Increase Server Capacity

[LunaHoshino]

its an incentive to join one of the many other, slightly smaller servers.

That's not what happens, though. What happens is that people who are joining because they want to play with their friends eventually end up just giving up on playing the game. I have personally seen three people do this exact thing-- they wanted to join Balmung because their friends were there, and after a week of trying they finally gave up and decided the game wasn't worth the trouble.

The advice of "well then the people who are already on Balmung should just go to a new server" is quite short-sighted. A lot of people don't really feel like grinding a brand-new character all the way through the story again, and as things stand, world transfers are $18 or so. There's all the incentive in the world for them NOT to leave Balmung, meaning that there's no incentive for the people who want to play with their friends to pick another world either.

[Raist]

That's not what happens, though. What happens is that people who are joining because they want to play with their friends eventually end up just giving up on playing the game. I have personally seen three people do this exact thing-- they wanted to join Balmung because their friends were there, and after a week of trying they finally gave up and decided the game wasn't worth the trouble.

The advice of "well then the people who are already on Balmung should just go to a new server" is quite short-sighted. A lot of people don't really feel like grinding a brand-new character all the way through the story again, and as things stand, world transfers are $18 or so. There's all the incentive in the world for them NOT to leave Balmung, meaning that there's no incentive for the people who want to play with their friends to pick another world either.

There is another side to the situation that you are neglecting though... those that have moved to servers to be with their friends, or worse rolled new characters--because it was more important to them that they enjoy the game with their RL friends. I and some of my peeps fall into that category.

I was one of 3 in my FFXI primary LS that were in the original beta... I'm talking 1.0 and not 2.0. We were on different servers though. I didn't have much invested in that character, so when I got into Beta4 I ditched it to try to join people on Hyperion but was too late to get in after the patching and crud when it opened, so one of my other friends that never played XIV at all and I made characters on Midgard together and started farting around... finding creative ways to die, killing each other off on impossible fights and all. Why not? We were continually trying to get into Hyperion after all to be with other people we knew, and this would give him a chance to get comfortable with the different feel of the UI from XI as well before we had to get serious.

Well... it never happened. One guy managed to get a foot in the door, but we couldn't. We managed to scratch our way up the ladder a bit, had our own little LS with just friends, and had gotten into an FC. Eventually, we gave up on Hyperion and when they opened up the server transfers people jumped to Midgard and we got to endgame together and had a blast.

There is something they can do that will allow them and their friends to play together. Some may not feel compelled to make the sacrifice, others will. Apparently it isn't important enough to them to jump worlds or roll a new character. It's a shame too. Think about it... they would be starting out from scratch and could really benefit from their friend's experience with the game. Be that with a new character or with a transferred one. I mean, they were willing to shell out the cash to not only buy the game but also subscribe for a monthly fee in order to play with a friend... and said friend isn't willing to at least roll a new character on another world to play with them?

Sounds kinda like a fair-weather friend to me, which begs the question of people's sincerity on the issue...

And therein lies the rub. Everyone talks a big game about being upset about friends not being able to join them. Well, if it really was such a big deal breaker for them, they could reroll or transfer... but they aren't doing either. And so the problem persists where there are too many people on one side of the scale, so SE keeps locking up their servers trying to balance the population out amongst the less populated worlds. There is a potential solution that can be implemented by the players... just not enough people are willing to bite the bullet I guess?

[Ashren]

snip.

You're neglecting Option C, the people who already have a large number of real life friends and school mates who are already playing on that server who are trying to get a few more friends and school mates into the game. Sure, if it's only one person with little or no ties to a server it's probably not that big a deal to ask them to transfer to a lesser population server, but what about when it's 10 or more people trying to get 3-4 people onto the server? Is it fair for all 10 of those people to have to shell out $18 each? What if they were from Australia and it's closer to $30 each?

Playing on a server for a long period of time, even if we assume you started with 2.0 and stuck to one server, is a serious investment for many. You become familiar with the server economy, you know the guild politics and you network, make friends, find people you are comfortable playing with. Most friends would just rather not play the game than make their friends start over and waste years of time and investment.

[LunaHoshino]

-snip-

I actually did make an alt on another server so that I could play with my friends there (my main is on Gilgamesh). It's a great idea in theory, but asking an entire group of friends to transfer or make alts on a new server just isn't going to happen in practice. Maybe if there are only a few of you, sure, but the larger the group, the less likely it is that you'll be able to convince everyone to come along just for the sake of one or two people who can't get in. What if you want to transfer but the rest of your friends don't? That means your only choice is to roll an alt, which is incredibly time-consuming. While I personally enjoy it, it's not hard to see why a lot of people don't.

Like I said, it's easy to say "people should just do this," but there are a lot of reasons why people can't or won't. I think a free server transfer week would be a great idea because it would remove one reason for people not wanting to transfer servers (the cost). As for the rest of it, well, there's not much you can do to provide incentives for people to roll alts.

[Vespar]

A free world transfer week may also help so players could disperse freely to less populated servers without having to spend $20.

[Gardes]

Maybe all y'all in balmung need to stop erping so hard.

Get off the server once you're done getting off.

[Roris]

A World Pass would actually be a legit thing to put on the cash shop, seems like a big missed opportunity there. Another thing that would be great is cross server parties like a lot of other MMOs have, maybe when they actually upgrade their hamster wheel server infrastructure, if ever.

[Velox]

A server transfer isn't really THAT expensive though. I mean, you pay $13 a month minimum for non-legacy ($10 legacy IIRC). That's $156 ($120) a year. Now the average "dedicated" MMORPG user (the non-hoppers) will play a single MMO for about 3-4 years (consecutive and non-consecutive) before finally moving on to another game. Assuming 3 years to be conservative, that's $468 ($360) that you will have put into FFXIV if you stick around for that long, not counting cash-shop purchases. Suddenly a measly $18 doesn't look like much does it? Hell, if your so financially strapped that $18 pushes you over your yearly budget for necessities, you probably shouldn't even BE playing a subscription-based game. Instead, focus on your real-life priorities immediately! Think of it this way, let's say that $18 for a server transfer was part of your monthly sub. That comes to only $1.50 a month. So for a single server transfer, you're basically getting a year's worth of subscription time for $14.50 a month. Wow, must be breaking the bank here! That's still cheaper than WoW and other p2p MMOs.

"But Velox, I shouldn't have to spend $18 to join my friends on another server, they should be able to come to me!"
So you're basically admitting that your friends aren't worth $18? Between ALL of them? Hell, I spent ~$240 between my friends JUST in Christmas gifts alone this past month.

[Raist]

Well they did offer free transfers early on. And a lot of people did bounce around. But, then a lot also stayed put. Hard to say what would be the ultimate solution when the player base in general isn't of the mindset to make such sacrifices. Who is to say that those three friends that had to start on another world won't be able to move over eventually? Alts could be created on their world to help them get going, learn the ropes and such, and then they could move over sometime down the line (or create new alts once creation is opened on the other server). But it sounds like no one in that circle of friends was open enough to the possibilities and just gave up. We discussed it several times that if a handful of our friends from XI got in game we would either move over to them or we would pitch in to help pay to get them to us if necessary... because they are that close to us, even though they live 5 states away. Heck.. I even contemplated throwing together a PC for one guy when his system had a meltdown, but he opted to get a console instead.

Which is the point of my view on the matter. If it matters enough, people will do what they feel is necessary to be with their friends. Otherwise, it isn't as big an issue as some appear to be making it out to be.

[Ashren]

It was brought to my attention that apparently if you create a character on any server, then wait three days you can then just transfer that character to a restricted server, thus bypassing the character creation restrictions. It sounds to me like this is just a shitty system all around and one that people are all too willing to find loop holes to get around, so any excuse to the contrary to try and white knight SE's decision to lock servers to new characters is utter bullshit.