What do we want? (Response to congestion)

So, I just want to get a general pulse of the population of the boards at this point in relation to queue and current services.

Right now we have:

* Numerous login related errors, most on SE's end
* Renaming Services down
* Massive Login queues even with backup servers

What we have gotten is:

* 21 combined days extension on our play time
* A promise of one 2002 error cause fixed in patch 6.01
* A halt on the sale of the base game
* Promise of a server roadmap in January

What I really want to know, is this enough for you? Is this the path you want SE to take? Is there a next step if this continues into January (Which it most likely will)?

For now I’m really happy with today’s response. It covers all the bases.

Now, that could change dependent on a few things.

1. Will the fix for 2002 actually fix the 2002?
2. If additional problems arise will the increase the comp time again?
3. What will the new server road map look like.

If the answers to 1 and 2 are yes, then it’s all good in my hood. It’s the answer to number 3 that I am most curious to see though.

21 Days-> Reasonable compensation thus far.

Promise of the 2002 error code fix? -> Also perfect, it will help to alleviate some peoples' frustrations when they aren't required to queue twice

Halt on sales? -> Good/Bad - Good in that it will alleviate some issues. Bad for those that wanted the game as a holiday present.

Promise of a roadmap? -> Excellent. They're communicating their intentions with their player base.

Is this enough for me? Given the present circumstances, yes.

What should happen is the suspension of all subscription payments until players can log in under a reasonable time frame. S-E is getting awfully close to false advertising with all the EW sales they've done to this point. Offering a product that can only be accessed by a minority of customers is very, very bad.


edit: White knights are out already. None of you are worth responding to with your twisted logic.

Assuming that everything that has been promised is delivered, this would be the next best thing to the problem never happening at all. SE has salvaged their bungled launch quite well.

It's funny, but the things beyond that which I'd most want to alleviate some of the situation are minor QoL things at best, stuff like:

1. Change the 'error state' noise during login queue to be distinctly different from the 'refreshing your queue position' noise, so that you can immediately and audibly tell when something goes wrong and you get bounced. (I'd love it even more if connection errors didn't bounce you out of the client entirely, but I recognize that's a not-small technical change to the entire login architecture and not likely to happen.) I would be shocked if this one was a difficult change to make.
2. If feasible, add the ability to cycle retainers on ventures to the mobile application. Yes, that's not a super small feature to develop -- so it wouldn't be anything we'd see right away -- but the companion app team is separate from the main client and server team so it might be doable. And if it was in place, you could do things like still at least send retainers out for crafting materials and stuff even if you can't log in to the game.
3. Temporarily up the idle-logout time to 45 minutes (or even an hour). I know people who get frantic because they have a thing in-game with friends at 6:30pm, so they start logging in at 4pm to ensure they're on-time, they're gonna walk the dog at 6pm ahead-of-time or whatever... and then they unexpectedly get through the queue earlier than they figured, at like 5:50, and panic that if they go walk the dog now and are even a minute late getting back to the keys they're going to get logged out. Most have a spouse or a roommate or someone who they can be like "Please just go move my character every ten minutes until I'm back so I don't get logged out", but a few don't, and it feels like a slightly longer grace period on that AFK logout would make it less likely people would be tempted into using AFK-prevention trickery.

Stuff like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eli85

What should happen is the suspension of all subscription payments until players can log in under a reasonable time frame. S-E is getting awfully close to false advertising with all the EW sales they've done to this point. Offering a product that can only be accessed by a minority of customers is very, very bad.

---

They're giving 3 weeks so far of free time to cover said issues, if you choose to subscribe knowing what was coming when they forewarned thats on you. Staying subbed is fine with the free time given as long as they continue to give time per extreme "downtime"

I mainly want SquareEnix to stay the course and move their asses to add more logical data centers ASAP so the queue situation can be brought down to sensible levels during prime time hours so everyone can have sufficient access to FFXIV to do whatever they hell they want, be it dancing all day, music, RPing, MSQ, dungeons, trials, raids, exploring, anything for 24hours a day if they so please.

I'll also take some vouchers for 2000 Poetics, 2000 Aphorisms for all the prime time weekday hours I had to wait getting into FFXIV, IF even getting in at all, some days it's just NOPE gotta sleep for work. Weekend queue numbers aren't much better either, 5000/ERROR/4000/ERROR/3000/2000/1000/ERROR/200/ERROR etc but at least I can log in at 11pm-6am to get through MSQ and other things.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...390.1630454288

Quote:

---

With the help of IT equipment vendors from all around the world, we are slowly beginning to receive information about delivery dates and figures. Considering the high specification requirements for FFXIV servers, along with the fact that adding a single logical data center requires hundreds of servers, we invariably need much more time, but we are starting to see some progress. In line with this, the Server and Infrastructure teams are working together to plan for new additions, and we hope to be able to provide some sort of roadmap by the end of January 2022.

We are considering adding servers to each region, especially plans for a large-scale addition in North America and Europe, and will be looking at the number of servers, infrastructure construction time, power issues, and server rack situation to see if we should do this sequentially or in one big push. Either way, the plan is to introduce a large number of additions, which we intend to carry out quickly and safely with as minimal inconvenience to our players as possible, and we will follow up regarding this matter as we progress.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eli85

What should happen is the suspension of all subscription payments until players can log in under a reasonable time frame. S-E is getting awfully close to false advertising with all the EW sales they've done to this point. Offering a product that can only be accessed by a minority of customers is very, very bad.

---

It's not false advertising though. That would be "no queues, no disconnects, no issues in our new expansion".


That's not a thing ever said.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

It's not false advertising though. That would be "no queues, no disconnects, no issues in our new expansion".


That's not a thing ever said.

---

I have to agree, it isn't false advertising or anything even close honestly, especially when we now appear to have good faith efforts on the devs to correct the issues.

I would also like them to address ongoing 90006 errors that seem to be getting worse the longer we go, and having to requeue from the beginning because there's absolutely no grace period. Numerous reports have been filed of bad hops with NTT right before hitting the game servers. They should be working with them to resolve these issues as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Macleod

I would also like them to address ongoing 90006 errors that seem to be getting worse the longer we go, and having to requeue from the beginning because there's absolutely no grace period. Numerous reports have been filed of bad hops with NTT right before hitting the game servers. They should be working with them to resolve these issues as well.

---

I won't say no one has had that problem, but I feel you're greatly exaggerating it. I'm on your data center and have had a grand total of one d/c. The queues on the login server are ongoing obviously, but the world servers themselves have been smooth. Most people do not post on the forums, and those that do tend to post the same exact thing over and over, as if that will somehow magic servers (which they've been trying to get for months) into existence.

Prety much agree with everelse that, yes, this is enough, providing they follow through. I don't really know what else they can do, getting new servers which is the only real solution will take time.

As for what the roadmap should look like.
In my opinion. An additional NA datacenter, 4-6 more servers and a reshuffle to even them out. Potentially split across two different sides, east and west coasts.
EU could maybe get away with just 2-4 servers, we already have fewer servers per DC.
Then Oceania is already planned, which should solve any issues on the JP side.

That as a minimum should be 'enough'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Seraphor

Prety much agree with everelse that, yes, this is enough, providing they follow through. I don't really know what else they can do, getting new servers which is the only real solution will take time.

As for what the roadmap should look like.
In my opinion. An additional NA datacenter, 4-6 more servers and a reshuffle to even them out. Potentially split across two different sides, east and west coasts.
EU could maybe get away with just 2-4 servers, we already have fewer servers per DC.
Then Oceania is already planned, which should solve any issues on the JP side.

That as a minimum should be 'enough'.

---

God, remember when they split the EU I to 2 data centers and people got upset because it was lower population? Can you imagine if EU was still just 1 DC?

I am most content with the answers and compensation, as are friends. I can understand though why many may not be as I quite enjoy my time playing.

Attempting to sound not rude in a language that is not native to me here, many apologies if I seem so!

I would like to see commitment from Square to re-evaluate the ability of their development team, especially their system administrators. I wished to post more on this point however require hot black liquid first. Coffee to blood ratio is tooooooo low.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mirhd

but I feel you're greatly exaggerating it

---

Multiple people in my FC also getting 90k'd and not posting about it on the forums says otherwise. There's plenty of info about the high ping and packet loss at NTT that has been going on since well before Endwalker started.

Honestly, I feel like Square-Enix is taking the path I'd want them to take in regards to the issues suffered by the players. They've been keeping us informed on what's going on and what they're trying to do to fix it short of getting more servers (due to factors beyond their control).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Macleod

and not posting about it on the forums says otherwise.

---

You're suggesting people not posting means the majority are getting disconnected? What? Further, while I acknowledged already that it's not as if no-one is having issues, it most definitely is an exaggeration, unlike the queues. A number of people in your FC experiencing some d/cs does not indicate something is widespread. That's not how that works.

I really don't think any other mmo wouldn't have bothered to do what SE is trying to do. As a company they've not lost my respect and I appreciate them keeping us informed on the issues. I plan to give them the time they've asked for out of that respect and if others don't wish to, then they have a choice to back away.

I'm pretty happy with what we got now. I mean, sure, the login errors are a mess but at least they are addressing the problems.
Of course, there's always people who are all "lol just code more servers".

Yeah, I'm extremely happy with the latest news and SE's plan for the upcoming future. On top of appreciate the plan, I'm grateful that they got to it sooner than not and didn't wait / drag it out until 2022, it shows a lot of courage and responsibility toward the current situation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eli85

What should happen is the suspension of all subscription payments until players can log in under a reasonable time frame. S-E is getting awfully close to false advertising with all the EW sales they've done to this point. Offering a product that can only be accessed by a minority of customers is very, very bad.


edit: White knights are out already. None of you are worth responding to with your twisted logic.

---

So you were just waiting to call people white knights? That's all I needed to know. Want to throw the word copium in there? You might fill out your bingo card....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Macleod

Multiple people in my FC also getting 90k'd and not posting about it on the forums says otherwise. There's plenty of info about the high ping and packet loss at NTT that has been going on since well before Endwalker started.

---

Unfortunately this is not an SE problem, or an issue that SE can manage. This is an internet infrastructure issue that is under NTT's control. All SE can tell them is that their players are reporting an issue with x node. NTT can straight up ignore them and there isn't a thing in the world that SE can do to make them do otherwise.