NA/EU Server Congestion: The Problem & A Solution for Devs (PLEASE READ)

I like what other games have done. Allow gamers to freely switch to another server in-game. Servers were labeled green, yellow, or red based on congestion and people could move their character to a less populated server. Or even when a person ''teleports'' or ''returns'' in FFXIV, that they would be going to their chosen destination, but on a less congested server. People in parties could still talk to party members between servers, and a party member could say "Hey. Everyone move to XXXXX server." Joining instances could teleport you to less populated servers, etc. Let the game itself and the people playing it regulate the congestion. *shrugs* Seems to work for others.

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Originally Posted by Kahlane

I disagree. The best experience I had in FFXI was the diversity in culture.

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I don't know why people had such great experiences playing with Japanese people while playing FFXI, I thought it was terrible.

I mean, no offense to them but they had some strange traditions.
Such as, disbanding the party as soon as any single person left... even if you were searching for a group for 2 or more hours.

Also, no matter how good I was at using the in-game translation system, most Japanese speaking people would ask me if I spoke Japanese; If i replied with "No I don't sorry" (using the in-game translator) I wouldn't get in an invite to the party.
Likewise, If I lied and said yes, I'd get an invite and most likely not have to actually say a thing anyway.

Also no Japanese speaking people ever really joined my party if we needed to fill a position.

It was literally the worst thing about FFXI.

Great points, liked. We need to get some feedback from Square.

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Originally Posted by Scolaris

I like what other games have done. Allow gamers to freely switch to another server in-game. Servers were labeled green, yellow, or red based on congestion and people could move their character to a less populated server. Or even when a person ''teleports'' or ''returns'' in FFXIV, that they would be going to their chosen destination, but on a less congested server. People in parties could still talk to party members between servers, and a party member could say "Hey. Everyone move to XXXXX server." Joining instances could teleport you to less populated servers, etc. Let the game itself and the people playing it regulate the congestion. *shrugs* Seems to work for others.

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Ragnarok Online I think did this. I think that's due to the way the infrastructure is set up. There are obvious benefits of doing this, although there is the downside of being technically complicated and makes it harder for people to meet up. A server status indicator would be useful regardless though.

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Originally Posted by EmiliM

The current issue with NA/EU servers, when it comes down to it, is quite simple: there are simply too many people trying to play at the same time. The fact of the matter is, the existing 25 NA/EU servers are basically already near, at, and in many cases, over capacity.

Assuming most Early Access players stick around for official release, the influx of new players joining at that point will almost guarantee the necessity for new servers to be opened up. There is no other way to address this. No queue or server maintenance will resolve the fact that too many people are trying to get in. Yes, eventually the server populations will most likely stabilize, but it will come at a cost of many people having already left.

Meanwhile, the Japanese servers are humming along relatively problem free. This is not because Japanese servers are somehow better, but the result of a simple marketing decision to "designate" these servers, which are physically located in Japan, as "Japanese worlds".

The reality is that the latency difference between a JP and a NA/EU server is mostly negligible for most people. In fact, I'd wager if Square Enix never bothered with separating the servers and simply stated "we have 50 worlds for all players in the world, feel free to join any one of them" we would have a far more even distribution of players across all worlds, and you won't have this issue of the JP servers being underutilized while the NA/EU ones are bursting at the seams. And I would bet nobody in NA would even notice the latency difference of a JP server (and vice versa).

My solution to the devs is to abolish the system of "designating" servers. Simply list ALL servers in a single list for ALL world players. All servers would then be utilized evenly AND you end up with the benefit of a more varied world community that people valued in FFXI.

For now, there needs to be more servers. Once that is done, please allow all existing players to do an optional one-time server transfer to ONLY those new servers, so those who wish to reunite with their friends/family or are willing to leave their current world for a less congested server can do so.

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I like this solution, especially the one-time server move. There are likely quite a few people willing to transfer to a low population server, but don't want to start-up a new character and lose progress. If anything, I don't see how this can hurt the current situation.

That said, I am unsure how long it would take to implement this solution, inform the community and then wait to see how it plays out. Its unfortunate, but I think we are too close to launch and to many issues they are currently working on to shift away resources to get something like this going. Hell world transfers were not even going to be an option for another few weeks if I am correct, its possible because they are still working on it.

I dont understand servers much, cant they do anything to increase the capacity of each world vs adding new ones?

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Originally Posted by Ebojager

I dont understand servers much, cant they do anything to increase the capacity of each world vs adding new ones?

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A lot of the problem is not only the installation, but also the configuring, testing, ordering, shipping, budgeting or just anything that is related to upgrading a piece of hardware (even more so for something of this magnitude). I am somewhat familiar with servers, but I think the best way to describe it would be like getting tires on your car switched out.

It would seem like a very simple switch, but what is time consuming are all the steps that lead up to the end result. What type of tires are you going to get, where are you going to get them, are they optimal for your car, can you afford them, how long will it take a technician or yourself to install them, if it takes longer do you have a back up vehicle to use? Its just stuff like this that make it a big pain.

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Originally Posted by Tsuroku

That said, I am unsure how long it would take to implement this solution, inform the community and then wait to see how it plays out. Its unfortunate, but I think we are too close to launch and to many issues they are currently working on to shift away resources to get something like this going. Hell world transfers were not even going to be an option for another few weeks if I am correct, its possible because they are still working on it.

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Yes, this would be a major change in the way servers are managed, which will be difficult to implement once paying customers are playing. That's probably why they wanted to have the current system set up during beta (and even then people made a big fuss about it). At the end of the day, I fear those who are frustrated will simply leave, and the servers will stablize and everyone else will just go back to playing and forget about all this. One of the reasons I wanted to direct people's attention to this is because it does more than just address the immediate server congestion concerns, it's a call to reverse their original decision to "split" the servers up and dividing a great global community. Yes, language barriers will present themselves, but at the end of the day, I think the benefits still far outweighs the downsides.

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Originally Posted by Ebojager

I dont understand servers much, cant they do anything to increase the capacity of each world vs adding new ones?

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It will probably be just as much work to upgrade existing servers vs getting new ones altogether. I'm led to believe the existing limit also takes into consideration of the game world design. For example, assuming at any given point 10% of players in each server can be found inside Gridania, and let's say Gridania can hold a maximum of 500 people before things start to look really crowded and unnatural. Then raising the population limit above 5,000 will potentially make a lot of the busier places very difficult to navigate.

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Originally Posted by Tsuroku

A lot of the problem is not only the installation, but also the configuring, testing, ordering, shipping, budgeting or just anything that is related to upgrading a piece of hardware (even more so for something of this magnitude). I am somewhat familiar with servers, but I think the best way to describe it would be like getting tires on your car switched out.

It would seem like a very simple switch, but what is time consuming are all the steps that lead up to the end result. What type of tires are you going to get, where are you going to get them, are they optimal for your car, can you afford them, how long will it take a technician or yourself to install them, if it takes longer do you have a back up vehicle to use? Its just stuff like this that make it a big pain.

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Thank you, that helps. Ive always wondered how the servers got full, or whatever, hard drive space, is each world multiple computers and can be enlarged by adding more space or computers, etc. Sounds interesting. Thanks for your reply.
Can I ask an unrelated question...the forum is only letting me post in the Technical Support forums, not the General or anything else ("New forum post cannot be made due to either you have reached to your daily limit or your main character's level is not high enough.")