Stop asking for a playtime cap; you don't know what you're doing

[Waaltar]

A cap would do virtually nothing to help with queues at peak playtimes anyway. Virtually everyone is going to be trying to login for the same 8 hour period.

Simply cap the amount of primetime people can play instead of any other sort of cap.

For now, the people who can't log in are in effect subsidizing the people who can log in.

[ForteNightshade]

Simply cap the amount of primetime people can play instead of any other sort of cap.

For now, the people who can't log in are in effect subsidizing the people who can log in.

This would be disastrous. Say you put that cap at three hours of playtime before a forced log off. People will naturally try to sync with their friends per my earlier post... except now that entire 3-5pm EST window is shifting towards 6-7pm, thereby resulting in a massive surge of players all bombarding the Lobby Server at once—more so than they already are. Not to mention this basically destroys any Savage static.

You say you're furious because Zelpa finished the MSQ already. I have as well. She likely did the same thing I did. Got up at ungodly hours and/or barely slept just to keep playing at non-peak hours. Why should we be punished because our schedule allows for that? None of this is fair but the fault entirely lies with Square Enix and their poor infrastructure not with players who happen to have non-peak timeslots available to them.

I want to see the gaming community get a life. Whenever I see these "muh freedom" posts, I am reminded that it is frequently just a last line of defense "on principle" for consumptive habits that otherwise don't really have a good justification (and are often, at best non-constructive and parasitic, and at worst actually harmful to society).

Cap them all, please. Streaming services too. Make media companies more accountable for the millions of hours they waste of citizens' attention spans that could be spent bettering themselves and their communities. Any non-educational media has become the worst sort of gambling, endlessly, passively cycling through content that affords very little, if any, real world benefit to the consumer.

Bluntly stated, who are you to determine how I or anyone else chooses to spend their free time? This is essentially the same nonsense people were spewing about others using their PTO days for Endwalker. How dare they choose to use their earned vacation days on a hobby. No, no. They need to dedicate that time to "better themselves in the arbitrary manner I deem acceptable."

What absolute entitled nonsense.

[SturmChurro]

...

A lot of what I've been reading - for the past week - does just feel like people lashing out towards players who are able to rearrange their schedules to log on and play during non-peak periods. A playtime cap would accomplish little.

[Yencat]

A lot of what I've been reading - for the past week - does just feel like people lashing out towards players who are able to rearrange their schedules to log on and play during non-peak periods. A playtime cap would accomplish little.

This whole situation sucks, but it's kind of funny how quickly the discourse shifted from "lol why are you all mad, it's just a delay and why would anyone take time off for an expansion launch anyway? there's always server issues" to absolutely raging about how some people managed to move their vacation time, or like you said are able to rearrange their schedule to play.

[ForteNightshade]

A lot of what I've been reading - for the past week - does just feel like people lashing out towards players who are able to rearrange their schedules to log on and play during non-peak periods. A playtime cap would accomplish little.

What I find particularly ironic is these same people are also asking others to sympathize with their work schedule and difficulty playing yet every one of their solutions is to screw over the players whose life circumstances afford them the availability to play during non-peak hours. Or they're willing to rearrange their schedule to do so.

Not at all hypocritical.

[Yencat]

I haven't seen anyone ask for this so maybe I'm not completely understanding, but hypothetically if they put a cap on playtime and everyone decided to use that during peak hours so they can play with the most amount of people or their friends, or they're only able to play during peak hours like many are now.. Wouldn't it still be the same situation?

If the servers are full they're full, cap or no.

[ForteNightshade]

I haven't seen anyone ask for this so maybe I'm not completely understanding, but hypothetically if they put a cap on playtime and everyone decided to use that during peak hours so they can play with the most amount of people or their friends, or they're only able to play during peak hours like many are now.. Wouldn't it still be the same situation?

If the servers are full they're full, cap or no.

I'll refer you to my post on the first page, but in short, yes. A cap on playtime simply funnels everyone into the same "red zone" which is likely to cause more problems for a Lobby Server system already struggling to keep itself afloat.

[IDontPetLalas]

I haven't seen anyone ask for this so maybe I'm not completely understanding, but hypothetically if they put a cap on playtime and everyone decided to use that during peak hours so they can play with the most amount of people or their friends, or they're only able to play during peak hours like many are now.. Wouldn't it still be the same situation?

If the servers are full they're full, cap or no.

Sure, if everyone logs on during peak time. However, as some of the more strenuous objections "but mah non-peak hours" , clearly there are people who are either logging in early and just staying logged in - so they don't want to see a queue - OR they log in and play during non-peak hours, in which case server capacity really doesn't apply. However if we cap play time, sure it would, it should improve the situation in the sense that the more hours spent in non-peak time, the less hours someone could spend in peak hours.

[IDontPetLalas]

A lot of what I've been reading - for the past week - does just feel like people lashing out towards players who are able to rearrange their schedules to log on and play during non-peak periods. A playtime cap would accomplish little.

What "lashing out" do you see exactly? When people are recognizing the simple fact that there is a significant percentage of the playerbase that is entirely blocked from logging in, and a certain percentage of the player base that is remaining logged in for what can be argued as extremely extended login times, exactly what solution would you propose?

A cap IS a solution. It is a solution that should mean that more people have a chance to login. That could mean that someone who has had NO chance could login, so that means that someone who has been paying for a service actually receives it.
If you have a better one, by all means, please propose one.