Why did they stop kicking out afks like they used to

I am not talking about persons that are afks waiting for a their duty to pop I am talking about people that take place 24/7 on the servers to do nothing. Don't get me wrong there is no hate here. It's just quite bothering during event like we have rn where the cities are crowded and sure they get purge when the event over and they do a maintenance kicking everyone out. I'm just curious why they removed that it's not like it take a long time to log in

Because the game would be empty otherwise.

but isn't a good thing tho?

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

but isn't a good thing tho?

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that person is just trolling.

the reason is because the only time you need to kick afkers is if there isn't enough server space to fit everyone and it boosts login q times.

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

but isn't a good thing tho?

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Not for SE. SE wants FFXIV to have the image that the game is alive and bustling with players so they can attract new players (for more money). They'll do what they can to achieve that even if it means creating that image artificially via players being allowed to stand around for an indefinite amount of time.

It's surprising usually online games kick people out to prevents that from even happening in the first place? I know when I started playing 2 years ago it was 10 min afk = kick

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Not for SE. SE wants FFXIV to have the image that the game is alive and bustling with players so they can attract new players (for more money). They'll do what they can do achieve that even if it means creating that image artificially via players being allowed to stand around for an indefinite amount of time.

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I can actually believe that yeah because I was kind of thinking about that

LOOOOOOOOL

What overactive imaginations.

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

It's surprising usually online games kick people out to prevents that from even happening in the first place? I know when I started playing 2 years ago it was 10 min afk = kick

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yea at the start of all the expansions they have made the afk kick timer but remove it as q times vanish.

lots of online games don't use afk kick timers but on the same hand plenty of them do it's really up to the devs if they want something like that in their game. and honestly the problem only happens in the begining of an expansion no reason to have it when it's not needed, some players like to be online 24/7 that's their business.

10m is only necessary when there's been an expansion drop. Outside of that, a 60m timer would be best. It wouldn't kick people out for going out to make food, but it'll also kick out players that go to sleep ingame.

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Originally Posted by Astrahime

10m is only necessary when there's been an expansion drop. Outside of that, a 60m timer would be best. It wouldn't kick people out for going out to make food, but it'll also kick out players that go to sleep ingame.

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that I completely agree I think it's a great idea

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

It's surprising usually online games kick people out to prevents that from even happening in the first place? I know when I started playing 2 years ago it was 10 min afk = kick

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It's never been as low as 10 minutes. It's always been a 30 minute cutoff for autokick when active.

I'm going to guess that you started around Endwalker launch. New expansion released are the one period when they automatically use the auto-kick. How long it remains active depends on how long the congestion continues across the different worlds. Generally it will be 1-2 months.

Outside of the periods of extreme congestion, it's rarely the number of players already online that are causing the log-in queues. The log-in queues are caused by SE throttling how many log-ins are being processed at the same time to keep the log-in servers stable.

Unless world servers are so packed that more players are unable to get onto the servers, the autokick isn't needed. A lot of players prefer seeing the cities crowded even if many of those players are AFK.

Cause it doesn't need it. They only turn it on when it's close to expansion launch and people staying online is congesting the servers so other people can't log in. Once it dies down, they turn the auto-kick off again.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Not for SE. SE wants FFXIV to have the image that the game is alive and bustling with players so they can attract new players (for more money). They'll do what they can to achieve that even if it means creating that image artificially via players being allowed to stand around for an indefinite amount of time.

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This makes logical sense but you can't really blame them for it. Pretty sure anyone in their position would do the same. Games, forums, discords, whatever. People in charge of most anything like to boost the activity by any means possible.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Not for SE. SE wants FFXIV to have the image that the game is alive and bustling with players so they can attract new players (for more money). They'll do what they can to achieve that even if it means creating that image artificially via players being allowed to stand around for an indefinite amount of time.

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guy in my fc used to afk in grid for a week straight

Because this late in an expansion it's arguably counter productive for an MMO to start kicking even the most afk of bodies.

First off, from a technical perspective:

Modern online games use a multitude of measures to minimise network utilisation wherever possible. A big part of that is simply not updating player positional and velocity data until they actually start moving.

Moreover, as far as server CPU load goes, again there are a ton of measures taken to minimize the effect of idle players and this isn't anything new by any stretch. Even Quakeworld had this down, testing a server by connecting 32 idle clients was a waste of time as it would use a fraction of the CPU resources that an active 32 player scrum would eat back in the day. This is something that's easy enough to test for yourself.

With that in mind, why the auto afk kick at the start of the expansion and not now? Simple, at the start of the expansion a higher percentage of players are active running around and doing content. Fast forward to now and jobs are levelled, reps are maxed, hunts are done and dusted and Chocobo companions are stabled. There's simply a much lower percentage of people actually running around doing stuff in the overworld now vs then.

Outside of the above, the only other issue with massive player counts in a single area is the client character gear reconstruction thread. All PCs and NPCs appear to be combined on a single thread which can cause weird single thread biased loads as you hit the cap. This only really starts to become an issue in areas like the Bozja entrance unless your PC is particularly potato though (Granted no idea what sort of an issue it is on console) and as it's not really impactful even when it does bite, not to mention it's entirely a client side thing and doesn't affect the server performance I don't think it's an 'issue' that SE are interested in addressing specifically.

As for why it's counter productive for an MMO to afk kick. Simple really, a lot of people use MMOs as a glorified chatroom, that breeds strong communities which in turn helps with player retention even if the content isn't quite doing the job. A lot of people are super social creatures in these sort of games and booting them breaks that.

This game has never kicked out afk people except for up to 4 months after an expansion launch due to congestion and one time when popular streamers started playing it causing it to go viral and get congested.

The director of this game knows that afk timers are not fun and only uses them when they think it's absolutely necessary.

lets be real 90% of you use an addon to prevent it anyways..

quick question? how many zones are there in game? and how many people in a zone before it become congested? and multiply that by how many servers there are..
the active player numbers are no where near what people think, and after wow banned the multi-boxers they found a new game, now if square starts a crusade against their armys of afk pose girlfriends mules, well i suspect we would loose close to 40% of the "active" player base..

aka square is only going to go after addons and botters in show, they cant afford to mass flag everyone running a mod or launcher or parser or even a bot... the floor lala's are here to stay.

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

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That's normal. It processes queues in waves. Sometimes I've seen long queues process 50 at a time and sometimes I've seen them process 100 at a time and it can take up to 2 minutes to get through the amount it's processing. It has seemed to vary how many it actually processes at a time.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

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That has literally nothing to do with how many people are on the server. The login servers just process logins slowly. The servers arent full.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

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I can get this queue around 3-6 AM

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

I just wish they'd keep enough kicked to maintain at least 100 open login spaces available. During non-peak periods, I shouldn't be facing a 10-20 queue every time I log in.

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Thank the RMT bots for that, they're constantly getting dumped offline and re-submitting login requests. Again, login queues have nothing to do with AFKs because the login server is separate.

I don't know why it's so hard for everyone to believe that a small number of people are trying to login at the same time as them.

SE just seem to process them in batches of funnels (ie. only 50 or only 100 per 2 minutes) and within that only one at a time can pass through.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...hen_Funnel.jpg

Even at a patch maintenance, where it's morning on a weekday, not many people are actually logging in because the majority of people wait until the evening after work to do it. But if you login the second the servers unlock, you will often get into a queue of a few hundred. It goes down pretty quickly, within a few minutes at most.

It's not that the server is full yet. Not even close. It's just the funnel system that I described.

If the server isn’t under strain why do you care if people afk in game all day? Genuinely curious

Wait, wait, wait, wait.. you mean to tell me that all those characters running around in the cities are other PEOPLE? I thought they were just NPCs with goofy names and really wonky AI!

/mindblown

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Originally Posted by Saraide

That has literally nothing to do with how many people are on the server. The login servers just process logins slowly. The servers arent full.

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It says the server is full during the wait countdown.

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Originally Posted by vetch

Thank the RMT bots for that, they're constantly getting dumped offline and re-submitting login requests. Again, login queues have nothing to do with AFKs because the login server is separate.

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I can't say I've ever seen an RMT bot get kicked offline. I can sit and report the same one over and over again for an hour, and it's spam keeps appearing. These days, I just switch chat to battle mode before entering Limsa so I don't see them.

Sometimes I fall asleep and leave the game running now.

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

I am not talking about persons that are afks waiting for a their duty to pop I am talking about people that take place 24/7 on the servers to do nothing. Don't get me wrong there is no hate here. It's just quite bothering during event like we have rn where the cities are crowded and sure they get purge when the event over and they do a maintenance kicking everyone out. I'm just curious why they removed that it's not like it take a long time to log in

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Limsa rpers in shambles

They did this at the start of the expansion because the game actually had so many players logging in that the servers were on fire and they had to temporarily stop selling copies of the game. Eventually, for some reason, the game stopped having an overpopulation issue so the afk-kicker was no longer deemed necessary.
Sad thing is, it didn't even work all that well when it was implemented. We still had the dancing dudes dancing for 24 hours a day 7 days a week. People with basic scripting knowledge (or people with friends who knew it) were running a script that'd tap a button for them every couple of minutes to trick the system while they afk'd in their locked home all day so they could get back in the game after work. The massive queues created a ton of pressure to stay logged in even at times when you'd normally log out, and the problem rapidly became a cyclical one. I hope the cloud infrastructure combined with the dynamis DC will help alleviate these issues in Dawntrail, assuming it even garners enough attention to warrant this kind of problem to begin with of course.

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Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Because the game would be empty otherwise.

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Wish that were true. Then I wouldn't have to miss out on S-ranks because I'm stuck in a 50+ person queue waiting on the server transfer. Or getting a failed teleport because the new area is congested.

I for one find the kick timers to be so annoying, I'm so glad it's been removed. I don't like having to tab back in to do 1 click after 30 minutes or like hurrying myself while eating dinner just so I don't get kicked out and have to reload back in and so forth, all that stuff makes me less likely to play a game and part of why i'll never play Runescape because of all their afk timer kicks.

the main thing is that I work while playing games at the same time, two monitors, sometimes i'll be working for a while and won't be able to stop doing something in time to do a click in FFXIV, then i'll play for like a couple hours in a row and maybe afk for 30 mins again, etc.

They like the sell the illusion of activity to new players by keeping the main 3 cities active.

You guys and your crackpot theories. Literally was because EW's launch had severe population overload and people wanting to queue into the game, so they had to put in afk lockouts to accommodate for other players wanting to log in.

Its why Dynamis was created, its also a major reason why they're testing cloud servers to prevent that issue. Although really EW launched at the best time during the WoW/content creator Exodus but we'll see if Dawntrail will have that same success (not even a chance lol)

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

It says the server is full during the wait countdown.

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Not to be rude but duty roulette often says "average wait time: however many minutes" and that ends up not being the case. Just because some pop up says so does not make it so. I actually had no idea about the login server processing logins in waves until I saw this thread and then it made sense. The servers literally aren't full, because if they were you'd be waiting a whole lot longer to get in with there being no auto-kick. You'd be waiting for however many people to finally log out of their own accord.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

You guys and your crackpot theories. Literally was because EW's launch had severe population overload and people wanting to queue into the game, so they had to put in afk lockouts to accommodate for other players wanting to log in.

Its why Dynamis was created, its also a major reason why they're testing cloud servers to prevent that issue. Although really EW launched at the best time during the WoW/content creator Exodus but we'll see if Dawntrail will have that same success (not even a chance lol)

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I don't see why it wouldn't have that same success on launch. The community hasn't stopped selling the game out to everyone they possibly can, and even if we're currently in a content lull, that's just the normal game cycle these days.

People hop from game to game normally, regardless of if it's single player or not. You know how everyone is constantly throwing money at single player games, switching between each latest release, dumping screenshots and videos on their socials, and whatever else? I'm pretty sure they do it for MMOs too. Retention probably won't be there after a few months, but there will be enough people logging in to make us all miserable with queue times.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

I don't see why it wouldn't have that same success on launch. The community hasn't stopped selling the game out to everyone they possibly can, and even if we're currently in a content lull, that's just the normal game cycle these days.

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Because the WoW exodus coinciding with Endwalker's release meant everyone and their dog was trying the game. This rush is long over so Dawntrail will most likely be back in line with every other XIV expansion launch, because most of those WoW players have experienced XIV now and gone back.
If they were all still here we would probably still be dealing with massive login queues.

This is how it is with just about every expansion cycle that i can remember since Stormblood; the auto-afk system is implemented for the new expansion, and then usually within the 1st year auto-afk is turned off. I may be wrong about the passage of time on when auto-afk is turned off, but from my recollection, if has felt like it was this long stretch of time in which the auto-afk timer was on. xD