Transfer Restrictions and Roleplayers

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Originally Posted by Marluxia

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There's no downside that I can see to segregating RPers away from people who don't consider themselves RPers, most easily with an officially designated RP server.

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That still doesn't tackle the issue others have raised here which is that these communities are already established, and in some cases, heavily invested in. Even if an "official" RP server were designated who would move there if they didn't want to uproot their homes and stories and connections?

It's going to take players dedicated to establishing a community elsewhere, or an incentive for the non-RP crowd to shove off instead.

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Originally Posted by Vanitas

Trying is certainly out of the question I guess.

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Have you heard of Gilgamesh. It is supposed to be the second roleplay server. Roleplay is dead there now. It has been tried before.

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Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

That still doesn't tackle the issue others have raised here which is that these communities are already established, and in some cases, heavily invested in. Even if an "official" RP server were designated who would move there if they didn't want to uproot their homes and stories and connections?

It's going to take players dedicated to establishing a community elsewhere, or an incentive for the non-RP crowd to shove off instead.

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I agree that that remains a problem, but I think it's worth examining what form this "investment" takes.

By that, I mean that if Square Enix offers free transfers with the retention (or compensation) of all assets, and designates an "official RP server" on top of that, I think it'd be possible for all RPers to move with limited fracturing. If the cost for uprooting is thirty minutes for the transfer to go through (assuming that you are transferring with all of your friends, and your friends have no reason not to transfer because the transfer is free with no losses) then wouldn't that serve as adequate incentive?

I fully acknowledge that I might be overlooking a whole host of issues, but that's the reason for this discussion.

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Originally Posted by Velynea

Have you heard of Gilgamesh. It is supposed to be the second roleplay server. Roleplay is dead there now. It has been tried before.

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I can also name other worlds where the attempts are seemingly unnoticeable or dead. There's probably 20+ FCs/LS pages on the linked RPC site of people who attempted to get communities to thrive as Balmung's had. Sargatanas, Leviathan, Brynhildr. Faerie. They might have had a linkshell or two but they give up or it becomes constrained to one small sub-50 group.

It does look like there's a good attempt being made on Mateus and I wish them all the luck with that.

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Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

That still doesn't tackle the issue others have raised here which is that these communities are already established, and in some cases, heavily invested in. Even if an "official" RP server were designated who would move there if they didn't want to uproot their homes and stories and connections?

It's going to take players dedicated to establishing a community elsewhere, or an incentive for the non-RP crowd to shove off instead.

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For it to work, SE needs to make a few things happen.

1) Housing needs to be transferred over. If this means adding new Wards to accommodate the Large Estates of FCs, then that NEEDS to happen. Players NEED this peace of mind, this feeling of security, that they are NOT going to lose this.
2) Transfers need to be free. Not everyone can afford to pay $18 to move one (or more) characters.
3) Restrictions of transferring Gil don't need to be loosened. They need to be -removed-. No one wants to lose their Gil from moving.
4) Make Official RP Servers. It. Helps.

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Originally Posted by Velynea

Have you heard of Gilgamesh. It is supposed to be the second roleplay server. Roleplay is dead there now. It has been tried before.

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Right, just give up then. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Marluxia

By that, I mean that if Square Enix offers free transfers with the retention (or compensation) of all assets, and designates an "official RP server" on top of that, I think it'd be possible for all RPers to move with limited fracturing. If the cost for uprooting is thirty minutes for the transfer to go through (assuming that you are transferring with all of your friends, and your friends have no reason not to transfer because the transfer is free with no losses) then wouldn't that serve as adequate incentive?

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Ideally yes, they're offering compensation for housing and furnishings, FC transfer, designated destination worlds will be free of charge, iirc (it's on Lodestone).

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Originally Posted by Vexander

For it to work, SE needs to make a few things happen.

1) Housing needs to be transferred over. If this means adding new Wards to accommodate the Large Estates of FCs, then that NEEDS to happen. Players NEED this peace of mind, this feeling of security, that they are NOT going to lose this.
2) Transfers need to be free. Not everyone can afford to pay $18 to move one (or more) characters.
3) Restrictions of transferring Gil don't need to be loosened. They need to be -removed-. No one wants to lose their Gil from moving.
4) Make Official RP Servers. It. Helps.

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See above. The gil restriction is only in place to prevent flooding a market with excess gil or giving one player an excessive amount of power over the market.

I'm not sure what RPers were expecting exactly. Balmung and Gilga are very saturated player-wise. Trying to shove more people on them would only degrade performance further.

It would definitely be nice if SE could designate/recommend certain servers specifically for RP though, as FFXIV badly needs multiple RP hubs instead of one swamped one. WoW does this and it works well.

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Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

Right, just give up then. Thanks.

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No need to become snarky now for giving information that this has been attempted in the past. It is better to inform people then inspire false hope.

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Originally Posted by Marluxia

One of the fundamental issues I'd like to have an answer for is this: does Square Enix know why Balmung is overpopulated? Are they even aware that a roleplaying community exists in NA and EU, and that the desire for a large roleplaying community is why Balmung is overpopulated? Or is server population purely a numbers game for them based off of their metrics?

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Yes, they do understand why Balmung is overpopulated and do know about the RP community. These things are not completely connected.

You seem to be missing a few of the other causes that caused both Balmung and Gilgamesh to swell up.

One of the big factors is that it was feasible for individuals to move to Balmung/Gilgamesh, but not feasible for large groups to move away from Balmung/Gilgamesh. $18 is a reasonable price to migrate an individual. $4500 is not a reasonable price to migrate 250 players.

Individuals ended up trickling into Balmung/Gilgamesh, but organized groups were unable to leave together. This ended up causing everyone to be crowded in Balmung/Gilgamesh rather than large groups moving to where there is more room.

With free transfers organizing a 250+ character mass migration from Balmung/Gilgamesh is not an overwhelming task.

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Originally Posted by Velynea

No need to become snarky now for giving information that this has been attempted in the past. It is better to inform people then inspire false hope.

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And then offer no alternatives. Forgive my skepticism when the message you're sending out is "don't bother, this is the way things are and nothing you do will change it" smacks of a defeatist attitude and does nothing to help the situation at all.