Do you think implementing a AFK Kick outside of Expansion Releases would do anything?

As a residential Aether Player, I very much often come into the game with a short wait ahead of me which isn't an issue, unless you also consider all the friends outside of Aether that are almost incapable of touching Aether. I've been pondering the thought of it all, and honestly would it really hurt if they added in an AFK timer that was a lot longer than the 30min during expansion releases? We're talking at least 1hr of AFK no inputs, to 2hrs max of no inputs, like would that really be a problem that someone has idled that long to be kicked out of the game? Sure this could be one of those things that doesn't matter for everyone that isn't Aether, and the change to add an AFK timer is a global change across all servers so it might have some issues.

Am I just not seeing the real issue somewhere, is an AFK timer somehow stupid of an idea? Genuinely curious on input.

Also if this isn't the place for this type of post, sorry, not exactly a super frequent flyer on the forums.

People just find ways to bypass it anyway, the ones it would need to kick wouldn't get kicked so it wouldn't help.

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Originally Posted by DendrielConcade

As a residential Aether Player, I very much often come into the game with a short wait ahead of me which isn't an issue, unless you also consider all the friends outside of Aether that are almost incapable of touching Aether. I've been pondering the thought of it all, and honestly would it really hurt if they added in an AFK timer that was a lot longer than the 30min during expansion releases? We're talking at least 1hr of AFK no inputs, to 2hrs max of no inputs, like would that really be a problem that someone has idled that long to be kicked out of the game? Sure this could be one of those things that doesn't matter for everyone that isn't Aether, and the change to add an AFK timer is a global change across all servers so it might have some issues.

Am I just not seeing the real issue somewhere, is an AFK timer somehow stupid of an idea? Genuinely curious on input.

Also if this isn't the place for this type of post, sorry, not exactly a super frequent flyer on the forums.

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I won't lie I was in the middle of making a thread similar to this today. But like Valkyrie said, the people that do need to get afk-timer kicked are those that would find a way or already have a way to bypass it. Though I think it would work for the non-terminally online FFXIV players who need to leave the game unattended for a few hours. I know there's some people that would leave the game running while they're at work or they forget to log off before going to bed, and in the grand scheme of things those types of happenings a small, but small tends to add up.

Personally I would want it implemented, especially with their new restrictions. It would at least alleviate some level of the problem, albeit minimal.

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Originally Posted by NOODS

I won't lie I was in the middle of making a thread similar to this today. But like Valkyrie said, the people that do need to get afk-timer kicked are those that would find a way or already have a way to bypass it. Though I think it would work for the non-terminally online FFXIV players who need to leave the game unattended for a few hours. I know there's some people that would leave the game running while they're at work or they forget to log off before going to bed, and in the grand scheme of things those types of happenings a small, but small tends to add up.

Personally I would want it implemented, especially with their new restrictions. It would at least alleviate some level of the problem, albeit minimal.

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It really needs to kick people visiting from other worlds/DCs first, since those have limited slots available, then start kicking people who are on home worlds. But like I said, those people would be the first to find ways to bypass it.

I personally don't want any changes to aether just to make it easier for ppl from other dc to come and afk in Limsa on Aether. I am already just tired of not being able to have my irl friends on my server, so we can be in an fc together, because they have to lock it down due to ppl not on aether. I personally hate dc travel because of the problems its caused. Frankly the less ppl that can travel to aether the better. "But my dc is dead! I can't get anything done!" Oh no! Maybe if ppl would stop coming to aether you wouldn't have those issues. I hate that they opened this can of worms. What a horrible decision.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

People just find ways to bypass it anyway, the ones it would need to kick wouldn't get kicked so it wouldn't help.

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Originally Posted by NOODS

I won't lie I was in the middle of making a thread similar to this today. But like Valkyrie said, the people that do need to get afk-timer kicked are those that would find a way or already have a way to bypass it. Though I think it would work for the non-terminally online FFXIV players who need to leave the game unattended for a few hours. I know there's some people that would leave the game running while they're at work or they forget to log off before going to bed, and in the grand scheme of things those types of happenings a small, but small tends to add up.

Personally I would want it implemented, especially with their new restrictions. It would at least alleviate some level of the problem, albeit minimal.

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I can see some clever ways to force people to fight the AFK timer more actively than just making it without inputs being put in, like half way through the timer if you don't re-instance it'll consider you trying to dodge the timer and still tick away, so people would be forced to TP out of whatever place they're in, just to TP right back type of deal. Sure its still something you can dodge but if you're just idle then you'd be out of the game. As you've also said, it would generally work even if it doesn't take out everyone who AFKs.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

I personally don't want any changes to aether just to make it easier for ppl from other dc to come and afk in Limsa on Aether. I am already just tired of not being able to have my irl friends on my server, so we can be in an fc together, because they have to lock it down due to ppl not on aether. I personally hate dc travel because of the problems its caused. Frankly the less ppl that can travel to aether the better. "But my dc is dead! I can't get anything done!" Oh no! Maybe if ppl would stop coming to aether you wouldn't have those issues. I hate that they opened this can of worms. What a horrible decision.

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See what I'd want would also apply to people deciding to hop over and AFK too, it would hit EVERYONE coming in and out of the place. I wouldn't want to specifically screw over people DC traveling by making the timer shorter or stricter in ways but it would still work I feel.

Even during expansion release, people use bots or plugins to get around the AFK kick. It wouldn't do much

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Originally Posted by DendrielConcade

See what I'd want would also apply to people deciding to hop over and AFK too, it would hit EVERYONE coming in and out of the place. I wouldn't want to specifically screw over people DC traveling by making the timer shorter or stricter in ways but it would still work I feel.

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If anything it needs to be shorter and stricter for travelers. If you want to go to a different dc just to afk, you should be the first to get the boot. Now if they only implimented this for travelers, now that would be a good idea. Kick the afk ppl from other dc, leave the characters from that dc alone.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

If anything it needs to be shorter and stricter for travelers. If you want to go to a different dc just to afk, you should be the first to get the boot. Now if they only implimented this for travelers, now that would be a good idea. Kick the afk ppl from other dc, leave the characters from that dc alone.

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Agreed 100%. Be it Dynamis, Primal, Crystal or Aether, there's always someone who makes like 7-10 accounts of the same character to just AFK in Limsa 24/7. I've said it in another thread, but cloud servers can't come fast enough. At least that way people won't feel obligated to travel to another DC just to get better queue times.

Mao wonderings what is point of this. Mao already seeing very few peoples in places where Mao hangs out. Mao nots know about Greasy Place (Limsa) though. Mao usually tries avoid that place.

You know what's more boring than a hub ? A deserted hub.

This game feel already empty enough when you go around in the world and you want people to get disconnected when they afk ? come on :D

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Originally Posted by NOODS

Agreed 100%. Be it Dynamis, Primal, Crystal or Aether, there's always someone who makes like 7-10 accounts of the same character to just AFK in Limsa 24/7. I've said it in another thread, but cloud servers can't come fast enough. At least that way people won't feel obligated to travel to another DC just to get better queue times.

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Does reporting them do anything? I remember at the start of EW, the usual suspects managed to go right back to afking in Limsa a day or two after launch while everyone was dealing with 7k+ queues.

It's completely pointless once the initial hype has died down, and I wouldn't even think it necessary during patches.

The content droughts are long enough to ensure the game is desolate between patches. I doubt Aether is even having exceptionally long log in queues, doesn't need to exist. I don't even think the 7-10 alt characters standing around are even that much of a problem unless they're on a highly populated world.

Everyone kinda glossing over the fact that purging the servers would do literally nothing to the "short wait" OP notices on login. That has nothing to do with how many players are online, it's simply due to the login server processing in batches. You're still going to have a short wait to log in, and in fact, may even make the waits slightly worse by forcing more players into the login servers more frequently, rather than having them already processed and online on servers with capacity to handle everyone currently.

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Originally Posted by DendrielConcade

As a residential Aether Player, I very much often come into the game with a short wait ahead of me which isn't an issue

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The AFK kick certainly isn't needed outside of expansion launches (or that one time the game went viral on twitch and Asmongold played). As you said, there are short queues except those times.

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unless you also consider all the friends outside of Aether that are almost incapable of touching Aether.

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I think the limit on DC travel to each world is a "cap" on the number of travelers and the cap is different depending on if the world is congested or not. There seems to be a separate cap for World Visiting which is also affected by if it's congested or not.

I think it is likely that if they are kicked for being AFK that it would allow others to travel, but once they return from being AFK they wouldn't be able to login.

Perhaps the AFK kick could apply to travelers only or when the world is actually Congested? This would prevent it being of inconvenience when it's not needed.

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would it really hurt if they added in an AFK timer

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The most annoying part about it is when you have been logged in for 2 days or more, the game forcefully exits after being kicked and that means entering passwords and 2FA all over again.

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Am I just not seeing the real issue somewhere, is an AFK timer somehow stupid of an idea?

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It's just seen as annoying in other games. Yoshi-P, who oversees the game, is a gamer and knows it's annoying so only puts it there when it's absolutely needed.

Most likely the travel limits are there to get people to form parties on other data centers instead, to help solve the lack of PFs on other data centers.

We have that short login queue even when the afk auto-kick is turned on. It has nothing to do with the amount of people on the servers. And afk people aren't really the problem with DC travel to Aether. Before they put those stupid restrictions in, we had no issues with people coming to Aether even with the auto-kick turned off. The problem are those restrictions and how people are just squashing onto Aether anyway in lower activity times like late night or early morning and then parking there for as long as they want to do content. So people on other DCs are finding ways around the restrictions anyway. They need to remove them and allow free DC Travel again.

As others have already said, any sort of AFK kick or other forced log out mechanism would just get circumvented by the exact people it's meant to affect.

There's not a whole lot that can be done unless SE wants to unironically ban people for AFKing and/or circumventing the expansion launch AFK kick that already exists.

Just remember if the log in queue says it's less than 100 in queue then the server isn't actually full. They just do batch logins to help with server stress. So don't confuse world is currently full for the world being actually full.

Not on Spriggan it wouldn't. You can't be AFK from Spriggan if you've transferred or traveled to Light, or your not at all logged in in the first place. And it hardly seems fair to kick people who are AFK waiting for PF, and can't play the bits of the game they want to because they've had to travel, because your Home DC has been murdered by lack of cross DC PF, or for that matter your just there to Duty Finder regular content, becuase all you can fill back home is Temple of Quarn and Labarythn of the Ancients.
But hey at least they are putting effort into the Solo game! /indifferent-shrug
(I'm only posting because I'm hoping Square Enix will make sure I'm wrong before continuing to do nothing)

Ah, good old DC-travel.
Good feature in theory but once again nobody thought about the potential consequences, certainly not the devs.

I don't think it will matter, nope.

It might decrease the waiting time a little but you're never going to permanently remove that because it is to my knowledge a permanent buffer that exists regardless of the actual population already on the world. Happy to be wrong but I am fairly certain it's always going to exist.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Various Good Points Potentially Too Long To List Here

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Like I said, my issue isn't the personal edge of logging in but it feels like a product of it, but as others have stated it could be as a sort of "Batch Login" process. I also didn't entirely stand with the idea and was open to see how actual people would feel about this which I appreciate since you can only go so far with your own thought you know?

If the issues for other world travelers was due to a limited amount of slots for specific people to be in other DCs, then for sure measures to prevent someone from AFKing and idling to take up slots in other DCs could actually be something to implement than a blanket thing over everyone. I don't particularly see an issue with re-entering your password and 2FA though, that's quite a simple process in the grand scheme of things via copying your password if really needed due to password complexity, and 2FA is never too long for a string of numbers.

Either way, I appreciate the discussion and some diverse takes and things I haven't pondered before here, which just makes me shift my opinion of it all a bit more reasonably.

I don't think it's going to serve any purpose. I doubt very much that Aether's lockdown during prime time has anything to do with AFK players creating congestions. I think it's SE's way of getting prime time players to stick to other data centers for group content.

If you have friends that can't get to Aether, there's nothing to stop you from going to them. You're guaranteed a return to Aether when you're done.

While I think it might help a bit, ultimately it would still be a problem. More people would get on in place of the AFKers, but then the limits would be reached and the problem of people getting to Aether would remain.

the problem isn't the afk players its the way the congested system works, and the fact that SE doesn't want people to all congregate on aether so it will forever be locked down til we get regional DF/PF.

The problem isn't really people AFKing, it's that SE deliberately set it up to lock down congested servers during peak times. This was to help speed up logging in to your home world during expansion launch and savage progression, but we're far past that and servers are nowhere close to maximum capacity.

As for why you get login queues now, it's because the servers are designed to log in batches of players at a time to help with server stress, it has nothing to do with congestion.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Ah, good old DC-travel.
Good feature in theory but once again nobody thought about the potential consequences, certainly not the devs.

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Yeah. These things happen. And DC is still a 'great' idea. I want region travel. (ignore xenophobes and their culture shock)

But, when you have a problem this bad you have to 'address' it. ASAP. Either your committed to this business or your not.
Delay a whole EXPANSION if you have to to move it up the list. But 'address' it ASAP.

And its 'not hard' to improve massively on what we have with nothing more than stitching togehter the code already in the game. in the interim while you code a proper solution.

The truth is they are being really pathetic about this problem.
CROSS DC PF. JUST USE THE TRAVEL YOU ALREADY HAVE. FORGET ABOUT CHAT FOR NOW.
My gods anyone would think the database and transistor hadn't been invented yet, and everything was still stored on punch cards.
It's just pathetic.
_
Or at this stage explain in some detail, why your game can't cope with the one real obstacle, which is increased needed character travel bandwidth.

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Originally Posted by Espon

The problem isn't really people AFKing, it's that SE deliberately set it up to lock down congested servers during peak times. This was to help speed up logging in to your home world during expansion launch and savage progression, but we're far past that and servers are nowhere close to maximum capacity.

As for why you get login queues now, it's because the servers are designed to log in batches of players at a time to help with server stress, it has nothing to do with congestion.

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Yeah I don't like the 'queue' business. Its 'this game is in high demand' snake oil.

This game's sense of 'ethics' is still absolutely fantastic given commercial pressures. I worry for when Yoshi-P says, I've given my bit. I need a break. But that queuing business is a bit- wrong.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

People just find ways to bypass it anyway, the ones it would need to kick wouldn't get kicked so it wouldn't help.

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There's a "Plugin" that already prevents the afk kick, and many people I know use it every expansion.

No.

Source: It does nothing currently.

People go to their houses, inns with a wireless controller and flick the thumbsticks every few minutes to avoid being kicked out.