New Servers?

Has there been any mention of them upgrading their servers/databases for Stormblood? I feel like our current servers are running on Pentium II's with such a limited housing system, technical aspects and how often they have been crashing lately. C'mon SE, I know you make more than enough money to give us something better than what feels like hamsters running on a wheel. :(

Yes, servers are clearly out of date, they are too slow, no reason to be melee lbed from 5 miles away because the servers can't process fast enough that I moved, or the fact something died in 9 seconds, not 11 seconds. I really do not understand why they are so slow when FFXI did not have such problems. Maybe... too much bound by ps3 limitations? maybe they are ps3s themselves? They crash too much, they can't handle patch load... I would like to know this as well.

Chances they probably will. They did for Heavens Ward after so many crashes and they were fast so I'm sure they will be expecting this if I had to guess.

Servers crashed again... 4th time in 3 weeks lol PS3 limitations have nothing to do with it (people love playing this card lol), its on SE's side. Feels like launch day all over again xD Though the serge of new/returning players could be a problem and servers can't handle it. but they are clearly outdated for this to be a continuous problem with this game *sigh*

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Originally Posted by Jadub2k

Servers crashed again... 4th time in 3 weeks lol PS3 limitations have nothing to do with it (people love playing this card lol), its on SE's side. Feels like launch day all over again xD Though the serge of new/returning players could be a problem and servers can't handle it. but they are clearly outdated for this to be a continues problem with this game *sigh*

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I doubt its the physical servers themselves and more likely the coding restrictions based on the number of people logged in vs what the code was specced for. You have all these returning players, coming back to already overflowing Balmung And Gilgamesh, and the game just can't cope.

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Originally Posted by Jadub2k

Servers crashed again... 4th time in 3 weeks lol PS3 limitations have nothing to do with it (people love playing this card lol), its on SE's side. Feels like launch day all over again xD Though the serge of new/returning players could be a problem and servers can't handle it. but they are clearly outdated for this to be a continuous problem with this game *sigh*

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Psxx limitations is a big meme from ffxi, it does not matter if it is literal anymore. pretty soon ill be ps4 limitations. It is just frustrating to hear limitations for this or that when asking for more inventory space.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I doubt its the physical servers themselves and more likely the coding restrictions based on the number of people logged in vs what the code was specced for. You have all these returning players, coming back to already overflowing Balmung And Gilgamesh, and the game just can't cope.

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With as much as they encourage new people to play and try to get returning players to come back, this shouldn't even be an issue. It's been more than 3 years since the launch of A Realm Reborn, yet we are still stuck with a cramped inventory and a myriad of other issues due to "server limitations" or "server stability". I don't know about you, but the money I put into SE and this game really feels like it's not being returned whatsoever. XIV feels like the red-headed stepchild that does backbreaking work and gets scraps in return to just scrape by. These server issues and limitations are kinda' becoming a meme at this point and, to be frank, extremely tiring.

They should offer free world transfers off certain excessively popular worlds; no problems on mine even with my ping since it's not bursting full of half the population of the entire game all in one place.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

They should offer free world transfers off certain excessively popular worlds; no problems on mine even with my ping since it's not bursting full of half the population of the entire game all in one place.

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Just wonder how many would actually move, you can constantly see people paying to get into Balmung.

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Originally Posted by Anzaman

Just wonder how many would actually move, you can constantly see people paying to get into Balmung.

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Honestly, they should just split Balmung and Greg into 2 servers each and move half of the split servers to Primal, then lock them to transfers for awhile. Splitting them would allow for them to add housing to both of the new servers, so people wouldnt lose those.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

They should offer free world transfers off certain excessively popular worlds; no problems on mine even with my ping since it's not bursting full of half the population of the entire game all in one place.

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That would be relying on a lot of people to move off of one or two servers onto the others which hardly have any population in the first place when people want to play with their friends and see active people running around. It would just be another bandaid to the problem instead of fixing the problem itself. I'm honestly surprised that people are so complacent with SE and how much it seems they skirt by on stuff like upgrading their servers and not being able to add more inventory space until the 2nd expansion of a game. :\

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Honestly, they should just split Balmung and Greg into 2 servers each and move half of the split servers to Primal, then lock them to transfers for awhile. Splitting them would allow for them to add housing to both of the new servers, so people wouldnt lose those.

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That would cause a riot if people got separated from their friends and they weren't able to transfer. I don't want to sound mean but that sounds like a terrible idea. Why not just face the fact that Balmung and Gilg are going to be the two dominant servers in population and spend resources to upgrade them as needed? For instance, in terms of housing, they could implement extra server capability to open up new housing wards as they fill up. In that case, server resources are only called upon when they are needed for high pop servers, none are wasted on extra empty wards and housing wards on lower pop servers stay the way that they are which requires no extra resources from SE.

I believe the whole expanded inventory thing they talked about at Fanfest is part of a server upgrade.

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Originally Posted by Reyll

I'm honestly surprised that people are so complacent with SE and how much it seems they skirt by on stuff like upgrading their servers and not being able to add more inventory space until the 2nd expansion of a game. :\

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It absolutely baffles me. As much as I hate to make comparisons, if in 2017 Blizzard was having 3-4 emergency maintenances per week because of constant server crashes the public would have their head. This service is seriously awful.

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

It absolutely baffles me. As much as I hate to make comparisons, if in 2017 Blizzard was having 3-4 emergency maintenances per week because of constant server crashes the public would have their head. This service is seriously awful.

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This is more or less what I was referring to. SE makes more than enough money to do what they need to do, but all I see are constant bandaids. Personally, I find it a bit sad that one of the major selling points for their next EXPANSION is increased inventory. That should honestly be part of a small quality of life patch with server upgrades that should have been done...a year ago? With the same subscription fees, there really isn't an excuse and watching nobody else speak out about it doesn't really raise my hopes up that it will ever match the same kinda' quality.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

They should offer free world transfers off certain excessively popular worlds; no problems on mine even with my ping since it's not bursting full of half the population of the entire game all in one place.

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They take a lot of money from people buying onto those servers. Someone tracks the data somewhere. They don't seem to care about the consequences as long as they can cash in. Anyone who argues this point will only have a leg to stand on when they lock those servers for real. Hell you don't even need pay transfer just login a few minutes after maintenance.

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

It absolutely baffles me. As much as I hate to make comparisons, if in 2017 Blizzard was having 3-4 emergency maintenances per week because of constant server crashes the public would have their head. This service is seriously awful.

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You realise this is only really an issue with one datacentre, not the entire server set up. Upgrading servers and maintaining the existing servers are two different things. Infact an upgrade offers more challenges since new hardware and software to accommodate it is more prone to bugs and issues and therefore at the inception generally less stable. That's why they said they probably won't role out the server upgrades with the launch of 4.0. The player numbers will already be putting strain on the server load and they want to ensure server stability.

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Originally Posted by Reyll

This is more or less what I was referring to. SE makes more than enough money to do what they need to do, but all I see are constant bandaids. Personally, I find it a bit sad that one of the major selling points for their next EXPANSION is increased inventory. That should honestly be part of a small quality of life patch with server upgrades that should have been done...a year ago? With the same subscription fees, there really isn't an excuse and watching nobody else speak out about it doesn't really raise my hopes up that it will ever match the same kinda' quality.

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WoW has a vastly bigger budget because it has a vastly bigger subscription base. WoW will also go for a year an a half without a content update except for cash shop items. Lets not pretend WoW doesn't nickel and dime less than SE. I might also add that FF14's inventory space is actually pretty competitive with WoW until Legion released and only because of the Wardrobe feature, a feature they worked on for like 3 and a half years from the time they first mentioned it.

Unstable servers are unacceptable but as I said above, stable servers and upgraded servers aren't necessarily the same thing. They are apparently spending $35 million on Stormblood, almost 3 times what they did on HW, so its not like they aren't making any effort to reinvest.

Server upgrades aren't minor, particularly on a program as complex as an MMO. There are a huge amount of programing, networking and testing that needs to be done to ensure the servers handle the software correctly without bugs and that they handle the load without issues or lag. They are a very large investment of time and money and certainly not a small QoL life thing.

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Originally Posted by Reyll

For instance, in terms of housing, they could implement extra server capability to open up new housing wards as they fill up. In that case, server resources are only called upon when they are needed for high pop servers, none are wasted on extra empty wards and housing wards on lower pop servers stay the way that they are which requires no extra resources from SE.

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Honestly if they changed housing completely to be an instance based thing, similar to Black Desert Online, it'd probably help quite a bit with the lag issues. One ward, you can buy any one house (everyone is able to) and when you enter it's your house or u can choose a different option (like apartments) to visit someone else's on the door.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

You realise this is only really an issue with one datacentre, not the entire server set up. Upgrading servers and maintaining the existing servers are two different things. Infact an upgrade offers more challenges since new hardware and software to accommodate it is more prone to bugs and issues and therefore at the inception generally less stable. That's why they said they probably won't role out the server upgrades with the launch of 4.0. The player numbers will already be putting strain on the server load and they want to ensure server stability.

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Do you think World of Warcraft doesn't have massively overpopulated servers? Several times larger than Gilgamesh and Balmung, even? Do you think they crash several times on a weekly basis?

SE has the resources to make this game operate smoothly. They choose not to allocate them here.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

You realise this is only really an issue with one datacentre, not the entire server set up. Upgrading servers and maintaining the existing servers are two different things. Infact an upgrade offers more challenges since new hardware and software to accommodate it is more prone to bugs and issues and therefore at the inception generally less stable. That's why they said they probably won't role out the server upgrades with the launch of 4.0. The player numbers will already be putting strain on the server load and they want to ensure server stability.

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They can also cash in on returning players when they come back with the retainers and pay double the sub amount. Retainers are a worse cash grab then anything in the cash shop. "oh we have itemizing/inventory issues, pay for it suckers.

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Originally Posted by RoseOfTheRaven

Honestly if they changed housing completely to be an instance based thing, similar to Black Desert Online, it'd probably help quite a bit with the lag issues. One ward, you can buy any one house (everyone is able to) and when you enter it's your house or u can choose a different option (like apartments) to visit someone else's on the door.

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I'm in favor for instanced housing, as well. I haven't played Black Desert Online but Wildstar had an amazing housing system when it came to visiting other people's plots and things like that. I get where they are coming from with the neighborhood feel and everything, but there are much, much better ways of doing it than how they are now. Three years is long enough keep crying wolf when it comes to server related things.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

They can also cash in on returning players when they come back with the retainers and pay double the sub amount. Retainers are a worse cash grab then anything in the cash shop. "oh we have itemizing/inventory issues, pay for it suckers.

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Retainers are also probably the thing that set me off the most. With a very limited inventory system, they only give you TWO retainers to store all of your older stuff and crafting things for how many classes? Your sub can reach over TWENTY dollars a month paying for what should already be included in the game at no charge.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

WoW has a vastly bigger budget because it has a vastly bigger subscription base. WoW will also go for a year an a half without a content update except for cash shop items. Lets not pretend WoW doesn't nickel and dime less than SE.

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Yes, WoW did go for a year and a half without a content update at the end of Warlords, a mistake which they learned from and swiftly corrected with Legion. I don't know why people are choosing to latch onto that when that is not the case anymore. Pre-Legion, would you have been happy to pay an extra dollar a month on your sub to pay for those individual bank tabs in your bank and your sub reach into the twenty dollar range? No, because that's not something you should be charging a customer on TOP of the sub fee. That is the epitome of nickel and diming, especially when you blame your OWN server infrastructure for the problem and only do minor upgrades to them every expansion.

Agreed the retainer thing should be on top of the sub because seems like your 15$ is just a key to get through the front door & you got to paying for everything else lol For one thing, I just hope they fix this finally. If were going to deal with the before and after release of every expansion for this game (We dealt with it during beta, before/after ARR release, before/after HW release, now before Stormblood release), then we need to hold them to task & start calling them out on it instead of just excepting it. Also I'm not saying that it is, but it FEELS like for the past (about to be) 4 years now. The player base has been pumping so much money into this game for so long, only to get mediocre in return. And it hurts to say something like that for a game that is legitimately fun to play. I mean like.. I've been subbed to this game for this long, so there obviously doing something right. Right??

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Originally Posted by Serilda

They should offer free world transfers off certain excessively popular worlds; no problems on mine even with my ping since it's not bursting full of half the population of the entire game all in one place.

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They would have to:

1. Remove the Gil limit on transfer.
2. Provide a voucher for a free house the same size and identical to the one they leave behind for both the FC one and the personal one with every furnishing accounted for.
3. Allow people to transfer their entire guild to a new server with exactly the same GC reputation and amount of FC credits.
4. Allow the people that transfer to a new server to have their FC already made and still be a part of it as soon as they login to the new server.

I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of offhand.

Next post since I can't edit on mobile. I'd love it if we could have a more populated server on Mateus. As is, our server is one of the smallest, I can't imagine servers that lack for housing especially when more than half of the houses on my server are empty and no one wants them.

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

Do you think World of Warcraft doesn't have massively overpopulated servers? Several times larger than Gilgamesh and Balmung, even? Do you think they crash several times on a weekly basis?

SE has the resources to make this game operate smoothly. They choose not to allocate them here.

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I never said that poorly performing servers was ok. I said that upgrading servers and having working servers are two different things. Again the server issues seem generally localised to one datacentre. The rest seem to be working rather well.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

They can also cash in on returning players when they come back with the retainers and pay double the sub amount. Retainers are a worse cash grab then anything in the cash shop. "oh we have itemizing/inventory issues, pay for it suckers.

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You would need to have the full 8 retainers to double your sub cost. I don't even know more than 1 current player who has that many and that guy burns money on things like fantasia's like there is no tomorrow. Concerns over server stability with a major server overhaul are perfectly valid. Expansion launches themselves can often be technically messy as any bugs missed by the QA or any issues generated by the large number of player activity start showing up. It makes sense to deal with one set of potential fires at a time.

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Originally Posted by Reyll

Yes, WoW did go for a year and a half without a content update at the end of Warlords, a mistake which they learned from and swiftly corrected with Legion. I don't know why people are choosing to latch onto that when that is not the case anymore. Pre-Legion, would you have been happy to pay an extra dollar a month on your sub to pay for those individual bank tabs in your bank and your sub reach into the twenty dollar range? No, because that's not something you should be charging a customer on TOP of the sub fee. That is the epitome of nickel and diming, especially when you blame your OWN server infrastructure for the problem and only do minor upgrades to them every expansion.

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That content drought has been the same for every expansion WoW has had for ages. MoP had just as long a drought. So did Cata. It's nothing new. All they have corrected so far in Legion is to release a steady set of patches. They are yet to show if they can actually keep on releasing content while working on an expansion.

Also, I would point out that the actual available inventory you have in FF14 is quite competitive with WoW. Even now your personal inventory in WoW is a maximum of round 136 slots and many players don't have that. They also have no Armoury equivalent so that bag space requires you to hold your gear as well. Just with Personal bag space that's 136 in WoW verses 100 + 25 for every gear slot you have in FF14. Then you compare retainers to WoW's bank. Until void storage which only will hold limited things WoW had 8 bag slots so maybe 240 plus about another 80 I think. They have expanded this over the last couple of years but that is still rather recent. FF14 started by giving the player 350 slots with no additional cost.

Now I am not saying I agree with them dealing with peoples inventory complaint by just giving us more retainers we can hire but the argument that FF14 is way more stingy than say WoW with its inventory space is pretty incorrect. The main advantage WoW has had is the Wardrobe feature making keeping gear for glamour unnecessary.

Server upgrades are not small things, particularly in MMOs. They are costly and complicated and the Developers need to be able to justify the expense to the executives and investors even if they want to do it.

I'm not gonna' further this with more WoW vs. FFXIV debating but inventory wouldn't be an issue if they released the same kind of system. Yoshi-P specifically said in one of the live letters or at fanfest (I don't remember which one), that a wardrobe system like that in this game would cost "significant server resources so we probably won't see it." The issue I am pointing out is that that shouldn't even be a valid excuse for them not to try, because *having* the server resources to be able to do that would solve a lot of the inventory problem in the first place but they're not even considering it. They constantly make excuses of why we won't see things or why we can't have certain features because of server this or server that. You are right, server upgrades are not small things but for the one of the most popular MMOs on the market, I am expecting them to be a bit better than what we are given.

Balmung only need a hard cap of players who can be online at the same time (not only locked character creation) and activated afk kick on Balmung

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Originally Posted by Reyll

I'm not gonna' further this with more WoW vs. FFXIV debating but inventory wouldn't be an issue if they released the same kind of system. Yoshi-P specifically said in one of the live letters or at fanfest (I don't remember which one), that a wardrobe system like that in this game would cost "significant server resources so we probably won't see it." The issue I am pointing out is that that shouldn't even be a valid excuse for them not to try, because *having* the server resources to be able to do that would solve a lot of the inventory problem in the first place but they're not even considering it. They constantly make excuses of why we won't see things or why we can't have certain features because of server this or server that. You are right, server upgrades are not small things but for the one of the most popular MMOs on the market, I am expecting them to be a bit better than what we are given.

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Did you miss the bit about the fact we are getting server upgrades? They are putting money into this very thing. They announced it at Las Vegas.

As for the Wardrobe system I totally agree that it would help a lot. The only time I remember him talking about it was him saying that they weren't working on it at the moment and if they were going to do something like that they would probably put the resources to expanding the existing inventory. I don't totally agree with that but that's that.

When Yoshi-P says that they cant do something at the moment I suspect it probably means that either A) the engine cant handle it, B) the servers can't handle it, C) the client hardware can't handle it, or D) the cost of introducing such a feature would make it extremely unlikely for management to give it the go ahead. All of those are very valid reasons. Do remember any such changes are on top of existing development costs for the content we get every 3.5 months and the player base has a very large field of features they want added to the game.

No, I didn't miss that fact. However, we also got server upgrades for Heavensward, yet look at the issues still happening/present. I'm not denying that they are putting money into it, but as I have said, they could upgrade from a Pentium II to a Pentium III and nothing would change that dramatically but it would still be considered a server "upgrade." They aren't very transparent about these kinds of things or what exactly an "upgrade" is. This is probably a bad analogy, but look at the technology used by the WiiU vs. PS4 and XBox One. It feels like Nintendo is a generation behind in technology and it shows in sales and popularity. While it had some quality titles, the WiiU was held back because of that and ultimately it didn't compete so well. I feel like the same thing is happening here with SE and if they fixed a myriad of these issues by fixing the issues that are present due to server stuff, they would get the influx of players that they ultimately are looking for to justify it.

I get that people like being on those big servers but the game was never designed to have so many players on one server while the rest lie forgotten; not a single day goes past without someone on Balmung/Greg reporting issues which only exist because of the strange imbalances in population. I think some people would naturally move away if there were free transfers to a smaller world in spite of the obvious inconveniences (several of which need fixing at some point). A hard block on new accounts there (not alts) would also help, though again it would upset some people too. It just seems to me that constantly supporting this game breaking population imbalance is not really the correct solution.