gilg, but I am happy they are on Balmung. Ideally though, I'd rather they addressed the actual server infrastructure, and deal with all the bots that are more than likely the real issue of why the server is locked down.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

But regardless, this isn't a player community fault. This is a failing on SE's part. And it should be addressed, not have fingers pointed at legitimate players and said "You roleplayers are the problem". That is rude. I'd rather point the finger at the RMT, than innocent, legit players.

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But it is the player bases fault (not specifically 'role players'), just players as in anyone regardless of whether the population is made up from people playing legitimately or not and while may not like that...it does not mean it is not true. You can't say it's RMT and bots fault not other players, you and they are the same in this issue aka like oil and water both poured into a pot, your both filling up the same pot; so much so that eventually will overflow or leak. You take out the oil it will still overflow because what space the oil took up will be filled with water.

A server can only have so many players before if becomes unstable and has a large negative impact on the running of that server. Can SE upgrade the server and increase the bandwidth? Maybe but it will not fix the problem as long as people keep trying to cram themselves into the same server. People need to pick another server when they know a server is at capacity or extremely close to it, ideally free transfer weekends should be implemented from time to time to alleviate the problem slightly but the problem really is just players not willing to move to one of the many other servers which is not near capacity yet.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

MageBlack, that sounds good. I am sure many roleplayers would do it, as long as there's free transfers to a dedicated roleplay server.

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Any server can be a RP server if enough people who want to RP on it move there.

Probably too late to implement now, but I always thought it silly how standard service allows you to have 8 characters per server with 36 character max. It's no wonder there are so much RMTs.

I think it would've been better to have 8 characters max.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

I don't care if you dislike roleplayers, or me. But making threats like that, is crossing the line. It's not amusing and I hope the mods step in now. Because that was uncalled for.

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I'm not saying I dislike rolplayers or you. I'm just saying if you guys get rid of some of your alts it would make room to make more. If you don't wanna do it as an. Accidental death, then just delete them. I just said "accidental death" for a suggestion that would fit in the "RP" stile. Then you could make new characters that go on an adventure together to find out what happened and why/how they died. =D

Well yeah I know servers can get to capacity. However from what I read on a certain roleplay site, Balmung was created from merging an RP server with a PvE one, back in 1.0's day. So a lot of legacy roleplayers were already stuck on the server before a realm reborn. For a lot of us, Balmung is home. Cleaning hout the RMT, would clear up a huge chunk of the congestion. Server infrastructure upgrades would help fix the issues as well. And of course, deciding who should migrate off, roleplayers or pve'ers, and either slap an RP tag on Balmung, or make a server dedicated to roleplayers with free transfers to it, would help as well. But for now, I feel the server shouldn't be locked to the creation of alts, if we already have characters on the server.

Unless the bot population is like 2000 times more than real player population, dealing with the bots won't -fix- it. Eventually the server will just fill up with real players (ideally). Then what?

Maintenance on the servers and also help work the worlds may help.

I'd worry a little bit about the economy of some worlds based on migration etc. Crafter services or people to run X Y Z dungeons may be -very- high in demand with not enough supply.

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

I'm not saying I dislike rolplayers or you. I'm just saying if you guys get rid of some of your alts it would make room to make more. If you don't wanna do it as an. Accidental death, then just delete them. I just said "accidental death" for a suggestion that would fit in the "RP" stile. Then you could make new characters that go on an adventure together to find out what happened and why/how they died. =D

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THIS also isn't a perma fix by any means, but more of a here and now fix without waiting for SE to twiddle there thumbs enough before doing soemthing

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Well yeah I know servers can get to capacity. However from what I read on a certain roleplay site, Balmung was created from merging an RP server with a PvE one, back in 1.0's day. So a lot of legacy roleplayers were already stuck on the server before a realm reborn. For a lot of us, Balmung is home. Cleaning hout the RMT, would clear up a huge chunk of the congestion. Server infrastructure upgrades would help fix the issues as well. And of course, deciding who should migrate off, roleplayers or pve'ers, and either slap an RP tag on Balmung, or make a server dedicated to roleplayers with free transfers to it, would help as well. But for now, I feel the server shouldn't be locked to the creation of alts, if we already have characters on the server.

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Also, merger or not, it's not good to try and tell either pve or RP to get off. Since both have been around since 1.x (me included)

I pulled my Legacy character off Balmung long ago. She lives on Lamia now, with my main character. Balmung wasn't really an ANYTHING server in 1.0 - by then we were down to barely a thousand players daily, so most of us were just derping around once 1.23 came out, waiting for the end. PVE I guess but we didn't really have anything special about us.

What I wonder is why Lamia, which also has daily login queues during the evening hours, doesn't have the same character creation restrictions?

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

I'm not saying I dislike rolplayers or you. I'm just saying if you guys get rid of some of your alts it would make room to make more. If you don't wanna do it as an. Accidental death, then just delete them. I just said "accidental death" for a suggestion that would fit in the "RP" stile. Then you could make new characters that go on an adventure together to find out what happened and why/how they died. =D

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For the hundredth time, the amount of characters on the server has absolutely nothing to do with the server being locked. Server locks are based on the number of players logging in to the server at the time.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

What I wonder is why Lamia, which also has daily login queues during the evening hours, doesn't have the same character creation restrictions?

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Because Lamia doesn't have the amount of login server traffic consistantly enough to be locked. Other servers are locked pretty regularly too, like Behemoth and Cerberus.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

Unless the bot population is like 2000 times more than real player population, dealing with the bots won't -fix- it. Eventually the server will just fill up with real players (ideally).

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At least then it won't be some dbag bot preventing my friend's from playing. I'd rather we had this problem from legit players. To me that would be an improvement that should be made. The fact it won't perfectly remedy the problem isn't the point and is a poor reason to ignore the bots.

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Originally Posted by Kiroh

For the hundredth time, the amount of characters on the server has absolutely nothing to do with the server being locked. Server locks are based on the number of players logging in to the server at the time.

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I put him on ignore after a comment he made. And yep, I definitely feel you are correct. And a lot of this, is from RMT. Prior to 2.5, I saw no bots personally, or if I did, it usually was a random RMT whisper. However, the moment I logged in after being patched to 2.5, went on my rogue and for the first time ever, saw huge armies of thaumaturge bots. Reported quite a few, and there were so many in one area, I couldn't get every single name and ended up just giving a location. And even today, they are still active. And prior to them, we didn't see the server as badly locked down as we do right now.

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Originally Posted by Kiroh

For the hundredth time, the amount of characters on the server has absolutely nothing to do with the server being locked. Server locks are based on the number of players logging in to the server at the time..

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Saying it repeatedly doesn't make it true.

Specifically the page here http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...06d0909189e479 specifically says..

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During periods of high congestion, we may institute a temporary restriction on the creation of new characters.

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it may surprise you to know that congestion includes logins, AND other metrics like current server population. So until you can provide a source that specifically says that it is ONLY logins then me and others will continue to call BS on your baseless statement. Currently logged in players absolutely count as server congestion since they actively take away server and network resources. Not just logins. Your statement has no bearing on the realities of how the internet and servers actually work.

TLDR: Bring a source or drop it because what you're saying doesn't make any technical sense.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

MageBlack, that sounds good. I am sure many roleplayers would do it, as long as there's free transfers to a dedicated roleplay server. My own FC, actually transfered to Balmung from Gilgamesh. I never played on Gilg, but I am happy they are on Balmung. Ideally though, I'd rather they addressed the actual server infrastructure, and deal with all the bots that are more than likely the real issue of why the server is locked down.

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The problem goes beyond bots and RMT, I'm on Balmung too and in all honesty I have hardly a peep from RMT tells or seeing Bots running around, at least in comparison to a server like Litch. This is entirely BECAUSE it is locked down. which means, if you cant make a character, neither can RMT. Makes managing a blacklist much easier (i have less than 10 names on my blacklist and I could probably get away with removing half of them) as well as them making bots for farming. This is a case where a "solution" also hinders legitimate players, not that lockdown is to solve this but it has that result.

The real problem really can be boiled down to Player mentality. For example shortly after release it was discovered the fastest way to level was FATE's so no one did dungeons and everyone rode the FATE train. Path of least resistance created an influx of people all doing the same thing. It happened again with Hunts and is still happening. All other content gets hurt because players find the best way to do something and EVERYONE does it (figurative everyone, not literal everyone. I avoid hunts). Same thing happened when people found out that the Maelstrom was the "Winning team" in PvP, mass transfers to that company just because it was said they win more ended up almost breaking the PvP queue times and is the reason i switched away from Maelstrom.

It is happening with Balmung for two reasons as far as I can see. First is because it has been labeled the Unofficial RP server and Balmung is what pops up with a quick google search so new players will flock there for this alone. Not to mention those players have their friends and other people who go there, or some go there because they want to have a full server with lots of people to make friends with and group up with, etc.

Again, this is why I think my solution would be the best one for this situation but it will not be something that will happen over night. We can hope this kind of a thing will come along with the actual EU server that will be coming because at that point they will have to offer free transfers to players because there is no way of knowing how many people are on NA servers because it didnt make a difference between NA and EU. At that point all they would need to do is add a (PvP), (PvE), and (RP) next to a few select server names on all data centers and the problem will sort itself out. Will SE actually do this, I honestly couldnt tell you. Is the THE BEST solution? I have no idea, but I have given my reasons for it.

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

Any server can be a RP server if enough people who want to RP on it move there.

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Yes, any server can be an RP server but it helps to actually have that distinction when you are a new player looking at creating a character. Thats really all I'm saying. Do this and it will at least help the different player types get in a server with more like minded players. Especially for the PvP linkshells considering they are GC locked at the moment.