A Plea to the Community: Long Queues

[Gyson]

People afk exploiting is only a tiny part of the problem. During the day, I see people afk in front of bells, hiding in Inn's & in crafting mode, but there's barely a queue until 1pm+ or so..15-30 people?

Prime time population is our issue.

Instead of people barking at each other & thinking it's going to change anything anyone is doing with their own paid subscription time, make posts directed at SE in hopes that they change something somehow. It's better use of your time than the anger & energy we're spewing at one another as a community. SE should have shut down Balmung's transfers back when they realized the server was already so overburdened that people couldn't even create characters.

Unless my cynicism is unfounded, I highly doubt anything anyone posts here is going to make another player say, "Oh sure I'll log out so you can play... even if it means I'm in a queue for 4+ hours again because I went to eat dinner."

Address the actual issue/source.

Complaining to SE isn't going to change anything (and, honestly, has been going on since launch with zero results). But this frustration from players is leading to exactly what SE wants - the transfer of players off a heavily populated server like Balmung and onto servers that need a population boost. Square has all the reasons in the world to allow this mess to continue as long as it's giving them what they want.

This is entirely a psychological issue for players at this point. Until they feel they can log in easily at any point in time, they won't stop AFK-loitering on the server to reserve their spot. As for why there are barely queues at certain hours, that's easily explained: for one thing, people don't AFK on the server 24/7 (not everyone, anyway). Like you, they know the range of hours where the queues are reasonable and take the opportunity to go offline during those times. Also, during those same hours the active population on the server can be lower as well, meaning the people who are still on (regardless of whether they're active or AFK) are having less of a noticeable impact on the capacity of the server.

You suggest addressing the issue/source - but the issue is twofold: too many people loitering online AFK, and too little capacity on the server to support them. SE is unlikely to address both the former and the latter, but players can change the former simply by giving up the practice of loitering online while they're away. However, the reality is this: it's unlikely threads like this will convince or even reach the ears of that population. Perhaps FC leaders should try something bold and spreading the word to their members, or even inform them that their guild won't tolerate the behavior.

Who knows. I believe this problem didn't last as long with the release of Heavensward because Square was bringing the servers offline much, much more often than they have been with Stormblood, which in turn provided more opportunities to show players that there wasn't much of a queue (because AFK players were kicked off and not immediately returning, and thus not being a constant burden on the server's capacity). That, in turn, had the effect of convincing players that they no longer had to bother with leaving their character online just to gain access to the server in a reasonable frame of time. I know it did for me, at least.

But Stormblood has had very little in the way of downtime and emergency maintenance - which is good for obvious reasons but certainly not helping this issue.

By the way, it takes me upwards of 50-100 spammed attempts to successfully enter indoor housing locations these days. That's been fun.

[Thortok2000]

Complaining to players isn't going to change anything (and, honestly, has been going on since launch with zero results).

You suggest addressing the issue/source - but the issue is twofold: too many people wanting to play on Balmung, and too little capacity on the server to support them. SE is unlikely to address both the former and the latter, but players can change the former simply by playing on a different server. However, the reality is this: it's unlikely threads like this will convince or even reach the ears of that population. Perhaps FC leaders should try something bold and spreading the word to their members, or even inform them that their guild will be transferring off the server.

I fixed your post for you.

SE is now booting everyone off the server once a day. Prepare to see how this has zero effect on queues, as the queues are caused by there being simply too many people on Balmung, NOT by afk-avoiders.

The people avoiding afk are a symptom, not the cause. Trying to treat the symptom is both ineffective and impractical.

[Gyson]

I fixed your post for you.

SE is now booting everyone off the server once a day. Prepare to see how this has zero effect on queues, as the queues are caused by there being simply too many people on Balmung, NOT by afk-avoiders.

The people avoiding afk are a symptom, not the cause. Trying to treat the symptom is both ineffective and impractical.

I'm not really having a fan of having my statement reworded to make it appear like I said something that I actually didn't. It's also odd that you wouldn't just attribute it to yourself and stand by your own statement instead. Take pride in your opinion if you believe in it, otherwise it all seems rather pointless.

We'll just have to see if the daily resets help or not. If they do, fantastic. If it doesn't help, then I suspect Square won't stick with this plan for long.

You clearly don't think hundreds or thousands of AFK players on Balmung are having any impact on the queue length or queue times, even though once a capacity queue begins one player must log out for another player to log in. Realizing that, I'm not sure how you're still failing to understand that even a single character sitting AFK for hours is (at that moment) contributing to bringing the server either closer to capacity or raising it further over the limit. It seems like a pretty straightforward concept to understand, but we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

[Hrafe]

I fixed your post for you.

SE is now booting everyone off the server once a day. Prepare to see how this has zero effect on queues, as the queues are caused by there being simply too many people on Balmung, NOT by afk-avoiders.

The people avoiding afk are a symptom, not the cause. Trying to treat the symptom is both ineffective and impractical.

You were right, I totally don't see a big difference in queues, I mean I was 2600 in line 15 minutes ago and now I'm at 900. No change what so ever. /sarcasm off *drops mic*