Possible timer for open world AFK'ers?

This really isn't a new subject about how many, many, and I mean MANY players will log on to the game and just go afk. I don't mean a 5-10 afk. I'm talking hours if not days being afk.

How does this affect me? Well, it doesn't just affect me. It affects others as well.
Especially when the server decides to randomly kick those that are actually playing the game, trying to get things done. And yet, the afk'ers are not affected? They still sit there AFK in the same spot for five (5) days?

Of course I will get comments like, "Get better internet" or "Maybe it's your ISP" or something other to the degree to where it is something on my end. Which I can guarantee you that it's not. lol

I'm not sure how much space/data it takes up for one player to go AFK. Which I'm sure isn't much. But when you have hundreds of others going AFK, when you have players trying to get into the game but can't because someone is hoarding server space, then that is where it becomes a problem.

So, is there anyway in the possible future to place a timer on for someone to be AFK?
I mean, you already do it in dungeons/instances to where they have 10 min until they are kicked for it. So why not in the open world?
I would say that a 30 min, or even and hour, for an open world AFK timer. That should give that player plenty of time to AFK, do what they need to do, and then come right back. If not, they simply get kicked and just simply log right back in. But by them being kicked, it opens up more for people to get in or to not get kicked themselves due to a server congestion.

They used to have this function, but decided to get rid of it since there were many complaints.

This functionality exists, and is wholley unnecessary. The devs turn this feature on at the start of an expansion when the influx of players is at its highest and worlds are constantly full, any other time it is not needed.

You will get comments like "get better internet" because this is not an issue with the AFK people, this is an issue between your system and SEs system. Blips happen on both ends, and kicking afk people will do nothing to stop your problem, because the two are unrelated.

I think this is a good alternative for high populated servers like Balmung or Gilgamesh during high peak hours.

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Originally Posted by JinnKyuuketski

How does this affect me? Well, it doesn't just affect me. It affects others as well.

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No it doesn't, AT ALL, your problems are most likely your internet route to the servers in spite of your assertion, as someone already said .. the server's DON'T RANDOMLY KICK PLAYERS!

The only time AFKers are an issue is when the servers can't handle the number of players trying to log in, and that only happens these days when new major content is released and even then it's nowhere near as common as it was when the game was new.

Anyone else find unnerving as hell when you see that one guy afk for days on end? Kinda worry about them to be honest.
Used to know a person on Gilgamesh who'd be in Mor Dhona just afk for an eternity even being in the exact same spot after maintenance, in fact I can't say I even knew them, they were always afk! It's pretty spooky.

As for the OP.
I think this as a user mentioned is only really a problem when a new patch or expansion is out though I may be having technical difficulties on my end because I've not got the best provider but it's worth mentioning that I've had these issues on new patch days so I don't know, could go either way.

Can't say I've ever experienced regular disconnects; typically when I do experience connection issues, it IS on my end, or it's a server issue that's affecting everyone connected.

This was definitely a gripe back at 2.0 launch before they implemented the AFK timer for awhile; however, you still had some creative people who used third party software or macgyver'd something together to press their controller/keyboard and keep them "active" while they were away at school/work/whatever.

You might knock a few afk people out by putting the timer on full time, but more likely than not you'll just turn them into dancing puppets.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

macgyver'd something together to press their controller/keyboard and keep them "active" while they were away at school/work/whatever.

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This, it sucked having to go to the store or just to make food and find the game kicked you, forcing you to the log in process for a 3rd time...

AFK players have nothing to do with random kicks, this is a problem on your side, bandwidth, cable, wifi, router, or your isp routing, you can't "guarantee" it's not on your side, that word only shows how little you know about it, i suggest you to find a real solution instead of trying to punish inocent players.

Every MMO has done this in the past and then removed it because of the long term issues with other players. This Game had it at launch to deal with Login queue times and they have now disable since the game has leveled out for nearly all servers. Yes there are times when new patch drops and Queue times are hell. But AFK timer does more But Currently from what I'm seeing on Swagatanas the game server pop is low during the Pre 3.5 cause everyone is either playing FF15 or other games and waiting for 3.5 or 4.0 to be release.
I still get random kicks and D/Cs but I don't care relogin is not a big deal.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

No it doesn't, AT ALL, your problems are most likely your internet route to the servers in spite of your assertion, as someone already said .. the server's DON'T RANDOMLY KICK PLAYERS!

The only time AFKers are an issue is when the servers can't handle the number of players trying to log in, and that only happens these days when new major content is released and even then it's nowhere near as common as it was when the game was new.

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That's not entirely true. The sole reason iddyllshire is as laggy as it is and takes so long to load for many players is the sheer number of people afk there... that has nothing to do with internet route to servers.
Mor dhona was exactly the same in ARR but the problem magically vanished when the afkers all left and went to afk in iddyllshire..

That said I wouldn't be against an afk auto log timer but it would depend on the time limits involved.

If i'd just finished gathering cuprites and had about half an hour to kill before I could go back and get chysahl greens. I quite often just afk and clean the house a bit, make a start on dinner or something so if I got logged off after 30 minutes. just before my nodes started spawning again i'd be pretty annoyed with it.

If i'd gone to work and left my game running though it wouldn't really bother me in the slightest if it auto logged me out after 2-3 hours of inactivity.

some queues I can imagine could be a problem, but they could add a simple prompt every hour or so. for players to check if they're still queuing... that could lead to less of those queues where you're at 23/24 players and always one who doesn't hit the ready check. then it takes 10-15 minutes for it to ding again.

Totally not needed to have auto kick AFK on all the time. I'm on a reasonably well populated server and there are only login queues in two cases: 1) when servers go down and no one can log back in, 2) when Heavensward came out and there was a big influx of players. Auto kick AFK won't do anything for situation 1, and auto kick AFK was implemented for situation 2. It doesn't need to be on all the time. Presumably we should see it again for a bit with Stormblood and that's fine.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

That's not entirely true. The sole reason iddyllshire is as laggy as it is and takes so long to load for many players is the sheer number of people afk there... that has nothing to do with internet route to servers.
Mor dhona was exactly the same in ARR but the problem magically vanished when the afkers all left and went to afk in iddyllshire..

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Ok, yeah - Idyllshire can get bad with loading due to the number of players. In that case maybe implement an auto kick for heavily populated areas and not server wide?

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Ok, yeah - Idyllshire can get bad with loading due to the number of players. In that case maybe implement an auto kick for heavily populated areas and not server wide?

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Doesn't Balmung ALWAYS have a login queue though? I know you can almost never make characters there unless you pay to transfer them over. Wouldn't that make a good candidate for a server auto-kick feature. Someone said people will still hack something together, well, that'll be some and not enough to make the feature useless.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Doesn't Balmung ALWAYS have a login queue though? I know you can almost never make characters there unless you pay to transfer them over. Wouldn't that make a good candidate for a server auto-kick feature. Someone said people will still hack something together, well, that'll be some and not enough to make the feature useless.

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But if Balmung is a problem, then no need for all the other servers deal with their hassle. XD Give Balmung an auto kick and be done with it.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Doesn't Balmung ALWAYS have a login queue though? I know you can almost never make characters there unless you pay to transfer them over. Wouldn't that make a good candidate for a server auto-kick feature. Someone said people will still hack something together, well, that'll be some and not enough to make the feature useless.

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Most of the time there is no login queue for Balmung, and when there is, it is very rare that it takes more than a minute or two to get through the queue.

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Originally Posted by Raynar

Every MMO has done this in the past and then removed it because of the long term issues with other players.

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Actually, no. Most other MMOs kick out players after they have been AFK for too long. Few people have a problem with it elsewhere, so I do not understand why it would be a problem here.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Most of the time there is no login queue for Balmung, and when there is, it is very rare that it takes more than a minute or two to get through the queue.

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So does that mean character creation is open a lot more often nowadays on Balmung? Glad to hear it's changed, last I heard it was always closed except for like maybe 2 minutes after servers come back up... Glad to hear it's changed though!

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Originally Posted by aesteval

But if Balmung is a problem, then no need for all the other servers deal with their hassle. XD Give Balmung an auto kick and be done with it.

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That's kinda what I was trying to say by saying the following

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Doesn't Balmung ALWAYS have a login queue though? I know you can almost never make characters there unless you pay to transfer them over. Wouldn't that make a good candidate for a server auto-kick feature.

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As in Balmung would be a good server to use it on. :P

There's a couple countermeasures they've used to deal with congestion in the past. They turned on the afk boot before and they also turned on mirrored open world zones, where there were instances for each zone and it would place you in one randomly if you teleported to that zone. For example, two players would teleport to the same zone, but you would be in 1 and they would be in 2, so you would never see each other. This made hunts a hassle to get to unless you entered the zone by the actual border. They actually kept that feature up longer on the high pop worlds when congestion was really bad back then, which means they monitor it closely. So if they're not using these anymore then it's clearly not needed, it might be when stormblood is live though.

YES, PLEASE.

This is an online game, it requires a constant and stable connection. Through the years, us players had the chance to experience all sorts of issues: full worlds, long load times, lag, disconnects - granted, there are many factors that contribute to these, but why leave in one that could be helped? Also through the years, we have heard the devs themselves citing network infrastructure and everything related as causes of various issues, or reasons for why certain things can not be done.

Yet, despite all these, everyone seems to think that logging in and going AFK is perfectly fine?? And no, this isn't about a few 10 minutes, this is about characters rooted to the same spot with the little red chair next to their names for 4-6-10-16 hours. Sometimes even a day or two - I have seen such myself. These are just extreme and should not be allowed.

There is no valid reason why anyone should be AFK for more than hour; if that's the case, they probably have something much more important that's come up than a videogame. However little it may seem, the load on the servers could be lessened with the AFK autokick active. It needs to be there, it IS there in every online game with a bit of common sense, it needs to be able to detect "clever" circumvention attempts, such as inactive crafting or running against a wall. At the very least it needs to kick people who are idle for more than an hour.

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Originally Posted by Alenaar

Also through the years, we have heard the devs themselves citing network infrastructure and everything related as causes of various issues, or reasons for why certain things can not be done.

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Some businesses operate on a bit of a use it or lose it policy for resources. Basically if they don't make full use of some resource they could see their budget cut in that regard because they didn't need it. Padding server usage could be a good thing if it keeps usage higher to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

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Originally Posted by Alenaar

Yet, despite all these, everyone seems to think that logging in and going AFK is perfectly fine?? And no, this isn't about a few 10 minutes, this is about characters rooted to the same spot with the little red chair next to their names for 4-6-10-16 hours. Sometimes even a day or two - I have seen such myself. These are just extreme and should not be allowed.

There is no valid reason why anyone should be AFK for more than hour; if that's the case, they probably have something much more important that's come up than a videogame. However little it may seem, the load on the servers could be lessened with the AFK autokick active. It needs to be there, it IS there in every online game with a bit of common sense. At the very least it needs to kick people who are idle for more than an hour.

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And to add on top of that, it's not HARD to just log back in once you are back, just one click away tbh.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Actually, no. Most other MMOs kick out players after they have been AFK for too long. Few people have a problem with it elsewhere, so I do not understand why it would be a problem here.

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To name a game that issues in the long term was NCSOFT's Aion they ended up removing it cause people were QQing about D/Cing and Community Team justed didn't want to deal with which was random D/Cs and Force D/Cs. For Example. You and I may not see it that as issue but others do. I like stated Earlier I don't see problem of just relogin period.

Only place I have run into a problem is Quarrymill when lots are AFK so i simply do not go AFK myself there if you AFK in a "quiet" corner it does not affect anything or anyone. As long as you do not AFK the server very very very seldom will kick you. Plus I would really like to see a server that has 100's of people AFK at the same time. A bit of an exaggeration?

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Originally Posted by Neri

They used to have this function, but decided to get rid of it since there were many complaints.

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Wrong they had this function to secure a smooth heavensward release (same with instanced areas on bigger servers) after everything went to normal they just removed it again and Im sure we will see smth similiar at stormblood release again.

The afker mostly affect people with bad pcs/ps3s. They tend to migrate to certain areas for afkness. The op is crazy though. If the servers can not handle the players on the game it is SE fault. Even if the players are or aren't doing something They set the amount of players a server can handle and be stable. I do think in the future it would be better if they had a couple places for tomestone gear. People with older pcs and touchy internet have problems getting in and out of the zone.

To the Balmung thing. Balmung can have a que at any time of the day. But it is a lie. Just unque and try again and it is instant. Balmung has had open character creation during the work day. Yes Balmung can probably have 100 people afk in Idylshire, but the server has had less players on since a couple patches ago. It is not a patch lul it has been slowing down for awhile.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

That's not entirely true. The sole reason iddyllshire is as laggy as it is and takes so long to load for many players is the sheer number of people afk there... that has nothing to do with internet route to servers.
Mor dhona was exactly the same in ARR but the problem magically vanished when the afkers all left and went to afk in iddyllshire...

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That also doesn't haven't anything to do with the servers, but with your system, and how much it can handle. For example, my PS4 was so incredibly laggy every time I would teleport to Idyllshire, and I would take forever to log in. My FC mate, who plays on PS3, took even longer to load in. I recently switched to a gaming PC, and my load times are almost instant, and I don't see hardly any drop in my fps. So I don't really see that as a reason to implement an AFK timer. Because that's not an issue in regards to the servers, but one's own system limitations.

Honestly seeing all the AFKers doesn't bother me. Because they don't affect my game at all. Like others have said, the OP's random disconnects are not caused by too many people AFK, or the servers just randomly deciding to kick them. It's something related to their system, their connection, or something on the route between them and the server. And AFK timer won't solve their issue.

I suppose they could be useful for highly populated servers, but I don't play on any of the closed servers, so I don't know if there are queue times or such on a daily basis for those that do. Probably the only time they're useful is for expansion releases when everyone is wanting to get on and play. I could agree with turning them on then.

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Originally Posted by TiaHariberux3

Wrong they had this function to secure a smooth heavensward release (same with instanced areas on bigger servers) after everything went to normal they just removed it again and Im sure we will see smth similiar at stormblood release again.

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Not entirely true. It was active up through 2.1 or 2.2 i believe/

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Originally Posted by Seig345

This was definitely a gripe back at 2.0 launch before they implemented the AFK timer for awhile; however, you still had some creative people who used third party software or macgyver'd something together to press their controller/keyboard and keep them "active" while they were away at school/work/whatever.

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You don't even need to do that. Originally, you could just talk to an NPC to keep the game from kicking you. Another method was to just leave up your HUD customization and you wouldn't get kicked. Used this trick all the time, even when the feature was present; don't like getting kicked from the game. Sucks when you go and do something like load the dishwasher, come back and find yourself kicked and take 30+ minutes to an hour or more to log in (back in 2.0).

Yeah please kick afk players, its totaly fun to que for something for 30 minutes or one hour and never tab out of the game because you could get kicked if you are afk for a second to long. :rolleyes:

Idyllshire doesn't lagg because of the afk people it laggs because your pc or ps has to load all the people who are running around there.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Actually, no. Most other MMOs kick out players after they have been AFK for too long. Few people have a problem with it elsewhere, so I do not understand why it would be a problem here.

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I was going to reply to this as well, and add that this is the only game i've played that doesn't have a timer. GW2, STO, SWTOR, ESO and I'm sure someone told me WoW has as well.

WoW definitely kicks you out for AFK.

Another thing to think about is that current active log-ins partly(?) determine whether you can create characters on a server.
Sadly, an AFK timer wouldn't even help a server like Balmung because the RMT hammer the server for new characters 24/7 (you can see 200+ garbage-named lv1 THMs and ARCs logged in moments after every maintenance)

I can't see a reason to kick out afk players. The game is looking empty enough already. Keep the mannequins in the windows. It doesn't impact server performance.

They should just make them perform progressively more embarrassing/absurd emotes as time goes by. It would be funny to come back from afk to see your character surrounded by a wall of beer cans, duct-taped to a pole, or digging a hole to nowhere.

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Originally Posted by Ilan

Idyllshire doesn't lagg because of the afk people it laggs because your pc or ps has to load all the people who are running around there.

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and loads all the afk people who are doing nothing but standing there for days.. like there are people who have the name "Probably Afk" and just sit there forever.

When Stormblood comes out, SE will bring back the 'afk-kick' thing again, as well as the multi-server zone or whatever it was called to make the release of the expansion smooth. Possibly smoother than HW's.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

That also doesn't haven't anything to do with the servers, but with your system, and how much it can handle.

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It may not have anything to do with the servers, but an afk timer in those areas would help out the systems of those who have difficulty loading in to those zones. They are crowded by afk players and causing system / game performance issues for no reason.