[Discussion] Upcoming Hot Fix

[Haibel]

I want to know how they plan to make regular mobs worthwhile to kill in level 50 dungeons, as per http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...97#post1402297

Adjusted almost never means easier to SE. In context to a class or job it means nerf, to content it means harder. atleast it did in XI for years.

[Naunet]

I'm late to the party, but what this means is this:

Each zone will have a cap population, so for example Behe spawns, and Coerthas is set to allow only 400, 500, maybe 700 people on it at once. Once that number fills, others cannot zone it, they'd be bounced back.

This was a feature they used in FFXI, and the cap was 700 for all areas if I recall.

I really hope you're wrong on this. If so, it is a horrendous mistake on the part of SE.

Hopefully they've entered the 21st century and are just implementing zone channels, rather than some idiotic hard cap on the population of a zone.

[GabrielK]

I doubt they'll make things harder, referring to the adjustments mentioned.

As for the zone limit ? Yeah, "can't wait" to get to an area I need to be in (leves/gathering/etc) and get locked out for an indefinite period of time... hah, fun times.

[Bixby]

I'm amused by the notion that a company that can't manage right-click report/blist (when both the UI elements and the backend for it already exist) without a major patch is going to manage to add zone channels with a hotfix.

I mean, if it does happen, awesome, but I find optimism on the issue difficult to muster.

[Azazela]

This hotfix sounds beautiful.

[Starlord]

I doubt they'll make things harder, referring to the adjustments mentioned.

With all the complaining on the forums to make things harder, somehow I doubt the dungeons will go the easy way.

If it goes anything like in the 1.0. Forum complaining= Change

Also, I hope they mean Channels and not limiting us per zone.... that's kinda no different than the 1017 biz...

[Drako]

Clearly the difficulty of dungeons will become easier imo. They already announced they'd be releasing hard mode versions of dungeons later on down the road, so that would make sense. Although I truly hope when they do implement hard mode for dungeons, its not the same difficulty it is today.

I'm also concerned about the zone cap. Does that mean when your leveling in those high pop areas itll be first come first serve? Those areas such as dragonhead and CPP are very crowded, and sense they are the only real place to level, I'm concerned a lot of people will not be able to progress in leveling, due to zone cap kicking them out. And then there's the DoL you also got to throw in the mix, what happens when lots of people can't get in the zone to mine/harvest their stuff due to a cap? Those are two important areas for DoL, for farming standard synth materials, leveling, AND some of the most important unspoiled locations. IDK maybe we are jumping the gun worrying to much, maybe we should wait and see. If the cap does end up being a pain in the arse, they should have separate caps for DoW and DoL that way the market doesn't get screwed in the process(should say players buying mats getting screwed)

[charlemagne]

I'll be horrified if any of the content gets nerfed this soon after release. I think making old content easier after a while is a good idea, but we don't have any old content yet. There will be more players who haven't completed stuff because they just haven't got to it yet rather than it being too hard for them. Nerfing any content this soon may also take away some of the motivation to do it, people could think "why do this now when the easymode button will be along within weeks?"
What's next? A skip content option next to the skip cutscene one?

[Rivienne]

I really hope you're wrong on this. If so, it is a horrendous mistake on the part of SE.

Hopefully they've entered the 21st century and are just implementing zone channels, rather than some idiotic hard cap on the population of a zone.

They need to implement a hard cap additional to prevent additional load after a certain threshold. Sure overflow instances could theoretically be added on top of such a system, whether they do or not isn't the point here. The point is that right now there is nothing at all to prevent all 3000-7000 people in a server from trying to enter a zone and crashing the world. And this has already more or less happened due to the fates. Therefore they from an infrastructure standpoint need this zone limit, right now. They can't not to do it. It is the only sane thing to do right now.

It also is unlikely to cause problems except during odin and behemoth, and then only in those zones: so it is rarely going to effect people, and only for 20 minutes or so even then. Much better than the alternative where behemoth pops and the servers crash, and nobody can play for hours.

This is why it is a hotfix. Not doing it would be a horrendous mistake. Also, fyi hard caps are a key part of any overflow system also. That is the point of an overflow system: when you reach cap, you overflow. Whether SE does the overflow part later or not is irrelevant to them needing the cap. They need it regardless of what does or does not happen later.

I can't think of any good, modern MMO out there that limits the number of people in a zone with a hard cap. It's absurd and absolutely unnecessary.

They all do. And it is always necessary. But let me explain in broad generalities:

There is a limited amount of processing any single server can handle. After that point you have to do one of two things

1) Split servers by task aka instance
2) Scale outwards with clustering

Both are very very different design decisions, and both are fraught with different types of technical problems.

A pure open world will go with option 2, and will not have a hard cap per instance, but rather a hard cap on the entire world.

An instanced world with option 1 must have hard caps per instance because each represents a different server (or virtual server but the point remains).

You haven't seen this in other MMO's that go with clustered worlds where there is a world wide cap. But the hard cap is still there

In those cases they either use a pure queue system that prevents people from logging on at all when cap is hit, or they use an overflow server where people are thrown at a different set of servers. But in both cases you still have a hard cap.

This is not something unique to this game, it is something anyone who deals with large scale systems has to cope with in some fashion or another. The only difference here is that for some reason they didn't implement it from day one, and unlike other instanced games released recently, it doesn't have an overflow system to deal with what happens after the cap is reached.

I also am not sure why you are so hostile to this, given you won't even see it except when behemoth or odin pops. Unless you anticipate that 500 trolls will all get together to troll an entire world, which I find rather unlikely.

[Evenstar]

It is way too early to make the dungeons easier. Make those easier when 2.1 is released, not now.

I welcome the mining changes (even if Ive already leveled miner), it was really needed.