Your plan with overcrowded servers has failed you.

http://i.imgur.com/aufE7rk.png
It's been at this number for the past 10 mins.

I'll honestly give it till the weekend's over to see if it changes any... but your plan with the incentives for people to move servers ect has so far been an absolute blunder.

From a business standpoint you've underestimated your player base as well as giving us this early access, that we've all already paid for and the game is completely unplayable for most.

It happened in 2.0, in 3.0, it's happening again.. but what baffles me is you've ha 12-15 years to fix these types of issues. Do you remember FFXI? I remember the lines in XI just like as what's being seen on Balmung and other servers.

Previous WoW Expansion launches didn't see this type of issue (I can't speak for Warlords and Beyond cause I didn't play those.) Even Guild Wars 2 has been outstanding about patching issues and getting fixes out every time a new patch goes live; And they are a Free To Play Game.

I love this game, This won't stop me from playing indefinitely, but it has put a damper on my hype for this Expansion, as it had done so for the previous expansion.

Yoshi-P, You seem like an awesome guy, but you and the developers should have foreseen every little detail that could go wrong with this launch and have a planned work around. Planning ahead would have saved this Early Access instead of looking into the issues as they sprout.

But this is what I've come to expect of a Square-Enix MMO.

Stupid of them to take down transfers....and they should have allowed them before early release.

The servers have been up for less than 24 hours since the plan was released. I transferred servers with some friends before heavensward, took us weeks to decide where we wanted to go.

It's a shame they haven't given us any lower-population servers where players might have an easier time getting in even during congestion hours.

/s

You... are speaking out of a profound level of ignorance of anything involving technology, business and people if you think putting this on the lap of Yoshi-P.

Simmer down.

There is no physical way the money can be put behind projects like this, expected or otherwise. Sure, you and argue against the way something functions in production when the problem happens. But you don't get to be put in the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' positions and decisions that these guys have to face every single day during design, balance, implementation.

And honestly, there's no excuse not to be an informed customer -to not look at the history of popular MMOs and realize that hey, during popular releases, crap like this happens constantly. If you need a socially understood equivalent, every time there's an online game release or expansion, it's the Zombie apocalypse, the Day Z movie level Zombie apocalypse. Put bluntly, there's more of us than they could possibly be ready for.

Blizzard really is the only company with the level of dedicated funding to their MMO project that can handle a large tide of numbers, and that's mainly because their numbers have been declining for the better part of a decade now.

R.I.P Balmung

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

And honestly, there's no excuse not to be an informed customer -to not look at the history of popular MMOs and realize that hey, during popular releases, crap like this happens constantly.

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Yes, crap like this happens, but it's handled signficantly better in other games...

Want the WoW-WoD example:
1) Roadblock quests were fixed within hours
2) Server load was alleviated within days by actually increasing the physical hardware
3) They compensated with playtime.
4) They communicated -up to- hourly.

What we have here? An "apology" stating "just wait it out"....

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

snip

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I'm not going to reply to anything you said out of the respect that you don't know me and by making blind assumptions that I know nothing of anything involving any aspect of gaming and the business of gaming and technology. But I will say it is rude to make assumptions of people based on something they bring up as a general concern for the populace of an entire game. Even the Japanese Players are complaining about the issue with the MSQ.

TLDR: Don't make blind assumptions of people. It makes you look hypocritical.

Failed? It's only begun. Their plan for overcrowded servers is a long-term plan.

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

TLDR: Don't make blind assumptions of people. It makes you look hypocritical.

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Cool, prove me wrong. Explain what's going on in depth and how you think you can solve the bottleneck. I'll reply and tell you why it wont work.

I'm not being hypocritical. I'm speaking from experience. Let's see if yours matches up.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Cool, prove me wrong. Explain what's going on in depth and how you think you can solve the bottleneck. I'll reply and tell you why it wont work.

I'm not being hypocritical. I'm speaking from experience. Let's see if yours matches up.

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Have you not been reading ANY other threads? Several people have offered workarounds and solutions. Have you judged all those solutions as unviable solutions? What I say would just be a complete repeat as other people have suggested.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Cool, prove me wrong. Explain what's going on in depth and how you think you can solve the bottleneck. I'll reply and tell you why it wont work.

I'm not being hypocritical. I'm speaking from experience. Let's see if yours matches up.

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Allowing us to queue for it, in order to create a line to help it smoothly play out.

Allowing players to bypass this mission for this one, which'll let players progress without this block that's also sending too much server data.

If neither of those, some compensation at least. We got locked out of 90% of the content because of this. People are upset, and because of it, will actually end up NOT enjoying it once it's fixed, only making the problem hurt the game.

There's no existing individual queue system. Nor has there ever been an expressed need for one at this point. Individual queues were never a bottleneck in heavenward nor have they crashed the servers previously. Duty Finder itself, on Instanced Duties HAVE crashed the servers and the workload presented - so they were likely prioritized in the limited development time/staff they have. You're claiming foresight on hindsight which, honestly does not work. They've stress tested the Duty Finder server before this brake (likely automated) and did not find this break before Stormblood. It would take time to construct this fix, meanwhile they need to keep the servers running.

Allowing players to bypass the mission one, compromises the story, and makes it impossible to flag again, denying what most players of the game want, and two, also requires a full server/client shutdown. What they're trying to do, is keep the servers running and what maintenance they're likely to do to fix the bottle neck possibly won't affect main clinent side but have a small duty-server downtime for the update.

Meanwhile, players are still getting through. Not at a rate you wish for, but it's still happening.

As far as compensation, that decision has to go through financing first. This is early access, so corporate is likely to say no as it's considered 'bonus time'. That decision is out of Yoshi-p's hands entirely, and he's probably already pitched the idea.

Point being -they're just as screwed in this situation as we are. You can be critical of the matter in hindsight, but you're not working in the trenches. This is an issue every MMO has to deal with ever, and none of them ever get it right. There's always something that breaks in this situation. Be patient.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

There's no existing individual queue system. Nor has there ever been an expressed need for one at this point. Individual queues were never a bottleneck in heavenward nor have they crashed the servers previously.

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You must have NEVER played 2.0 or FFXI.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Cool, prove me wrong. Explain what's going on in depth and how you think you can solve the bottleneck. I'll reply and tell you why it wont work.

I'm not being hypocritical. I'm speaking from experience. Let's see if yours matches up.

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Your own stupidity has proven you wrong.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

There's no existing individual queue system. Nor has there ever been an expressed need for one at this point. Individual queues were never a bottleneck in heavenward nor have they crashed the servers previously. Duty Finder itself, on Instanced Duties HAVE crashed the servers and the workload presented - so they were likely prioritized in the limited development time/staff they have. You're claiming foresight on hindsight which, honestly does not work. They've stress tested the Duty Finder server before this brake (likely automated) and did not find this break before Stormblood. It would take time to construct this fix, meanwhile they need to keep the servers running.

Allowing players to bypass the mission one, compromises the story, and makes it impossible to flag again, denying what most players of the game want, and two, also requires a full server/client shutdown. What they're trying to do, is keep the servers running and what maintenance they're likely to do to fix the bottle neck possibly won't affect main clinent side but have a small duty-server downtime for the update.

Meanwhile, players are still getting through. Not at a rate you wish for, but it's still happening.

As far as compensation, that decision has to go through financing first. This is early access, so corporate is likely to say no as it's considered 'bonus time'. That decision is out of Yoshi-p's hands entirely, and he's probably already pitched the idea.

Point being -they're just as screwed in this situation as we are. You can be critical of the matter in hindsight, but you're not working in the trenches. This is an issue every MMO has to deal with ever, and none of them ever get it right. There's always something that breaks in this situation. Be patient.

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No individual queue system, right? (Even though you actually get the queue icon when you accept)

Heavensward didn't shove 100% of Stormblood's playerbase into a mission 30 minutes in. Stormblood required people to level up and continue a good bit into the zone, enough for people to log out. This separated progression, instead of putting it together. That's why it's a bottleneck.

They prioritized duty finder queue's and palace because they cover more done content than solo duties.

As for compromising the story, you can still give us the cutscenes. You can allow the player to return to it once it's fixed, and once it's fixed, it can go back to requirement.

Also, about people getting through, yes. People are getting through. At such a slot rate that the highest level on Balmung is a CARPENTER.

Lastly, it's bonus time we paid ahead of time for. People took time off of work for this. Result? Staring at a dude for 12 hours.

Ugh, there went the post in a missclick.

In summary.

FFXI never used a true queue system until after Rapsodies. (And never had a real instance system until after Promathia for that matter, and even that's debatable compared to what's considered true instancing these days.)

FFXIV only ever had one single-layer bottleneck issue, that was during Beta - duty finder system has had several upgrades since and again, they've already had to push this through an automated stress test if they're following industry standards.

The icon shows for all 'in duty' systems - its a dumb umbrella status that really needs to be properly defined - but it's their catch-all to prevent direct tells in instances. Instances are produced on duty finder services but 'queues' have only been produced to slot players in parties, which, all party-instance queues come up with brief "Members ready for instance" even though there's only one queuing (think undersized party unsycned). Ideally, they should operate on separate systems but, like most things hampering production teams, the money is likely not there.

Third, you paid for extra time on game,but not exclusively for storyline. It's not Yoshida you have to worry about, he understands the frustration. It's the corporate penny pinches who are going to say "But you have so much other content to play while the congestion dies down."

I hate playing the devils advocate, but these are common frustrations for developers, analysts, programmers and anyone in IT have to deal with, on top of the heated rhetoric by the end user. It's a war on two fronts, and it can really get people down. Thankfully, PR can shield some of it but keep in mind a lot of these people are players too.

It seems they opened the floodgates, because a ton of players were able to progress the MSQ simultaneously.

The server blew up not long after, though, so I can sort of understand why they imposed that limitation.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

It seems they opened the floodgates, because a ton of players were able to progress the MSQ simultaneously.

The server blew up not long after, though, so I can sort of understand why they imposed that limitation.

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Yeah I'm going to have to avoid Frontlines for a while, because it seems whenever I get queued into one I disconnect and it's back to a multi-thousand Balmung queue.

This situation sucks all around. The players can't play the game properly, the developers feel like they get caught with their pants down after busting their butts off for a year and a half - and something that's pretty effing common in the industry gets treated like it's own unique snowflake disaster, all over again.

It'd be great if everyone in development had all the time in the world to anticipate every major issue coming through, and Single Player instancing (hell the game's instancing in general) could use some serious looking at. But combat/content overhaul were the big sticking points throughout the entirety of Heavensward and it looks like that was the development focus. Along with the inventory system expansion (which... ok let's be honest here, I don't know what they were thinking about the way they handle inventory and character data. You simply don't need that level of data backup - that's where the bulk of all this server traffic and development bog-down comes form). And they are massive undertakings. Reworking the instancing system properly is going to take some ground-up work. And usually there's never enough time/staff to cover everything you've got planed, let alone the extra unanticipated stuff.

I'm probably a bit oversensitive in the matter too, but my department just got through a pretty large layoff when everyone was already heavily inundated. And it's just amazing how, well dismissive of the difficulties people who are critical really are be it of ignorance, frustration or just plain heartlessness.

I'm not entirely sure if a bandaid level queue is going to hold up to this level of demand either, but here's hoping.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

As far as compensation, that decision has to go through financing first. This is early access, so corporate is likely to say no as it's considered 'bonus time'. That decision is out of Yoshi-p's hands entirely, and he's probably already pitched the idea.

Point being -they're just as screwed in this situation as we are. You can be critical of the matter in hindsight, but you're not working in the trenches. This is an issue every MMO has to deal with ever, and none of them ever get it right. There's always something that breaks in this situation. Be patient.

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Sorry but my days are being consumed , i have 22 days left, and then after all this is gone which if i count the early access weekend days 3 then the whole of next week fixing problems, which we know will happen, 7 days,
Those are 10 days lost, I can tolerate 3 days, but once the other people without early access comes, that's when the real problem will come.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

Yes, crap like this happens, but it's handled signficantly better in other games...

Want the WoW-WoD example:
1) Roadblock quests were fixed within hours
2) Server load was alleviated within days by actually increasing the physical hardware
3) They compensated with playtime.
4) They communicated -up to- hourly.

What we have here? An "apology" stating "just wait it out"....

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Yeah, I love that last part. "Hey guys, we're stupid and don't feel like actually spending more money on increasing hardware server space, so uh, just wait it out. Eventually, you're bound to get through as others do."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

This situation sucks all around. The players can't play the game properly, the developers feel like they get caught with their pants down after busting their butts off for a year and a half - and something that's pretty effing common in the industry gets treated like it's own unique snowflake disaster, all over again.

It'd be great if everyone in development had all the time in the world to anticipate every major issue coming through, let alone the extra unanticipated stuff.

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Dude, for realsies though? You're acting like this is a COMPLETELY UNFORSEEN problem that they could not have possibly anticipated. You're acting like this server stability, server congestion issue HAS NEVER OCCURRED EVER before! Like, holy shit! If they sold 2 million pre-order copies, they should expect that many players to be online! They can't claim ignorance on this one. It's happened in the past. On Every. Single. Patch. And. Expansion.

I am still on Heavensward Main Storyline Quest and everytime I try to queue for a solo Duty, I get the 900006 error. and starting to make me mad because i have a 1500 queue each and everytime I try to login

I honestly question the entire structure of this games servers. I mean i've never seen another MMO ever use a time limit for instances. Even most free to play ones. Why then are servers funded by a sub fee so bad?

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Originally Posted by Taggerung5

Dude, for realsies though? You're acting like this is a COMPLETELY UNFORSEEN problem that they could not have possibly anticipated. You're acting like this server stability, server congestion issue HAS NEVER OCCURRED EVER before! Like, holy shit! If they sold 2 million pre-order copies, they should expect that many players to be online! They can't claim ignorance on this one. It's happened in the past. On Every. Single. Patch. And. Expansion.

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I bet... even though they see such an influx during these expansions times, they rather wait it out since move of us will come back to it. but since they release content sooo slowly, people will lose interest and move along thus the congestion isn't an issue no more.... why spend money on infrastructure when after a few weeks, it wouldn't matter. it's a loss of money. as far as they see it. they made their money ahead of time and people suffer...

THE TRANSFERS HAVEN'T EVEN COME BACK ONLINE!!

It's why this shit is still going on!

Transfer me to Coeurl, I just want to play! Ugh!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

This situation sucks all around. The players can't play the game properly, the developers feel like they get caught with their pants down after busting their butts off for a year and a half - and something that's pretty effing common in the industry gets treated like it's own unique snowflake disaster, all over again.

It'd be great if everyone in development had all the time in the world to anticipate every major issue coming through, and Single Player instancing (hell the game's instancing in general) could use some serious looking at. But combat/content overhaul were the big sticking points throughout the entirety of Heavensward and it looks like that was the development focus. Along with the inventory system expansion (which... ok let's be honest here, I don't know what they were thinking about the way they handle inventory and character data. You simply don't need that level of data backup - that's where the bulk of all this server traffic and development bog-down comes form). And they are massive undertakings. Reworking the instancing system properly is going to take some ground-up work. And usually there's never enough time/staff to cover everything you've got planed, let alone the extra unanticipated stuff.

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I can give the development team a mulligan on the server instability. I do think they could (and should) have looked into renting additional server capacity for the first month, but perhaps, as you say, there are financial decisions at work, in which case it's SE corporate to blame.

What I cannot give the development team a pass on is the god-awful Role system that makes my WHM (and other jobs) feel neutered, the nonexistent options in regards to Job Gauge visibility (it's quite an eyesore out of battle), the storyline design which stupidly gated maps and the game's main city behind instances at all (as opposed to Heavensward), and the general lack of communication provided to the playerbase.

None of those are financial issues. None of those are 'oh, in hindsight' issues. This is a company that has been building MMOs for 15 years, and this specific development team has been working on XIV itself for more than four years now. They should have known we'd want the ability to hide the Job Gauge (because we asked for it on virtually every other HUD component); they should have known better how to balance the Healing and, to a lesser extent, Tanking jobs; they should know better than to go radio silent on hugely visible problems.

So you can give them a pass all you want, but so far as I'm concerned, the development team itself, with Yoshi-P at the helm, really screwed up a lot of the core aspects of Stormblood. I'd have much rather they cut a bit of content and truly deliver a AAA experience on what remained than half-ass everything because they tried to do too much.

Edit:

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Originally Posted by otarolgam

THE TRANSFERS HAVEN'T EVEN COME BACK ONLINE!!

It's why this shit is still going on!

Transfer me to Coeurl, I just want to play! Ugh!!

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I'm on Mateus with one of my characters, and the instance is still a bottleneck. =/

Trust me. It probably isn't much better on Coeurl. I've been hit with 400-500+ queues to log in at times and instances are just as broke here as the rest of the datacenter. And for the first time ever, I even got to see FATE bosses phase in and out randomly and become untargetable due to the number of people trying to cram into one FATE.

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Originally Posted by Taggerung5

Yeah, I love that last part. "Hey guys, we're stupid and don't feel like actually spending more money on increasing hardware server space, so uh, just wait it out. Eventually, you're bound to get through as others do."

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Because that's exactly how it's going to happen. Why are they going to waste additional money on adding hardware that is only going to be temporary in use for a problem that is temporary.

You're on Balmung. One of the most popular worlds. This is to be expected.

How about if they make it so ones don't dc every 5 or less minutes then have to wait 30 minutes to be able to play again for maybe less than 5 minutes again when not even in new area but just trying to craft a item or arr quests.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

I can give the development team a mulligan on the server instability. I do think they could (and should) have looked into renting additional server capacity for the first month, but perhaps, as you say, there are financial decisions at work, in which case it's SE corporate to blame.

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That's all I would ask for on that. Being critical of design decisions if it's not what you like is fine - we all have opinions. I'm just tired of people spouting off without consideration of the situation on the other end, or the willful ignorance of such.

I don't pretend this is something that would be a complete blindside, but when you're down on development staff and time, you look at what can 'get by'. This was likely a bad decision born in a bad situation.

As far as what they did for jobs and Job balances. All I would ask is consider the opposing opinions from your fellow players. I've a few raw opinions of my own on how they changed Jobs, but that's a separate issue, some of them you've mentioned are being addressed and were bluntly stated they were publicly. Others are simply differences in opinion, or balance changes.

I will say that your "I would rather" doesn't fly when there's millions of voices making at least as many demands. As far as the idea of a AAA experience? I'm going to chuckle on that one. Expectations are always high on an MMO's release, expansion or vanilla. It never plays out as expectations are. Everyone feels their own blunder is the 'worst' blunder, or inexcusable, etc. It doesn't change the circumstances or the reality of the fact that it's the sheer number of people that causes things to break. There's just no meeting this level of demand, looking from the other end. Sure, a developer would love to - but that's simply not the reality of things. They try one thing, they get the opposing critique. They switch gears, same problem. And they simply don't have the financial leverage to just pick one demographic of audience to stick with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by otarolgam

THE TRANSFERS HAVEN'T EVEN COME BACK ONLINE!!

It's why this shit is still going on!

Transfer me to Coeurl, I just want to play! Ugh!!

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It's here too sadly. If you get kicked though the queue time is shorter.