Dear SE, please unlock Balmung

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Originally Posted by Catwho

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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when I left Lamia, it was a freakin ghost town.

SE has a plan btw,

They hope that when EU servers go live people will move from NA located servers to EU servers. Yes there are currently EU server but no reason for Balmung EU users to leave.

I know a few EU players on Balmung and honestly I am not sure if they are planning on moving servers or not because they are part of NA FCs. So in 3.0 and 3 data centers they will need to see improvements in lag before they move.

Before 3.0 SE will not make any changes to Balmung.

@ Blackweaver

i think you overreaced and blocked way to quickly to that one person about the "accidental death". As I read it (and he later clarified but it was too late) the phrase was in quotes to reference an RP reason for an RP character to disappear or be deleted. He was not asking that 200-400 of you and your friends should be murdered in real life.

But I agree, alts are not the problem, too many accounts on the server are.

Well speaking from experience MageBlack, as I mentioned earlier. I could be in a wold RP, like was roleplaying in the inn of drybone, and teleport hacking bots were pouring in every few minutes before porting out. That was hurting immersion seeing that type of stuff. So there's still a ton and ton of bots. They just aren't shooting out RMT whispers. Those from what I can tell, are coming from stolen accounts. I made sure when ARR came out, to order an authenticator first thing. Any MMO I play that offers that extra layer of protection, I immediately grab.

And at this point, it would be best to do as you said, slap the server titles on, though pvp I don't think makes much sense since there is no open world pvp in this game. So servers would need only 2 tags: (PvE) and (RP). And given it's unofficial designation, Balmung should get the (RP) tag.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Saying it repeatedly doesn't make it true.

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



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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Uh, Tiggy? Your quote just proved his point. It's not about the total number of characters created on the server, it's specifically about the number of characters concurrently logged in. That's what 'high congestion' means, and it is preciesely what Kiroh was saying.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

-Snip.-

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The complete oversight of his point says a lot about you. It was an RP suggestion if the amount of existing characters was the problem and if you no longer used them to either have them in character meet with an unfortunate end, or simply just delete. It was not a personal death-threat to you or roleplayers. To counter your initial post, are you faster than these bots who create the accounts when the server is open and if they were to unlock the server at all times? What if someone got d/c'ed mid-raid due to ISP failure and can't get back on reasonably because they're several hundred players in queue?

The bots actually show heavily every two weeks to a month or so, by the way. (See: Actions Taken Against...) They do a lot of housekeeping and then they all have to start over from Thanalan on THM or where ever. But I think the reality is, Balmung is just that full normally because I hardly ever see an RMT /tell here as compared to hearing about the barrages some of the other servers get.

Which brings me to my personal stance on the issue, if you're done RP'ing with that character or you hardly ever use it, you should probably get rid of it(them). Because you're taking away from other peoples' friends being able to transfer or legit new players from starting here with their friends as well, which is the reasoning you used earlier in this thread to justify your desire for more characters. (However, this last statement hinges on how they define congestion.)

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Well speaking from experience MageBlack, as I mentioned earlier. I could be in a wold RP, like was roleplaying in the inn of drybone, and teleport hacking bots were pouring in every few minutes before porting out. That was hurting immersion seeing that type of stuff. So there's still a ton and ton of bots. They just aren't shooting out RMT whispers. Those from what I can tell, are coming from stolen accounts. I made sure when ARR came out, to order an authenticator first thing. Any MMO I play that offers that extra layer of protection, I immediately grab.

And at this point, it would be best to do as you said, slap the server titles on, though pvp I don't think makes much sense since there is no open world pvp in this game. So servers would need only 2 tags: (PvE) and (RP). And given it's unofficial designation, Balmung should get the (RP) tag.

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I wasnt saying there are no bots, only that there are fewer than other servers that are not locked like Balmung is. I think that a PvP dedication wouldnt be a bad thing. I know there is no open world PvP but there is a PvP community and if you have a few spread out across many servers in a datacenter, its harder for them to gather together to form a functional team. You could easily get away with maybe one PvP server for this game but just like having a RP server, it would be nice to see other distinctions as well.

Still, the amount of Bots and RMT is a game wide issue and something that is constantly being dealt with. The hardest part I would imagine would be finding a solution that interferes least with legitimate players. it's no easy task, and task that is only complicated and antagonized by players getting frustrated. imagine how upset you get about them breaking your immersion, not imagine having to deal with all the bots, RMT, AND all the players like yourself that see them. It's no picknick. I think sometimes players and posters here lack a little compassion but thats a whole different rant and not directed at anyone here specifically.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

Uh, Tiggy? Your quote just proved his point. It's not about the total number of characters created on the server, it's specifically about the number of characters concurrently logged in. That's what 'high congestion' means, and it is preciesely what Kiroh was saying.

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Maybe I read him wrong but this was my interpretation.


For the hundredth time, the amount of characters on the server has absolutely nothing to do with the server being locked. -I read this as people currently logged in.

Server locks are based on the number of players logging in to the server at the time.. - Read this as people logging on right now.

Perhaps I misunderstood since the argument I interpreted it as has been made in the past. Especially with people thinking afk players don't count.they are on the server so they clearly do.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Maybe I read him wrong but this was my interpretation.


For the hundredth time, the amount of characters on the server has absolutely nothing to do with the server being locked. -I read this as people currently logged in.

Server locks are based on the number of players logging in to the server at the time.. - Read this as people logging on right now.

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Let me be more clear on this then.

The number of characters that exist on a given world has nothing to do with the server being locked. Though I thought it was pretty clear considering I quoted someone suggesting people delete their alts as a solution...

The amount of people that have logged on to the server in the past several hours (the last window for character creation) is what determines a server lock, not the amount of people logging in exactly at the time the clock rolls over.

Love how people paying 15 bucks a month thinks that SE has the obligation to fulfill all their request and anyone who objects (who happens to be paying customers) should be ignored.

There are people who want the server open, there are people who want it perm locked - but I'm pretty sure SE has their reason to be locking few of the servers while the vast majority of other servers are open.

Probably the only real way to actively fight the RMT, is to completely block their access to the game entirely. Even if it means blocking the IP of their general location. Or prevent them from making accounts by keeping tabs on the credit cards they use, or the emails they use. Though credit cards might be the biggest way. If they are using trial accounts, well... the only solution to that, is to do away with the trials, or stick trial accounts onto their own server and when it is upgrade time, offer them a free transfer to a server of their choice after they pay for the game.

These are only suggestions mind you :)

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Originally Posted by Kiroh

Let me be more clear on this then.

The number of characters that exist on a given world has nothing to do with the server being locked. Though I thought it was pretty clear considering I quoted someone suggesting people delete their alts as a solution...

The amount of people that have logged on to the server in the past several hours (the last window for character creation) is what determines a server lock, not the amount of people logging in exactly at the time the clock rolls over.

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Agreed completely. Was definitely a misunderstanding on my part. Like I said I've seen that other argument made in the past so I jumped to conclusions. Sorry about that.

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Originally Posted by mohammedius

What the heck, you already have 6(!!) characters on this server, and want to create ANOTHER one? And you're complaining about how the server is locked 24/7??

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This guy does it it better http://guildwork.com/users/iulus/characters

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Probably the only real way to actively fight the RMT, is to completely block their access to the game entirely. Even if it means blocking the IP of their general location. Or prevent them from making accounts by keeping tabs on the credit cards they use, or the emails they use. Though credit cards might be the biggest way. If they are using trial accounts, well... the only solution to that, is to do away with the trials, or stick trial accounts onto their own server and when it is upgrade time, offer them a free transfer to a server of their choice after they pay for the game.

These are only suggestions mind you :)

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How does one tell the difference between an RMT and someone farming to save money for a plot of land? I would really hate to get banned cause I started to farm crystals by going from node to node. Especially if i accidentally did that teleport glitch. Yes, after a point it is obvious to us but banning accounts or blocking CC access is only a bandaid solution, for these types its nothing to hack another account or buy another copy or change their VPN or apply/steal another CC. gotta find out how to stop them before they start. also consider that they wouldnt be able to continue if people didnt buy their product. No market, no RMT.

There's also a high probability that there are people with multiple characters and are multi-boxing to farm shards/stuff.

It's apparently fine and not against TOS

Here's what SE should do. Figure out the percentage population roughly of bots vs players and lets say it's 10% bots 90% players. Keep server worlds open until hit 110% capacity, lock them at that time and go through banning the accounts of the 10% of bots leaving 100% players within a locked server preventing any more RMT new bots being made. Rinse and repeat for each world that hits capacity. If you account is hacked by RMT, SE already has steps regarding such issues.

If you are not one of those in the 100% player locked world but want to get in then too bad for you but get over it and pick another world. Open up free transfer weekends from time to time on SE side so friends and groups/FCs can move to be together on other servers if needs be to alleviate the problem though. Keep the locked worlds locked until the population drops below 50% then unlock it once more and let it rise to around 110% again before repeating the earlier steps. Quite simple and fairly effective solution in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

That's the thing. I shouldn't have to. If Blizzard Entertainment can make a full server be locked to prevent new players from making characters on a full server, but still allow players who are already on the server, to make an alt, then SE can too. But I have a feeling soon I will be able to make my alt. We got a maintenance coming up soon, for the patch that brings gold saucer. So I will probably be able to make my alt then. But regardless, SE needs to address the server always locked issue.

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Perhaps not, but it does solve your problem.

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Originally Posted by odie

when I left Lamia, it was a freakin ghost town.

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We're now the 5th or 6th most populated server by some estimates. SOOOOOO many new players. You can't turn your head in a city without seeing a green leaf. We actually have enough people in our FFXI Veteran free company to do full FC clears of eight man content every night. It's great.

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If Blizzard can do it, SE is capable of doing it too!

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Funniest thing I read in a while.

Man... T_T I love Goblin and all but I would kill to not get spammed by RMT all day. I have my tell sound turned off but I can still see it on my screen.
If I had a penny for every tell I received from RMT in a given play session I'd be rich enough to pay off my school loans.

So while Balmung may be locked 99% of the time at least you don't have to deal with as much RMT spam.

More to the point, I think that if a server is locked then it should stay locked- nobody gets in, including new characters from existing accounts and server transfers. The server in question should then remain locked until enough people leave/quit/transfer off/etc.
I know Balmung isn't the only server who has this issue. I've seen people complain about Greg, Levi, and Tonberry as well.

I realize it sucks but please remember that the server population caps are there for a reason.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

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

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Again, this is ASIDE from graphical data, which is also pretty high but I'm not as certain about.
In WoW (and many, many other games) You can only be one class, have two professions (though you can change these through special means, it's a reset option) and have only one level assigned to your character.
That means that, just taking THAT simple factor, each WoW/EQ/Whatever character has one value and stat allotment for one class per character.
In FFXIV, one single character can be ALL the classes. Which means this value, and thus stat alottment, gear allowances, etc. is potentially much higher since even if you don't unlock the classes, the values are still assigned to your character.
Let's be generous here and take 1 character in an MMO where you pick a class, 2 gathering classes, and 2 crafting classes. This means an FFXIV character has one more value for gathering, 4x as many values for crafting, and 10x as many values for the base class. That's ONE character in FFXIV.
If you'll remember, FFXI had a similar system and they were just as if not more so draconian about alt creation and server assignments (things change but, so did software/hardware) going so far as to charge you more monthly for each character you had access to, because each one in THAT game was 11x the size of of an average character in its contemporary games, increasing to over 20x as time has passed. They were also (at first, again this was back in 2003) more in the habit of wiping characters in FFXI if they went without being subscribed.
And again, this is BEFORE we get into graphical data, which for XIV is very high compared to most games of its type. I don't think I need to explain that an FFXIV character's graphical data would eat up more space than a WoW characters...cuz that's PAINFULLY obvious. We have more options for our EYES than most MMOs give for entire bodies.

SE should reimplement auto kick to players AFK for a certain amount of time, at least on congested worlds and then see what happens. 30 mins is way enough time to auto kick at.

Not like it takes forever to relog in from character select. Miss any important messages? If it's important, they will tell you when you log back in. Time sensitive important message, you were AFK anyways....

With Heavensward tis only going to increase....

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

Probably the only real way to actively fight the RMT, is to completely block their access to the game entirely. Even if it means blocking the IP of their general location.

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Yeah I'll enjoy having my raid members unable to play because their region happens to host a lot of bots, all because someone wants to make their 7th character on the most locked-down server. Why are people accusing SE of doing nothing about bots, do they even read the lodestone?

http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...0cf0c2b7b874b9
http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...e9add396ace306
http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...838eb7ef36cc83
http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...5ef054e06f1ab6

The ban waves are every week now and there's some 20,000 accounts there in the last month alone. They just make new accounts, and will continue doing so as long as its profitable. Lastly you have no self-awareness if you don't see why people aren't feeling sympathy for you. It's nothing to do with congestion. People struggle to get onto the most populated servers at all, you managed to make 6 so we're all playing the world's smallest violin for you.

Read through most of this and just wanted to touch on the character data portion (coming from someone who works in the field).

The character data itself is probably not that much. It's something, for sure, but a lot less then the numbers being tossed about in this thread. Even counting for expansions growing purely vertical, each item of data will only be a few bytes in size (purely numeric, easy to store). Even taking into account the fact that you can have multiple classes, your inventory, your retainer, etc. it's still not a whole lot of data in the grand scheme of things.

People often think databases are monsterous and huge but really they're generally not. I'd wager it's measured in the single or double digit gigabytes for the entirety of FFXIV's playerbase (not counting backups).

So it's far more likely that the creation locks are due to concurrent players and it's just an easy way to try and get folks to make new characters on other servers. As it is you can pay to transfer to the server regardless of the lock situation so it's definitely not a case of data limit but concurrent connection limit (people logged and connected to the server).

Awesome post Caraway! And yeah that pretty much is what I was suspecting as well.

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Originally Posted by Caraway

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^This. People who think the databases are getting too big and that's somehow the problem... don't understand how databases work. Individual character records probably only take up a few megabytes.

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

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Blocking connections from a general area could also block legitimate players from the game, which is a pretty terrible move. I'd hate to get banned just because someone in my area, unrelated to me, is using bots. The credit card tracing idea would work better, but then again isn't it possible to just pay with time cards? That's what I do to pay my subscription, don't see why RMT accounts couldn't do the same.

Also trial accounts only go for two weeks, or until you reach level 20, whichever happens first. I've seen bots well over level 20, so they're obviously not using trial accounts.

I do think RMT bots are a big issue, but I doubt it would fix your problem to clean them out. SE cleans thousands out regularly, from what I've been reading in this thread, the real source of your problem is just how popular the server itself is.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

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

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-Restrictions

Not an exact quote per say, but it is roughly where the discussion on the issue began... roughly 1.5 years ago. So, it is kind of hard to nail down a specific quote, but this post sets the framework for where the problems were and how they've been moving forward since then to try to improve stability.

Back then, the focus was on the concurrent connection limit problem and NOT the amount of characters created per world (note, it is specifically stated that it is NOT a problem with how much character data was stored that was an issue, but it was concurrent connections). Not too long after this was posted they restructured things so that we got shunted through more front end servers to better manage the logins and such (initially, we logged in more directly to our world servers, and there were fewer servers managing the various areas and instances--they redistributed the loads across more boxes). Basically, they moved into a much more complex structure of clustered groups to distribute the loads more effectively. This new topology initially allowed them to ramp up the concurrent connections to 7500 from 5000 (not sure how high they are up to now though).

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...d_to_75007800/

Again, I apologize for not being able to provide an exact quote... just doing some googling for specific phrases I recall from the discussions of the time and getting odd hits here and there that may hopefuly bring a little more clarity to the discussion here.

I did however find this buried in the Lodestone. A post that went up after some of these changes that may provide the details you are looking for:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...b9b8b5c44d4061
Partial quote from that post:

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-Regarding Limits on New Character Creation As a result of this maintenance, it is now possible to accommodate an increased number of simultaneous logins in the various Worlds; therefore, we have now lifted the New Character Creation restrictions in the majority of Worlds in which restrictions were in effect. New players who are just starting a game or those who would simply like to create a new character can do so by finding a World which has had the restrictions lifted, and creating a character there.

Please note that there is a tendency for characters to become concentrated in certain Worlds, causing login numbers to jump up in those particular Worlds. In order to create a population balance between Worlds, we will continue to be implementing New Character Creation restrictions in overly congested Worlds.

We will monitor the situation, and in the event restrictions may be lifted, follow-up news posts will be posted. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and ask for your patience and understanding.

-Addition of New Worlds
With this maintenance, preparation for the addition of new Worlds has been completed.

Although it is possible to add several new Worlds due to load balancing on servers, an increased number of players able to login simultaneously to various Worlds, and New Character Creation being possible again on various Worlds as a result of this maintenance, we will only be adding a minimal number of Worlds at this time directly after maintenance.

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The point back then, and still to this day, is about managing the login traffic. Concurrent connection limits are the larger factor in play, not how much data is stored in the back end.

As to the debate about the AFK players... In a sense, the bulk of the character data is more or less static--they aren't loading everything about us into the world server's memory all the time. When we interact with our character and/or the environment, the specific pieces of needed information is retrieved and processed from the back end. We saw the same methods used in XI, and it is S.O.P. in the industry where databases are exposed to the internet--there is a front-end with a database connection, and that connecter has a connection pool with defined limits. A player in XIV that has gone into AFK status presents a very minimal load on the servers by comparison--no chat, no equipment swaps, no interactions with npc/environment/mobs, etc. It is only when someone else interacts with them (casting a spell and such), or they become active again (and thus exit AFK status) that they could start to impose any noteworthy load on the world server. You can demonstrate it yourself by watching your own data stream after you've slipped into AFK status for about 5 minutes or so....then watch it some more when you are running around interacting with NPC's and such.

So the issue is not how much data storage is saved on the backend--it is the potential load generated when fetching and updating that data. Thus, they have to be mindful of the potential concurrent connection load coming to/from the front and back ends. The more characters they allow into a world, the greater that potential traffic becomes. So they have been using character creation and login queues to try to shape that traffic flow across their entire infrastructure. Locking out worlds is basically an attempt to make people set up on other worlds so when they log in they get shunted to another segment of the network...hopefully improving the load balance.

As of now I was able to create an alt just to see what the big deal is about Balmung.

Balmung is currently open, so I suggest you make alts asap

I can also confirm that at of the time of this post, Balmung is currently open.

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Originally Posted by Anapingofness

So while Balmung may be locked 99% of the time at least you don't have to deal with as much RMT spam.

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That's actually true is some sense, though we still have quite a lot of RMT on Balmung, I created a character on Midgard and every time I log in for more than 30 seconds I get an RMT /tell. I even got RMT spam while I was in the opening cutscene.

While the server being locked does suck for legitimate players, it does at least shield us from the bulk of RMT spam other servers are inundated with.

Okay, I've only been in Balmung for an hour or so and I have to say that I don't get that many rmt tells compared to Gilgamesh. I do see bots, but that may be because I'm am still leveling up and can actually notice them now. I don't know.

What I do notice compared to Gilgamesh is that alot of people are just sitting in Ul'dah with AFK symbols on their heads. Or just sitting around doing nothing. Not sure if this is just RP code.

It's still too early to say for sure since I'm still low level and haven't explored the other places. And while RMT is a problem, the main issue that I see, compared to my other server, is people AFKing

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Originally Posted by Blackweaver

If you feel the server shouldn't have new players, then that's fine, keep the restriction, but don't put that restriction on players who are already on the server. Let us make our alts!

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You already have one (many in your case) character(s) on the server, thus have less right to make a new one on it than someone who would want to start fresh. People like you with multiple characters on Balmung are the reason why it's locked.

You may not know this, you your account alone is using 5 spots which could have let new players to come into Balmung, instead of having 1 playing and 5 ghosts all the time (whenever you play one, the other 5 take spots for nothing. duh)

I just want Square to create an offical Rp server. I'd reroll there in a heartbeat.

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Originally Posted by Sandoria

I just want Square to create an offical Rp server. I'd reroll there in a heartbeat.

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well we do know they will be moving the EU worlds over to Europe, so my guess is that once this happens, SE will have enough free resources (from the split) to add 1 RP server to both NA and EU. Now this won't likely happen at the same time, but rather as a result from a series of events.

Well unfortunately I was in bed asleep when the server was unlocked last night. But hopefully it will unlock again tonight and I will be able to make the alt :)

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Originally Posted by myahele

What I do notice compared to Gilgamesh is that alot of people are just sitting in Ul'dah with AFK symbols on their heads. Or just sitting around doing nothing. Not sure if this is just RP code.

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They are literally just idling. Ul'dah is an RP hub but it's like 15-20% RPers.

Apparently it was unlocked at 5AM PST today. It's been a while since it was unlocked as well.

I used to be able to check often but my desk was relocated to the bedroom. Last open that I know of was 2/10/15. Around the same time
It's been generally 3amPST-5am PST

So since the "congestion" seems to be indicated by frequent login queues (read: 24/7 some days) in the model that SE uses, and not the total number of characters per world, it makes sense that a large percentage of AFK population would cause the server to be locked down.

And then it becomes a cycle: people are concerned about being hit with a long login queue, so they go afk rather than logging off, leading to more login queues, leading to the server being locked down.

That explains why Lamia doesn't have the server lockdown issues despite its surprisingly high population. We all get error 90000'd if we try to stay logged in overnight!

Edit: I wonder of some of the locked down servers also have a larger percentage of PS3/PS4 users, since I know those players desperately stay logged in in case PSN goes offline again.