Logout Measures

SE, I am sorry to have to say you need to do something like in WoW, but you do! They have a way that you bounce between worlds and can have friends on your friends list that are on different servers. When you join a person's party that is not on their server, you transfer over to their server temporarily just like in GW2. You can have people from other servers be in your guild, just you will not get the perks, but you can still chat with this across servers and whisper too.

If you implement something like this, then people can do FATEs and hunts together from different servers. This will help with those who still do not want to server transfers to do so.

Then the only problem you are left with is those who will not transfer due to housing. A simple fix for part of it is stop having some items get destroyed when it is removed. Instead, have it get sent to the reclaim guy for whoever first placed the item.

Then you are left with 1 problem, plots being available. Which that leaves me with 1 question about that: How come you cannot build any type of building on any lot? Why are some lots limited to small while others are limited to large? Why not make all lots the same and you pay a certain amount to build a certain kind of house on that lot? And if you first bought a small house for the lot, then you can destroy it and build a new bigger one on the same lot. Why was it not done this way?

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I don't find it hard to blame players at all. I do it with gusto! To me, the idea that the place to be is the most crowded server is crazy. Yet (obviously) that seems to be the standard thinking. People moved to these servers because they were large. So yeah, I blame people for literally doing this on purpose, then complaining about the completely predictable consequences.

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If someone was hosting 30 parties, but only one of them had music, where do you think most people go? Balmung was touted as THE only option for RPers for so long. For many players, a queue & transfer fee were a small price to pay for actually enjoying the game. It makes perfect sense for people to go there.

But blaming players "100%" is also blaming them for there not being a fix to this a long time ago. Yes, people chose to go there, but blaming the players entirely for the current problem is like blaming the patrons on the Titanic for there not being enough life boats.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Prior to the launch of Stormblood queues were not a problem on Balmung. While there were sometimes a login queue it was never longer than a couple of minutes.
I.e. it was not at all obvious that things would get this bad.

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Perhaps it wasn't obvious, but it was inevitable. If everyone flocks to one server, that server will eventually become too crowded. There's no other possible way that ends.

And the truth is, these queues won't last forever. They're not the consequence people need to worry about. The real problem with Balmung is that it's an RP community that can never get any new players. And I use "never" there literally - as long as people want to go to Balmung for RP, it will never be opened (or if it is, it'll be re-closed very quickly). The very idea of the server is not tenable.

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Originally Posted by Raynar-Bloodstrike

If someone was hosting 30 parties, but only one of them had music, where do you think most people go? Balmung was touted as THE only option for RPers for so long. For many players, a queue & transfer fee were a small price to pay for actually enjoying the game. It makes perfect sense for people to go there.

But blaming players "100%" is also blaming them for there not being a fix to this a long time ago. Yes, people chose to go there, but blaming the players entirely for the current problem is like blaming the patrons on the Titanic for there not being enough life boats.

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When that party got too crowded for anyone else to get in, presumably someone would start another party. And I remind you that Balmung was touted as the RP server by players. This doesn't shift the blame to anyone else.

The passengers on the Titanic weren't responsible for it sinking. It didn't sink because it was overcrowded. Your analogy doesn't apply here at all.

A better analogy would be if the fire department posted the capacity for a party venue, and people ignored it. They kept warning the people it was overcrowded (in the form of character restrictions) until the problem got so bad that they just had to stop letting anyone into the building at all. Is the party's overcrowding then the fire department's fault? No, though they could have stopped it.

And here's the thing: if the players' goal is to have one RP server, and Square Enix's response is not allowing new characters to be created there, have they actually "solved" the problem? It seems to me that not being able to make new characters is itself a major problem. The symptoms have changed, but the problem remains. What has actually been solved?

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

True, which is exactly why people are trying to establish RP communities on additional servers - mainly on Mateus (NA) and Omega (EU).

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Which is great, but they should have done that months if not years ago. Balmung has been overcrowded for a very long time (again, character creation restrictions show that pretty clearly), but no one was inclined to solve the problem until they were forced to. Also, I wish the Mateus decision had been made before I decided to move here. ;)

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I think patching actions that circumvent auto log out would be better soluttion.

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Perhaps better, but it's a solution that couldn't be ready in time to do any good for the current situation...

You've got the development time to actually make a working system...
And then testing time to make sure it actually works properly, and doesn't break anything...

And, if we're including consoles...
I believe the console manafacturers even have their own testing they have to do, which could add on another week before this fix could even be rolled out to everyone...



It's something that definatly should be done...
But it's not something that can help us out now.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

And the truth is, these queues won't last forever. They're not the consequence people need to worry about. The real problem with Balmung is that it's an RP community that can never get any new players. And I use "never" there literally - as long as people want to go to Balmung for RP, it will never be opened (or if it is, it'll be re-closed very quickly). The very idea of the server is not tenable.

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True, which is exactly why people are trying to establish RP communities on additional servers - mainly on Mateus (NA) and Omega (EU).

sooo punish everyone for gilgamesh and balmung? why not just DC those servers??

Gilga doesn't really have large queues anymore so...

Someone suggested this exact solution in one of the topics about Balmung's AFKers a few days ago. It's kind of disruptive, but I appreciate that they're doing something.

On the one hand, this was a necessary measure.

On the other hand, this is the equivalent of swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. Was there really no possibility for a more precise solution?

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Which is great, but they should have done that months if not years ago. Balmung has been overcrowded for a very long time (again, character creation restrictions show that pretty clearly), but no one was inclined to solve the problem until they were forced to. Also, I wish the Mateus decision had been made before I decided to move here. ;)

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Wasn't a real decision as such. There were a small RP community on Mateus even before the total lockdown of Balmung and other servers happened. Some of them took advantage of the opportunity and began to heavily promote their server to the greater RP community. People started moving over there, and soon their small community wasn't so small anymore.


Until the lockdown of Balmung happened there was no real chance of establishing any large RP community on other servers anyway - several attempts have been made over the years with little success[*]. RPers benefit greatly from being on the same server as many other RPers so it was hard to persuade people to go elsewhere. After the lockdown new people HAD to go elsewhere, so suddenly alternatives actually had a chance to grow big enough to become self-sustaining.

[*]At the start of ARR there were actually two unofficial RP servers - Balmung and Gilgamesh. Unfortunately Gilgamesh also became the unofficial raid server and the RP community there began to become somewhat insular (from what I have heard) and started to dwindle.