[Balmung] Server Issues, safety, and overcrowding

[Shougun]

Not sure if a town is the best place for wildly random chat but at least compared to Cross Roads chat I don't really find Balmung's Ul'dah that bad - sometimes weird stuff but "usually" things I don't think a GM would do anything about because it's not a significant issue.

I sort of think of it like real life, you walk around and see people kiss each other and swear, and as you walk by you can hear their conversation. RP / simulated conversations if you get close (RPers generally do not use /yell /shout).

I guess I just expect some goofy things to go on, it's why you join or leave general channels in WoW if you wanted to be "immersed" or hear someone's twitter feed lol. Perhaps they should add channels to certain active zones, like main cities. If you post about your favorite color in the looking for party channel GM will take that far more seriously than if you talked about it in general. Recruit and trade could be others. Although you could always create and enhance other systems, and leave the chat system alone, making general even more for general only and encouraging people to leave general if they don't want that sort of thing. Like a trade/crafting request sort of "party finder" tool, or a way to advertise your FC without posting chat a whole bunch.

That said, not being able to play with your friends is a big bummer.. Wonder if they could offer a modified server transfer potion, where you can transfer to your friend's server - can bundle it into the recruit a friend system and you only get the potion if you're on a full server. So you'd be able to leave by recruiting a friend. I assume you have to pay for the game for the to recruit a friend code to work, I didn't pay attention if trials count as recruiting them.

[LunarEmerald]

There's been a suggestion before...

If someone uses your recruit a friend code, they could be allowed to create a character on the same server as yours regardless of normal restrictions...



While it doesn't solve all the problems, and possibly creates some of its own, there it is.

This is a terrible idea and would only serve to bloat specific servers even more.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

This has been attempted numerous times; each resulting in the smaller RP communities dying or inevitably transferring to Balmung. The largest secondary attempt was actually Gilgamesh but didn't last for the reasons Vexander said. Roleplay is a niche hobby. You ideally want to congregate as many people together for variety in writing and character development. That can't happen if everyone is spread out. Black Desert, WoW, Blade & Soul all have one server where everyone goes. SE could make an RP official server separate from Balmung. All that would happen is either the entire RP community migrates there or everyone stays on Balmung due to its population.

[Fuma]

-snip-

I'm not sure you understood my post correctly. What I'm saying is for SE to make them official RP servers instead of ones that community has decided to name that. Similar to how you see servers when you make a new character say legacy, they could do the same for RP so that new players who want this know where to go. Not everyone is going to want or come to a forum just to find this out. An official label would go much further than the ramblings of the forums, a small portion of the FFXIV population come here or any other forum for that matter to get info like that. And I wouldn't say the RP community is small and niche, there's more people interested in it than you think.

[Vexander]

Seems if they decided to call it an official RP server and maybe add 1 or 2 more I'm sure the game would still do fine (not add new servers but assign the RP tag to them). The problem now with the community is as we move into a lull period at the end of the expansion you start to see the true players, the ones still logging in consistently and if you're NA you're either on Balmung or Gilgamesh or you suffer because of it. By adding the RP tag to some of the servers it could help spread out those groups more evenly and by having a free transfer promotion it'd make it easier on FCs or groups of friends to make that move. This would also help correct low pop servers so they can thrive as well.

The thing is, you do NOT want to spread the RP'ers out. Like I said before, the RP community is not large enough in any game, generally, to be spread out. I should probably add again that even if you got all the RP'ers to move off of Balmung, it might not change anything in the long-run. Moon Guard is one of Blizzard's most populated servers. Why? Not because the RP community is so large, but because Roleplayers typically are a mature and reasonable group of individuals who are good enough at the gameplay for Raiders to to see as viable. RP'ers also create a sense of community on those servers, that a lot of players of any kind of gameplay are drawn to, even if they don't directly participate in it. In short, people tend to gather where RP'ers are. So even if we moved all the RP'ers off of Balmung, chances are within a year we'd just have a different server with overcrowding.

I'm not sure you understood my post correctly. What I'm saying is for SE to make them official RP servers instead of ones that community has decided to name that. Similar to how you see servers when you make a new character say legacy, they could do the same for RP so that new players who want this know where to go. Not everyone is going to want or come to a forum just to find this out. An official label would go much further than the ramblings of the forums, a small portion of the FFXIV population come here or any other forum for that matter to get info like that. And I wouldn't say the RP community is small and niche, there's more people interested in it than you think.

If SE did that now players would generally feel lied to since only one Server has a strong RP community. SE would also need to go out of its way to decide how an Official RP server differs from other servers. If this suddenly means things like a strictly enforced naming policy, well, there's going to be all kinds of problems.

I also think you're underestimating how many RP'ers do their homework. RP is 90% studying and researching things like the Lore and where other RP'ers are, and 10% actually RP'ing.

[Fuma]

The thing is, you do NOT want to spread the RP'ers out. Like I said before, the RP community is not large enough in any game, generally, to be spread out. I should probably add again that even if you got all the RP'ers to move off of Balmung, it might not change anything in the long-run. Moon Guard is one of Blizzard's most populated servers. Why? Not because the RP community is so large, but because Roleplayers typically are a mature and reasonable group of individuals who are good enough at the gameplay for Raiders to to see as viable. RP'ers also create a sense of community on those servers, that a lot of players of any kind of gameplay are drawn to, even if they don't directly participate in it. In short, people tend to gather where RP'ers are. So even if we moved all the RP'ers off of Balmung, chances are within a year we'd just have a different server with overcrowding.



If SE did that now players would generally feel lied to since only one Server has a strong RP community. SE would also need to go out of its way to decide how an Official RP server differs from other servers. If this suddenly means things like a strictly enforced naming policy, well, there's going to be all kinds of problems.

I also think you're underestimating how many RP'ers do their homework. RP is 90% studying and researching things like the Lore and where other RP'ers are, and 10% actually RP'ing.

Having 2 maybe 3 servers labeled as RP servers would not thin the herd so much as to "ruin" RP, if anything it'd help those that don't visit official forums know where they can go for a higher chance at finding other RPers. Look at my post a few pages back where I also show active playerbase numbers, you label Balmung and 2 of the real low pop servers as RP and you can help bring those numbers up by allowing free transfers from Balmung only to those select servers. There are a ton of people on Balmung that want to RP and feel that server is way too crowded to enjoy the game, now they have alternate places to go that will still have a good number of RPers around since it's marked as an RP server helping point others that direction.

And you're waaaaay overthinking what an RP server would/should be. All SE needs to do is mark it as a RP server just like they do with the legacy servers and thats it. Players that RP enforce themselves with the lore.

Also, your comment about RPers doing their HW I don't understand, how does that have anything to do with a conversation about offering officially labeled RP servers?

[Vexander]

Let's put it like this. Why would SE label a server a RP server, if the server has nothing additional to it, at all, to make RP'ing there somehow a better experience? When games have specific RP servers those servers tend to have rules in place such as enforcing naming conventions and the like, and that's more on the simpler side. Its why a lot of games these days don't have dedicated RP'ing servers. If the RP label is nothing more than a, "Hey RP'ers, come here," then it doesn't really do much of anything for RP'ers, and RP'ers will still congregate at the server the RP is happening at. My comment about Homework is that RP'ers by nature do their research when joining a game. They learn the lore, they learn which server is the most active for RP, and they look at a number of Guilds/Free Companies dedicated to RP.

[Fuma]

Let's put it like this. Why would SE label a server a RP server, if the server has nothing additional to it, at all, to make RP'ing there somehow a better experience? When games have specific RP servers those servers tend to have rules in place such as enforcing naming conventions and the like, and that's more on the simpler side. Its why a lot of games these days don't have dedicated RP'ing servers. If the RP label is nothing more than a, "Hey RP'ers, come here," then it doesn't really do much of anything for RP'ers, and RP'ers will still congregate at the server the RP is happening at. My comment about Homework is that RP'ers by nature do their research when joining a game. They learn the lore, they learn which server is the most active for RP, and they look at a number of Guilds/Free Companies dedicated to RP.

Because the game currently is doing SO much for RPers now and they benefit so much from it? Stop putting walls up on why something won't work, the label idea is merely to help make it easier to drive people looking for something like that together.

[Vexander]

Because the game currently is doing SO much for RPers now and they benefit so much from it? Stop putting walls up on why something won't work, the label idea is merely to help make it easier to drive people looking for something like that together.

You mean the idea is merely to help make it easier to drive RP'ers apart? Frustrate new players coming to the game and joining a server thinking they'll be able to enjoy a playstyle, only to have been misled because, again, RP'ers congregate into a singular community, a single server. As others have said, there -was- an attempt by RP'ers to leave Balmung for a less populated server. It's called Gilgamesh, its the second highest populated server, and the lack of RP'ers on Gilgamesh resulted in RP'ers going right back to Balmung. The fact that Gilgamesh is the second highest population server would be in support of my earlier comments about a move not really helping. Like I said, RP'ers build that feeling of community, and players of all playstyles enjoy that atmosphere and gather around such communities.

You can't divide the RP community as we've seen, and you can't move it without resulting in another overpopulated server, again, as we've seen. That's why I'm saying this solution of Official RP Servers won't fix anything.

[Fuma]

You mean the idea is merely to help make it easier to drive RP'ers apart? Frustrate new players coming to the game and joining a server thinking they'll be able to enjoy a playstyle, only to have been misled because, again, RP'ers congregate into a singular community, a single server. As others have said, there -was- an attempt by RP'ers to leave Balmung for a less populated server. It's called Gilgamesh, its the second highest populated server, and the lack of RP'ers on Gilgamesh resulted in RP'ers going right back to Balmung. The fact that Gilgamesh is the second highest population server would be in support of my earlier comments about a move not really helping. Like I said, RP'ers build that feeling of community, and players of all playstyles enjoy that atmosphere and gather around such communities.

You can't divide the RP community as we've seen, and you can't move it without resulting in another overpopulated server, again, as we've seen. That's why I'm saying this solution of Official RP Servers won't fix anything.

Well, we just don't see eye to eye on this at all but that's fine they're just our opinions but I'll try to remain as optimistic as possible on this.