[Dev Feedback] - Megaservers - Open World Content needs this :)

In a recent interview, Yoshi-P talked a bit about mega servers, and I just wanted to encourage the development team to keep working hard towards that progress.

I hope the next logical step is that the players on a data center are put into the same zone, and load balance zones so that there will always be players that you can see and interact with.

When I look at Eureka, this is content that would be better just out in the game, rather than behind an instance. But in order to do that, zones need to be shared, and not separated by a server. This would also allow for players on the data center to take part in maps and more!

Anyway, thanks for all that you do! :)
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The question that immediately pops into my head with this is - how would this affect The Hunt and World Bosses?

The Hunt is already a disaster on certain servers, and introducing mega servers with no changes to how it works would make it nigh impossible to do with the amount of people that would be introduced.

Edit :

Let me elaborate. My concern is also actual gameplay of certain things, as well as server stress. For example, on Behemoth there is a small group of people that grief hunts for everyone. Now, a player can leave the server if it matters that much to them, but if you introduced mega servers, those same Behemoth griefers would be able to mess with the entirety of Primal's hunt scene. You can argue competitive all you want, but the way the Hunt and it's rewards are set up do not accommodate for an entire data center worth of people, regardless of if the server hamsters can handle 300 people showing up for S ranks and the rest locked out beating at the doors hoping to get in.

Sorry, but Open World content doesn't need Megaservers for more people on the maps... it needs more things to do that are rewarding to attract more people back to the maps and out of Rhalgar's.

old MMORPG older than WoW or even FFXI get a more interesting open world than FFXIV, a more living (with character moving in) open world than FFXIV.

FFXIV is one of the most instanced MMORPG, most thing to do in FFXIV (excluding RP) is instanced. servers are not empty, some getting more than 10k "activ" people (yes, matter is "define activ player" i know). If the 6 area are empty, it is mainly due to gamedesign. we are all in one of the 72 housing area (144 because each ward is 2 different) instance or Rhalgr. or Kugane. We have to go out to hunt (for those doing this) gathering, treasure hunt (same) and tribal quests (and, at each patch, quests)
Most of those open world content are alone, or party. only the hunt gather more than 8 people to do the same thing...


Megaserver is interesting thing. if we see what blizzard did with it, there is many good things, i invite in my party a friend from another server and... he is "teleported" to mine server the time he is in my party. i let you think all thing good... and BAD it gave. nothing is perfect, and "server hoping" to get some rare ennemies is not (in my mind) a fully good thing. .

Aaaaand FFXIV gets the hunt. Depending on how they use this "mega server" it can break even more this weak content as tsumdere said. ("how they use" because the way i explained, from wow is clearly not the only way.)


But honestly, i think good things can be done with "megaserver" ... lets hope they wont fail it... (i dont know why but i am scared about the probability they fail... )

I would kill to be able to play with my friends on mateus while still being on my my main's homeserver.

Unless SE can fix their servers and their object culling this is the last thing that needs to happen. Eureka is a mess and shows how badly the servers react to a ton of people in one spot. You end up either having targets vanishing on you, getting hit by invisible adds, and not even being able to heal party members who are standing right next to you because they are phased out.

There are a lot of issues with SE Backend that shows a lot during peak times and when large amounts of actions are happening at the same time. I know they did there server move with some hardware upgrades, but I feel that the coding is the major thing holding them back at this time to allow them to break the barrier needed to get more people in the same zone/instance.

On the brighter note, I would love to have more connection to the other worlds on the data center.

I am not sure if I like the idea. First as others have stated what will happen to things like the hunts? What will happen if you have a relic that needs fates from certain zones and suddenly the swarm is doing them while newer players might be left in the sand. Also next to hunts and fates would much really change? If people have no reason to do something in the overworld they wont be out there. So maybe you will see a bit more people outside but does this outweight the negatives?

What about log in problems at patch days? What about the instances and stability of the maps? What about laggs and DC and not seeing the monster or players if too many people are at a place? Honestly for me Eureka just showed that SE is not able to truly handle 144 in one place. I dont see them handle much more very well.

Solution: Give us more things to do in the overworld. Treasure chest huntings, more sightseeing points, riddles, more lore to find and maybe some activities that are done there. (Like beast tribe quests) Then you will have more people doing it without the need to create x instaces because the map will otherwise crash or without the laggs, anger and salt it can also create.

I'm not really keen on the idea of "megaservers". The core code struggles with people in Eureka fighting a boss -- how would it deal with thousands upon thousands more in the city hubs -- to say nothing of The Hunt.

I like the community aspect that servers have. I feel like we'd lose that if we merged them all.

before they add megaservers, they need to make the overworld content be interesting to make players go outside of the hubs to do stuff instead of just waiting for dungeons queues, as how is currently, there is, leves for DoW/M for up to lvl 60, hunts, fates, quests and beast tribe quests, and most of this is not interesting for the majority or when they reach some point people stops doing it

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Originally Posted by Xau

before they add megaservers, they need to make the overworld content be interesting to make players go outside of the hubs to do stuff instead of just waiting for dungeons queues, as how is currently, there is, leves for DoW/M for up to lvl 60, hunts, fates, quests and beast tribe quests, and most of this is not interesting for the majority or when they reach some point people stops doing it

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This honestly feels like a catch 22, because I agree, there needs to be more open world content, but if they spend time making it, and there aren't people to do it with, then it will just be seen as DOA content. But if we shared the zones with the data center, then the open world content like Maps could be taken advantage of... and I think we could then see Eureka shift into the open world as well.

Until they fix the current server issues this simply isn't going to work. They can barely handle Eureka as it currently stands now, never mind on patch days when some content is literally incapable of loading because too many people are in a /single/ instance. (Raubahn and Pippin Savage anyone? Because I remember that week of not being able to progress /fondly. /s) Which doesn't even touch on the fact that one of the main reasons we'll never see instanced housing is because it would put too much strain on the server. Let's repeat that. Instanced housing, which allows you to keep housing instances unloaded when not in use, is too much of a strain for the servers at present. How are they even remotely going to handle dozens of instances that require constant uptime in order to handle the illusion of one continuous server?

Also frankly speaking, if content is DOA with normal servers, it's not likely to improve much if ported to the 'open world'. No matter how much you polish and gold plate a turd, it's not going to somehow magically get better or more appealing to the people who disliked it in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Delmontyb

In a recent interview, Yoshi-P talked a bit about mega servers, and I just wanted to encourage the development team to keep working hard towards that progress.

I hope the next logical step is that the players on a data center are put into the same zone, and load balance zones so that there will always be players that you can see and interact with.

When I look at Eureka, this is content that would be better just out in the game, rather than behind an instance. But in order to do that, zones need to be shared, and not separated by a server. This would also allow for players on the data center to take part in maps and more!

Anyway, thanks for all that you do! :)
A

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Uhm...have you been in eureka or at any hunts? In every fight with a lot of people you have issues with shown mobs and party members, i honestly don't need that on normal fates...

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Originally Posted by Ilan

Uhm...have you been in eureka or at any hunts? In every fight with a lot of people you have issues with shown mobs and party members, i honestly don't need that on normal fates...

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If only you had control over these settings, like an options menu of sort...

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

If only you had control over these settings, like an options menu of sort...

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Yeah if only...like in other games...

I would be OK with this even if it were limited to treasure maps for now. When friends are strewn across servers, it'd be nice to get everyone together, and get them lobbed onto the Louisoix realm for example, to do maps.

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Originally Posted by Ilan

Uhm...have you been in eureka or at any hunts? In every fight with a lot of people you have issues with shown mobs and party members, i honestly don't need that on normal fates...

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Yes I have been, but that's why Zones would/should then be balanced so what you've seen wouldn't be an issue. :)

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Originally Posted by Delmontyb

Yes I have been, but that's why Zones would/should then be balanced so what you've seen wouldn't be an issue. :)

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Balancing isn't going to fix deep seated server issues. Those absolutely need to be fixed first before a mega-server can even be entertained. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even ignoring the servers, I'm just plain against the idea.

• It would errode server communities
• If they go towards unrestricted megaservers, the marketboard would be a nightmare.

If they have megaservers no doubt SE would eventually have to introduce instances for each open world area (like they did on SB release and The Lochs for Ixion) to handle all the player traffic so we'd just be back to where we started.

The whole game would need to be reworked.

Everything is instanced, there's loading screens everywhere. The entire game was made with instancing in mind. Then there also comes their 90's server hardware and PS3 spaghetti code.
I never knew why they tried to untangle the spaghetti code instead of just demolish and building from the ground up with ARR.

I'm all for megaservers but in this game I would prefer (re)build from the ground up with modern engine.
True multicore CPU usage (+16 threadings) and use full power of modern GPU's so we can see some hard capped 144 FPS and maybe up to 90 FPS on 4K with 'acceptable' eye candy settings?
Then I would love to see some open world and loads of people on all the maps.

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Originally Posted by Fhaerron

I never knew why they tried to untangle the spaghetti code instead of just demolish and building from the ground up with ARR.

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because time and $$$.

Why do people want to load up what (most of the time) is supposed to be wilderness or at least sparsely settled environments with a metropolis' population?

Open world zones don't need to be more populated. They need to continue to feel like a real world. The less you make them feel like a real world, the less desirable they are to visit. If there's some special FATE or a S rank hunt mark that need a large number of players, shouts to linkshells will usually attract enough players.

Leave the zone crowding to the cities.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Why do people want to load up what (most of the time) is supposed to be wilderness or at least sparsely settled environments with a metropolis' population?

Open world zones don't need to be more populated. They need to continue to feel like a real world. The less you make them feel like a real world, the less desirable they are to visit. If there's some special FATE or a S rank hunt mark that need a large number of players, shouts to linkshells will usually attract enough players.

Leave the zone crowding to the cities.

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With the open world we would also wish that the open world has actually interesting things in it and doesn't feel lik an empty void.

As I said the game isn't build for open world, it was build to be instanced, that's why it needs to be reworked ... again.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

The question that immediately pops into my head with this is - how would this affect The Hunt and World Bosses?

The Hunt is already a disaster on certain servers, and introducing mega servers with no changes to how it works would make it nigh impossible to do with the amount of people that would be introduced.

Edit :

Let me elaborate. My concern is also actual gameplay of certain things, as well as server stress. For example, on Behemoth there is a small group of people that grief hunts for everyone. Now, a player can leave the server if it matters that much to them, but if you introduced mega servers, those same Behemoth griefers would be able to mess with the entirety of Primal's hunt scene. You can argue competitive all you want, but the way the Hunt and it's rewards are set up do not accommodate for an entire data center worth of people, regardless of if the server hamsters can handle 300 people showing up for S ranks and the rest locked out beating at the doors hoping to get in.

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Yeah I can't see megaservers happening without instancing the zones themselves. Megaservers definitely have great benefits though, i hate how almost none of my friends play on my server, all my friends from previous games I've played who play FFXIV are scattered across many other servers on aether. With Megaservers, this would NOT be an issue at all.

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

Yeah I can't see megaservers happening without instancing the zones themselves. Megaservers definitely have great benefits though, i hate how almost none of my friends play on my server, all my friends from previous games I've played who play FFXIV are scattered across many other servers on aether. With Megaservers, this would NOT be an issue at all.

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Absolutely. Do not get me wrong, I wish that megaservers could be a thing, I just do not think they cannot right now without some serious reworking of the few open world activities that already exist.

Balmung is already very crowded. I dread to think what it would be like if the open world could have visitors from other servers.

I also suspect that a lot of the people playing on smaller servers do so because they want to play on a smaller server - and if they don't, then they have the option to transfer to a more populated server to reap the perks that come with such a place.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

Absolutely. Do not get me wrong, I wish that megaservers could be a thing, I just do not think they cannot right now without some serious reworking of the few open world activities that already exist.

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Oh yeah, there would need to be some system reworking for the current open world content. This isn't a light switch change, but I do hope we get there at some point in the near future. :)

As others have said better - everything is instanced and this most likely would be a pointless step.
FFXIV is a very pretty hallway - much like FFXIII.