Make FFXIV More Alt-Friendly... Please??????

[Miste]

No, this isn't a good ideaat all. If SE did this, how would you get yor Alt on Balmung, a server that is damn near perpetually locked against character creation?

Seriously how many thousand more semi-active characters canyou add on locked servers? If SE did allow this, theend result would be to make high population servers even more ridiculously hard to get on.

That's not how the server locking works.

The server locks based on the number of currently online players. Which is why some servers (like mine) unlock in the middle of the night like 1am-8am for example since very few EST/PST players are online late into the night. If you really wanna try and fix servers being locked go yell on Balmung forums for players to not leave their game on AFK for hours or while they sleep, but since it is such a high pop server even removing the AFK's may not open it up for creation idk.

So this semi-active characters thing you mention doesn't exist really, if they aren't actually online in-game on the server the locking mechanism doesn't take that player into account when locking servers.

I have all 8 character slots on my account on Excalibur but only when I am online on one of them am I contributing to the server lock number. Just having 8 there by itself does nothing if I am not currently online, and I can only be online on one of them at a time.

[Kosmos992k]

That's not how the server locking works.

I think it is. It was explained at length back when we were starving for server space and subsequently got new worlds.

Servers lock in one of two ways. First, SE explicitly locks servers against character creation based on the population spread and density in starting zones. Alternately servers can automatically lock themselves based on the population in the zone you are attempting to join - or the total online population on the server. But that depends entirely on the server being available for character creation. Balmung is seldom open for new characters - which is a big part of what I was saying.

Even if it is open forvcharacter creation, if you start a new character as a conjurer and it just happens that Gridania is very busy (or Balmung is very busy as a whole), you'll be told you can't create your character. On a heavily populated server this translates to it being easier to create characters during the least busy times - assuming the server is open to new characters..

[Miste]

I think it is. It was explained at length back when we were starving for server space and subsequently got new worlds.

Servers lock in one of two ways. First, SE explicitly locks servers against character creation based on the population spread and density in starting zones. Alternately servers can automatically lock themselves based on the population in the zone you are attempting to join - or the total online population on the server. But that depends entirely on the server being available for character creation. Balmung is seldom open for new characters - which is a big part of what I was saying.

Even if it is open forvcharacter creation, if you start a new character as a conjurer and it just happens that Gridania is very busy (or Balmung is very busy as a whole), you'll be told you can't create your character. On a heavily populated server this translates to it being easier to create characters during the least busy times - assuming the server is open to new characters..

You just said the same thing I said...it is based on the amount of currently online players.

I really doubt SE would be so oblivious that they would take into account all my 8 characters on Excalibur as 8 more characters to add to the lock number. I could also create 8 characters on a whole other server (for no reason at all) and create even more towards the lock even though my account is essentially one entity since you can only login to one character at a time. Why on earth would they count me as 16 people? It makes zero sense.

Unless you make more than one FFXIV account and pay more than one sub you only exist as one player no matter how many alts you make because in the World you are on they only exist one at a time. When you have Character A and Character B and you are online on Character A, Character B doesn't actually exist on your server at that time until you switch off Character A and go online on Character B. You can only increase or decrease your World's online population by a factor of 1 at all times (unless you make another FFXIV account and sub).

Balmung is seldom open because there are too many people online on the server at all hours. Also it is locked for a reason...I know it sucks when you can't get on a server you want but it would do no good if SE just let us overpop a server till it breaks. Blaming people with multiple alts for you not being able to make your own alt on that server is a bit silly imo.

[PArcher]

Balmung is seldom open because there are too many people online on the server at all hours. Also it is locked for a reason...I know it sucks when you can't get on a server you want but it would do no good if SE just let us overpop a server till it breaks. Blaming people with multiple alts for you not being able to make your own alt on that server is a bit silly imo.

Its a bit back and forth. Yes, your account can only exist in-game as one character at a time, so it ultimately doesn't matter if you have one or multiple characters on a server if you were to spend the same amount of time on that server. That is true. But if you are going to have multiple characters, having them on different servers (or, at the very least, not all on the highest-population servers) is "better".You'll be on the higher-pop server less often, which frees up space for other people (hopefully their mains), and you'll be on lower-pop servers more often, which can help with their population issues too.


As an aside, I have several characters; most of which I made and never used (including one on Greg). I do have my main and my alt both on the same server; main's cleared A4S, alt is geared enough to do so, but I'm too lazy to run in two statics at once (so just pug A1S and A2S when I feel like it with him). Alt isn't for RP, he's for playing and gearing a different job (healer) than my main (tank)