Making this game less frustrating for new players.

I really want to love this game, but I've never played a game that makes it so hard to make characters. Try yesterday to make a new character with my Fiance and try to get her into the game. Just coming back from a Hiatus after the last frustration of just trying to get her an account from her free trial, boy was that way more work than I've done in any other MMO I've played put together(WoW, Guild Wars, Lotr, SWTOR, Lost Ark, New World)

Anyhow, sorry for trailing off. So I come back and I would like her to make a character with me, whelp Home world, and in fact whole Crystal is unable to make new characters. Transfer my characters with Free Home transfer to new server Seraph, go to make characters together on Seraph, yet again can't make characters would have to make it on another Homeworld.

I just don't understand why their server system is so Frustrating. We play so many games together and never run into anything like this. You simply cannot blame it on number of players, WoW is right there with them on concurrent players and you will NEVER have this problem on WoW.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel here? Will they ever fix this?

I'll pass, thanks for the terrible Advice and showing you Don't read. Appreciate your time.

Well yes...you can. Because FFXIVs servers are different. They only hold up to X amount.
So when that world becomes overpopulated / Full, they dont allow anymore characters to be made. WoW may be a largely populated MMO just like FFXIV, but that doesnt mean they function or are made the same.

Im sorry for the frustration.
Will they increase Server capacity? Maybe.

So, was the problem that the server was full? Sometimes if you wait until off hours, the server load goes down enough to let you create a new character. Unless the server's marked as congested or locked, then you might be SOL.

The Dynamis DataCenter was opened up to help alleviate this. Just head over there and you should have no problem.

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Originally Posted by Tommyjc

I just don't understand why their server system is so Frustrating. We play so many games together and never run into anything like this. You simply cannot blame it on number of players, WoW is right there with them on concurrent players and you will NEVER have this problem on WoW.

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While I agree wholeheartedly that the temporary time-based character creation restrictions on active worlds (or the complete shutdown of character creation on "congested" ones) are extremely annoying, it's worth noting that comparing any one MMO to another on a technical level is rarely worthwhile; the back-end server architecture of any given MMO tends to always be something of a weird, homegrown beast, and there's very real reasons as a result that limitations which exist on one may not exist on another (or vice versa).

FFXIV in particular is weird because of the data center/world division, which is a concept I've not seen in most other MMOs. We have a lot of things that are partitioned based on data center (instance servers, PvP rankings, etc.) and a lot of things that are partitioned based on logical worlds. I can only imagine what some of the implications of this are in terms of data-flow between the multiple physical servers that make up logical 'worlds' and 'data centers' behind the scenes.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

The Dynamis DataCenter was opened up to help alleviate this. Just head over there and you should have no problem.

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Seraph is in Dynamis, Thus my frustration, thanks for the advice though

Seraph isn't congested, luckily, so you can try late at night or very early in the morning to create one, at least. That, or maybe you both can start over together on another Dynamis server - with road to 80, FC xp, and earrings you'll both level up super fast anyway.

I remember you could generate a friend code on the registration site and give that to your friend so they get a spot on the same server. Is that not a thing anymore?

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Originally Posted by Tommyjc

Seraph is in Dynamis, Thus my frustration, thanks for the advice though

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(I read as far as Crystal, thought of how crowded it is there and responded.) Seraph was an unfrortunate choice. That was THE server a lot of people flocked too. The others should be fairly light.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

I remember you could generate a friend code on the registration site and give that to your friend so they get a spot on the same server. Is that not a thing anymore?

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Pretty sure this has never been a thing in XIV.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/worldstatus/
Show a pretty realtime lock down.

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Originally Posted by Kewitt

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/worldstatus/
Show a pretty realtime lock down.

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Ya I have it, when I moved to the Seraph Server it showed as new with no issues, move, and right back to square one. I just wish everything wasn't so disappointingly difficult. This game has a lot of things I like. I just don't understand how they don't make enough money to have decent servers.

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Originally Posted by Tommyjc

So I come back and I would like her to make a character with me, whelp Home world, and in fact whole Crystal is unable to make new characters. Transfer my characters with Free Home transfer to new server Seraph, go to make characters together on Seraph, yet again can't make characters would have to make it on another Homeworld.

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It's pretty common for an MMORPG to have a server cap, and when it's reached, make them wait or say it's full. Just many of them are probably not popular enough now for you to ever see it. Right now, all of Crystal is Congested, which means nobody can make characters there. They want to push people onto the new data center, Dynamis.

It's pretty common for an MMORPG to have a system similar to Preferred worlds where you get a bonus for making a character on a server that is less populated. Because obviously they want them all to be populated instead of just one of them.

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I just don't understand why their server system is so Frustrating. We play so many games together and never run into anything like this. You simply cannot blame it on number of players, WoW is right there with them on concurrent players and you will NEVER have this problem on WoW.

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WoW is different since I think they are more open to cloud services (?) than Square Enix is. Cloud servers allow for more flexibility but they come at a cost.

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Is there a light at the end of the tunnel here? Will they ever fix this?

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Yes, at one of the next patches when they decide that Crystal is not congested anymore.

If the Dynamis servers are just congested (and not Big C Congested like Crystal is right now), waiting for off-prime time should alleviate the issues. Since it's a US-based data center, you're looking at 2pm PST - 9pm PST (5pm EST - 12am EST), give or take, as prime time when everyone is coming home from work and playing. Weekends are a little more crowded, but if you try earlier in the morning before mid-afternoon, your partner should have an easier time. :)

Please understand this is a Indie game developed by a very very small company called Square Enix.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Pretty sure this has never been a thing in XIV.

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yeah I don't remember that being a thing in this game. just a friend code for the referral rewards. I do believe FFXI had something like that though atleast in its early days

You just got unlucky and picked the one Dynamis server that literally everyone else jumped on, I'd wager for probably the same reasons as everyone else as well.

While the worldstatus link is a useful tool, it could probably stand to be more prominent for new players on character creation.. but I can also say, as a new player, I paid zero attention to things like popularity or size. Hard to say what benefit would be had prior to players actually getting a sense of the world populations first hand.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

You just got unlucky and picked the one Dynamis server that literally everyone else jumped on, I'd wager for probably the same reasons as everyone else as well.

While the worldstatus link is a useful tool, it could probably stand to be more prominent for new players on character creation.. but I can also say, as a new player, I paid zero attention to things like popularity or size. Hard to say what benefit would be had prior to players actually getting a sense of the world populations first hand.

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Yeah TBH when I first began playing FFXIV I was on Omega, Chaos. Only because the name sounded cool.

SQEX should do better in informing about temporary/permanent congestions and whatnot for sure... but keep population numbers officially hidden. Everyone will just funnel themselves to the most active ones.

I would say either try again on a different time, or bite the bullet and make one on a different server.
at least we have DC travel now.

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

SQEX should do better in informing about temporary/permanent congestions and whatnot for sure..

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Like I said, not entirely sure how much that might help, though can presume it'd be better than nothing. I recall as a new player, I wouldn't really have given much thought or consideration to this information, not really having any frame of context or anything. "Idk, just let me in so I can start playing." The world and data center distribution can be a small bit of information overload to someone just creating their account..

I want to say a proposal could be something like allowing all new accounts to be eligible for one free character transfer regardless of world status (but still adhering to the Congested rules). Give the player the freedom to get in and start playing and discovering, time to determine if their world population is suitable. Nobody's going to know right away if they've picked something right for them, and by the time they have a sense of the worlds, or at least their own world, they may have sunk enough time and progression and investment that just restarting on an ideal world would be a large setback.

Although, no idea how well that proposal would work with the already established free transfer opportunities... (i.e. does an already eligible free transfer use up your "first time free" transfer?)

They did make more servers they give us whole new DC and we getting 4 more servers for that dc

Simple. create a character, save that character, log into the game before going to work (inactive hours of your region) load the saved character appearance, create character on world you want.

Yes it might be frustrating but that's the price you have to pay for wanting to play on a populated world.

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

Yeah TBH when I first began playing FFXIV I was on Omega, Chaos. Only because the name sounded cool.

SQEX should do better in informing about temporary/permanent congestions and whatnot for sure... but keep population numbers officially hidden. Everyone will just funnel themselves to the most active ones.

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If people can't read the lodestone or worldstatus page, then it's their problem. I read it when I was trying to get on a congested world as a new player.

They inform it on the lodestone, which is displayed in the launcher that everyone uses to login to the game.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...c982009902aa22

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

Please understand this is a Indie game developed by a very very small company called Square Enix.

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Please understand that this is the only "Indie game" in the business that allows both console and PC players on the same worlds. [This is not a direct response to the poster quoted above, but I'm using the sentence structure to make a point].

Each "world" is comprised of multiple servers. Each dungeon/trial/raid instance is brought up on shared servers that are part of your logical realm (Aether, Crystal, Dynamis for North America). Each zone is an instance brought up on one of the multiple servers that comprise your world. It isn't as simple as "just add more servers".

Dynamis "congested" but many duty roulette queue times approaching infinity lol.

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

Dynamis "congested" but many duty roulette queue times approaching infinity lol.

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Seraph is a special case amongst Dynamis. Literally 50-60% of all of the population is there.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Each "world" is comprised of multiple servers. Each dungeon/trial/raid instance is brought up on shared servers that are part of your logical realm (Aether, Crystal, Dynamis for North America). Each zone is an instance brought up on one of the multiple servers that comprise your world. It isn't as simple as "just add more servers".

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Yes, each "world" is essentially a massive rack of server machines taller than ourselves, so they have to buy not one server but a massive rack of very expensive, high-spec machines, when there has been a pandemic with restricted trade, limited work and travel so people can't be in the building to set them up and a semi-conductor shortage.

The argument everyone turns to after that is cloud servers and how flexible they are, but SE explored that already and there would be reduced performance with them and after years of it being this way, it's probably not designed for the cloud.

They might eventually but for now even WoW (Classic) has locked servers to prevent massive overflow, similar to how FF14 already handles their servers. Honestly surprised it took WoW this long to add it but at the same time not since it's been bleeding subs for a very long time.

WHAT IF you could buy your way into congested servers through the mogshop? Shareholders are happy and the loyal consumer is happy. I'll take my seat on the CEO big boy table now.

and after a while the congested server would totally crash due to waaay to many people. Looking at Balmung

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

WHAT IF you could buy your way into congested servers through the mogshop? Shareholders are happy and the loyal consumer is happy. I'll take my seat on the CEO big boy table now.

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Used to be able to. Then Balmung and Gilgamesh happened. So they don't let you anymore lol

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

WHAT IF you could buy your way into congested servers through the mogshop? Shareholders are happy and the loyal consumer is happy. I'll take my seat on the CEO big boy table now.

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NGL I would pay extra for guaranteed character slots wherever/whenever.

WoW for sure had this kind of thing too. I remember because I played from vanilla to MoP. High population servers would be marked as full. (I remember Blackrock and Proudmore being pretty much locked for a good while, I was on Eldre'Thalas which got close to full for a while) I think it's not an issue anymore because there's a lot less people playing WoW than back in BC/WoTLK. In your specific instance you could make a character on any server on Dynamis besides Seraph. It doesn't matter where you make a character because you can freely visit any NA server on any data center at any time, so just pick whatever is open.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Used to be able to. Then Balmung and Gilgamesh happened. So they don't let you anymore lol

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MORE SERVER RACKS!
We won't rest until people log in and zone into the 9th instance of Limsa lower decks!
*dev peon whispers in my ear*
lay-ten-see? What? Is that some sort of erp lingo?