Server restarts to boot afk players?

I don't mean like suddenly shutting the servers down without warning, but it would be nice if once or twice a day the system would say "We're going to log everyone out in 20 min to reset logins."

I mean, that would give everyone a fair chance to play and kick out people trying to stay online while AFK. It might be every four hours or so, but at least that should give more players a chance and/or encourage people to log when done. I think the more people can't get into the game the more tempting it is to say logged in.

I really don't think people understand that kicking afk people still won't get you in any faster. It's not like there are thousands of afk players per server, but there are thousands trying to log on those servers. What will you do next to cry about if they did do this and you notice you still can't get in?

But if the thousands of AFK are kicked... the thousands trying to get in, would. Bad logic there...

Edit: Yes there ARE thousands AFK (look at the I'm not logging off overnight crowd :p)

Yeah I could aether jump right now and show you 200+ afk in screenshots and the servers just went down and came back up like ~1 hour ago.

http://imgur.com/a/Lviip Just 4 aetherites.
1-2 people moving per picture. The 2 hunting zones had FATE's going on so the fate parties were not sitting in town.

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Originally Posted by Rhylee_Mau

But if the thousands of AFK are kicked... the thousands trying to get in, would. Bad logic there...

Edit: Yes there ARE thousands AFK (look at the I'm not logging off overnight crowd :p)

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Again show proof there are thousands of players AFK. We have proof that there are thousands trying to log into heavily capped servers, there is no proof, number of any kind from SE showing AFK players. Restarts would only put active players in a situation that they might not get back in during the flood of reconnects.

Yes, I'm sure the AFK people are causing EVERY issue that the servers are having.... (sarcasm).

This should be done to flush the servers at least twice a day.

Despite what some of you would like to believe there is a portion of the player base who once they get in will not log out. At 10 am today my free company had 30 members on, 4 of them were actually playing.

You can make whatever statements you want about this being a non-issue, but as long as there are people logged into the game but not actively playing it's wasted server space. It is not a long term fix... it's not even a large scale fix, but taking the time to code an afk boot timer, and occasionally flushing the servers is a good idea. As is a queue that actually works from the moment you hit character select, regardless of whether the world you are logging into is full or not.

No, it won't solve every issue we are having right now... frankly, even the new servers are most likely going to hardly put a dent in the log in issues. The overarching problem is that pretty much every server has more people who want to play on them than the server can hold. Most likely the only way to really fix this issue is through adding new servers and offering free server transfers for free companies, both of which will require time to implement.

I don't care if I end up being 3000th in the queue. Provided people are actually leaving the servers, and others are steadily replacing them I know I will get on sooner or later.

The trouble with wanting to mess with people not AFK is SE will just anger those of us who had no trouble getting in and doing our content. What if we finally get into a Praetorium Duty Find and SE announces servers are restarting 10 minutes in - we then try to relog and can't.

What then?

You just inconvenienced a ton of people simply because of the crusade against AFK players.

I used to be against it. But after seeing all the people who think there's no problem logging on, I think it would make for a beneficial educational experience were they to be kicked off at prime time.

One problem i can see with doing this is .. well they logout all players = All of the players are gonna be trying to login at the same time right after = login server might die.. =p

So what times of the day to do this? Schedules are varied. Many players work, how many don't? Players work 8-5PM? 9-6PM? 11PM-7AM? 12NOON-8PM? 6AM-... what does it matter. GMT zone, Central, Mountain, Pacific, etc. Daylight savings, or not. Some people may work weekends many don't. What times of day or what days? If I don't log in by 6:30AM I can't log in all day most days. So nothing for me but wasted 1017 downtime, 24/7. I am also one of many college educated and business experienced who really understand the causes of the failures and that once overwhelmed by demand for game access, our venerable producer and his team were unable to get reports of many failures. I don't believe they fully comprehend yet the problems because the data is still skewed by lack of technical capacity and lack of customer service capacity to handle it all. I hope for the best.

You don't need to kick afk players. All you need to do is add something that after 24 hours gives you 90% exp penalty and unable to lot on drops. When you can't do anything without logging out, THEN you'll have people do it on their own will.

And if anyone wants to argue that it will ruin the game for people who play 48 hours in a row, then feel free because I don't care about that minority.

Not exactly the best way to go about it as it also punishes those who are actually, you know, playing.

People who (hopefully) outnumber the AFK players.

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Originally Posted by Malamasala

All you need to do is add something that after 24 hours gives you 90% exp penalty and unable to lot on drops. When you can't do anything without logging out, THEN you'll have people do it on their own will.

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A sort of..."fatigue system", if you will.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

A sort of..."fatigue system", if you will.

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NOOOO!!!!!

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

One problem i can see with doing this is .. well they logout all players = All of the players are gonna be trying to login at the same time right after = login server might die.. =p

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The trick here is to do this for each server individually on a rolling schedule with atleast a half an hour delay between each reset. One server going down and coming back up is hardly going to stress the lobby servers more than they are right now with all the people trying to get on at all.

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Originally Posted by Malamasala

You don't need to kick afk players.

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I beg to differ. Yes... you do. This is why having the game client go unresponsive and error 90k is a rage button. I promise you that if those little selfish sh--err... exceedingly self-motivated diminutive rascals were kicked off after fifteen minutes we'd have to spend a lot less time fighting the error 1017 nonsense. Granted I'd prefer those reported for doing so and found guilty getting a three day vacation but sadly the world isn't perfect. Also your solution has one problematic fault... it likely wouldn't persist past server resets and maintinences and we're having those daily.

Honestly I wouldn't want to punish the majority that are trying to play to punish the few that aren't.

A system should be put in place but it can wait till next server maintenance.

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Originally Posted by Nexxa

I beg to differ. Yes... you do. This is why having the game client go unresponsive and error 90k is a rage button. I promise you that if those little selfish sh--err... exceedingly self-motivated diminutive rascals were kicked off after fifteen minutes we'd have to spend a lot less time fighting the error 1017 nonsense. Granted I'd prefer those reported for doing so and found guilty getting a three day vacation but sadly the world isn't perfect. Also your solution has one problematic fault... it likely wouldn't persist past server resets and maintinences and we're having those daily.

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Did you for some unknown reason stop at the first period you found? I stated you don't need to kick them because they'd log out on their own free will if they were penalized by being online past 24 hours. And in the case my solution fails because there was maintenance within 24 hours, it isn't like they weren't kicked out at maintenance and everything is working anyway.

4 hrs of 1017... i dont have much free time to play and im sick of the AFK players. servers need to change and AFK players need to get out. small changer could make a difference but not making changes isnt helping.

I want to play just as badly as any of you, but even rolling restarts will likely crash the lobby server and allow even fewer people to play. Hence why they're not being done, and the sticky stresses how carefully they will be handling the restarts on Wednesday. Any band-aid fixes like afk timers will just take time and resources away from implementing a real solution. I don't like it either, but there are really only two options here: wait, or cancel your pre-order and play something else. How patiently or impatiently you choose to do the former is entirely your own prerogative.

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Originally Posted by Silmina

I want to play just as badly as any of you, but even rolling restarts will likely crash the lobby server and allow even fewer people to play. Hence why they're not being done, and the sticky stresses how carefully they will be handling the restarts on Wednesday. Any band-aid fixes like afk timers will just take time and resources away from implementing a real solution. I don't like it either, but there are really only two options here: wait, or cancel your pre-order and play something else. How patiently or impatiently you choose to do the former is entirely your own prerogative.

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I don't know if you've noticed, but the log-in servers are already being hammered by the people unable to get in. That's why nearly all of the notices for the past few days are about emergency maintenances on the log-in servers and log-in difficulties.

Furthermore I think the term band-aid fix is inaccurate. This isn't a band-aid fix, this is like the general anesthesia before surgery. And neither are we asking for them to JUST do this. The priority should be alleviation of the issues right now, as soon as can possibly be done, while long term fixes are being prepared. They are doing the latter and not the former.

If they had a working queue system people would not be trying to log in over and over. If they had an afk boot timer, people would trickle out as they ceased to actively play and new players from the queue would trickle in. Since they have neither at the moment (and don't try to tell me that there is a queue system... it's all sorts of asinine.) they have lobby servers that are being overcrowded by people bottle necked at the character select screen waiting for people playing to log out (which many just aren't doing) or being disconnected.

I don't feel that Square Enix is being pro-active enough about this situation, and a good portion of the community saw something on this scale happening when SE decided that 3 days was long enough for the entire open beta phase.

This issue is a series of poor decisions accumulating into a very large frustating experience for the majority of their player base.

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Originally Posted by Uriahnool

"We're going to log everyone out in 20 min to reset logins."

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If they were to do that, I'd say just do it without warning, so those afk people can't plan to jump right back on and afk, because I know I'm not the only one who doesn't like spending 90% of the day trying to get on and only getting 1-2 hours on before sleep -.- That pretty much sums up all of Saturday and now what seems to be Sunday, didn't even get on until around 9 last night, from trying since noon

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Originally Posted by Ferth

I don't know if you've noticed, but the log-in servers are already being hammered by the people unable to get in. That's why nearly all of the notices for the past few days are about emergency maintenances on the log-in servers and log-in difficulties.

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That is exactly why the log in servers will go down if it restarts. You'll have all those people PLUS the ones booted off the server trying to get back in.

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If they had a working queue system people would not be trying to log in over and over.

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The entire reason why you're getting a "shoo, go away" message instead of a queue is because queues have to be handled by the lobby server. It would crash entirely if SE did that, and fewer people would get to play.

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If they had an afk boot timer

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then people would just start taping down the W key. It won't solve anything.

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I don't feel that Square Enix is being pro-active enough about this situation, and a good portion of the community saw something on this scale happening when SE decided that 3 days was long enough for the entire open beta phase.

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No, they are not. I don't expect anyone to give SE a pass on this, because I'm sure not. But the "solutions" people are offering aren't being implemented because they will make the problems worse instead of better.

Them doing something like that would probably just put un-due stress on the login / lobby servers, which are already being hammered constantly by people wanting to get in.

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Originally Posted by Nexxa

I beg to differ. Yes... you do. This is why having the game client go unresponsive and error 90k is a rage button. I promise you that if those little selfish sh--err... exceedingly self-motivated diminutive rascals were kicked off after fifteen minutes we'd have to spend a lot less time fighting the error 1017 nonsense. Granted I'd prefer those reported for doing so and found guilty getting a three day vacation but sadly the world isn't perfect. Also your solution has one problematic fault... it likely wouldn't persist past server resets and maintinences and we're having those daily.

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People shouldn't get a ban (even temp) for being afk in game for long periods, regardless of how frustrating it is. But I definitely agree with the random server resets/kicking of afk players.

There wouldn't be AFKer if there wasn't login issues. The reason there are ppl afking is because they don't want to deal with the login problems.

Fyi: right now I'm trying to login into the game and getting error 1017 for 2 hours so far. But I'm not blowing a casket about it.

hey from 10:30 am to 9:40 pm i've been unable to play. Kudos to those who got online just to leave their toons in world and go about their day. *nerdrage*

Let me be clear: I despise squatters (players that AFK for hours to hold a spot on a server), but constantly shutting down and restarting the servers would be far harder on them. Turning anything off and on in fairly rapid succession is never a good idea.