The character creation restriction is bad, bad, bad.

[Tenshinohana]

I'm having a lot of problems with recruiting friends to FFXIV. It's a really disheartening, when you try to get a friend to play; with no cross-server action, they of course want to come on the server. But then! The character restrictions kick in and they can't come on the server, and have to wait over five hours (after a two hour download)!

There should be better ways to restrict character creation than this restriction, that puts a total wall for people up. The fact that there is this chracater creation exists, some of my friends just blatantly rage quit and I can't convince them that it's worth the wait.

This has happened to me at least three times right now, one raged and created the character on another server and then transferred it to my server (extra 30€ paid...)

I genuinely think FFXIV would benefit of a different character creation restriction system. This system has it's benefits, but for players, new players to be exact, it has more disadvantages than advantages.

[sraberry]

There is not a lot that can be done when some of the servers everyone plays on are already filled beyond what was intended. If they always kept character creation open, even after the world is full, the world wouldn't run as smoothly as intended. It would keep the lower population servers even lower as well, which is something that isn't ideal for those of us on one.

I agree that a different system could be put into place, but I am not sure what type of system could be put in place instead, since this is a system many other MMO's put in place as well.

[Twilite]

Blame Balmung and Gilgamesh :P

[Alahra]

There should honestly probably be some kind of World Pass system, like FFXI had originally. Initially on that game, you couldn't pick a specific server unless someone gave you a special code (retrieved from an NPC, I think, but it's been a very long time), which would then direct your character to their server at creation.

They could do something similar here and allow someone to give a code to a friend or something, so they can bypass the restriction.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There should honestly probably be some kind of World Pass system, like FFXI had originally. Initially on that game, you couldn't pick a specific server unless someone gave you a special code (retrieved from an NPC, I think, but it's been a very long time), which would then direct your character to their server at creation.

They could do something similar here and allow someone to give a code to a friend or something, so they can bypass the restriction.

This worked in FFXI due to the lack of social media. Nowadays, such a system would accomplish nothing. Between twitch streamers, forums, reddit and twitter, the password would be passed around so much, everyone would know it.

And locking heavily populated servers only hurts Square. How likely would friends of yours be to play the game if they had no way of playing with you? This actually happened to me during BnS' launcher, and I know if I couldn't have gotten on the same server as my group. I just wouldn't have played, period.

There needs to be incentives to play on less populated servers instead of trying to bar people from the larger ones.

[Alahra]

This worked in FFXI due to the lack of social media. Nowadays, such a system would accomplish nothing. Between twitch streamers, forums, reddit and twitter, the password would be passed around so much, everyone would know it.

It was a one time code, so passing it around would have no real benefit. The code itself cost gil, as well, so you couldn't get an infinite number of them. It wasn't a huge sum, but especially early on in the game's life, it was significant. And if gil wouldn't work, some sort of limitation based on time (like one code per day or one per week, or whatever) would work, too.

[Pence]

If you can't understand why there is a restriction in place than I don't think there's much hope for you. It's crazy obvious why it exists.

[Eidolon]

If you can't understand why there is a restriction in place than I don't think there's much hope for you. It's crazy obvious why it exists.

Why doesn't it exist on SErver transfers then?

[Alahra]

Why doesn't it exist on SErver transfers then?

Presumably because they considered the additional barrier of the cost of transferring is enough of a deterrent to keep enough people on lower-population worlds. Granted, I don't think that's necessarily true anymore because of the heavy migrations to Balmung and Gilgamesh for NA players since the release of Heavensward. But that slowly seems to be righting itself, at least on some servers. Diabolos is back to being creation capped and it hadn't been for awhile.

[Tenshinohana]

If you can't understand why there is a restriction in place than I don't think there's much hope for you. It's crazy obvious why it exists.

The thing is, I am not questioning _why_ there are server restrictions. I am questioning _how_ it's done. Blocking people isn't really a good way to restrict it really. There could be a system where you could bypass a restriction with a refer a friend -code. Or perhaps have the same system that WoW has; just state a list of servers and how full they are, and if you still choose a full server and then complain about the waiting on the server, shrug and say "You chose a full server, not really our fault". Which IMO is a better system than just plainly blocking them so that nobody can access it except for waiting.