A Plea to the Community: Long Queues

[Shineko]

The logic behind the plea is simple, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. Yes, Balmung is an extremely high populated server, and during peak hours there WILL be a queue for a few weeks more at least. But IMO it's fair to say that we have 1-2K+ people dodging the auto-logout, and even if most of those DO become active during peak, there's still several hundred who aren't. Seven hundred more slots for active players. If people start logging out as a whole, more people can get on. If more people can get on with shorter queues, less people would logout. Either direction is a self-enforcing cycle. So let's aim for the one that helps our community as a whole.

[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.

[Elamys]

SE isn't going to invest the resources to solve a problem that occurs for a few weeks every few years.

I mean, how dare you ask someone to log out of the game when they're not playing.

[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*

[Gyson]

Well, it just took me 20 mins to move through a 2400 queue on Balmung, which is a vast improvement over the 4+ hours that size of a queue normally takes to move through. It's unfortunate it won't stay that way if people start loitering online while afk again.

Edit: Now that the initial login rush (after the servers came back online) is gone, the queue is down to 15 people. Usually at this time of the day it is well over a thousand. I don't have to make 50+ attempts to enter a housing instance either. It definitely seems to have helped for now.

[Icywebs]

There will be some loitering, sure, but I'm hopeful that people see the queue being not as awful as it was and be less terrified of the prospect of logging out.

[Gravton]

So now all the afkers are going to be logging in at the same time as the non-afkers during prime time. There is nothing keeping the current users logged in from afking. And this fixes server issues how? Or is this more of a, "My usual log in is before prime time, so it's fixed for me." type situation?

[Thortok2000]

This is literally just hitting the reset button on the problem once a day. As this is a problem that got progressively worse and worse, this is an improvement, but not a cure. The moment they stop daily resets, the problem will simply come back, until such time as there aren't 15 thousand people trying to play on a 10 thousand player server.

I doubt it's going to affect peak times at all.

[Icywebs]

This time yesterday, the queue was 2.5k for me. It took me over 4 hours to get in.

I started today at 596 under a half hour ago and I'm at less than 100 to get in.

So while, yes, we all acknowledge that Balmung is a full server, we can also acknowledge that the queue problems were exacerbated by an excess of people AFKing and exploiting workarounds to avoid getting booted, which is what this whole thread was about to begin with.