Square: You need to open servers before this community is slowly choked

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Originally Posted by Elspath

10 years ago mmo's had server stability where housing districts were infinite and DDoS wasnt even a problem because the servers were stable.

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Which miraculous server were you playing in, that didn't had problem with DDoS? League of Legends that is a HUGE game with a lot more incoming than FFXIV had problems for almost two weeks with DDoS and it were a lot worse than here, World of Warcraft and all other blizzard games from time to time have their problem with DDoS, even sony and microsoft suffers a lot with attacks like that.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Most people play with standard pentiums or AMD a5 APU's, lol. The minority has gaming rigs like that, and I am included int he minority. I have a 4770k and a GTX980ti, hence me never having issues when lots of people are on screen or during Odin and Ixion.

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I have a new Ryzen build with way overkill to handle this game i 90K'd alot during early SB on Ixion fate. Now it never happens so im theory something was adjusted on servers/SE end as i'm running with same hardware.

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Originally Posted by Elspath

10 years ago mmo's had server stability where housing districts were infinite and DDoS wasnt even a problem because the servers were stable.

FFXIV is BEHIND on server tech and has some of the worse servers I have ever seen in a MMO to DATE!

PLUS FFXIV is one of the most expensive MMOs with a high price entry fee, month subscription, with optional subscription add on's AND a in game item store that is bigger and more expensive then MOST free to play mmos (only one i have seen with a bigger in game store is Star Wars Old Republic but that game is free to play with optional monthly)

So what do we get for all the money square is draining from its community? Dont know but its not in the lack luster content that has been slowly shrinking this past year. (one freaking dungeon that can be finished in less then 15 min)

If I wasn't one of the lucky few that owns a house I would cancel my subscription.

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Your whole post is BS. FF is not behind and has no bad servers, its also not so expensive, the shop is not bigger than in f2p games and SWTOR is not a real f2p.

You only want to start a fire with your BS. Not to mention that you just pay your sub because of your house. If the game is so bad for you not even the house would make it worth to play a monthly fee to play sims..

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

Now it never happens so im theory something was adjusted on servers/SE end as i'm running with same hardware.

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Or the majority of us simply just don't go and kill Ixion any more. Once you have enough horns to trade in for the item(s) you want, there really is no incentive to go back and kill him again.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Or the majority of us simply just don't go and kill Ixion any more. Once you have enough horns to trade in for the item(s) you want, there really is no incentive to go back and kill him again.

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Well, that's why I still do it cause i got my mount pre nerf and going back casually whenver i know its up to collect rest of the newly added items.

As a fc leader it’s become close to impossible to recruit. I’ve half given up for the time being. I’m starting to lose interest in the community since it is so stagnant. Transferring isn’t an option for me right now due to housing, I don’t want to lose my fc or personal house. Plus the friends I do have are here. It needs opened though, or something needs to be done. I’m willing to stick through launch day instabilities to be on a large, thriving server.

More snowflakes thinking Balmung is the be all and end all. Sucks for you but that's what happens when you pack a server like a clown car.

Why are you so against opening it then? I and many other have been and are still willing to deal with instabilities. If it doesn’t affect you why are you against it and name-calling those that desire to see new players without giving up their long established home?

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Originally Posted by Titor

Why are you so against opening it then? I and many other have been and are still willing to deal with instabilities. If it doesn’t affect you why are you against it and name-calling those that desire to see new players without giving up their long established home?

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If you're still asking these questions (that have been answered time and time again on these forums) then you have bigger concerns to worry about.

This is my first time seeing a thread like this, and my statement has not been answered. Apologies for not spending my whole life on the forums to read every thread as you seem to do.

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Originally Posted by Titor

Why are you so against opening it then? I and many other have been and are still willing to deal with instabilities. If it doesn’t affect you why are you against it and name-calling those that desire to see new players without giving up their long established home?

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Unless you can speak for all, or atleast a clear majority of Balmung's players, saying you and "many others" are willing to deal with server instabilities (and what could potentially culminate in downright corruption if your character data. Bet you'd love that now wouldnt you?) far from means anything

I understand the will to see the influx of new players, but frankly, where I'm standing you picked your poison when you joined what is probably the most well known server for atleast the english speaking community (I knew about Balmung and it's status as a "RP server" before even starting FF14 ffs)

As many have said before me, you cant eat your cake and still have it.
No ammount of complaining is gonna change that, especially when the problem is players being stubborn

Balmung =/= the entire player population of FF XIV. I know this is a shocking concept for you, but there are dozens of other thriving servers for FF XIV out there who will continue to support SE even as Balmung thins out.

So as large and important as you believe Balmung to be, you're still a minority of FF XIV players. And frankly, this self-centered attitude is, at its core, exactly why we can't stand all this unlocking whining.

Alright then, guess I can’t argue with that. Time to relinquish my personal house and tell the remaining group of people in my dwindling fc farewell. After saying bye to the 5 or so good friends I’ve been hanging out with for the last three years, I’ll make my transfer for the sake of meeting some new people.

Which server should I head to?

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Originally Posted by Titor

Alright then, guess I can’t argue with that. Time to relinquish my personal house and tell the remaining group of people in my dwindling fc farewell. After saying bye to the 5 or so good friends I’ve been hanging out with for the last three years, I’ll make my transfer for the sake of meeting some new people.

Which server should I head to?

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None. It sounds like you have everything you need. Balmung will unlock when it's size shrinks to a point of parity with the bulk of the other servers. What you guys call 'dead' most of us call Friday night. The big server feel may go away but you still have houses, friends, and your realm of choice.

FFXIV is weird in the sense that its a 6th gen MMORPG that still has severs. Many 4th and 5th gen use the megaserver setup and instance the zones as needed. Even WoW is doing this by instancing their 'phases' (they don't have zones in the same way other games do).

They should consider doing this with FFXIV, you choose NA, EU, or JP as your server and zones spread out people in multiple instances as needed. Combining resources to service all would be more efficient. Locked servers use the same as low-dead servers whose hardware is really going to waste. They'd just have to bite the greed bullet on server transfer revenue.

I don't think it's a matter of locked servers. The elephant in the room is that SE doesn't do a good job of getting people to stay playing.

The content model we have encourages raidlogging, and stormblood made it worse by being more or less an extension of Heavensward, not it's own expansion. By this I mean that we do more or less exactly the same things we did in HW, with no real variation or unique aspect to the game. While people leveled their mains, the game was busy. Now that people have done so, there simply isn't enough fresh content to keep people playing.

I think SE knows this too, which is why they wound up repeating a couple of past events. Even then, the current content model is tired, and on locked servers, there aren't enough newbies coming in to replace the raidloggers/patchquitters. But if the current population were still playing, there's be much less of an issue.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Mateus and Omega exist as alternatives for those seeking role-play. The latter is, however, currently locked down as well. There's also pockets of role-players scattered across other servers.

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Can we please quit telling people to go to X server to RP. Seriously, no server has an RP tag, you are free to RP on all servers. If you insist on swarming one or 2 servers with RPers you'll just end up creating another Balmung situation.

Spread out, expose more people to RP, make some new converts. Quit isolating yourselves and complaining about stagnation and lock outs.

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Originally Posted by Mysterysword

Balmung =/= the entire player population of FF XIV. I know this is a shocking concept for you, but there are dozens of other thriving servers for FF XIV out there who will continue to support SE even as Balmung thins out.

So as large and important as you believe Balmung to be, you're still a minority of FF XIV players. And frankly, this self-centered attitude is, at its core, exactly why we can't stand all this unlocking whining.

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This 100%, and I state that being one who left Balmung during SB early access (was there all of HW). Ended up with a personal house and an upgraded FC house, among other things. Wouldn’t go back even if it were free.

Gonna get massacred for this but... one of the bigger arguments I see often for not moving off these servers is about the personal housing (which I get, it's rare and all that jazz, and that RPers in particular use them for things) but if the "stagnating" community is really ruining your enjoyment of the game. Does the house actually matter that much if you aren't really enjoying the game you pay monthly for?

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Can we please quit telling people to go to X server to RP. Seriously, no server has an RP tag, you are free to RP on all servers. If you insist on swarming one or 2 servers with RPers you'll just end up creating another Balmung situation.

Spread out, expose more people to RP, make some new converts. Quit isolating yourselves and complaining about stagnation and lock outs.

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RPers will generally flock to wherever the biggest hubs are as more roleplayers = more variety in roleplaying. Small communities stagnate faster than locked ones lol

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Originally Posted by Rokke

RPers will generally flock to wherever the biggest hubs are as more roleplayers = more variety in roleplaying. Small communities stagnate faster than locked ones lol

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*facepalm*

Mateus was one of the smallest populated servers, Omega was a new server. Omegas locked and Mateus isn't small anymore. If everyone tells new RPers go there Mateus will be locked as well soon enough. There are other RP communities on the other servers, I know, I found many while I was creating characters on various servers on my quest to find an FC I liked while figuring out what class I'd like to main.

There is no reason to dog pile on a couple of servers for RP.

I disagree, this is a great game and very popular with over ten million gamer's. I believe lots a jealous WoW nerds are messing with us. Lets just wait for our beloved game owners to fix this problem.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

*facepalm*

Mateus was one of the smallest populated servers, Omega was a new server. Omegas locked and Mateus isn't small anymore. If everyone tells new RPers go there Mateus will be locked as well soon enough. There are other RP communities on the other servers, I know, I found many while I was creating characters on various servers on my quest to find an FC I liked while figuring out what class I'd like to main.

There is no reason to dog pile on a couple of servers for RP.

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If server A has 100 rpers, server B has 1000 rpers and server C has 10 rpers, server B is the ideal destination if rping is important to your gaming experience. Can you rp on server A and C? Yes. But say you move to server C and discover that 6 of those 10 rpers strictly rp pirate storylines and you don’t, you are now left with a pool of 4/10 people to rp with. That is why the dogpiling happens in every mmo that has rpers.

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Originally Posted by Rokke

If server A has 100 rpers, server B has 1000 rpers and server C has 10 rpers, server B is the ideal destination if rping is important to your gaming experience. Can you rp on server A and C? Yes. But say you move to server C and discover that 6 of those 10 rpers strictly rp pirate storylines and you don’t, you are now left with a pool of 4/10 people to rp with. That is why the dogpiling happens in every mmo that has rpers.

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Server B is locked, pick another server.

Here's the deal, if you insist on dog piling you limit the number of rpers anyone will ever encounter. In fact if all the rpers dog pile on one server people who've never rped in their life will continue to not be exposed to it and may likely never rp. They may hear about it and think maybe, but with the servers locked where are they going to go to find out? Open world RP can net you more RP players than you never knew existed in the first place. You'll never find them stuck in the bottle you're in now. The community needs to spread out more to grow and flourish.

I've said it before in a similar thread, and I'll say it again here. There are some quality of life stuff to help players out in the event they are on different servers such as the following:
- Cross-Server party finder (godsend since 3.5 IMO)
- Cross-Server Friend Lists (long time coming)
- Cross-Server Linkshells
- Discord
- Teamspeak
- Mumble
- Lodestone blogs
- Those discord chats that apply to the entire data center

I mean, servers such as Leviathan, Excalibur, Hyperion, Sargatanas, and Behemoth have decent populations, raiding, and social scenes, but not on the level of Balmung or Gilgamesh. I wonder why?

Other servers need opportunities to flourish as communities too.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Server B is locked, pick another server.

Here's the deal, if you insist on dog piling you limit the number of rpers anyone will ever encounter. In fact if all the rpers dog pile on one server people who've never rped in their life will continue to not be exposed to it and may likely never rp. They may hear about it and think maybe, but with the servers locked where are they going to go to find out? Open world RP can net you more RP players than you never knew existed in the first place. You'll never find them stuck in the bottle you're in now. The community needs to spread out more to grow and flourish.

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People are free to go wherever their heart desires, Im just trying to explain why unofficial rp servers happen in pretty much any mmo. Even as early as the BnS beta, through twitter and tumblr I already knew what server to roll for rp. The bulk of a rp community will usually clump together- This is not a XIV exclusive thing, its just what happens when you're got niche interests.

To be fair, the RP community asked for official RP servers during ARR's development, and Yoshi-P even said he liked the idea. Then beta hit...and silence. Without official servers Balmung remained the primary unofficial RP server, and after a vote on it, Gilgamesh became the non-Legacy unofficial RP server. When Balmung and Greg were locked, the RP community picked Mateus next.

RP can be tricky. In lot of cases characters, players and RP style just isn't compatible. Of course RPers are going to flock toward the highest concentration of available RPers.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

There is no reason to dog pile on a couple of servers for RP.

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Actually there is. For RP it is better the more RPers are around, so moving to a server with lots of RPers on makes perfect sense. Lots more chances of finding a group you like.
If you move to a server where there is just a tiny RP community and then you find out they don't match you - then what? You move elsewhere. On a big RP server like Balmung you can easily find other people to roleplay with, but on a tiny server there might be no choice but to move to another server.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Server B is locked, pick another server.

Here's the deal, if you insist on dog piling you limit the number of rpers anyone will ever encounter. In fact if all the rpers dog pile on one server people who've never rped in their life will continue to not be exposed to it and may likely never rp. They may hear about it and think maybe, but with the servers locked where are they going to go to find out? Open world RP can net you more RP players than you never knew existed in the first place. You'll never find them stuck in the bottle you're in now. The community needs to spread out more to grow and flourish.

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Most RPers are not very interested in "exposing" non-roleplayers to RP. Certainly much less interested in that than in getting a good RP experience for themselves.

Servers getting locked is not only due to roleplayers moving there but also because lots of non-RPers go there.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Actually there is. For RP it is better the more RPers are around, so moving to a server with lots of RPers on makes perfect sense. Lots more chances of finding a group you like.
If you move to a server where there is just a tiny RP community and then you find out they don't match you - then what? You move elsewhere. On a big RP server like Balmung you can easily find other people to roleplay with, but on a tiny server there might be no choice but to move to another server.

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Have you never scouted a server out before? You don't have to 100% commit right away blind.

The servers have technical limitations to the amount of people they can accommodate. Picking just a couple servers to dog pile on and well, we see the results. Spread. Out. More. Who knows, you may even meet your new best friend.

Ironically, if the community chokes to death, the servers will open :P

Quite frankly you've all had the option to move for quite a while with some little incentives on top for going to preferred worlds. If you wished to stay on your server. Great. More power to ya. But you made the decision in that moment that your assets, friends, roots, whatevers were more important to you than shrinking the server population. You can't have your cake and eat it sorry. If the player drop off is that bothersome. Move. If loss of housing/friends/community is that bothersome. Don't move.
The overcrowding was a player mediated problem (SE partially too with the paid transfer bypass). It will require players to actually do something to fix.

I think many players from Balmung and Gilgamesh fall into the line of thinking that if enough people transfer away, the community will never recover. They are used to the phenomenon that new blood comes to the server only after thorough research and a paid transfer, and if the server is no longer bustling and overfilled then the appeal is lost and those paid transfers will cease. But that is not the only way to gain new players. In the past months we have seen a completely new server growing so much that it becomes locked, new rp communities being established and low pop servers growing to a very healthy size because of population balancing incentives. Dead servers will never be a thing anymore.

If Gilgamesh and Balmung keep losing population, it may seem alarming because high population was their identity, but preferred server bonuses and friends joining the game will keep every server alive and well. All that will be lost is status and exclusion. This talk of "choking" or "dying" is only fearmongering.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

If Gilgamesh and Balmung keep losing population, it may seem alarming because high population was their identity, but preferred server bonuses and friends joining the game will keep every server alive and well. All that will be lost is status and exclusion. This talk of "choking" or "dying" is only fearmongering.

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Any community needs some supply of new blood to thrive, regardless of population. It's shit that nobody on here can invite friends to come join them. It's shit that nobody already on here can even make a new alt here. It's shit that preexisting communities and friendships are being fractured by transfers.

I would argue that the preferred world bonuses and the unhappiness with Stormblood launch queues were already likely enough to address the issue. The lockdown and closing of inbound transfers went too far. At the very least there is no justifiable reason those measures could not have been tried by themselves prior to taking the more drastic step of closing inbound transfers completely. The only excuse is that they messed up and didn't plan properly for the expansion rush and threw everything they could at the issue in a panic, players be damned.

What if SE allows players to move their houses as well when they transfer servers? That seems to be one of the major factors for people to not want to move. It could work like moving your house from one ward to another. SE already said they were going to add more wards, so why not hold back a little before releasing them to the public and let players willing to relocate get first dibs on plots?

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Originally Posted by Joven

so why not hold back a little before releasing them to the public and let players willing to relocate get first dibs on plots?

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Let me preface this that I'm well aware that this would probably highly fuck up the release of plots (as they could honestly all be grabbed before they're opened to the public), but speaking someone who's been kinda toying with the idea of moving servers (granted Odin is no longer considered congested but, details) and hoping against hope to get a good plot eventually, I can honestly see this as a strong enough incentive to make me move if the time comes, especially if one were to maybe add that on top of everything else that's being offered for moving from Congested to Preffered

Lower pop servers are annoyed enough with transfers buying up houses, just as they are earning enough gil themselves. I consider that fair game, but if you block the natives* and long-time members of a server from getting a house at all, there will be a lot of angry people on that server and rightfully so.

*used because of a lack of a better word

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

Lower pop servers are annoyed enough with transfers buying up houses, just as they are earning enough gil themselves. I consider that fair game, but if you block the natives* and long-time members of a server from getting a house at all, there will be a lot of angry people on that server and rightfully so.

*used because of a lack of a better word

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While I can agree that housing disappearing too fast is annoying (I didn't get a house until I came back after nearly 3 years, and even that was luck), I don't think it would be too far of a stretch if they limited the number of people per ward that could transfer per server. Either way, it's just a suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Joven

What if SE allows players to move their houses as well when they transfer servers? That seems to be one of the major factors for people to not want to move. It could work like moving your house from one ward to another. SE already said they were going to add more wards, so why not hold back a little before releasing them to the public and let players willing to relocate get first dibs on plots?

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Considering the lack of available housing on any server and the fact that overcrowding is why the server is locked in the first place, I don't think housing is what's keeping most of them from moving. They would've had a better shot to get a house of their own if they had moved after all.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Considering the lack of available housing on any server and the fact that overcrowding is why the server is locked in the first place, I don't think housing is what's keeping most of them from moving. They would've had a better shot to get a house of their own if they had moved after all.

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I was referring to people who already have a house to be able to take it with them, not letting any player that transfers get a free house.