A Lived in World?

[Jeeqbit]

Yeah I don't why they decided on this approach. It seems really lazy, if the number of people on a single zone was stressing some limits out then optimizing how many characters appear on screen or making other types of optimizations would've been preferable to splitting them like this.

It's just temporary though.

It doesn't seem to be related to the amount of characters they want to display on screen, because there is already a hard limit on this, so it is probably related more to the amount of people they want in a zone generally at a time.

[Ath192]

It's just temporary though.

It doesn't seem to be related to the amount of characters they want to display on screen, because there is already a hard limit on this, so it is probably related more to the amount of people they want in a zone generally at a time.

It doesn't seem that temporary to me if they amount of times I see it is more than the amount of times I don't. But you just described the issue, they don't want a large amount of people in a zone at a time, and they should, that's what makes zones feel lively.

[Jojoya]

It doesn't seem that temporary to me if they amount of times I see it is more than the amount of times I don't. But you just described the issue, they don't want a large amount of people in a zone at a time, and they should, that's what makes zones feel lively.

That's what causes latency issues and even client crashes for some players. Many design choices are less what SE can do or wants to do, and more "what percentage of the player base will have technical issues if we stuff too much in at one time".

A zone doesn't feel lively when it takes 5 minutes to get off the loading screen. Hunts are not fun when there are so many people present that your graphics card can't render what's happening until 3 minutes after it happened (very awkward if you're conducting so you're stuck asking your party if the hunt is dead yet so you know to relay the next one).

You don't need 300 players in a zone to make it feel lively. I think most of the problem is that SE leaves the zone instances running longer than they're needed. Usually by the second week, you're not going to find more than 60 players combined in a zone's instances unless a hunt train is active and if it is then you've got 90% of players in one instance and the remaining 10% in the other one or two.

[Shurrikhan]

It doesn't seem that temporary to me if they amount of times I see it is more than the amount of times I don't. But you just described the issue, they don't want a large amount of people in a zone at a time, and they should, that's what makes zones feel lively.

No matter how many players there are in the zone, if you don't see them, they're not going to make the zone feel livelier. A mere 40 players are still often plenty to make an XIV-size zone feel lively simply depending on their distribution.

As you start pushing beyond those points of diminishing returns, latency and lost access to competing desired FATEs, etc., turns more players off to staying in that zone than it increases their desire to be in it, at least until you start giving players a hell of a lot more reason to hang out in those zones and/or do something new about said latency.

[Ath192]

No matter how many players there are in the zone, if you don't see them, they're not going to make the zone feel livelier. A mere 40 players are still often plenty to make an XIV-size zone feel lively simply depending on their distribution.

As you start pushing beyond those points of diminishing returns, latency and lost access to competing desired FATEs, etc., turns more players off to staying in that zone than it increases their desire to be in it, at least until you start giving players a hell of a lot more reason to hang out in those zones and/or do something new about said latency.

I disagree, especially because we see the opposite happen already. Limsa is always packed with people and that seems to attract more despite the lag. When a Zone is dead noone wants to visit it.

Fates already increase their HP in response to speed farming so they have their mechanism to mitigate the issue you described. At the end of the day I think rather than working on removing people they should work on finding a way to optimize having all those people in an area.

Just preference really, but this is a thread about making the world more lively and I do think my suggestion would improve that aspect and splitting instances would work against it. No matter what they are putting works towards it so I'd rather it go to keeping us together.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree, especially because we see the opposite happen already. Limsa is always packed with people and that seems to attract more despite the lag.

I feel that one's more an outlier, with the reason mostly being what attracted people there in the first place (not merely that it got people by chance and then the people were the primary attractor for more).

Fates already increase their HP in response to speed farming so they have their mechanism to mitigate the issue you described.

It does not at all mitigate the issue I'm describing. It's not even relevant to it.

FATEs HP scaling is based on the number of people involved at the previous FATE killed. When you have too many people for everyone to participate in the same FATE train (unable to get enough Enmity for kill-credit / turn-ins for item-credit), that procedure is what can so quickly make it jank.

Just preference really, but this is a thread about making the world more lively and I do think my suggestion would improve that aspect and splitting instances would work against it. No matter what they are putting works towards it so I'd rather it go to keeping us together.

I'm against automatic splitting, except where players have opted into it, but given how laggy filled unsplit instances get, I don't mind that instances are an option.

Again, my $0.02 is just that liveliness has at least as much to do with distribution of people and the zone activities among which they may be distributed than merely the population count. Trying to salvage a lack of worthwhile activities beyond FATE-currency/rep farms (however far one may extend their extrinsic rewards) with just more population wouldn't do much, all while being pretty badly affected by this game's netcode/server-stability issues.

[Ath192]

Again, my $0.02 is just that liveliness has at least as much to do with distribution of people and the zone activities among which they may be distributed than merely the population count. Trying to salvage a lack of worthwhile activities beyond FATE-currency/rep farms (however far one may extend their extrinsic rewards) with just more population wouldn't do much, all while being pretty badly affected by this game's netcode/server-stability issues.

You just said it here. This is what needs work, server stability and netcode. I agree on the activities, but population count matters to me at least. I just wish players wouldn't treat the netcode and server stability issues as fact of life and that's why they have to cut corners and split instances. Instead of cutting corners and finding ways around server instability they should be spending that time working on fixing the instability itself so server can hold everyone without splitting them.

If there is one hope is them trying the cloud. But it strikes me more that they are looking into it merely because of expansion release population booms. I pray they are looking to wield it to solve the issues mentioned above.


Also Limsa is not an exception, people used to clump in Mor Dhona, Idylshire, Rhalgers Reach and to a lesser extent Eulmore and Radz. I think in part due to the fact you couldn't summon mounts anymore in end game areas and people liked showing those off.

Of course when the population drops off a cliff only the biggest hubs survive but nonetheless there is plenty of evidence populated areas attract more people to them.

[Shurrikhan]

Also Limsa is not an exception, people used to clump in Mor Dhona, Idylshire, Rhalgers Reach and to a lesser extent Eulmore and Radz.

Yes, when they had unique advantages relative to other places to hang-out. In Limsa, that's the placement of the Market Board. In zones necessary to buy/upgrade tome/raid gear when that gear was relevant, it was because that was the only place at which to buy/upgrade tome/raid gear. About as many would go to a less convenient capital city specifically to avoid the crowds as to see the emote trains or what the latest bot-drawn word of the day was in the Limsa aether plaza.

If there is one hope is them trying the cloud. But it strikes me more that they are looking into it merely because of expansion release population booms. I pray they are looking to wield it to solve the issues mentioned above.

Sadly, I, too, expect that's all there is to it. But hey, would love to be wrong and for that to be just a first step in taking more seriously their player's experiences in regard to latency, etc.