Full Realm Character Creation (Addressing It)

Do the developers have any plans to address the inability for new players to create characters on perpetually full realms such as Balmung and Sargatanas? The literal inability to be able to recruit new players to the server(s) is incredibly bothersome in recruitment and advertising. Even at 6AM EST and after maintenance ends those two realms are still locked for creation.

Forcing new players to purchase a realm transfer as soon as they start your game is not a viable option and turns away potential customers who want to join your game. You need to consider a system where people can at least 'queue' for character creation and have the character become created when the server has the capacity rather than forcing them to try and log in at 4-6AM each day hoping something has changed. There is no logical defense for the current state of these realms on Aether. Either they need to be expanded/divided, or a method for creation needs to be implemented.

To add to the idea, you should also be able to play that queued character on a different server and auto-transfer (for free!) when there is room for you keeping all your progress.

If people were not cheating the restriction by using world transfer, the restriction might have been gone by now.

More like maybe they should offer free transfers AWAY from full servers.

If something is full to the point of bursting, the only thing that can be done to be able to put more into it, is to remove some of what it's full with.

If players don't want to go to a server that is less crowded, that's up to the players.

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

More like maybe they should offer free transfers AWAY from full servers.

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So people should be rewarded for filling up a server?

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

So people should be rewarded for filling up a server?

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They should be "awarded" for reducing the overpopulation problem of a server.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

So people should be rewarded for filling up a server?

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???
They should be rewarded with helping the congestion of overcrowded servers.
If people all choose to go to the same other server, then that one will eventually be not free to transfer to... it would fluctuate with the amount of people on each server of course.

The servers are locked for a reason. If you put more people on a server than the hardware can handle, it goes boom. People just need to pick another server. It's been this way in every other MMO; once a server gets full, the company locks it as to not cause disruption for players already on it. I mean, unless you -want- those servers to start crashing and lagging all the time, but I'd rather not have a lot of 90ks again. There shouldn't even be realm transfers allowed to these servers. Allowing alts, I understand, the player is already on the server and isn't taking anymore room to have alts on that server. And I do agree with realm transfers for free off over-populated servers.

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

???
They should be rewarded with helping the congestion of overcrowded servers.
If people all choose to go to the same other server, then that one will eventually be not free to transfer to... it would fluctuate with the amount of people on each server of course.

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I could possibly stand behind a scheme that gives reduced rates (not zero) for moving from the top 10% populated worlds to the bottom 10% populated worlds, but even then with restrictions...
Like if the difference between the top and average, and the bottom and average is low (good spread of populations), no reduced rates would apply at all.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

I could possibly stand behind a scheme that gives reduced rates (not zero) for moving from the top 10% populated worlds to the bottom 10% populated worlds, but even then with restrictions...
Like if the difference between the top and average, and the bottom and average is low (good spread of populations), no reduced rates would apply at all.

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The issue is that individuals don't want to leave. They have free companies. They have friends.

You need a means of encouraging entire chunks to leave in a group - a whole Free Company to be willing to go to greener pastures where they have a shot at buying a house, for example. There is going to be hassle involved no matter what, but making it free turns it into a reasonable option finally.

I do agree that any free transfers would need to be to only a handful of worlds where the population is not an issue. SE has the internal data for that.

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Originally Posted by Raim

perpetually full realms such as Balmung and Sargatanas?

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The problem and putting even more players on it would make it worse.

Do you want 24.7 queues to get on. I'm guessing not. What they should do is offer free transfers off of the high pop servers.

Well my friend could not get in even at 6AM after the maintenance so you are literally preventing him from playing the game with people they know. Im guessing Balmung and Sargatanas are on permanent lockdown? Strange how throwing money at that changes it. Since free trials aren't even able to transfer I have no idea what to do about it. If you've already entered your full game code can you transfer while in a trial?

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Originally Posted by Raim

Well my friend could not get in even at 6AM after the maintenance so you are literally preventing him from playing the game with people they know. Im guessing Balmung and Sargatanas are on permanent lockdown? Strange how throwing money at that changes it. Since free trials aren't even able to transfer I have no idea what to do about it. If you've already entered your full game code can you transfer while in a trial?

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Throwing money on it works, because the VAST majority of those people who want to play on a full server, most of the time their only reason being: "HERPA DERP! Biggest server = BEST!", won't throw money on it.

A few new characters won't break the server, thousands of them (which would be the case if the servers were open), could.

For the record, you cannot transfer a character to a closed realm unless it reopens. So even if you give Square your money, you cannot go to Balmung unless you can also create characters there.

I've seen Sarg open off and on right after maint and between the hours of 3-6am, but I have never once seen Balmung open after the expansion. Is that the player's choice? What if all of their friends play on that server, as mine do? There's no battle tag system like Warcraft and no guesting system like GW2 and no megaserver system like ESO, so we're just... stuck playing without the people we want to play with?

It's easy for someone on the server of their choice to decry any suggested changes made to the system, sure, but new players and returning players who want to move are just... unsubbing or not subbing after their trial account at all.

Then there absolutely must be a system implemented for transferring off of the full realms and I will not stop until it is addressed. I understand that Balmung/Sargatanas are large. I didn't pick them because they are large, they are comprised of my original 1.0 realm where everyone I know played. I don't exactly have a choice unless they expect hundreds of people to all of a sudden pay for a transfer or offer a FC transfer service. The new people I invite and others invite literally physically cannot play with us by any means and if that isn't a problem I don't know what is. The staff also doesn't seem to be very vocal about addressing it, and theres no means of redress for directly talking to staff in or out of game.

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Originally Posted by Raim

*snip*

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Sadly, basically the only viable solution is to offer free transfer from crowded servers to "empty" servers.
But the gain from doing this is very debatable.
People with an FC won't switch.
People with friends in an FC won't switch.
A lot of people just might not care.

Basically the only type that will switch is people who have no connection on their current server, AND want to play with a friend who is just starting.

Then they should at the very least allow for affordable Free Company transfers.

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Originally Posted by Raim

Then they should at the very least allow for affordable Free Company transfers.

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Which makes a simple and feasible solution (free player transfer) into a GIANT and most likely unfeasible solution (FC transfer).
So yeah.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

The issue is that individuals don't want to leave. They have free companies. They have friends.

You need a means of encouraging entire chunks to leave in a group - a whole Free Company to be willing to go to greener pastures where they have a shot at buying a house, for example. There is going to be hassle involved no matter what, but making it free turns it into a reasonable option finally.

I do agree that any free transfers would need to be to only a handful of worlds where the population is not an issue. SE has the internal data for that.

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It would also be easier for people that have Mansions to transfer their houses over or sell them! Right now, we all want to move but we are stuck cause we dont have the time or means to buy another Mansion all over again...

Have you added your question to This thread for the next LftP?

The only realistic way this will improve is the addition of more servers, the labeling of the servers (PvP, PvE, RP) and then provide free, un-gil-restricted transfers to other worlds. You will not be ab le to convince a whole group of people to move otherwise, not on their own dime.

Balmung is so overcrowded, we have no RMT, yay!
Balmung is so overcrowded, all the plots get snatched up in a minute and nobody can have a house, boo!
Balmung is so overcrowded, we have the worst login queues, boo!
Please allow more people to come to Balmung!

...yeah, makes sense.

Or at the very least, maybe have a release of a new housing area coincide with a free transfer campaign for players on overpopulated worlds to entice them to move to lower pop servers where they'd have a shot at it. At this point, housing is drying up everywhere, and it might would help move large groups of players if there was availability somewhere else, and there'd be more incentive to do so if large amounts of money didn't have to be forked over for it.