Locking Balmung/Gilgamesh is not working

[Moonlite]

Why would closing a server make it toxic? I am sure a large percentage of players don't even do progression with a full Balmung party anyways with the tools that are available.

Just think of it as a glass half full situation. We still have regular cheaters that will never get banned. But rmt bots don't regenerate every maintenance. A random check showed Balmung sold gil was astronomically more then any other server.

And yes, while the devs did help create this situation by not having a more robust back-end (or by not limiting server pop before it became problematic), they did include server recommendations based on server population. So if players ignored that and continued to create characters on a full pop server, that is indeed a problem that the players created themselves.

I am sorry. I can give them a pass for players ignoring recommendation. But they throw that all down the drain when at the same time they were lining their profits. Some months showed more transfers on to Balmung then other servers had population. You can't ask for a pass and take money at the same time for the issue.

[Shofie]

The whole reason a lot of us are pushing for labeled roleplaying servers is because it creates an in-game method of unifying the playerbase. It gives, without any shadow of a doubt, a clear and concise location for roleplayers to go.

Currently, all our roleplaying resources (including which servers to use) is limited to third-party websites, like the RPC, and Tumblr, and other types of word-of-mouth. Not everyone playing FFXIV is aware of these sites, or utilizes them even if they are. There's also a lot of division even within those communities about where to go. Many people don't want to move off server and risk their homes only to find out there's a dwindling community, so many people stay on a locked server, with rapidly stagnating roleplay, out of fear of losing what they have already. When the community generally decided Mateus was a good substitute for Balmung, the people already on Mateus generally were bristly and unhappy with roleplayers coming to their server. (Not everyone, but there certainly was a lot of vocal opposition against it.)

If there were a concise in-game resource (i.e. designated roleplaying servers--simply a server with a tag that says "Roleplay welcome here" more or less) then it would tell everyone who plays the game that is a location to go for it. New players without outside resources would go there. It wouldn't rely on people having to research which servers, or find outside information. It would tell existing roleplayers where to unify. It would help servers that are otherwise PVE servers not get overrun by a bunch of roleplayers.

The short version is, the pros far outweigh the cons of having designated realms. There's literally no reason not to have them.

From a business standpoint, designating realms also works, because people would transfer over in droves, freeing up locked servers in the process. It would also help a lot because you wouldn't have a divisive community. Yes, roleplay servers have people doing other stuff on them, but it helps keep things cohesive and gives direction. As it stands, people are afraid to leave Balmung because it's locked, because they're afraid RP will be thin on other servers, and they don't want to lose what they have. But there's no one new coming in, period. It's not healthy. We need a better long-term solution than locking realms and waiting for the players to sort of congregate on another realm until that one gets locked too. Just designate a few RP-friendly servers officially, and things will ease up off the congested realms.

Balmung was a merged Legacy server, and that hasn't helped it.

A lot of people think we will just repeat the cycle, but part of the issue is we don't have clearly labeled servers beyond "preferred" and "locked", and there are plenty of non-roleplaying minded folks playing on the "roleplaying server". It's unofficial status as an RP server is hurting it in that case. If it were formally labeled as such, then people would flock to--or avoid--it as appropriate for their tastes. We need direction, and not direction from the players. We need it from the company, to help with the flow of players.

[Shofie]

I don't think they have ever said that they're afraid of opening an RP server due to toxic players. I think they see it as unnecessary, because RP happens on every single server in the game (this is also true for Japanese servers). If anything, painting Balmung as the RP destination caused a lot of problems of its own.

From the E3 Liveletter earlier this year:

Q: Are there any plans to mark certain servers as 'role play' specific ones?
A: In terms of having an icon displayed on the screen when you log in and see the worlds, the work that goes into that - it can be done instantaneously. But that being said, whether or not we should do this, we are torn on. It's been 4 years since the launch of ARR and we know that a lot of people RP on Balmung and I'm sure that some would be ok with being labelled as being ok for RP, but there might be some people who did not join for that purpose. We don't want to create a toxic environment where people say 'if you're not RPing then get out of this world'. But I'm sure there are voices that are raised, but it would be nice to get data to back that up, maybe a survey or something like that. We are positively looking into it but torn on what timing to implement it.

They are torn on wanting to add it, and specifically want us to ask for it. So here we are. We ask. Please.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

From the E3 Liveletter earlier this year:



They are torn on wanting to add it, and specifically want us to ask for it. So here we are. We ask. Please.

It already happens on Balmung, it would definitely happen on an RP labeled server.

also, the mass transfers would then cause that server to be locked, and then "why can't we invite our friends to the RP server, its always locked" threads.

[Theodric]

The perks of locking overpopulated servers far outweigh the drawbacks. It's also very interesting that some of the most vocal individuals in support of flooding Balmung with as many role-players as possible are amongst the most reclusive when it comes to actual in-game interaction.

Balmung being locked has been an immense benefit for various other servers. Mateus and Omega became unofficial role-playing servers. Others such as myself have left to join servers with a healthier economy and more stable player population. Thus I took my leave of Balmung and settled on Cerberus. No regrets.

These threads often follow a similar flawed line of thinking that involves expecting all the perks of a large server and none of the drawbacks. Many role-players do not want a server purely for themselves either - because not every role-player uses the game for role-play alone. Thus they desire a healthy portion of players focused on the PvE and PvP side of the game.

[FaileExperiment]

What about keeping the lock, but allowing only new users who are invited via the refer a friend program already in place, by someone already on Gilgamesh or Balmung for say 1+ years. The number of players a single person can refer in would be limited, to curtail abuse. This solution limits incoming players, but still allows those that have a genuine reason to be on these servers specifically.

[Tevatron]

The perks of locking overpopulated servers far outweigh the drawbacks. It's also very interesting that some of the most vocal individuals in support of flooding Balmung with as many role-players as possible are amongst the most reclusive when it comes to actual in-game interaction.

I came back to this thread just to say that is an INCREDIBLE assumption you're making there and your general thesis of "well we should let the economies and populations of the larger servers in the game stagnate so some backwater can do better" is working off a similarly bizarre assumption that there is not an active, positive measure that can be taken to alleviate the problems of both types of communities.

This thread is why I had six posts on the OF until today.

[Theodric]

I came back to this thread just to say that is an INCREDIBLE assumption you're making there and your general thesis of "well we should let the economies and populations of the larger servers in the game stagnate so some backwater can do better" is working off a similarly bizarre assumption that there is not an active, positive measure that can be taken to alleviate the problems of both types of communities.

This thread is why I had six posts on the OF until today.

It's not really an assumption. I played on Balmung up until a month ago - since I first started the game back at 2.0's launch. So I consider myself to be rather familiar with quite a lot of things related to the server! I know quite a lot - perhaps more than you may think.

Given your apparent fondness for bloated things, though, I suppose it isn't any surprise that you're in favour of stuffing Balmung with as many people as possible.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I came back to this thread just to say that is an INCREDIBLE assumption you're making there and your general thesis of "well we should let the economies and populations of the larger servers in the game stagnate so some backwater can do better" is working off a similarly bizarre assumption that there is not an active, positive measure that can be taken to alleviate the problems of both types of communities.

This thread is why I had six posts on the OF until today.

This right here is just silly. Calling smaller servers backwater is rather presumptuous isn't it? Also, a healthy market doesn't mean stuff if selling only for high prices.

[NolLacnala]

What about keeping the lock, but allowing only new users who are invited via the refer a friend...

You would be creating a pyramid scheme of bypassing the server lock (Reminder: Which is to keep the server from exploding). One person invites three friends. Two of those three friends invite two friends each, and one of them also throws a friend invite to a random who begged to in. So on and so forth until everyone's bypassing the lock with refer a friend, defeating the entire purpose of the lock. Server destabilizes, 5 hour login queues, etc.

As seen during SB's launch, Balmung's very existence in Aether is detrimental. Very few on any Aether server could get through Raubahn's wall. That is, until Balmung tripped over itself, opening the instance server flood gates for everyone else.

The server needs to be bled until you're no longer capsizing the datacenter.