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

You know, whenever I see the excuse of not being able to play with friends, family, etc...why don't you just transfer to a server they can play on rather than telling them to stay up until 4 AM to make a character or pay the money for a transfer? I mean beside that, all of this means nothing if the servers go bust due to overload. This is a natural part of running an online game, servers can't hold infinite players.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

From what I understand those are EU worlds

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Like the entire point of my reply was... it says "Moreover, players who want to transfer to or create new characters on designated Worlds across all data centers will receive special bonuses as described below." and then goes on to list "Transfers to designated Worlds will be free of charge" and then repeating the exact same thing about exp and gil/playtime twice but referring to totally different things - designated worlds (likely low pop servers across the board), and newly created worlds (the new EU servers).

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Originally Posted by Lodestone

Moreover, players who want to transfer to or create new characters on designated Worlds across all data centers will receive special bonuses as described below.

Bonuses
- Transfers to designated Worlds will be free of charge.
- EXP bonuses will be applied to designated Worlds (up to level 60).
- Gil and free play time will be awarded to newly created characters that reach a certain level on designated Worlds.

- EXP bonuses will be applied to newly established Worlds (up to level 60).
- Gil and free play time will be awarded to newly created characters that reach a certain level on newly established Worlds.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

From what I understand those are EU worlds

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The mention of designated worlds includes "across all data centers" when talking about the bonus.

Since EU is just one data center, the "designated worlds" designation is not just the EU worlds.

OP, I don't get your argument. If anything, you should want MORE high pop servers than just the two. They should have locked those jokers up forever ago.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Nep Nep's AFK club exist BECAUSE of lockouts due to high population? On CACTUAR of all servers

Can't you just RP that you're on Balmung?

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Originally Posted by Istaru

Can't you just RP that you're on Balmung?

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Owch...that was awesome.

I think it's a good thing. I've seen high population servers locked or limited in MMOs for nearly 20 years now. Servers just reach a critical limit, and we here on Aether have already seen that this critical limit doesn't just affect those on the higher population servers, but the entire data center. I'm glad SE is taking measures to establish parity among the servers on this data center so we can have a more stable system.

I dont want these restictions lifted. I want to see a larger number of populated servers instead of us 2 really big servers

There are incentives to moving atleast, thats better than most mmos

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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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This "solution" doesn't do anything to solve the problem of "you can only make a character here by paying money or making a new character extremely fast for the split second it opens". If anything, you just made more problems due to DF and PF becoming much smaller due to not having connections to the other servers in their datacenters.

Seems I transferred off Hyperion at the right time. It's unfortunate though. Knew some people that wanted to transfer over now they're SOL. I know they want to populate the other servers more but man, it shouldn't even be this many servers in the first place. The servers that were dead before HW dropped are still dead now. Not many want to play and barely see any people around. Of course cross server PF helps, but in the end still doesn't stop a dead server from feeling dead.

I do NOT support the op. This policy of restriction imposed on the high pop servers is best for all players across the board. It is in my opinion that SE made the right call. This decision of policy change will help the smaller servers grow a community. The op claims these changes will restrict the sharing of creative community ideas for balmung...My question to you all is why should Balmung be the place for creative community idea sharing, role play, raiding, and fun social events? I think the changes will be prolific for several other servers that are not Balmung.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

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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Posting something like that could backfire you know. To put it bluntly, to a long-time Balmungite that screenshot doesn't necessarily represent a healthy server population, a likely immediate reaction is to think that it's dead or at least seriously ailing.

I normally wouldn't ever consider playing on a high-pop server and only joined Balmung (aka Besaid) because it was the only real option for RP. Even so, my first reaction on seeing that screenshot was to wonder if it was taken right after maintenance since it's so empty. That does count as empty for Limsa aetheryte square on Balmung, basically, so even if I'm fully aware Balmung's population is absurd and unhealthy, a normal amount of characters won't look right to me without putting some serious consideration to it.

I used to be on Balmung. Sure, some good people there, but given how many people there are on that server, that doesn't really amount to much compared to how much racist-fueled animosity I encountered as a lalafell player. It gave me some good things like some friends I still talk to, a girl who means the world to me and an economy that promoted me to really start up on my crafting, all at the cost of other desires like a house or play time free of congestion issues or just everything else that makes Balmung, well....Balmung.

Ever since I left Balmung, I still believe that to be the best decision I've ever made in this game. No more overbearing server queues, no more thinking I'd never get a house, no more trying to convince friends to pay to transfer servers just so we could play together, no more losing vast amounts of gil trying to sell crafts, and ESPECIALLY no more maxed out blacklist because of how many players there have such hatred toward lalafells and even lalafell players for seemingly no reason whatsoever. I still talk to friends I have on Balmung, I still keep up my crafting and that girl is still with me on my current server of Moogle, so really I feel like I still have all the perks I had on Balmung without the sheer bulk of downsides of playing there.

To the OP, I honestly cannot spare any degree of sympathy for your cause. Your server is horribly overcrowded, which means that more problems will occur in the long run, both technical as well as social. If you really want to be happy in the game, do what I did: leave Balmung. If you can't get friends to join you, then I'm sure you'll be able to make new ones. It worked for me, and once again, I'll continue to see that as the best decision I've ever made.

Why do these threads always pop up when I am about to go to bed?!

I always browse the internet on my tablet for a few mins before sleeping and these threads always appear when I am too lazy to login on a mobile device.

"ohhh, this is going to be one of THOSE threads, better leave a snarky comment on page 1!"

Nope, creating posts on a mobile device sucks so I don't usually bother.
Won't someone think of us EU players for once? :(

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

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.

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It isn't. Contrary to popular belief, there is a fairly dedicated raid community. Even on the strictly roleplay side, people have mixed feelings in regards to the overwhelming population. I'm not someone who enjoys tiny servers unless I have a large enough group of friends already playing, but others certainly do.

eh tbh i kinda feel se needs to just make specifically rp servers already but no keep the resections in place please let some of the other servers beef up then re open the full servers

Balmung is gonna build a wall. And Behemoth is going to pay for it.

I hate that people can not transfer new characters over to these servers or have friends transfer over but I really am afraid for Gilgamesh and Balmung during the SB launch. It is for the best that restrictions have been put into place. It is going to be horrible even as far as expansion launches are concerned because the servers were never designed to support that many active characters on just two servers. The pops of these two servers have grown from the time of HW's launch. I would not be surprised if they went down for multiple emergency maintenances during SB launch on top of all the normal launch downtime.

So, you prefer more populated server rather than stable servers? This is to avoid as much as possible server crash. Also, it is temporally. On Stormblood launch an avalanche of people will enter to the servers at the same time. The congestion will long for few week till the newness is over. It is necesary ensure as much as possible the stability. Is not as simple as "YOu can let us go to the server and everything will go ok". That's not how work.

Couple software questions about the ops alternatives.

Who pays that increased subscription fee? Would I on sargatanas or someone on the apparently dead servers have to pay those extra subs so your friends can play on balmung?

Or Would everyone on balmung suddenly find there sub fees increased. Even the ones that have been there since 1.0?

Or would those increased cost only apply to newly created or transferred players?

The forced disconnect when players afk for extended periods of time is something I've never had a problem with. Would help load times for idyll shire ando stuff on most servers.

However it has been suggested a few times before now and that never turns out well.

As an RPer and fellow Balmung player, I just wanted to state something to non-RPers for the record.

Please do not assume all or most RPers agree with this "petition". Currently, the majority of our community is actually in the middle of having talks about lower pop servers to establish another RP base in (specifically talks about if and when). This might be obvious information to some of you, but to those who have a tendency to cast a net far too wide, I don't want you to be under the impression that all of us throw temper tantrums of this nature. Careful, thought out, and mature steps are being taken to address the concerns this new policy has brought to light.

We're not all misguided, entitled fanatics like the OP.

Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Oaken

I challenge anyone who actually wants this policy to remain in place to cite, with specific examples, how the high population of a server has adversely impacted your gameplay. In my two years on Balmung, the only time I /ever/ recall the population causing a problem was when new housing wards were released. The amount of speculation, fear-mongering about "monster queues," and other unfounded, speculative concerns about population woes are completely baseless and exaggerated.

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Have you thought that maybe the reason you haven't seen problems is because SE has kept servers like Balmung restricted?

Now certain servers are reaching their limit SE is putting tighter restrictions on them.

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Originally Posted by SilkaN

Won't someone think of us EU players for once? :(

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EU datacenter gets two new servers with free transfers, leveling bonuses for under 60, full housing compensation and even assistance to FC's willing to make the move. That's a pretty good deal I'd think.

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

EU datacenter gets two new servers with free transfers, leveling bonuses for under 60, full housing compensation and even assistance to FC's willing to make the move. That's a pretty good deal I'd think.

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I don't want new servers, I want threads like these to be created while I am still motivated enough to post!

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

EU datacenter gets two new servers with free transfers, leveling bonuses for under 60, full housing compensation and even assistance to FC's willing to make the move. That's a pretty good deal I'd think.

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I think you totally misread their post. lol

Didn't even read, SE is kind enough to allow those transfer since the beginning. Any other game would just have a max population and if the server is full no creation or transfer would ever be possible until it get some free space regulating the population to other servers, and that's the problem here, too many server are "dead" because people gather where everyone is.

/notsigned

Why others must be adapting to your server of choose? You can move too, of course.

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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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They did exactly this already in FFXIV Korea earlier this year. It backfired. Hard.

For those who aren't aware, FFXIV Korea merged their servers, and they did it poorly. The game's infrastructure does not accommodate for server merging at all - for some reason, they were unable to increase the amount of housing wards, so when they merged two servers together, one server had houses from half of their wards wiped to make room for half of the other server's wards, and the other server had the other half wiped to make room for the other server's half that didn't. Those who lost their houses were compensated, but very, very poorly at that. And that's only the most visible effect of how badly the server merge backfired on a community level. The PERCEPTION of the merge even happening in the first place is another topic entirely, which could be summed up as 'oh, this game had a server merge, that means it's going to die soon, so it's not worth jumping into this game now or ever', which is REALLY bad considering this is Korea we're talking about here.

Sure, you could argue that SE could have not done it in such a messy way, but do not think for a second that you know any better than the devs do on these types of issues, unless you are going to volunteer to code the server merge yourself.

Your arguments throughout this thread also read like you want SE to shift responsibility off of Balmung's community, of which all of its issues were created by its own damn community in the first place, and blame the players of the low populated servers for failing to find ways to attract people to come and stay. Whatever they've already attempted on their own clearly hasn't worked, especially with people from your server working overtime to convince prospective new players that being in such a server like Balmung is the only way to play the game. This post is especially vile to me, because the mere suggestion of a server merge reads like a punishment for the low populated servers (especially since you've somehow already convinced yourself that this current plan will fail and the servers will remain dead).

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Originally Posted by Amelia_Pond_Behemoth

Balmung is gonna build a wall. And Behemoth is going to pay for it.

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We're not paying for that f***ing wall.

To those mentioning merging realms...tell me you willing too deal with the lynch mob of players who will be looking for you cause they or their FC lost their player homes??? If your a fan of pulling the rug from under the feet of people standing on it go for it.

Lahabrea is dancing in his grave as this whiney thread generates enough chaos and discord across the realm in service to the One True God.

Side note why does Balmung sound like "Ball-Dung"

Or you could transfer to a low pop server. This is a good move instead of having 12 hour ques and server lag and crashes.

Two? I only read it as new worlds, which could be more!

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I think you totally misread their post. lol

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I did. The caffiene was wearing off.

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Originally Posted by Shilvers

Two? I only read it as new worlds, which could be more!

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Pretty sure somewhere it said two new worlds for Chaos. Could be more, but pretty sure it's at least two.

Now what was I--oh right, caffiene.

I don't agree with this peitition

I will have to say that this was needed long ago

remind me if i'm wrong but didn't only balmung fall over a few hours after 3.5 went live?

before you pull out your pitch forks against SE for locking you server, I would have to say this is the gentlest way of sorting this out letting the playbase resolve this instead of SE and people are right, other games do this too.

The anouncment could easily read

We are shutting down Balmung and the playerbase will be spilt between 2 new NA server, Server A (insert ff sounding name) and Server B (insert ff sounding name here too)

^^ this would solve the issue quickly but the spilt would be quite brutal and very unemotional but it would solve the server stabilty.

and for the record i'm not saying the above should happen

You guys should move to Coeurl. I need more neighbors I can annoy.

I am also peeved beyond measure.

I run the world's largest LGBTQ Gaming Community off of Gilgamesh. We were first FC in beta, and first house, and spent what's approaching 4 years developing a server that is free of hate speech against sexual orientation by working with nearly every FC through exhaustive linkshells and Facebook communications. We've had 2,700+ unique FC members as verified manually through Enjin as of April 2017. You cannot tell 2,700 accounts to transfer without fears of the free transfer being lifted. There are too many risks, including losing the trust of our members and our community.

You can listen to trolls who have nothing better to do than to demean other player experiences, but that doesn't change that Gilgamesh has been the center of a thriving community with 3-10 brand new players every single day. The first day we tried expanding to Faerie server, we were greeted by an FC called <AIDS>. Don't tell me homophobia doesn't run rampant.

^^^ What is this post even, I fail to see how locking servers involves homophobia at all. So people in your expanded community can't transfer into Gilgamesh, big deal. No offense but I think you're on the wrong target to argue.

For what it's worth, Balmung and Gilgamesh at least should have been hard-locked to transfers and character creation long ago. The level of active pop is absurd compared to average pop of the other NA servers.
Perhaps the only mistake was not having free transfers to low-pop servers available sooner, or the same time as the lock announcement.

For those who never experienced the HW launch, enjoy your 2-4k actual login queues on SB launch, because without this lock it would surely be higher.

^ Consider 2,700 members. Two thousand, seven hundred. When would you ever get that many people in your own FC? Why in the world would thousands of people pay for a server transfer to join an obscure FC and make it one of the largest in Final Fantasy XIV history?

Because it really is that bad, and most straight people don't have to care how players get undermined with off color jokes and comments and calling people every word in a Discord-based raid group that, by even mentioning those words here would get you suspended -- but no one thinks about them in a raid group. When you've got thousands of people paying the ridiculous server transfer costs to get away from it and just play the game like any other human being, there's something that you cannot ignore.

Our guild is proof that there is a problem, and people are willing to pay to get away from it.