Transfer Restrictions and Roleplayers

[Aldotsk]

I am not going to be surprised if housing comes out early and by 5 AM Eastern time, you'll see yourself queued up with 1000 people for Balmung where no one will be able to buy the house you want.

Oh wait. Housing was already bad since 2.1

[Zumi]

I have a question what is role playing exactly? What do you do to role play in a game like FFXIV.

[Bruh]

The problem is that us new rpers need somewhere to go right now. It doesn't do good to say everyone should consolidate on Bal when we can't transfer into Bal, and likely won't be able to for some time.

There's always Mateus...

[ExKage]

I have a question what is role playing exactly? What do you do to role play in a game like FFXIV.

Essentially people use emotes / battle actions to show the 'actions' but mainly the story is told through /em and /say "Get spiked by a dirty aldgoat you swiving whoreson!"

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I have a question what is role playing exactly? What do you do to role play in a game like FFXIV.

Roleplaying is essentially collaborative writing. Your character exists like any other NPC in the game would and you are writing about their interactions with other people. These stories are usually separate from the MSQ, which most roleplayers simply acknowledge as happening in the background, i.e., they aren't writing as the WoL, but just someone living their life in Eorzea.

[Marluxia]

Hello. It's me again. Getting sick of this topic yet?

Anyway, I wanted to bring attention to some things. Namely, the "World Selection" thingy at the character creation screen when you first make a character.



This screen is hugely inadequate and gives absolutely zero information.

Let's go back in time a bit to 2014, when Balmung was closed except for 2 AM character creation windows and transfers.

You're a new player, perhaps even a roleplayer, and you want to play on a relatively large and active server.

From this window alone, how do you know what server to pick to best suit what you want?

And the answer is you don't. You have absolutely no information as to a server's population or what kind of community it might have. World of Warcraft has "PVE", "PVP", "RP", "RP-PVP" labels on it, and very rough population indicators of "Low", "Medium", "High", and "Full".

And if you scroll down, you'll notice Balmung and Gilgamesh are closed to character creation, because they're full. You're bummed out because those servers definitely have the largest and therefore most active communities, but you can't get on there. No other indication exists as to whether a server has what a player wants, but Balmung and Gilgamesh have so many active people that they're full! So if I want to play on the largest community, I'd have to play on Balmung or Gilgamesh!

And then along the line, you hear that Balmung and Gilgamesh are open to transfers. So of course, since you want to play on an active community, you transfer.

Anyway, my point with all of this is that in addition to a new RP server, the World Selection screen needs better information so players have an idea of what they're getting when they're going to that world. Perhaps not total population because that's imprecise, but something like "Average Active Connections" or something.

Will that stop people from gravitating towards the largest servers and most active communities? Well, no. The only way to stop that is with something like the Balmung transfer restriction.

But people would be willing to play on other servers if there was some indication or guarantee that the server wasn't a ghost town. If Balmung is closed because it has 25k active connections at a given time, then a new player would be more inclined to play on a lesser populated server if they have a rough idea of what that population is. They might want to be on Balmung, but hey, Exodus has, say, 15k active connections! That's not as large, but it's still pretty large, so I will still have an active community! Or Cactaur has 12k active connections, that's still a LOT of people!

But still, the fact that players--especially new players--have to rely on stuff like unofficial censuses based on Lodestone sweeps is just a tiny bit ridiculous.

[jameseoakes]

But still, the fact that players--especially new players--have to rely on stuff like unofficial censuses based on Lodestone sweeps is just a tiny bit ridiculous.

I think part of it is that SE does not wants to have specialist servers, and SE is worried that if they make an RP server some of the community will expect it to have certain rules they do not want to enforce.

[Marluxia]

I think part of it is that SE does not wants to have specialist servers, and SE is worried that if they make an RP server some of the community will expect it to have certain rules they do not want to enforce.

When they addressed this in the Live Letter, this is one concern they pointed out; they don't want RPers chasing off non-RPers. I think someone also brought up wanting SE to enforce things like lore-friendly names, which I disagree with.

I don't think SE should have any responsibility enforcing RP servers or anything like that. The reason for the tag is better categorisation so new and existing players know where to go if they want to RP, and so they have security in knowing that there will be an active and (hopefully) large community to RP with.

[Rivxkobe]

Despite popular belief, I would argue that there are more people who are nice, polite, respectful, compassionate and understand on the Balmung server than anywhere else. It is also the place where the Lalafell community is also the strongest.

Nothing I have seen has supported your argument here. Not with players from Balmung on the boards or encountered in game.

Also, why does the community of an in game race being the strongest on said server matter?

[DieRoteFrau]

I wish they would just create a new, official RP server. I've been waiting to get onto Balmung for months now. My boyfriend, entire FC/friend group, and static are on that server and I can't do anything about it. They don't want to budge from that server because of the low prices on the MB and the community they've built there. It seriously fucking sucks. I hope we hear something about them lifting the lock on the server for 4.1.