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

[DeaconMoore]

I was referring to people who already have a house to be able to take it with them, not letting any player that transfers get a free house.

I know, I'm just pointing out that the size of the available population with housing is much much smaller than those without housing. Ultimately its impact would likely be negligible towards freeing the server of enough pop to be unlocked once again. It would no doubt encourage people to camp the housing districts more on the off chance a house opened up though.

[Naunet]

Any community needs some supply of new blood to thrive, regardless of population. It's shit that nobody on here can invite friends to come join them. It's shit that nobody already on here can even make a new alt here. It's shit that preexisting communities and friendships are being fractured by transfers.

I have always thought it utterly idiotic that you can't even make alts when you're already on a locked server. But yes, while Balmung was/is overpopulated, it is hard to deny that the extended chokehold SE has put it in has damaged the scope of certain communities on that server.

[Rokke]

Have you never scouted a server out before? You don't have to 100% commit right away blind.

The servers have technical limitations to the amount of people they can accommodate. Picking just a couple servers to dog pile on and well, we see the results. Spread. Out. More. Who knows, you may even meet your new best friend.

If you scout out rp across servers you'll wind up Mateus lol

You're repeating the same point without once commenting on how other mmos have unofficial rp servers or how people will be forced to deal with extremely limited contacts. You're on the new rp servers, its easy to say "SPREAD OUT" when you're already at the best spot xD

[Joven]

I know, I'm just pointing out that the size of the available population with housing is much much smaller than those without housing. Ultimately its impact would likely be negligible towards freeing the server of enough pop to be unlocked once again. It would no doubt encourage people to camp the housing districts more on the off chance a house opened up though.

Unfortunately housing will always be a crapshoot no matter how they handle it. I can't think of a way for them to un-bungle it so everyone has a fair chance outside of instanced plots

[DeaconMoore]

If you scout out rp across servers you'll wind up Mateus lol

You're repeating the same point without once commenting on how other mmos have unofficial rp servers or how people will be forced to deal with extremely limited contacts. You're on the new rp servers, its easy to say "SPREAD OUT" when you're already at the best spot xD

I joined mateus during HW well before it was "the rp spot to be" with the release of SB. Mateus despite being one of the smallest servers at the time still had an rp community. Yes, it's been bolstered but if you people keep up with the bs that its the rp spot to be it will no doubt join Balmung as locked eventually. As I said before, when I joined the game I scouted the servers and many of them do have rp communities on them. If you go there and bolster them they will grow too.

[Rokke]

I joined mateus during HW well before it was "the rp spot to be" with the release of SB. Mateus despite being one of the smallest servers at the time still had an rp community. Yes, it's been bolstered but if you people keep up with the bs that its the rp spot to be it will no doubt join Balmung as locked eventually. As I said before, when I joined the game I scouted the servers and many of them do have rp communities on them. If you go there and bolster them they will grow too.

I won't deny that rp exists on other servers - the pools of people are just more limited when they are spread out. I moved off Faerie over 2 years ago because I was frustrated that I couldn't find the contacts I was looking for.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I won't deny that rp exists on other servers - the pools of people are just more limited when they are spread out. I moved off Faerie over 2 years ago because I was frustrated that I couldn't find the contacts I was looking for.

Those pools would probably be bigger if everyone didn't tell everyone else "only go to Balmung, you can bypass the character creation lockouts by paying for a transfer."

[Kaethra]

The content model we have encourages raidlogging, and stormblood made it worse by being more or less an extension of Heavensward, not it's own expansion. By this I mean that we do more or less exactly the same things we did in HW, with no real variation or unique aspect to the game. While people leveled their mains, the game was busy. Now that people have done so, there simply isn't enough fresh content to keep people playing.

This in itself isn't a bad thing. Daybreak does this with both EQ games. They'll release an expansion that raises their level cap by 5, then after that they release what is called Content Expansions. They do NOT raise the level cap, and don't really advance the story in a major way, sticking to the plot started in the leveling expansion. So you get a trilogy of expansions. The benefit is, you remember those 6 zones you did in SB from 61-70? Imagine that effort being put into dungeons and raids.

The result is an content release schedule your average player is likely not going to get bored with anytime soon. In many cases they don't even complete everything before the next leveling phase which is used as a bit of a 'catchup'.

Stormblood feels like a content expansion. The story is directly after HW's. And does much of the same stuff. But in their 'wisdom' SE decided to raise the level cap by 10. That requires leveling content. 10 levels worth. Think about that. Take ARR and you'll notice its 50 levels. So an expansion that raises the level cap by 10 needs 20% of the originals content. That's alot of time, alot of resources needed.

Now imagine if SB was a content expansion and level cap was still 60. All those dungeons and trials 61-70 would be 60. And we'd have twice as many of them. And that'd just be with the 4.0 launch. the downside is the story would be focused on Doma for the entire 4.0-4.x cycle. 5.0-5.x would be Ala Mihgo. The story would come slower, but the content would be literally doubled.

Point is, you can have expansions be extensions of expansions. And do it well. But you have to make sure we're not simply 'starting over'. Like it felt with 61. That's really my only complaint. In reality I'm a bit impressed with the 4.0 content so far. 4.1 seems a bit lacking though.

[Rokke]

Those pools would probably be bigger if everyone didn't tell everyone else "only go to Balmung, you can bypass the character creation lockouts by paying for a transfer."

If server A has 100 rpers, server B has 1000 rpers and server C has 10 rpers, server B is the ideal destination if rping is important to your gaming experience. Can you rp on server A and C? Yes. But say you move to server C and discover that 6 of those 10 rpers strictly rp pirate storylines and you don’t, you are now left with a pool of 4/10 people to rp with. That is why the dogpiling happens in every mmo that has rpers.

F-forward and back and then go forward and back and then go forward and back...Wyrmrest, Moonguard, Emerald Dream, Jiwan, Orwen (Calpheon 2)- Rpers clump together. I expect Bless to form an unofficial hangout whenever it finally releases.

I wish small servers the best of luck growing their rp communities, but there will always be a hub people flock to. If/when Mateus ever locks, a new server will be picked. To expect otherwise is silly.

[Nezerius]

Picking just a couple servers to dog pile on and well, we see the results. Spread. Out. More. Who knows, you may even meet your new best friend.

That's not really how it works for the majority of the roleplayers. There's a clear reason why roleplayers flock to a few specific servers, which is to make it easier to find like-minded players who they want to roleplay with.
There's always going to be a few, here and there. Ones that prefer a small, tight knit RP community, or ones that want to start a new one on a less populated server. However, these are the minority.

Besides, this behaviour isn't just limited to roleplayers. Just look at Gilgamesh, and the amount of people that used to transfer there. They went there because it has/had a large hardcore raiding community, making it easier to find a static.

Telling roleplayers on unofficial RP servers to spread out more, is akin to telling hardcore raiders in a large established raiding community to just go to a smaller server to start a new raiding community on it. Why would they go through all that effort, with the uncertainty of it actually being successful?

On the subject of "exposing" non-roleplayers to roleplay; while I can only speak for myself, I really have no interest in trying to convince a non-roleplayer like that. I'd rather spend my time roleplaying with other roleplayers.