[Balmung] Server Issues, safety, and overcrowding

[Grimmel]

I'm sure I'm not the only one with concerns over this issue. As it stands it is extremely difficult for newer players to play with their friends by starting out on the same server as them.

It's impossible to do this on Balmung and there are several issues of why this cannot be made possible as well as sub issues on top of those issues.

People advertising Balmung as a place to endorse vulgar and explicit content is one of the major issues.

Just last week on Balmung we had an issue with an individual whose main reason for transferring to Balmung was to find and get involved in such lewd activites. I'm sure you all witnessed the shout chat in Ul'dah and what it ended up leading to.
This game was not intended for such activities to take place in. There are other games that allow this but FFXIV is not one of them.

There is a T rating yes, But T rating means for Teens and above. Last time I checked being a teenager included age groups of 13-17 which is the age of minors. Not just 18+. I see people advertising for events on our party finder detailing strip clubs and other lewd activities that involves parties requiring to be 18+ to participate. The problem here is you cannot enforce that properly. You cannot stop everyone at the door and ask for a scan of their ID. It is something out of your control and people should be respectful of this games rating and not turn it into their own take of a personal Final Fantasy Porno.

Balmung is a big server I get that, It's a popular place, but when people keep transferring to Balmung due to the above mentioned and the hopes of having a more populated server to play on you're actually killing the game as a whole. Why do you think there are so many servers in the first place? To spread out and ease tensions off any particular server so that the servers function normally and the data centers don't get overloaded. Right now there are a handful of dying servers because people are continuously coming to Balmung from less populated servers. But for what?
There is a lot of content new transfers are going to be locked out of for a very long time. Housing is an issue for our server and hunts are nearly impossible to do as there are enough people present at an S rank for to die in less than 30 seconds. A ranks are impossible, once they're announced their pulled by some impatient person who has zero care for anyone else other than themselves. Some of the most fun aspects of this game are excluding a majority of the servers populace due to over crowding.

And then I have characters on other servers, other data centers and they are severely under populated. Tons of housing available. Even the initial wards first introduced aren't all filled up yet.

Balmung is not healthy right now. There is a 1 minute window open after every maintenance to create a new character before it's all filled up by RMT bots. There is literally no "wait till the early hours to make a character" anymore for Balmung. None.

Dev's if you're reading this, something needs to be done.

[Medicine]

Megaservers, also if your complaining about the whole ERP situation know that nothing can solve that issue, That T rating is pointless because nobody can control what people do on an MMO.

[Grimmel]

Megaservers, also if your complaining about the whole ERP situation know that nothing can solve that issue, That T rating is pointless because nobody can control what people do on an MMO.

Actually it can be solved if people report it when they see it. There is a correct way to RP such themes and then there is the extremely very wrong way of doing it which I'm seeing a lot of on Balmung and I'm really tired of it.

For those that want to report it, it falls under harassment as it disrupts the gameplay of others who don't want to have to see it advertised for in their Party Finder.

[EorzeaHero69]

Chat isn't part of the esrb rating system, since it only focuses on story, themes, violence, etc.

[Bixillarla]

T rating is just for the game content done by Square Enix not the online ineteractions with players. For online games there is always the caveat that online interactions are not rated. You cannot control what people do online in a MMO.

[Rokke]

There is a 1 minute window open after every maintenance to create a new character before it's all filled up by RMT bots.

Its closer to 30 seconds, but even then its not impossible to get a character through. 4 of my characters made it through after server crashes or maintenance.

Realistically, what can the devs do? People like to bring up discontinuing incoming transfers while offering free outgoing transfers as a solution, though I wonder even if it were free how many people would actually go? I came to Balmung because it had a huge population. I'm not going back to a smaller server willingly lol

[Urthdigger]

I really wish it were possible to freely move between servers. I came to Balmung (originally Besaid) as I liked the RP community. However, I also want to be able to play with newer friends who join the game. Sure I can have them join another Aether data center world and do cross-server PF with them, but it'd be nice to be in an FC or linkshell with them, help them with crafting, or even just hang out in the world.

[alimdia]

Can we not bring RL politics here?

[CookieMonsta]

I'm sure I'm not the only one with concerns over this issue. As it stands it is extremely difficult for newer players to play with their friends by starting out on the same server as them.

You do not know how real world cities work huh?
People naturally converge to population centers to due social, economical and communal benefits. Big cities have more jobs, more manpower, more money, more opportunities, more activity etc etc. FFXIV is highly social MMO requiring community participation to achieve anything meaningful so your idea would completely rob the people who come after of the benefits that people like yourself reaped initially.

A better way to fix this would be to merge the small servers together so they can cobble some kind of community together. Unfortunately, SE's own housing system is what denied them of this simple fix.

[Parisstilton]

I don't think everyone coming to Balmung is here just to erp. Yes there has been a lot of weird chat but I think a lot of the in shout stuff is actually teenagers being teenagers. How are you going to stop them being horny? As for adverts in PF if they are not lewd what's the problem? You don't have to go to the event so how is it hurting anyone?
Personally I don't care as I have an inbuilt ignore function that works perfectly well.
I understand the playing with friends problem though. I have a friend that I would like to introduce the game to but I want to not be able to help him and not have to ask him to stump up an extra £12 so I can.