Ability to switch servers!

[Nipa]

One free server transfer every week. Only forbid transfers to the overpopulated servers (based on the playing population, not the number of char created). This would allow players to easily play with their friends, and naturally create maximum population servers, which are good things.

This is what we can expect for a 2011 MMO.

[DoctorMog]

One free server transfer every week. Only forbid transfers to the overpopulated servers (based on the playing population, not the number of char created). This would allow players to easily play with their friends, and naturally create maximum population servers, which are good things.

This is what we can expect for a 2011 MMO.

One per... WTF?

Why even have different servers to make characters on?
At that point, you might as well make it like Maple Story, just pick the server you want to log on to, after character selection.

[Nipa]

Why even have different servers to make characters on?
At that point, you might as well make it like Maple Story, just pick the server you want to log on to, after character selection.

Basically, there are 3 reasons for having more than one server:
- the first, obvious, one, is technical: if your game is poorly coded, you won't be able to balance correctly the load of all your players on a single server. A correctly coded game, using instantiation, can handle as much player as you want (the only things that need to be running on the same physical servers are players in the same instance, nothing more... and in fact, you can even split that a bit more, Rift do this). But of course this is not an easy feat.
- the second one is to split the game into small communities. Some players actually love knowing "everyone" on their server, some other don't care since they only play with their guild. In bigger servers or in game where population is quickly cycled, it's harder to attain that feeling.
- The last one is a matter of immersion: if you have too many players on a single server, you will have to instantiate some (open land) zones. Some people don't like that, and it will impact greatly open PvP.

Basically, as much as I understand how SE has to abide by that first reason, I find the second one quite strange in a game where you can have as many guild as you want, and the third one pretty stupid in a PvE game.

The idea behind the weekly free transfer (also behind cross-servers groups or LFD) is to allow players to play with nearly everyone while keeping all those reasons. Allowing the players to choose which server they will play on at login totally breaks the second point, unlike with a slow paced server change.

Rift went the weekly transfer way, I find it quite adequate (since the game has an open PvP component).

WoW went the cross-shard LFD way, and focuses on guild progression: the average player doesn't really care on what server he is, until he want to play with some specific out of game friend. They intend to go for the cross-shard group making (and are struggling on how to monetize this).

In the case of FF14, a game with last names (reduces names collisions), multiple guilds (good thing to handle a lot of potential people), only PvE content (every thing can be instantiated), and an international community, if they could have a single server, with instantiated zones, I pretty sure it would turn out nicely. Of course seeing how SE is handling a mere interface rework, I'm pretty sure it's out of the question.

Hence my request for a slow transfer option (weekly or even monthly would be enough, since we only have one character).

[Delsus]

Basically, as much as I understand how SE has to abide by that first reason, I find the second one quite strange in a game where you can have as many guild as you want, and the third one pretty stupid in a PvE game.

The idea behind the weekly free transfer (also behind cross-servers groups or LFD) is to allow players to play with nearly everyone while keeping all those reasons. Allowing the players to choose which server they will play on at login totally breaks the second point, unlike with a slow paced server change.

Rift went the weekly transfer way, I find it quite adequate (since the game has an open PvP component).

WoW went the cross-shard LFD way, and focuses on guild progression: the average player doesn't really care on what server he is, until he want to play with some specific out of game friend. They intend to go for the cross-shard group making (and are struggling on how to monetize this).

In the case of FF14, a game with last names (reduces names collisions), multiple guilds (good thing to handle a lot of potential people), only PvE content (every thing can be instantiated), and an international community, if they could have a single server, with instantiated zones, I pretty sure it would turn out nicely. Of course seeing how SE is handling a mere interface rework, I'm pretty sure it's out of the question.

Hence my request for a slow transfer option (weekly or even monthly would be enough, since we only have one character).

SE wants us to have pickup parties which is why they are working on the lfp/party search function, they dont want people to stay in thier linkshells, most people dont want to do everything in thier linkshell, they want to meet people out of thier linkshells.

Also they are going to put PvP in ffxiv, but its not top of thier priority list so whereas right now it has only PvE content that will not be the same in the future.

Also the interface is not top of thier priorities either there are other more important things to fix in the game before asthethics, the UI works, admittedly not as well as it could but it does, it will be fixed just when it comes up in thier priority list.

[syntaxlies]

One free server transfer every week. Only forbid transfers to the overpopulated servers (based on the playing population, not the number of char created). This would allow players to easily play with their friends, and naturally create maximum population servers, which are good things.

This is what we can expect for a 2011 MMO.

i would actually cut this down to a month but a time limit is a good idea.