Square: You need to open servers before this community is slowly choked

[Airget]

Yup, it seems like "all those players can't handle it".





TL;DR FF XIV game engine is poorly designed, i.e. it can't support many players in one location.

p.s. even if it's ^ kinda offtopic, it's still a problem.

Compared to what? Even the Battle Royal games tend to have a 100 player limit, how many players tend to be at Ixion 200-300? That's a huge jump. What other games have over 100 players in a single area? I'm honestly curious to know because as far as I'm aware a lot of games tend to be 4v4, 8v8, 16v16.

Even Star Wars Galaxies had a limit of 200 per instance making new instances if it reached over that amount because they to understood the max limit a single instance could handle.

I honestly don't think people understand how difficulty it is to keep an area stable when you have 200+ players playing at the same time inputting commands wearing different gear moving taking dmg being healed having affects that go off which then buff other members in the party etc etc.

[ColorOfSakura]

Just as the title says. Square, you have got to upgrade your servers if they can't handle the amount of players on larger communities, or you are going to slowly choke the life out of this game's biggest groups.

This is not conjecture, this is fact. If you quarantine a community and seal it away it is eventually going to die. People cannot invite anyone, new blood will never find their way there, people will slowly quit because they ALWAYS slowly quit, and there will never be anyone to replace them.

Square, mark my words: Find a way to open these servers before it's too late, or the only people you'll have to blame when your largest groups of players disperse is yourself. YOU are killing your own game more than anything else right now.

Or more people could literally move off Balmung and balance the server load out more.

This isn't Square Enix's fault, its the RP community's. You guys need to fix it, not SE.

[Shurrikhan]

Its not necessarily a server issue, but a network one. You've seen people mass DC during Odin? Thats not because the servers can't handle it, thats because player machines can't handle the amount of players in the area.

Player "machines" do not handle any part of that except drawing assets where the servers have told them to. That explains FPS bog and nothing more. Under certain FPS drops, your client may experience a fatal error during certain preexistent compatibility issues. But it will never disconnect you.

Your "network" does, however, though to a smaller degree than the server itself. The reason 140 players can be present in a given zone without issue, yet face disconnection if even just 40 players are attempting Ixion at the same time, is that you aren't interacting with all 40 players. Turn on all battle log message: what do you see? Chances are it's significantly less than when 40 people are standing around Raubahn, Extreme mode or simple, early Normal-mode rush. You still need to see what gear they're wearing, what their names are, what their FCs are, what their jobs are, but at least it's not yet telling you their adjusted HP values with every hit, every combat action they take or receive, etc.

But it's the servers that are dropping you when it's not longer able to receive packets from you. You can stop being able to convey or receive information indefinitely and the network will not necessarily drop you any more than it would a webpage on a browser with no automatic time-out. The server is what considers you unresponsive and removes you accordingly to reduce load.

[Elspath]

10 years ago mmo's had server stability where housing districts were infinite and DDoS wasnt even a problem because the servers were stable.

FFXIV is BEHIND on server tech and has some of the worse servers I have ever seen in a MMO to DATE!

PLUS FFXIV is one of the most expensive MMOs with a high price entry fee, month subscription, with optional subscription add on's AND a in game item store that is bigger and more expensive then MOST free to play mmos (only one i have seen with a bigger in game store is Star Wars Old Republic but that game is free to play with optional monthly)

So what do we get for all the money square is draining from its community? Dont know but its not in the lack luster content that has been slowly shrinking this past year. (one freaking dungeon that can be finished in less then 15 min)

If I wasn't one of the lucky few that owns a house I would cancel my subscription.

[CaTi]

10 years ago mmo's had server stability where housing districts were infinite and DDoS wasnt even a problem because the servers were stable.

FFXIV is BEHIND on server tech and has some of the worse servers I have ever seen in a MMO to DATE!

Not to nitpick but 10 years ago the amount of data being exchanged with the server by each character/object/whatever probably wasn't as big as it is now. Price of pretty things y'know? Server tech can only do so much without being prohibitively expensive.

[KaivaC]

Oh noes, the glorious RP server Balmung is stagnant because there's too many players on it and nobody wants to move, therefore FFXIV is going to die! Ahhhh!!!!!!!

It's a simple fix, but players are refusing to take the option, either due to server loyalty, friend loyalty, or money loyalty, but the point is that Balmung will stay locked until players start transferring to other servers. There are plenty of other options to stop being stagnant. Insofar as server upgrades are going, aside from Ixion and these DDOS attacks, I have rarely encountered an issue server side. Maybe they could be upgraded, but like another poster said, you're trying to have your cake and eat it.

[Lazaruz]

*snip*

I'm gonna ask you a question here, and hopefully you see my point before I actually spell it out in the end.

Say the servers at present can reliably support 100k players. Balmung is filled to burst in that regard, hence the lock on both new characters and transfers.

Now we take that server, and double the max ammount of possible people to 200k, but uh oh, Balmung is also a super popular server so alot of people are either making new characters or transferring in each and every day. What do you do when you hit that 200k mark?
Upgrade again? And then what? You'll be stuck in a circle of people slowly gathering on one single server, with ever increasing requirements on your hardware.

Sure, you could in theory join a smaller, less populated server with Balmung, but that's forcing other people into a community they might not want to be. I know some have said they intentionally pick lower populated servers as they like the sense of smaller communities, and others have complained in the past when iirc players from Balmung transferred in en masse.


As far as I'm concerned, Balmung is locked entirely for a very good reason
The issues people complain about with the lock is a issue with player behaviour, and we'll be right back to it the next time a server like Balmung locks for a extended time.

10 years ago mmo's had server stability where housing districts were infinite and DDoS wasnt even a problem because the servers were stable.

I smell BS.
And I smell it because a DDOS doesnt derive its power from how "stable" a server is, nor are the current attacks either any proof of SE's server hardware (as I have no doubt this was meant as a jab at the current attacks), given that SE's not the one being attacked, the ISP is

You'd know all of this if you did your research, but I guess paying a sub just so you can hate on the game is more fun

[kidalutz]

OP It could also be due to the reputation Balmung has gotten. I mean it doesnt seem to matter what Server I'm playing on Balmung is considered the Server to avoid.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

OP It could also be due to the reputation Balmung has gotten. I mean it doesnt seem to matter what Server I'm playing on Balmung is considered the Server to avoid.

The lock on the server (and subsequently, the lock remaining in place) has absolutely nothing to do with the preconceived notions of Balmung that every non-Balmungian has towards it. I'm... pretty sure that's the furthest thing in mind with SE's decision to keep us locked down, lmao.

[MistakeNot]

OP It could also be due to the reputation Balmung has gotten. I mean it doesnt seem to matter what Server I'm playing on Balmung is considered the Server to avoid.

Well, the reason Balmung is so full is because for many people Balmung is considered THE server to be on.
Other than the overpopulation there really is no reason to avoid Balmung in particular.