Petition to Terminate Restrictions on Transfer to “High Population” Servers

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Originally Posted by savageink

Come to Mal, we have pie.

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But eww, Malboros have bad breath!

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Originally Posted by Oaken

I wouldn't call a server where there actually appears to be people playing the game at various times of day "OVERPOPULATED," especially compared to servers that are actual dead ghost towns [i.e. - run around Limnsa and enjoy spotting 5-6 people, tops]. Forcing players to pick between friends and dividing players is poor policy that will ultimately result in subscription loss.

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Servers with half your population are ~there actually appears to be people playing the game at various times of day~. When it's so populated that its active population could sustain like 3 other very populated, healthy servers, that isn't okay. And Balmung/Gilgamesh are auto-locked constantly due to online players. Therefore, they're overpopulated. By the dev's and by anyone who actually stops to think about it's standards.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

I can't imagine why you'd think having an increased fee for subscription and transfers be a good idea. Why would the guy on Balmung would pay more than my Faerie subscription? Maintenance isn't more expensive, most of it is highly likely to be automated anyways. They're already adding incentives according to their announcement. We just don't have any details as to how much and what exactly it means. Your only good suggestion is #5 which would need to be backed up with free transfers to make sure a hardcore raider on Balmung could bail to a more like-minded server and vice-versa.

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In theory SE already has a double standard pricing structure. Not all players that meet the in game requirements can enjoy the same in game features. Actually cause by the over population due to assets available.

According to the graph posted higher in this thread, you can clearly see that Balmung was at 26k or so "active" players for the month of March. Balmung is anywhere from two to SIX times larger than the other servers. That's the definition of Overpopulated for you.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

Again, these are relatively minor disruptions to gameplay and impact a handful of hardcore PVE players. These minor disruptions pale in comparison to the very real threat of fragmenting the FFXIV community across many small servers and turning the game into a quasi-single player experience, which will cause subscribers to lose interest.

SE could support high population servers or implement actions similar to those discussed in the OP to mitigate population problems.

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Do you know what would need to go into re-design the game to accommodate your desires from it's current standards?

Also:
http://i.imgur.com/tOgJG44.png

That's a lot of only 5 people. That's only the aetheryte, too.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

In theory SE already has a double standard pricing structure. Not all players that meet the in game requirements can enjoy the same in game features. Actually cause by the over population due to assets available.

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Are you referring to the MogStation services like retainers and such? I see those as a sort of on-demand feature. Some may feel like 2 retainers are just not enough but others (like me) are satisfied. It all depends on perspective and what you get out of them.

How about no? Others servers need players also instead of everyone thinking they all need to go to the same server.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

The solution should not be to boost the populations of dead servers (which will remain sparse and dead -- see post above for detrimental effects), but to merge small population servers and devote resources to sustain high population servers. SE has the assets to do this, and if they do not, should simply raise subscription prices.

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I agree that some of the smallest servers could benefit from a merge, but you seem to be glossing over the midpop servers. Aether is not just "ghost towns + Balmung". With the temp lock + 4.0's launch, those mid population servers will fill in and hopefully even out some of the data center's lopsidedness.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

But eww, Malboros have bad breath!

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It's the pie.

On the bright side, once you have some you will never notice.

Simple: put Balmung and Gilgamesh on their own server tree, then put Bahamut, Mandragora, Chocobo, and Shinryu on their own as well.

That gives all 5 servers more room, since it'll just be those together on those groups.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

Are you referring to the MogStation services like retainers and such? I see those as a sort of on-demand feature. Some may feel like 2 retainers are just not enough but others (like me) are satisfied. It all depends on perspective and what you get out of them.

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I was being a touch off. In game does not refer to anything on mog station. In game would refer to features where you can get a house, but actually can't because of real world limitations. While cash could be considered a real world limitation it is not physically part of the world. Occasionally on Balmung when a new thing is added like Gold Saucer you can't actually do it. Why because they server can't/won't let that many people in.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

NO NO NO. This game has limited assets. The server should be closed and not open till they can balance those assets. Other games lock servers I have never seen whining like this on those forums.

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I don't agree with what the post wants.

Even if I don't agree with what he's asking for, this guy went through the trouble to put his concerns out in a respectful manor as best as he could. For you to just dismiss it as whining is just rude.

Delete Balmung, it's the only way to be sure ;)
Seriously, if building a (temporary) wall around Greg and the Balmy Army is what it takes to make Aether balanced....
Like, I get about the community thing, but the raid and RP communities kind of brought that upon themselves by not encouraging those scenes to grow elsewhere. Rather than fracturing, I think if anything, wouldn't the restrictions help those communities grow?

Wait, so not only the RP community in Balmung wants to put on restrictions on the server to force non-RPers out, but now it is being suggested that the subscription fee should be increased just so that they can get more people to join the club?

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Originally Posted by MaethusXion

Simple: put Balmung and Gilgamesh on their own server tree, then put Bahamut, Mandragora, Chocobo, and Shinryu on their own as well.

That gives all 5 servers more room, since it'll just be those together on those groups.

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That's not really how it works. The reason they end up instancing areas is because there are just too many people accessing the same areas at the same times.You can see the effect when you walk into a city after being in the country at high pop times. Letting even more people have access to the area is just going to bog it down more. 1 frame a second is uncool.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

I was being a touch off. In game does not refer to anything on mog station. In game would refer to features where you can get a house, but actually can't because of real world limitations. While cash could be considered a real world limitation it is not physically part of the world. Occasionally on Balmung when a new thing is added like Gold Saucer you can't actually do it. Why because they server can't/won't let that many people in.

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I see what you mean. Although for your Gold Saucer example, that's more a side effect of a new addition being popular in a high pop server. It's doesn't bar you indefinitely from the feature itself as it will eventually calm down a little over the next few days following release. Annoying true but hardly worth an increase or reduction of actual subscription pricing. You are not barred from the content, it's just at maximum capacity for what it can handle at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

Again, these are relatively minor disruptions to gameplay and impact a handful of hardcore PVE players. These minor disruptions pale in comparison to the very real threat of fragmenting the FFXIV community across many small servers and turning the game into a quasi-single player experience, which will cause subscribers to lose interest.

SE could support high population servers or implement actions similar to those discussed in the OP to mitigate population problems.

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But the lock out is only temporary as well. None of this is permanent, and is likely only happening to help with the expansion launch.

You say other people are exaggerating, but I think you're being a bit over the top yourself.

Chill. Balmung will stay the high pop server its always been.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

I see what you mean. Although for your Gold Saucer example, that's more a side effect of a new addition being popular in a high pop server. It's doesn't bar you indefinitely from the feature itself as it will eventually calm down a little over the next few days following release. Annoying true but hardly worth an increase or reduction of actual subscription pricing. You are not barred from the content, it's just at maximum capacity for what it can handle at the moment.

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Yes and that is completely fine. But you could say we are boht not able to enjoy the same in game content for the same sub. Which is why a lock is so good the rpers be damned. The servers have an finite amount of room and resources. It is SEs job to make sure that they distribute that server space evenly so we all have the same playing experience if all other factors are equal (pc,isp,in game ability).

I have accused SE of cash cowing transfers. Since these servers clearly have a problem. Now I don't understand they have and will really lock servers. So why did they let it get so out of control. If legacy Balmung had been locked at less then 10k. We would clearly have a second rp server and the rpers wouldn't be so bent out of shape. Or better the rping community would have left.

OP: "Empty servers are bad for business and bad for the game!"

Also OP: "SE, don't take any steps to populate empty servers, the big ones are all that matter."

You're literally arguing against yourself. You're pointing out all the ways that low-pop servers drag the game down, and fighting to ensure they stay low-pop.

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Originally Posted by TheAngelneer

Wait, so not only the RP community in Balmung wants to put on restrictions on the server to force non-RPers out, but now it is being suggested that the subscription fee should be increased just so that they can get more people to join the club?

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No. I think the RPers on Balmung are trying to find a new server to call their home with the free transfer coming up.

To the OP, I think it's unreasonable to increase everyone's subscription payments just to keep an over populated server up. I think that SE is doing the right thing by blocking off the high population servers, because the "lower" population servers (I see them as average population instead) will never be able to grow without that, as some have already said. With the free server transfers coming up, I think it's time for some willing people to try to branch out and find a new place to call their home. Though Mateus may be small, we're always looking for new neighbors (literally. Some houses have been open for so long that they've reached the lowest price they can go) to go on adventures with.

and i'm a little salty that you called average population servers ghost towns. just because we're small, doesn't mean there's literally no one in the main hubs >:c

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Originally Posted by floofuf

No. I think the RPers on Balmung are trying to find a new server to call their home with the free transfer coming up.

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I wouldn't call asking for the termination of transference restrictions in two threads in this forum so they can all go to Balmung "trying to find a new server to call home".

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

I have accused SE of cash cowing transfers. Since these servers clearly have a problem. Now I don't understand they have and will really lock servers. So why did they let it get so out of control. If legacy Balmung had been locked at less then 10k. We would clearly have a second rp server and the rpers wouldn't be so bent out of shape. Or better the rping community would have left.

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I suspect had more to do with something about the original 2.0 server structure not giving them the ability to lock transfers into Worlds. Transferring a newly created character into Balmung/Gilgamesh was originally a bypass discovered when character creation on those servers was locked. They may have wanted to do this long ago but were unable to until they moved the NA datacenter and updated the JP and EU datacenters.

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Originally Posted by TheAngelneer

I wouldn't call asking for the termination of transference restrictions in two threads in this forum so they can all go to Balmung "trying to find a new server to call home".

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I might've misunderstood your question? I just recall seeing a thread on Reddit a few hours or so ago about RPers on Balmung trying to find a new RP server. I didn't go back to see if anything happened in it, so I don't know if it was shot down. If I'm wrong, can you tell me why? I honestly don't know what's going on anymore x.x

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Originally Posted by floofuf

I might've misunderstood your question? I just recall seeing a thread of Reddit a few hours or so ago about RPers on Balmung finding a new RP server. If I'm wrong, can you tell me why? I honestly don't know what's going on anymore x.x

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They are talking about this thread and another thread on the forums saying no RPers will play because they can't get into balmung.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

I wouldn't call a server where there actually appears to be people playing the game at various times of day "OVERPOPULATED,"

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You mean like what I experience every day on Faerie?

Face it, your perception of the other servers has been so thoroughly warped by being on a server that has something like twice the population of everything else.

A perception so biased that it is useless in a discussion.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

They are talking about this thread and another thread on the forums saying no RPers will play because they can't get into balmung.

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Ooooh. Thank you for clearing that up! I had thought that RPers were getting tired of Balmung and wanted to find a new home server. I don't know why I thought that, to be honest. I hope everything works out in the end for them.

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Originally Posted by floofuf

I might've misunderstood your question? I just recall seeing a thread on Reddit a few hours or so ago about RPers on Balmung trying to find a new RP server. I didn't go back to see if anything happened in it, so I don't know if it was shot down. If I'm wrong, can you tell me why? I honestly don't know what's going on anymore x.x

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I suspect Balmung's playerbase isn't as unified as some RPer's think. Some are complaining about their friends not being able to transfer into Balmung like they planned, while others are seeing the benefit of transferring a large group from Balmung to somewhere with more room.

delet balmung as well as this thread

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Originally Posted by floofuf

I might've misunderstood your question? I just recall seeing a thread on Reddit a few hours or so ago about RPers on Balmung trying to find a new RP server. I didn't go back to see if anything happened in it, so I don't know if it was shot down. If I'm wrong, can you tell me why? I honestly don't know what's going on anymore x.x

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Oh yeah, I am talking about another thread in this forum This is what is getting us confused :P

In the other thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nd-Roleplayers) some people were saying that SE should make Balmung an official RP server and enforce restrictions on non-RPers (who should just suck it and transfer out).

My criticism is towards how entitled people coming here with these ideas are. They not only want to take over the server but also for other people to pay for their exclusive mega-server. I can only hope they are not representative of the RP community as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

while others are seeing the benefit of transferring a large group from Balmung to somewhere with more room.

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It actually calls to mind something I'd see a lot in the early days of WoW, where entire guilds would transfer to somewhat less populated servers in an effort to avoid the performance problems and queues that the server problems presented. None of that was really assisted by the company though like we're seeing here.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

Nice graph and allegations about login queues. It's a shame I can't really reduce to graph format what running through various zones on a high population server like Balmung or Gilgamesh (or other high population servers -- i.e. - large, healthy, active open world communities) looks like compared to most other servers (i.e. - ghost towns, terrible economy, minimal interaction between players, etc.). The bell curve on that graph would be a marvel to behold.

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Are you kidding? Balmung has one of the worst economies.

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Originally Posted by TheAngelneer

Oh yeah, I am talking about another thread in this forum This is what is getting us confused :P

In the other thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nd-Roleplayers) some people were saying that SE should make Balmung an official RP server and enforce restrictions on non-RPers (who should just suck it and transfer out).

My criticism is towards how entitled people coming here with these ideas are. They not only want to take over the server but also for other people to pay for their exclusive mega-server. I can only hope they are not representative of the RP community as a whole.

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I see now. Man, some people take their servers very seriously I guess. I don't think they're representative of the whole RP community. The people calling for changes all have different ideas on how this ordeal should be handled and want to share them with us. All will sort itself out in time.

Blocking more people from transferring is the right move. Frankly, I don't think they should remove the block even after the SB launch until server pops level out. I just wish they also implemented free transfers out.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Blocking more people from transferring is the right move. Frankly, I don't think they should remove the block even after the SB launch until server pops level out. I just wish they also implemented free transfers out.

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I think they will be. If so, my friends and I are contemplating moving.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I think they will be. If so, my friends and I are contemplating moving.

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Come to Mateus!! We have spots for many people in our FC :D

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I just wish they also implemented free transfers out.

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From the wording of the post, they will. But to specific servers rather than from specific servers.

* Transfers to designated Worlds will be free of charge.

The "newly created Worlds" have their own slightly separate section (like, one extra line between the "designated" and "newly created" bullet points) on the Lodestone post. The newly created Worlds could be (and probably are) designated Worlds, but it wasn't stated as specific to new Worlds.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

[B][U]-OP snip-

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I'm going to try to take this piece by piece, bare with me.. I tend to ramble.

1. Prohibiting transfers

Prohibiting transfers only divides friends if there is no way to play with them. ATM that is not the case with the new cross server tech they are implementing. Yoshi-P has stated in interviews that this tech would be expanded on over the course of time. The only discouragement as a new player coming in is how long it may take you to get up to current content (MSQ's).

2. High pop servers

This is just blatantly false. People come and people go, all for different reasons. Back in WoW during BC - WotLK Argent Dawn was one of the biggest servers, now it's not. I've known a few people who were always sniffing around for a new FC to play with, they don't play any more. Just because it's a high pop server does not necessitate subscription. Otherwise there would be NO people on the current smaller servers.

3. Server transfers and RP

You're being a bit overly dramatic on this one considering these restrictions are temporary. They won't be here permanently. Could it cause a little stagnation, possibly, but we have 20,000+ people on the server. Branch out and meet new people and learn to interweave your RP with more and more people.

4. Economic health, player-run events, user-content, = increased sub retention

First part.. HA. ARR relic quests that involved Materia IV that had a chance to blow up in your face. That's 600,000 (that's the low end) to 900,000 gil that you may have just wasted, if you were buying them. And you needed I think 10 (correct me if I'm wrong)! Player ran economy is a player run economy. More people or less, it can spiral out of control real easily.

Player run events, no arguments. More people does potentially lead to the possibility of more player events. User-content I'm lumping in under player events.

About the increased sub retention. I covered it up above, people come and people go, all for different reasons. I've seen crafters and gathers leave just as I've seen RPers and raiders leave. It depends on the person and their set of circumstances in not only game, but also life that dictates whether they stay or go.

5. Problems over exaggerated

No. No they are not. The Heavensward launch was dreadful. Between server stability and crashes and the 40+ minute queues to just to get in game and that's if you didn't lose connection attempting to log in or if the server didn't crash in-between. Not to mention the more players on a server the more animosity that's generated between players. For instance the vast majority of hunt complaints came; mostly, from the high pop servers all with the same complaints of early pulls and resetting of the mob. High pop servers aren't always sunshine and rainbows.

6. Numerous solutions to overpopulation

(1) This isn't a solution. It's just as potentially detrimental as closing off a server. "I bought the game, but if I want to be on the same server as my friend I have to pay a higher rate for a transfer due to highpop?" would literally be the next newest never ending complaint

(2) I thought I read somewhere that this was happening? Maybe I'm getting it mixed up with something I read that someone was suggesting elsewhere. >.>

(3) Fully agreed on this one. Though they do it more behind the scenes, it sometimes doesn't feel like it's enough.

(4) This would also be more detrimental to the game than a boost. Resource wise it could be good, but not at the cost of potentially chasing away current subs. I know a couple of people where this would be a deal breaker for them. Again, this would fall on a person to person basis.

(5) Again something I agree on, and it's something we've asked for back in 2.0 and I believe even back in 1.0 if memory serves. And I believe Yoshi had commented about it, though it's eluding memory.

(6) This, if I'm not mistaken; I don't recall hearing of it's permanent removal, is already in the game, but currently turned off due to lesser congestion. Though I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see it's come back for Stormblood.

They could spend money and resources on rebuilding/redesigning their back end of the game, but I think they really want to focus on getting more into the game itself.

Have to remember that this restriction is temporary. How long is temporary? That we'll have to wait and see

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Originally Posted by floofuf

Come to Mateus!! We have spots for many people in our FC :D

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Careful. All the empty house plots here might just leave them dumbstruck.

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Originally Posted by Keydah

From the wording of the post, they will. But to specific servers rather than from specific servers.

* Transfers to designated Worlds will be free of charge.

The "newly created Worlds" have their own slightly separate section (like, one extra line between the "designated" and "newly created" bullet points) on the Lodestone post. The newly created Worlds could be (and probably are) designated Worlds, but it wasn't stated as specific to new Worlds.

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From what I understand those are EU worlds

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

From what I understand those are EU worlds

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I think they want people off of balmung and gilgamesh, or they wouldnt have gone this far. I'm 99% sure a lot of aether and primal worlds will be designated.