Merge two of the lowest pop "empty" servers, then, and use the freed resources for a new server. Yes, it takes money, but at some point that's got to stop being an excuse. SE's job is to invest money into the game to make a profit. The situation on Balmung right now is not okay, people are losing faith in SE, people are getting so fed up they are quitting or considering it because they can't stand being on Balmung anymore but don't want to be parted from their friends and the largest RP community. We've put up with the long queues and the server crashes, the ridiculous lack of housing and contradicting info about what can or can't be done in regards to people "flipping" houses, the lack of fresh faces in the community and the inability to play on the same server as friends who are just picking up the game, and now the economy is absolutely tanking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
People are either saving ridiculous amounts of gil to buy houses at multiple times their actual cost from other players, or they already have their house or have foregone that madness and have instead already bought all the things they want and need. There are no new players and no new characters being made. There's jump potions available atm so even classes and characters people haven't gotten around to leveling yet don't need low-level gear and food etc. when they can just get boosted to a high level instead of grinding out levels. No one is buying anything. Prices are super low and they drop drastically every day, sometimes every hour, sometimes in minutes. Undercutting is out of hand. Things just aren't selling. Making gil is nearly impossible, yet if you want a house, you need to save up a few dozen mil for a small plot and risk getting in trouble for buying it from another player. If you need to clear out your inventory, you'll have better luck trashing what you have or vendoring it, because otherwise your retainers will be sitting full of things listed on the marketboard for weeks. It's getting out of hand and it's long past time SE does something about it when no other fix has been more than a band-aid at best.
We have seen how Mateus's population blew up so quickly when it was named the unofficial, secondary RP server. There's not a chance that at least the same level of interest wouldn't be generated by an official RP server.
Locking Balmung/Gilgamesh is not working
Printable View
-
10-23-2017, 12:35 PMD-chan
-
10-23-2017, 12:46 PMValkyrie_Lenneth
server merges are NEVER the way to go, unless a game is dying out completely.
Adding more people to Balmung won't make the prices increase, they will go down further, supply/demand -
10-23-2017, 12:52 PMD-chanServer merges are what happens when a company has made a mistake. Sometimes that mistake is vastly overestimating how many servers they will need, or making poor choices that turn people away from the game and make the number of active players drop. Sometimes that mistake is letting one server get grossly overpopulated and doing nothing about it until it was too late and locking it indefinitely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
-
10-23-2017, 12:57 PMValkyrie_LennethSo you are telling me, if they merged 2 small servers to make way for an "RP" server, the people on the smaller servers would get upset over losing their houses, possibly names, and FC's, and that would be less of an issue than the current problem on Balmung? They did do something about the overpopulation. Free, unrestricted server transfers, but people didn't want to leave their 8 linkshells and 200+ friends, so by their own choice, they stay on a server with population issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by D-chan
The game has also had the most active players since the release of 3.0.
For the record, my character was created on Besaid in 2010. That got merged into Balmung. When they offered up the free transfers, my group took advantage of it. We made our choice, you made yours. You can't blame SE for your decision. -
10-23-2017, 01:04 PMreiichiPeople keep bringing up an unofficial census based on special rules that designate an "active" player. That doesn't speak about people who only come back for an expansion or just for a patch for new savage raid content. From my understanding, Gilgamesh is one of those servers. Sure, it's population looks smaller right now, but it's still active enough to be closed. And its active population will likely spike when 4.2 drops and there's new gear and new Omega to run. Right now, 4.1 hasn't really changed anything gear-wise for PvE players. They're likely saving on their subscription costs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rita1989
But let's assume that per datacenter, the number of players all evened out so each server has the same amount of people. Come patch/expansion time, we'd still run into login queues, duty finder issues, and private instance issues because those are datacenter-wide issues. Sure, some of the server-wide issues might be temporarily alleviated, but the current transfer incentives aren't quite enough in my opinion. They were for people looking for an out. Not for the people who want in. -
10-23-2017, 01:10 PMD-chanWhen exactly did I tell you that? Please show me? You aren't going to get anywhere in trying to make a point by putting words in my mouth. Yes, they would be upset. The same as people on Balmung are upset now. The same as many people on Mateus and elsewhere are upset they can't be on Balmung/with the larger portion of the RP community. The same as many people who had been on Mateus prior to the free transfers were upset when their server was flooded with RPers, their population blew up, and the houses were bought out. Shit happens, there isn't much you can do to help a large number of people without upsetting a smaller number of people. Yes, some names might be lost, I don't see how FC's would be lost since I've never seen guilds get disbanded in a server merge in any other MMO (but maybe I'm missing some detail here?), and as for housing, I think before anything else, SE needs to rework the housing system. After all, making an official RP server and then not letting people transfer their house there or even guaranteeing they could purchase a new one there would be no fix at all for the issues at hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
If the "something" SE did was so ineffective and unappealing to players that it hardly made a dent in the overpopulation problem, then it wasn't a helpful "something." And I'm not denying that attempts were made, rather that they were, in my own words and not the ones you made up for me, done "too late." I can't blame SE for my decisions. I can, however, blame them for their own mistakes. -
10-23-2017, 01:13 PMValkyrie_Lenneth
Then whats the point of merging servers, if the people who would be upset is equal to those currently upset? That would just transfer the anger from one population to another, and solve nothing. Really what needs to happen is the RP community needs to not be stuck on 1 server, and they need to split themselves up. Because no matter what happens, you won't ever be able to fit all past, present, and future RPers on one server, and for the most part, my understanding is that they only want to be on the biggest RP server. They only moved/chose Mateus when they had no other choice.
-
10-23-2017, 01:25 PMreiichiThey tried before on Gilgamesh and it worked decently in 2.X. It didn't stay alive that well after.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
Smaller groups of RPers have also congregated on other servers like Siren and Jenova, but there was never a really organized effort until Balmung was locked to transfers. At that time, Mateus was very vocal. And EU players also decided that it would perhaps be wise to have an unofficial server that wasn't a sea and a continent away from them. This isn't some easily fixed problem. It's on the players and on SE for any solution to -really- work. Otherwise, coordinated player efforts will either be missed or ignored, or will fill up and lock another server. Efforts by just SE will anger the players somewhere.
It's also tough to group all RPers together because there really isn't -that- strong of a community bond. Rather, it's more like a bunch of individual groups with some decent overlap that may or may not coordinate on hub sites like the RPC or tag appropriately on select-what-you-see social media like tumblr. -
10-23-2017, 01:31 PMD-chanYou've asserted that there are numerous "empty" servers out there, that doesn't sound "equal" to the number of people currently miffed about the server locks? A lot of us enjoy RPing in MMO's because it feels like a complete world that's "alive" around you when you're in a big RP community where you can usually always find other people IC or RP events going on. Smaller communities don't always have that feel, and large vs small communities have other pros and cons. But naturally, a lot of role-players are going to gravitate toward... well, a lot of role-players.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
We have split ourselves up, numerous times. We knew Balmung would be too crowded at 2.0's launch, so Gilgamesh was designated an alternative RP server. That fizzled out eventually as the game started calm, and most of them transferred to Balmung. Balmung began to get very crowded, people who wanted something smaller or who just missed the memo that there was an unofficial RP server began to make small RP communities across various servers. Then with the server lock and the queue time hell, there was a bigger push to make a secondary RP server hub and Mateus was chosen. True, some people who were just joining the game didn't have a choice and had to default to Mateus. But plenty of people on Balmung willingly chose to transfer or make characters on Mateus. They absolutely had a choice.
RP communities are not incapable of dividing when it's in our best interests. However, most of us are fine with a crowded server. Again, no one here has any illusions about an RP server ever not being crowded. In any MMO, no matter how many RP servers they are and whether they are official or unofficial, there's typically one that's "the" RP server that attracts the majority of the RP community. We're not asking for it to not be crowded. We're asking to no longer have our server be one that's been sequestered and slowly suffocated. There's nothing stopping there from being multiple RP servers even in terms of official RP servers, it's not unheard for MMO's to make a new RP server when the previous RP server is too crowded, so "there are too many RPers for one official RP server" isn't much of an argument because... there doesn't have to be just one? -
10-23-2017, 01:42 PMEnla
The only reason SE hasn't server merged up until this point is because doing so if often seen as an indication of decay within an MMO's structure. Yet there are plenty of servers even on the Aether network that could probably benefit from it. The server closures of Balmung and Gilgamesh can only 'fix' the issue so much without ruining those two servers and we're fastly getting to the point where inflation is at an all time high. The continued lock is only going to cause more issues going forward without SE taking a long hard look at their server infrastructure and making a few potentially tough calls about what they want going forward. They need to upgrade their capacity on all ends no matter what side of the equation you're on however. The introduction of 4.1 was a clown show for most people because of the limitations of their current technology and as the game continues to grow and expand there's going to come time when their present best simply won't be enough.
-
10-23-2017, 02:09 PMRokke
I think some of yall are underestimating how much of a population increase Aether's servers have seen. If SE wanted to go the server merge route, they would have had to have done it before 4.0, when the lopsidedness was at its peak. The "small" servers are too big to combine now.
If you do not like the lock, you are literally free to leave. Thats what SE is counting on :P -
10-23-2017, 08:42 PMMature
Just because a bunch of few "RP" , doesn't mean the whole server does "RP". Which it seems to be the minority
Stop with this moronic request -
10-23-2017, 08:45 PMAraxesNo. Balmung florished because people like to Troll RP'ers to make themselves feel better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
-
10-23-2017, 10:18 PMGun-Cat
I actually like the fact that Balmung is closed of. It has a healthy economy, I have never gotten a single gil seller message since ARR and most importent, it has something of a community. People think twice before they transfer away because it is a one way ticket as it stands. Also, can't confirm that the cities are dead. Sure they are not as crowded as Kugane, but I usually am seeing people RPing in Gridania or Limsa. Let's not mention Ul'Dah.
So yes, I wouldn't mind seeing how it turns out of they kept Balmung closed for SB. Does it suck for people wanting to join Balmung? Yes, very much so, but if the SB launch showed us anything than that SE quite literally can not handle Gilga or 'mung as it stands. -
10-23-2017, 10:41 PMVelthice
lmao at requesting cannibalizing small servers to make another rp server. How entitled can you be? How about instead SE smash balmung into 3 servers, and label 2 of them rp? How would that make you feel then?
Seriously think about what you're requesting and the people it affects -
10-23-2017, 11:22 PMNanaWilohSaid this on a thread related to Gilga population, the census bases its info on lodestone updates. The lodestone only updates when a player logs into the game, so the census does not represent a realms true population by any regard. Gilga and Balmung have populations far bigger then what the census is showing which why they are still locked. Its not the active population that is being looked at by SE its the actual population of offline and online players.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rita1989
-
10-23-2017, 11:39 PMZojhaThen the locks make little sense, though, because other realms that are not locked for character creation have considerably more characters than Balmung/Gilga. In fact, Balmung/Gilga are among the least populated realms "total", they're only the highest for "active" players, i.e. players who had their lodestone updated in the tallying period.Quote:
Originally Posted by NanaWiloh
More likely than that, SE simply has a high inertia regarding the Gilgamesh lock or fears people would flock to it again right away. -
10-23-2017, 11:52 PMNanaWilohActivity does not represent realm population. A realm can have the highest activity but does not mean it has the highest population. The census is a measure of activity nothing more nothing less using to measure realm population is a mistake.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zojha
-
10-24-2017, 12:14 AMValkyrie_LennethYes, thousands of people decided to play on Balmung to troll RP'ers. This is ridiculous lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Araxes
-
10-24-2017, 12:16 AMNanaWilohHello I am ridiculous nice to meet you!! :D Sorry couldnt help it just trying to lighten things up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth
-
10-24-2017, 12:29 AMZojhaYes. And in their lodestone surveys, people have counted INACTIVE characters as well and I've just told you that in terms of population, Balmung actually has a very small population. In fact, it has THE SMALLEST total population. Zalera has twice as many characters. At the same time, Zalera has (or had) the least amount of active characters (among NA realms), because most of them are dead toons, banned RMT accounts, dead trial accounts etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by NanaWiloh
IF your theory held merit and they'd look at the total population, they'd lock Zalera but not Balmung. That's ridiculous. Only active characters that actually strain the servers by logging in count. -
10-24-2017, 12:48 AMNanaWilohWell then I stand corrected. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Zojha
-
10-24-2017, 04:18 AMTevatron
I was really tempted to edit this into my original post because there's a fundamental flaw in logic I've seen in a lot of responses that needs to be addressed, but I'm going to risk it being lost and just post it here.
The idea that closing off a system necessarily makes it unstable is just an assumption you can make about systems. That's just a rule of how things work. Nothing in day-to-day life is put into a stable configuration by isolating it from outside influences. It is axiomatic in the same way that it's an axiom to say, "Two lines that are parallel on a flat plane don't intersect." You can argue whether or not it's unfair to make Balmung and Gilgamesh unstable (or metastable if you prefer) for the sake of other servers. You can easily guess where I'd come down in that argument. You can't, however, argue isolating Balmung and Gilgamesh makes them broadly healthier. That's not how things work.
I will totally accept the idea long queues and people using exploits to stay logged in during content releases are a problem, but those are problems with potential solutions that don't involve creating additional systemic problems that affect one hundred per cent of those communities' playerbases. You cannot convince me it is technically impossible to add more wards to Balmung and you certainly can't convince me making automatic logouts a standard part of content releases so people don't idle for eight hours a day is an inferior option compared to isolating two communities and their respective economies.
I hate to bust out some economics here because it sounds really hoity toity, but it is a true and simple fact to say it is VERY HARD to convince people to do something by making something they're already doing less attractive. That's how utility works. That's how agents make choices. There is literally a recent Nobel Prize about this exact thing. If Square Enix wants people to make better choices in regards to what servers they play on, the objectively better option is to provide a positive incentive to make those choices.
(Technical note for the pedantic types out there. Obviously, I'm talking about dynamic systems. Systems with high entropy can be isolated, but at that point you're talking about thermodynamics and comparing a server of living, interacting people to a hypothetical, high-entropy system is silly.) -
10-24-2017, 04:42 AMTaleraRistain
They should split Balmung and Gilgamesh up into new servers. Then, allow free transfers for a period in case people have gotten split up from friends/family. But keep an eye to make sure none of the new servers get too overloaded. People aren't going to leave these overcrowded servers, so SE needs to do something to handle the effect they have on the rest of the data center.
-
10-24-2017, 07:09 AMD-chanIf it meant we'd have two officially labeled RP servers and two new servers in general, and that no servers were indefinitely locked anymore, I'd be pretty happy! That is... exactly what we're hoping for??? After all, we were asking for additional servers when someone complained about all the "empty" servers already in the game, hence why server merges to supplement the addition of an RP server was brought up to begin with??Quote:
Originally Posted by Velthice
I don't understand how people are calling a request as simple as wishing to play on a server the same as any other or have a designated place for RPers when people are showing such obvious disdain for us here in this very thread is "entitled" and "stupid" yet the same people are getting so offended by the idea of us wanting, well, to play like on any other server like it's not a whole level past entitlement to get furious at the idea of other people wanting the same experience as you with no expense to yourself.
(Also, in regards to another post, a lack of gold sellers does not denote a good economy, all it means is that the server is, in fact, closed. The economy is abysmal right now.) -
10-24-2017, 08:40 AM347SPECTREAll this would do is cause FFXIV to a lose massive amount of subs.Quote:
Originally Posted by TaleraRistain
-
10-24-2017, 09:15 AMMoonliteThat is probably more a design issue. A large percentage of players that are more then casual and not enough gil leaving the game. Also the fact that a lot of items can be produced by the game/server in an unlimited quantity.Quote:
Originally Posted by D-chan
The other servers should fear the day Balmung is allowed a cross server AH. You think we see complaint threads about aggressive pricing now. -
10-24-2017, 09:17 AMBubblyBoarWhich is funny, cause earlier suggestions in this topic by other people about merging servers to make room for RP servers would do the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by 347SPECTRE
In all honesty, what SE is doing now is working perfectly. And with topics like these, you know the whole thing is working. The stubborn are slowly becoming less stubborn and those less stubborn than others will start to leave the server and free them up. People are kicking and screaming harder than ever because they are close to their breaking point and about to give in to exactly what SE wants. And as long as SE keeps it up, the war of attrition will win and people will either leave, or watch their friends leave until the population have calmed down.
Keep it up SE! -
10-24-2017, 09:57 AMMilesian
I play with plenty of non-rpers and have had friends join who aren't rpers. My desire for an official rp server is very very low, especially given how bad the communities of other game's 'official rp servers' have been. The devs explained exactly what my problem is with the whole thing and I'm glad their decision seems to be leaving the servers without 'tags' attached. There is no need for them - and the argument that we have to use outside resources is hardly going to change anything. Any MMO with or without an official rp server tends to use outside sites and resources to bring its rp community together.
-
10-24-2017, 10:24 AMD-chanYour idea is basically for SE to make people so frustrated and unhappy that they quit and you don't see how ultimately that is neither in the best interests of SE nor the players?Quote:
Originally Posted by BubblyBoar
-
10-24-2017, 11:27 AMVelthiceI don't care that you're an rper, not at all not 1%. What I care about is that you think people completely uninvolved with your server should lose their homes and their community so that yours can grow. That's disgusting, and that's entirely on you.Quote:
Originally Posted by D-chan
The entire point of the lock is to make the server bleed players until it equalizes out with everyone else on the aether datacenter. Big servers are over, you can't have them anymore no matter how much you want them. If people are transferring off that's good, great even. If people are so stubborn that they'd rather quit, well that's unfortunate that they have that attitude but it serves the same purpose anyway. We can coulda shoulda woulda all day but this is what we got so people have to deal. if square was going to change their minds they would have a while ago because there have been much bigger, louder threads than this. -
10-24-2017, 11:51 AM347SPECTRE
I honestly don't mind the lock. Yeah it sucks we won't see any new players for the foreseeable future buuut, the damn server (Balmung at least) are so big that you can still run into new faces everyday. Also the addition of more cross-server features (cross-server FC, possibly hang out instances, etc...) would even alleviate the lack of new players problem, if and when SE decides to implement them.
-
10-24-2017, 01:22 PMPerkPrincessNo one wants a big server.Quote:
Originally Posted by Velthice
Where are you getting this?
People just want direction from SE on what sort of communities they should foster on what servers.
It's a basic tagging of servers. -
10-24-2017, 01:23 PMAngelCheese77Heh. I laugh when I read this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shofie
EverQuest 2 made a server for RPing .. Antonia Bayle. Even set it up as one. RP preferred they labeled it. And it grew. With both RPers and non-RPers. And guess what? There is more griefing from the NON-RPers than anyone else.
Why would non-RPers come to AB then if it's RP preferred? Because of the server numbers. People go where there are lots of people.
So I have to dismiss such a silly thought from Squeenix. Anyone can be a jerk, whether you RP or not. Makes zero difference. -
10-24-2017, 01:33 PMAldotsk
Balmung won't open for 2 years, even after half population moves out of the server. Why? Because the moment they open the gate again, majority people will want to head back to Balmung for their convenient leisure.
Server will really stay closed for next 2-3 expansions. Maybe then they will forget about that server.
Sadly, I think people in Balmung are stuck to stay because of not just RP, but convenience of cheap prices in MB. -
10-24-2017, 02:37 PMD-chanDo you know what server merges are and how they do very little but group the people from two or more servers onto one? Did you miss the part where I explicitly stated before anything else the housing system needs reworked, including the ability to transfer housing between servers? Do you think these allegedly "empty" servers have enough of a "community" already and enough people in said community (who would actually be upset by a merge) that more damage would be done than the damage that is faced by Balmung, Gilgamesh, and any other server that may be locked in the future if it grows big enough and SE finds no other solution? Do you really think a small number of people shouldn't face a slight inconvenience to greatly improve circumstances for a larger number of people? "That's disgusting, and that's entirely on you," I suppose.Quote:
Originally Posted by Velthice
I know MMO players think server merges herald the death of a game and the end of the world as we know it, probably due to them usually happening when a game overestimates its own popularity or loses a lot of active players, but that's obviously not the case here. Resources need to be redistributed where they're needed.
Honestly, I don't really give a crap if servers are or aren't merged, but if naysayers are going to swoop in and cite "too many empty servers already!!" as an excuse to shoot down everyone's ideas and never let anyone else have anything nice because the problems don't affect them personally, I'll sure suggest them. Hell, I don't even know if there are servers low pop enough compared to others to be considered "empty" at this point, I haven't looked at numbers, but if that's the argument someone is gonna pull, I will gladly give the logical solution to it. -
10-24-2017, 03:12 PMRokkeI mentioned it pages ago: Aethers "empty" servers aren't empty anymore. Balmung is large enough to be split into two smaller servers, but the other servers are too large to be combined- So yes, combining two servers for Balmung's sake would be grossly unfair for whoever is on the merging end. Balmung's problem is Balmung's problem, and this is coming from someone on Balmung.Quote:
Originally Posted by D-chan
-
10-24-2017, 03:19 PMD-chanI'm not trying to claim that's not the case, as I mentioned in the latter half of that post--just if there being "empty" servers was actually an issue as one person was alleging as a reason against creating an RP server, merges could be an obvious solution. If the servers aren't empty, so be it! That was never my claim and never my argument.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rokke
-
10-24-2017, 03:23 PMSindele
There's really no true solution other than a forced split into new servers that has an acceptable degree of success without some kind of breakthrough on server capacity (and even then, there are functional capacity issues that simply raising the limit couldn't fix).
Positive incentives? How much can you realistically offer that would be 'enough' to induce major change without having a disproportionate impact on the destination servers? And now that the precedent has been set that you can sit there and wait for another bigger offer to roll around, how do you keep people from just calling it as a bluff and holding out for sweeter offers that cater to them?
The current lock is absolutely the most player-friendly state it could be in, and any argument to the contrary hasn't really thought it through. Sure, they could remove the lock, and uncap the queues. That would probably get more people to transfer out, ironically, as people get sick of being stuck in slammed multiple-thousand-deep queues that take hours to flush out every time they want to log in and play, like a Stormblood launch period that never ends. It'd never really fix the problem, though, as much as fall infinitely towards whatever the queue's equilibrium point is and generate thousands upon thousands more forum posts of rage.
It's split or status quo. The idea that anything else would be effective is daydreaming at best.
E: Also, just to pre-empt it, yes, I'm entirely aware that a server split would be a fantastically ugly salt mine. But there's no real 'win' option here, just varying degrees of 'lose less'. -
10-24-2017, 03:35 PMBigRed5392
as much as id like to see a RP datacenter.
What you want rarely happens, My time in WoW taught me RP tags don't work.I tried to join an rp server on WoW and rarely found rp. It was just lil plays you "watch" or erp/trolling.
you guys should look into hardcore rp based MuD, tons exist, and the admin enforce the rules. gil and balmung needed to be closed, they were breaking the Aether datacenter.