Eternal Bond Reservation system is setup very poorly

As the title says, I think the reservation system is a poor idea in general and not even a logical move. With as many players there are on the servers, its hard to pick a reservation date that isn't something absurd as 3am. Worse part is that you HAVE to have your partner there to choose a reservation date. My partner is at work on fridays most of the day so where do I get even the time to have my partner on with me during the open window time and to try to pick a reservation let alone not have it some absurd hour that no one can even attend. As I showed up at 3am to even check the reservations they were almost all taken up. I don't even know why SE didn't just make it a separate instance like the waking sands? We paid for a plan and now we can't even go through it all the way due to this terrible planning on the developers part and the lack of decent reservation openings.

I agree, its definitely poorly designed. Why couldn't they just use a special instance for eternal bonding? Sharing it with others makes it a complete hassle and unfair for many because of the times. SE definitely need to rethink their approach to this system, its overly complex for absolutely no reason.

I agree that certain aspects of the reservation system are inconvenient and unsatisfying. I paid for platinum primarily for the outfits but also for the first time slot when reservations open. There were about 50 people at our NPC and it was a rush. In the rush of things, I grabbed a time slot not realizing that the day I selected (thinking it was going to be 12/13/14 12am not 12/20/14 12am) is a time when I am going to be on a plane flight. Now that I need to reschedule, I have to wait until next week, and I have to wait until an hour after the free wedding members pick all of the slots. Couldn't this have been avoided by giving up your reservation so that someone else can take it and I can pick a different time slot now? And 4am is a ridiculous time to have someone make reservations. Last time I checked, most places in real life aren't open at 4am to take wedding reservations.

-Allow cancellations so that slots can be reopened for others
-Don't punish those who picked the wrong time slot when trying to beat the masses
-Instanced Eternal Bonding
-Make open reservation time cater to the data center time zone

My partner still not home and still has a few more hours before coming home, decided to check reservations,(Despite I can change all the settings for the eternal bonding ceremony by myself but apparently I am incapable of picking a single date) and this is what is left. The time is 1:54PST when I checked it and it left almost nothing available for anyone to even complete the ceremony. The only time slots are open is when my partner is going to work, when my friends are either at work or sleeping. How is this even remotely fair to everyone. I can't even imagine how fair that is for even the free plans let alone those who paid for it.
http://gyazo.com/cbcb289565dd2a749eff9e2b5f256b31

I also have my fair share of problems with the Eternal bonding system as well outside of the Reservation system. I think having the Lv requirement of 50 is really unreasonable, my partner and I were planning on trying to get married the day the patch came out but after looking over the requirements I was upset, not only that but one of the requirements and to have a Lv 17 story quest complete as well. That's really stupid, I think that the required level should be no more than Lv 20 at best since that is when most of the game really opens up. Why limit weddings for End Game, when it requires a Lv 17 quest to be finished. I know it has to be level 50 with "any" class but still. It feels to me like they didn't take into account people that don't have a lot of time to play the game. My partner can only play for maybe 2-3 hours after work before bed to go back the next morning, even still my partner can be kicked out the room in which the PS3 is located.

I agree. :| I could only register before work this morning, I got on only to see almost nothing available only AM times (because I only paid for gold...) and the dates are only like the week of the holidays, why not from today onwards? This whole system is complete garbage if not for the nice dress and dye I used to dye it with I'd feel like it's a complete waste of money. Not only were there limited dates and times to choose from (just one page of dates), but you have to be on WITH YOUR PARTNER, which is impossible because not everyone can be on at the same time and during that time frame to REGISTER for an ingame event, which is limited on times/dates you can even do the wedding event on. :| Why not make this instanced and without needing anything, just make it an automated event and I'd be happier than I am now. :| This is rediculous. If you don't pay 20 dollars, you get an even smaller chance of even getting a wedding during times that you're most likely even online.

Not too sure if anyone suggested this, but the way that my husband and I worked it is we both stayed logged in overnight, just AFK. If one of the partners is willing to get up or stay up until that absurd time, then as long as your characters are both in the area, it will work.

My husband got up at 2:30 in the morning (MST) for a few minutes, registered us, and then went back to bed.

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Originally Posted by JaydeDancer

Not too sure if anyone suggested this, but the way that my husband and I worked it is we both stayed logged in overnight, just AFK. If one of the partners is willing to get up or stay up until that absurd time, then as long as your characters are both in the area, it will work.

My husband got up at 2:30 in the morning (MST) for a few minutes, registered us, and then went back to bed.

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Definitely a good idea though that still doesn't solve the lack of reservation availability.

No, no it does not.

It's a bit silly really and sounds like Square should have had more space reserved. However, I think the best solution is to wait till the hype dies down so that there's room. Yes, you won't get married right away this way, but do you want to spend several more days or weeks getting more annoyed and angry that there's no room still?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

It's a bit silly really and sounds like Square should have had more space reserved. However, I think the best solution is to wait till the hype dies down so that there's room. Yes, you won't get married right away this way, but do you want to spend several more days or weeks getting more annoyed and angry that there's no room still?

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The problem with that is WHEN the hype would die down, several weeks, months down the road? I'm sorry but that doesn't even sound remotely fair to anyone who's even paid for this to begin with. The only way to get them to change something is to speak up which is pretty much what everyone is doing in this thread. If you keep quiet, nothing will change.

While we're at it, I'm going to throw something else out there:

It'd be REALLY NICE if they listed the time zone when you go to register. If just to prevent silly people like me getting confused.

I knew this whole marrage system was going to wind up a total farce.

The Reservation System, The "Premium" plans via the cash shop, the lack of any real reason to do the ceremony, all of it.

The reservation system was compleatly stupid on the devs part. It could have easily been a instance activated by an NPC when the system was activated.
The "Premium" plans I personally thought was idiodic but I'll give them a slight pass being as there is a free option.
And ultimatly for all the hassle you get.... The ability to port to their location? Can't we do this already? It displays their location on the friend list, and the port spell is always usable so how is this an advantage?

Really there needs to be a compleat overhaul of this system, cause it's busted as hell.

1: NPC controled instance. The Premium and Free crap could stay and simply be used to unlock the instance. (And use that aplication corretly by mailing the rings to the players applying)
2: Add actual benefits for the couple. example, Being able to purchase a "Marrige Home" to where it functions like buying a personal home but gives the couple the rights to all fetures like they would in a FC home.
3: (And more of a personal gripe) Please test drive some of this data before implamenting it. this isn't the 1st time a new feature was added half-baked and needed a compleat overhaul to the point that it was a compleatly worthless feature. And I'd be extreemly heartbroken if the Trip-Triad game become an "Pay to Win" compleatly broken system that you can't even participate in with out the cash shop. (I don't mind the cash shop but having pay to win crap ultimatly makes this game's subscription fees unfair. So plz no triad cards on the cash shop, save maybe some alternate art cards with identical stats to ingame)

I've been really upset with how this is set up. My husband and I would like to get our characters married in the game, but it's pretty much impossible for us.

Not only because we have to both get up at a crazy hour to log in to even have a chance at getting a slot, which we can't do in the first place. But also, his work schedule changes constantly, and he has no idea from week to week what his hours will be nor what days he'll have off. You reserve a slot at least a week in advance, and that's just not a plausible thing for us.

Even when the hype dies down (which could be months, who knows), it'd be very difficult because of the advanced reservation system. And we paid money for this crap, too.

So what are we even supposed to do? :\

^ Same here. It's 4:22am that I'm writing this and this is totally unnecessary. I should be asleep so I can handle my job properly in 3 hours. Instead I'm wasting my time posting to a gaming company about a ridiculous payment I've made for a quick 10-minute ceremony that I can never achieve.

Sorry, I'm so t'eed off that I made another thread on it: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-In-A-Party%21

But honestly, I'm not deleting it. Squeenix needs to be well aware of how ridiculous this is for us. If it means covering more threads, so be it. I paid good money for this only to get screwed every week for the last three weeks.