A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

[dotsforlife]

Problem is there's no way to resolve the issue without pissing everyone off or risking server stability. You either unlock the servers and have the issue arise again (because lets face it, everyone and their mother keeps pointing people to select servers like sheep being herded) or SE takes a hard stance and basically just sets a hard cap for each server and as it's hit it gets locked until population flows back out or the more dead servers start filling up.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Once your population isnt in immediate risk of exceeding server capacity, they will.
It's as simple as that, especially since it took SE FAR too long to stop the ability to transfer in, one could make the argument Balmung even went beyond what would be considered stable numbers

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers. Now Mateus, Cactuar and Leviathan are the top servers. Should everywhere who went there cross their fingers and desperately try to re-direct people to other servers for fear they'll get moved into congestion and suffer the same decline? Now you could possibly argue Balmung needs to stay locked a bit longer, but I'd prefer the devs stop taking the easy approach and offer better incentives for other servers.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers. Now Mateus, Cactuar and Leviathan are the top servers. Should everywhere who went there cross their fingers and desperately try to re-direct people to other servers for fear they'll get moved into congestion and suffer the same decline? Now you could possibly argue Balmung needs to stay locked a bit longer, but I'd prefer the devs stop taking the easy approach and offer better incentives for other servers.

You realize this'll be a continuous cycle that must be repeated? When that happens, the same applies to those servers because you cannot predict which players go where and for how long. There is no single solution other than to address the situations when they arise.

If Balmung ever got to the point where it actually stagnates, they'd just open the server and offer the incentive to transfer over. But let's be real, Balmung is far and away from that happening within the next 1-2 years.

[Oscura]

You realize this'll be a continuous cycle that must be repeated?

I can see how that will be healthy for the game as time goes on.

[Vrankyl]

If Balmung ever got to the point where it actually stagnates, they'd just open the server and offer the incentive to transfer over. But let's be real, Balmung is far and away from that happening within the next 1-2 years.

While the population itself may take that long to stagnate the real issue with such a lock is the economy on the server. So many things that non crafters sell are finite things to be sold, things that once people have they don't need again. Even crafters will eventually have an issue as leveling gear becomes less and less needed and thus ends up not selling. Now if SE were to implement a Data Center wide MB this would no longer be concerned and the lock could easily stay indefinitely until the population drops to acceptable levels. Without something like that it can very well ruin the economy on the server completely.

[Krotoan]

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers.

Recovers... back to too many people?
Or you think the server will finally go under safe limits of concurrent users and then it'll open and people will just gush out like a severed artery and it'll die? .. .. I'm not seeing any reason to unlock the server that makes sense yet.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Recovers... back to too many people?
Or you think the server will finally go under safe limits of concurrent users and then it'll open and people will just gush out like a severed artery and it'll die? .. .. I'm not seeing any reason to unlock the server that makes sense yet.

Recovers in the sense of rebuilding their community. If enough people transfer, many won't go back and even more will inevitably leave or quit the game entirely because Gilgamesh isn't what it once was. You have to strike a balance between stable populations and letting a community thrive. I recently moved to Cactuar and don't want to see the markets implode and people start leaving because the devs refuse to offer better incentivizes.

[SaitoHikari]

I've never been on Gilgamesh, but some of these testimonies makes my heart ache. I know if Hyperion ever got to be like that, I would hate it too.

The only reason I can see for people to move back to Gilgamesh is to reunite with their friends. I don't think opening the server back up will be as much of a cycle as people think.

Yeah, I agree with this assessment. The number 1 reason for people to transfer to Gilgamesh has already been designed out of the game with the creation of cross world party finder.

Re-opening Balmung, meanwhile, would still cause a flood of people coming in due to its mythical status as being THE RP server, and there is nothing that can address that. The only thing that can come remotely close is if SE somehow makes a series of cross-server instances that people can easily look for specific players and join with, without any party-based entry restrictions and time limits. Perhaps Diadem could be re-purposed to help with this, actually. Just add a couple non-combat RP-friendly locales and remove the entry restrictions, increase the maximum amount of people in an instance from the current 8 parties to like 150 total players, and let people choose any instance they want.

[BigRed5392]

I missed that, which is interesting... Then again the EU population is fairly evenly distributed so there isn't much SE would be able to do there. That said there are 7 Japanese servers designated as congested at the moment, I honestly wonder what the state of their communities and market boards are. Especially since RP isn't really a thing there so there is no RP community to sustain their servers through patch lulls.

jp play differently then NA players.

[LaylaTsarra]

Was it healthy for the game for servers like Balmung, Gilgamesh, Tonberry and others to bleed other servers in their data centers of their vitality when their party finders dried up and people moved away to the promised lands as a result? The fact of the matter is the bleeding needed to stop for the health of the game overall. Cross finder party finder has has a lot to do with stopping the exodus from smaller servers and the incentives to repopulate the smaller ones appears to be working very well.

I can feel for those who aren't happy with people leaving but it's no more of an issue then having had the smaller servers suffer for a long time because of their people leaving. Rebalancing is necessary and hopefully locks will be a thing of the past soon enough.

Relative to the OP I can identify with Gilgamesh seeming less populated at the moment because I have a fully leveled toon there and run content. Yes it does seem less populated but I will say that when xpac released having queues of over 3500 was ridiculous. Perhaps it's time for SE to give the population of Gilgamesh a hard look and perhaps open it again because the incentive to move there now with cross finder pf isn't what is once was.