Server Issues and Limitations

[Sorel]

You're moving the goalposts. You've made abundantly clear that your question is what changes need to occur. The thread you linked asks when server lag is going to be fixed. Those are two different questions.

The question of "when" has been answered. As far as I can tell, the question of "what" has not been asked until today.

On this point you are correct. I concede to that. It is unfair to for me to ask a question and not wait for it's answer. But I still believe we should get a meaningful answer once the Development Team addresses the question.

Moreover, I suspect it's kind of an unfair question. First, SE can't -- and shouldn't -- reveal its confidential business information.

Second, we're talking about several different issues: server lag, party search feature, linkshell management, limits on the number of items that can be traded, etc. While the cause of all those problems may be related to the servers, I seriously doubt that they're all caused by the same server issue. So they'd all need their own explanations.

Third, answering your question would require SE to figure out how they're going to fix those issues. But they aren't to that stage yet. I'd much rather they focus on fixing problems than diverting manpower to resolve your curiosity about things they're going to fix in the future.

You asked them to treat the server related issues like they've treated the other issues with the game. Well, that's what they're doing. They provide information about the battle related issues when they've arrived at a plan and developed a way to address those issues. We didn't hear much about crafting changes -- other than the fact that they'd be addressed -- until very recently because they're now figuring out what they're going to do.

We should expect the same thing when it comes to server related issues. Let them address the issues they're working on, and then they can give us more details when they begin working on them.

Well first, I don't believe that admitting that having "networking problems", or having "database problems", or having "processor problems", or having "hard drive problems" is revealing any more confidential information than "server issues".

Second, while these "server issues" seem to affect the implementation of multiple core features like you said ... because SE keeps using the same phrase "server issues" they themselves are representing that this one thing is the root of all the trouble. This may be a misrepresentation, but we can't know that because the phrase "server issues" is too imprecise. All I'm asking for is one additional descriptive word to be added to the phrase ... the "what".

Third, the Development Team has managed to come up with tentative plans to fix other game issues months before they were ready to implement them. Naoki Yoshida mentioned this new claiming system 6 months ago in one of his Letters. And the point of all these letters and dev posts isn't to just "satisfy curiosity" ... it's to keep us informed of what is going on with the ongoing improvements to FFXIV. If answering this question about "server issues" is an unnecessary diversion of manpower, then every question on these forums is an unnecessary diversion of manpower ... no??

And maybe they are dealing with "server issues" like every other issue with the game, but they are certainly not communicating about it like every other issue in the game, so we don't know what their dealing with, or how they are dealing with it.

And if they're not communicating because they don't have a plan on how they are going to address these "server issues" ... isn't that bad ... like really bad??