Congested Worlds: SE You need to fix things

1. ADVANCED NOTIFICATION: It's really not hard to put up a notice saying that you're going to lock the servers. Closing a server like this is pretty huge and quite honestly will always be negatively received with positive comments generally being memes and jokes. However an advanced notification would probably curb this quite a bit. SUDDENLY closing the server down like this without any actual notification is really stupid.
2. Big Cities will Always be Big Cities: You're never going to really make a big city smaller. Balmung in this instance is also pretty unique because it's known as the RP server. It's always gonna be big server.
3. ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS: You know seeing a lot of bots pop up on Balmung as a result of the server unlocked does send a lot of messages. Including them as active players really isn't fair when it's completely your fault for letting them go through in the first place. The game doesn't have an cheat detection at all and you're literally punishing players that don't bot because these guys are literally padding server numbers and you guys really need to think of a better idea. Between specifically making the servers that larger communities stronger to sufficiently hold a larger playerbase to installing a cheat engine to curb bots, there are a number of different things than just outright locking servers down.

I think that if they put a notice, even more people would have transferred contributing further to the congestion.

I'm pretty sure that everyone who has been here for a while knew that Balmung was going to be closed pretty quickly. The problem with your advanced notice suggestion is that if they do give an advanced notice, they run a risk of getting a huge influx of players and run the risk of making the congested server even worse. Honestly, while the devs do take some flak for this situation, this is a problem that the community brought on themselves as well.

It was bound to happen eventually, so I'm not surprised. Especially considering all the new faces I've seen around.

Wasn't Balmung locked back up before the first day was over? Let's be real here we all saw this. If you didn't create your character or transfer within hours of maintenence that first day it wasn't happening. I know folks that spent days trying to get on there starting six hours after maintenence and never found a time when it was unlocked.

Just delete balmung, the diaspora of people moving to different servers will fix things.

Balmung shouldn't have been reopened
Yes it is nice we got a few new members in our 50 plus active members fc but still.
I think it was just a cash grab I don't care for the logon queues.
I didn't pick balmung its where my 1. X character was moved to and unless they actively spilt balmung. Ie you log on and you pick balmung 1 or balmung 2 the issue will not resolve.

Honestly I think that is where se should move to I pick my character then I pick the world I wish to log into.
Our discord is already cross world and we have cross world parties let me just log into a different world.

Honestly I am surprised it lasted this long.

Well it's no different to real life. You open a store but suddenly get more customers than you have stocked for and at some point you would say, oops sorry we are closed. It's quite often for something to close at the last minute and Balmung is no exception. Everyone kinda new it was the most congested even before it was made open, so it should of been expected to get locked again.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I'm pretty sure that everyone who has been here for a while knew that Balmung was going to be closed pretty quickly. The problem with your advanced notice suggestion is that if they do give an advanced notice, they run a risk of getting a huge influx of players and run the risk of making the congested server even worse. Honestly, while the devs do take some flak for this situation, this is a problem that the community brought on themselves as well.

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Aaand the first thread is in, I'll bring the drinks, you'll bring the popcorn?

Here we goes again...... Balmung ...

I am also in favor of #DELETEBALMUNG

Life's pretty good over here. Just sayin'.

In all honesty: what were people expecting? TL;DR - Balmung has kind of proven that server community does matter in this game despite so many folks saying otherwise. If it didn't, it wouldn't flood all the time while other servers flounder.

I know folks crack jokes all the time that people go to Balmung primarily for the RP, but there really is a lot more to it than that. The overall attitude on Balmung is just way more positive and welcoming (yes, there's drama llamas. Like every other server. Go figure). When the servers were opened there were shouts "Welcome to FFXIV" and "Welcome home returners!". There are vets who will gladly do event fates the entirety of the event so that people who get on them late or newbies have a chance to still do them. Since there's a bigger crowd of players wanting to do the "boring" gathering/crafting classes the marketboard is fast and pretty healthy.

But more than anything you don't have to use content in game to meet people.

See a bard playing on the street? Clap or cheer for them. More often than not that starts a conversation. Hell just sitting and being willing to say hi to folks that are doing the fates is usually enough to potentially get to know someone. Balmung has reached a point where it doesn't matter if you RP, raid, or just chill. Chances are you're going to meet someone that's just interested in having fun and you don't have to be forced into an instance party to get that interaction. And it's active every day of the week, so if you have a weird play schedule it really won't make the game feel lonely for you like it might elsewhere.

Now my personal experiences are on Aether, but for the most part you can't get any of the above unless you blast your way through the MSQ and pray to stand out in the sea of folks in end game areas. The starting cities are barren. What people are there are far more likely to not even acknowledge you if you do reach out.

Two servers stand out though: Mateus and Cactuar. Cactuar is incredibly friendly, and what do you know? People seem to enjoy that about a server because it's grown in spades and has an active player population incredibly close to Balmung. The Novice Network is friendly and useful and goes out of its way to invite sprouts. However it has the same problem most other servers have: no one wants to leave the end game zones. So despite having an active population comparable to Balmung, players don't really meet anyone until they leave the starting areas, giving the game a desolate feel.

Mateus has tried incredibly hard to be the second RP server and I give them kudos for that. I think they're well on their way to succeeding. The few weekends I was on it was very friendly and had that similar social feeling Balmung did. But Mateus has a weird civil cold war going on: there's a lot of folks that straight out hate having the small server feel stripped from them, and a few that hate the RP-ers coming in. And then you have RP and non RP folks outright hating Balmung transfers for various reasons (i.e. "I can't buy a house anymore." Look at the Goblet folks. There were at least seven smalls when I looked...yesterday.). Where Balmung basically said "Welcome/Welcome Home," Mateus had a mix of "Get off our server," and "Please don't go."

And that's the point I'm trying to make. Whenever I look at threads of newbies asking what server they should join most people say "servers don't matter because of cross-server play." But both Balmung and Cactuar's ridiculous growth kind of shows that yes, server community does in fact matter. Surprisingly most sprouts like having their starting areas full of people. I came back on a new character and honestly gave about every server on Aether a try, and frankly it doesn't compare.

Whenever I look at threads with responses like "delete Balmung" or "Don't you dare transfer to our server" I have to wonder why you people think folks clamor to Balmung in the first place? Between a server that's openly friendly and one that openly demands people bugger off, which one would you rather be in when you're not doing instanced content?

So if folks want Balmung to balance out and stop bogarting such a large portion of the player base, maybe some folks on other servers ought to not be so antagonistic/antisocial. If people transfer off of Balmung, don't harshly judge them for it because they picked your server. If newbies are saying they don't like how quiet their server is, don't put the blame on them for not pumping through the MSQ or buying a jump potion.

Until then this juggling of Balmung opening and closing will probably be the new norm: it'll open again in a few months, this process will repeat itself, close again.

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Originally Posted by DreadRabbit

Until then this juggling of Balmung opening and closing will probably be the new norm: it'll open again in a few months, this process will repeat itself, close again.

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Until the human technology advanced further in next 10 years where super server will exist; but currently no and stop asking.

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Originally Posted by DreadRabbit

Until then this juggling of Balmung opening and closing will probably be the new norm: it'll open again in a few months, this process will repeat itself, close again.

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Sounds about right. Balmung is simply too lucrative, there's no way SE would dare keep it closed forever. Gotta make them transfer coins.

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Originally Posted by Vanitas

I am also in favor of #DELETEBALMUNG

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Same here. Sick to death of all the whiny, entitled people from that server.

......hahahahaha!

Honestly, it shouldn't have been open for more than a week- if not two days. Two weeks was long enough.

So they unlocked balmung, everyone made an alt "just in case" and now it's locked again. *snrk*.
color me unsurprised?

I can't think of anything else that hasn't been said already. This is the risk of playing on a server teetering on the edge of pop-cap.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

So they unlocked balmung, everyone made an alt "just in case" and now it's locked again. *snrk*.
color me unsurprised?

I can't think of anything else that hasn't been said already. This is the risk of playing on a server teetering on the edge of pop-cap.

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I just xferred my character and my friend's from Faerie to Balmung. So far we're both loving this server. Great community of people that look more to having fun with each other than anything else.

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Originally Posted by Suetan124

I just xferred my character and my friend's from Faerie to Balmung. So far we're both loving this server. Great community of people that look more to having fun with each other than anything else.

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Cool. Not saying balmung is bad. Just full and I'm not surprised it got full quickly.

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Originally Posted by fantasticm

Sounds about right. Balmung is simply too lucrative, there's no way SE would dare keep it closed forever. Gotta make them transfer coins.

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Keeping it open would probably cost them more than what they get from transfers, considering they have to buy hardware for all servers just to prevent lag in Balmung. If they only cares about money they wouldn't have locked it in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Indicative

[*]ADVANCED NOTIFICATION:

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This would make the problem worse. They have had a Congested Worlds post and system since the launch of 2.0. Notifying people that servers will be closed only makes things worse.

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Originally Posted by Indicative

[*]ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS:

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This is where you are in need to focus your rage and solutions. There were quotes from YoshiP at the launch of 2.0 that we would never need to MERGE servers because they had the technology to have cross server play like GW2 and WoW. Why don't we focus our rage into demanding they change the system because just getting mad that they closed a popular server isnt going to help matters.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Keeping it open would probably cost them more than what they get from transfers, considering they have to buy hardware for all servers just to prevent lag in Balmung. If they only cares about money they wouldn't have locked it in the first place.

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Yeah I sincerely doubt their spiffy new server purchases/moves were for Balmung's sake alone. Would be hilarious if that were the case, though. And money is their primary motivation, so... I mean, aren't you looking forward to the Final Fantasy 7 remake?

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Keeping it open would probably cost them more than what they get from transfers, considering they have to buy hardware for all servers just to prevent lag in Balmung. If they only cares about money they wouldn't have locked it in the first place.

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They do/did? Can you cite your sources? That sounds very interesting.

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Originally Posted by Suetan124

Great community of people that look more to having fun with each other than anything else.

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They're so busy having fun that they don't have time to get better at the game itself. Hence why the rest of Aether wants to quarantine Balmung to its own RP Datacenter.

So in response to DreadRabbit, i have a little bit of a personal opinion on Balmung as well as i main on the server. While we are a rowdy lot, Everyone here is family.. It's rather weird, once you are a part of them and you transfer off? You just can't wait to come back, atleast most feel that way. The reality of it is this Square Enix, I have said it time and time again. This server will forever be congested, the things you are doing to try and balance the load? Wont work, why? People want to play with friends, family, and just generally nice people. Not be chased off a server because they transferred from the highest population one.

So you realistically have two options. #1 Designate Balmung an official RP server and upgrade the hardware to accommodate a much larger community, add permanent instances in every zone aside the major cities to balance the load, and unlock the server. or #2 Keep it locked, keep attempting and failing to disperse people into hostile servers they want no part of, keep finding people unwilling to move and having issues with server stability, and keep seeing posts like these.

Everything else just wont work, Balmung is a community I am proud to be a part of and will continue to move characters to every time its open. Thats the reality of it, I love my home and theres nowhere else like it.

Balmung was closed? Big shocker there.

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Originally Posted by fantasticm

Sounds about right. Balmung is simply too lucrative, there's no way SE would dare keep it closed forever. Gotta make them transfer coins.

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They could force merge the server with a less populated.

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

Balmung was closed? Big shocker there.



They could force merge the server with a less populated.

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And make it even more populated? Isn't that completely counterproductive? If anything they should merge low-pop servers with other low-pop servers. But you can't do a server merge because of the nature of the housing districts and it would be an absolute nightmare if they attempted to merge them together since each server is a copy/pasta'd version of each other.

But if it means actually improving server infrastructure etc. they really should invest in that. But presently it seems that they don't have any interest in understanding that larger servers are always going to be large and they're willing to stagnate larger servers to populate smaller ones. It's the much-easier route and requires way less effort on their part.

Wait no actually Rinuko has a point, sharing resources with another less populated server would balance the load a little bit. Not counterproductive at all.

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Originally Posted by niwaar

This would make the problem worse. They have had a Congested Worlds post and system since the launch of 2.0. Notifying people that servers will be closed only makes things worse.

This is where you are in need to focus your rage and solutions. There were quotes from YoshiP at the launch of 2.0 that we would never need to MERGE servers because they had the technology to have cross server play like GW2 and WoW. Why don't we focus our rage into demanding they change the system because just getting mad that they closed a popular server isnt going to help matters.

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I'm honestly amused that you're classifying everything I was saying as rage. What's wrong with wanting them to put in a cheat detection program in the game? That was one of my suggestions, was it not? Bots inflate the population and they aren't actual players. It's literally something that would benefit servers across the board. Having an effective detection for that would be very beneficial to the server rather than having players report countless bots to the GMs. I wasn't in Balmung in 2.0 and I transferred in Heavensward. I'm also sure that the Congested status that prevented transfers was a new thing that happened late 3.0 and didn't exist pre-Heavenswawrd. The sudden closing without any discussion at all or hints that Balmung and other congested servers would be closed generated a huge backlash against SE. No notification. No courtesy. People who wanted to transfer and be with friends were just stuck.

https://i.imgur.com/vV9632L.png
These bots really shouldn't be included in the number of active players on Balmung, but they are. It's pretty silly too. 24/56 people in the Novice Network right now are bots. I'm sure there's way more than that in Amdapor Keep right now as well. One of my solutions? Put in something to detect these bots easier. Certainly very reasonable, is it not?

My main's on Balmung, I have a mansion, I personally have nothing to lose with the server being closed itself. I do, however, am a bit upset because some of my friends were planning on transferring this week/had a friend who transferred off and was planning on transferring back to Balmung. While I'm surprised that Balmung was open for this long, I was hoping that there would be at least a courtesy notice rather than suddenly closing the server down. Notifying people that the servers are closed, in my personal opinion, isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. However without actual metrics neither side of the fence can really make an argument outside of pure speculation.

• Notifying people that Balmung is going to close is going to increase traffic, yes. This is completely true.
• There are a lot of alts on Balmung. The people that make new characters there are going to do it because they either want to troll on Balmung or genuinely want to be part of the RP community there or have friends present.
• You can't deny that a courtesy notice ss just a very tactful thing to do.

Balmung's a special case because it's the premier RP server and you can't exactly just write that off. Cross-server is a thing but there are people that enjoy that creative aspect of the game as well. It's something that isn't quite as fun cross-server at all.

However the important thing as well is that there's a lot of general stigma against roleplayers, as you can see in this thread and anything Balmung-related really. It's completely fair for people to want a haven't if they want to try doing something along those lines. Balmung's a server filled with filthy degenerates -- it's such a meme it hurts. But that's really not all that it is. We have plenty of people that run PvE content and raid on Balmung.

But I'm rambling.

tl;dr I'm not mad so please don't accuse me as such. I just wish they had a better handle on doing things and I wish that, as a company, they were more considerate of players on the server and their friends as well.

Side Note: Jeez maybe I shouldn't have fanta'd to a grumpy looking Elezen when I posted this. I just look really pissed off.

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Originally Posted by Indicative

I'm honestly amused that you're classifying everything I was saying as rage. What's wrong with wanting them to put in a cheat detection program in the game? That was one of my suggestions, was it not? Bots inflate the population and they aren't actual players. It's literally something that would benefit servers across the board. Having an effective detection for that would be very beneficial to the server rather than having players report countless bots to the GMs. I wasn't in Balmung in 2.0 and I transferred in Heavensward. I'm also sure that the Congested status that prevented transfers was a new thing that happened late 3.0 and didn't exist pre-Heavenswawrd. The sudden closing without any discussion at all or hints that Balmung and other congested servers would be closed generated a huge backlash against SE. No notification. No courtesy. People who wanted to transfer and be with friends were just stuck.

https://i.imgur.com/vV9632L.png
These bots really shouldn't be included in the number of active players on Balmung, but they are. It's pretty silly too. 24/56 people in the Novice Network right now are bots. I'm sure there's way more than that in Amdapor Keep right now as well. One of my solutions? Put in something to detect these bots easier. Certainly very reasonable, is it not?

My main's on Balmung, I have a mansion, I personally have nothing to lose with the server being closed itself. I do, however, am a bit upset because some of my friends were planning on transferring this week/had a friend who transferred off and was planning on transferring back to Balmung. While I'm surprised that Balmung was open for this long, I was hoping that there would be at least a courtesy notice rather than suddenly closing the server down. Notifying people that the servers are closed, in my personal opinion, isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. However without actual metrics neither side of the fence can really make an argument outside of pure speculation.

• Notifying people that Balmung is going to close is going to increase traffic, yes. This is completely true.
• There are a lot of alts on Balmung. The people that make new characters there are going to do it because they either want to troll on Balmung or genuinely want to be part of the RP community there or have friends present.
• You can't deny that a courtesy notice ss just a very tactful thing to do.

Balmung's a special case because it's the premier RP server and you can't exactly just write that off. Cross-server is a thing but there are people that enjoy that creative aspect of the game as well. It's something that isn't quite as fun cross-server at all.

However the important thing as well is that there's a lot of general stigma against roleplayers, as you can see in this thread and anything Balmung-related really. It's completely fair for people to want a haven't if they want to try doing something along those lines. Balmung's a server filled with filthy degenerates -- it's such a meme it hurts. But that's really not all that it is. We have plenty of people that run PvE content and raid on Balmung.

But I'm rambling.

tl;dr I'm not mad so please don't accuse me as such. I just wish they had a better handle on doing things and I wish that, as a company, they were more considerate of players on the server and their friends as well.

Side Note: Jeez maybe I shouldn't have fanta'd to a grumpy looking Elezen when I posted this. I just look really pissed off.

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They have cheat detection in place, its not as easy as you seem to think it is stop people from using bot programs. If it was as simple as you seem to think it is,MMO's would have lot less issues with bots. Its a game of leap frog and sadly botters are always able to leap sooner then MMO developers can.

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Originally Posted by Indicative

One of my solutions? Put in something to detect these bots easier. Certainly very reasonable, is it not?

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It sounds reasonable on paper, but as an ex-programmer, it's far from that simple.

Fighting against bots is literally a never-ending arms race. You implement detection programs, and within a week most botter program developers will have figured out ways to circumvent it/mitigate it, update their bots and you're back to where you were before; creating new detection methods, and then the cycle continues. It costs a lot of money and time to fight bots, and Square has adopted the approach of simply doing waves of mass bannings to them, rather than fighting a weekly never ending war.

Lol no one can fix Balmung because the players will always clamber to the server any time it's open. If they had given advanced notice, it would have only exacerbated the situation.