[Balmung] Server Issues, safety, and overcrowding

[Fuma]

You mean the idea is merely to help make it easier to drive RP'ers apart? Frustrate new players coming to the game and joining a server thinking they'll be able to enjoy a playstyle, only to have been misled because, again, RP'ers congregate into a singular community, a single server. As others have said, there -was- an attempt by RP'ers to leave Balmung for a less populated server. It's called Gilgamesh, its the second highest populated server, and the lack of RP'ers on Gilgamesh resulted in RP'ers going right back to Balmung. The fact that Gilgamesh is the second highest population server would be in support of my earlier comments about a move not really helping. Like I said, RP'ers build that feeling of community, and players of all playstyles enjoy that atmosphere and gather around such communities.

You can't divide the RP community as we've seen, and you can't move it without resulting in another overpopulated server, again, as we've seen. That's why I'm saying this solution of Official RP Servers won't fix anything.

Well, we just don't see eye to eye on this at all but that's fine they're just our opinions but I'll try to remain as optimistic as possible on this.

[Rinari]

Ironically, attempting to lump the entire RP community into a single locked server is dividing it far more than giving a couple medium servers an 'RP' tag ever could. There are RPers scattered around all the servers because Balmung is locked and so overcrowded, that even a paid transfer there is a bad idea if you want to experience things like housing. You can't even get an apartment on Balmung. Balmung apartments sell (through paid releasing) for more than small houses on medium population servers.

Over here on Faerie, I see scattered RP and meet plenty of people that have RPed in the past and would like to again if there were a thriving community for it here outside of Balmung. For me, I engage in light RP here and there, making it a low priority thing. In WoW, I was much more into it on Earthen Ring, one of the official RP servers. That server had a large thriving RP community up through Burning Crusade at least. I'd like to get involved more here, but I'm not willing to pay transfer to Balmung AND deal with its overpopulated condition. It's perfectly possible to have multiple thriving RP servers in an MMO without stuffing them in into one giant overpopulated server. WoW did it after all.

To be fair though, the FFXIV RP community created the problem it has with Balmung. SE isn't helping, but they also didn't force everyone into Balmung. I've seen massive drama wars on FFXIV RP forums where players wanted to spur RP communities on servers other than Balmung due to the overcrowding. The result being lynch mobs and forum moderators dropping a hammer with basically 'we'll only allow promoting RP on Balmung to avoid splintering the community'... ignoring that of course, Balmung's state itself is already doing that by turning away newer players like me.

That's all a done deal though. I've made good friends on Faerie and even if Balmung's problems were fixed magically, I wouldn't transfer there. I've got roots now. That's true for most players. We aren't going to leave our friends behind. Even free transfers will have limited effectiveness, but maybe that could work a little. Tagging one or two medium servers with 'RP' could prompt some newer blood to attempt to build RP communities there, eventually luring away some of Balmung's RP crowd that want to escape the crowding and break the stranglehold Balmung seems to have... hopefully alleviating some of its overcrowding problems in the future. Just imagine those fun Balmung ques at 4.0 launch!

[Fuma]

Ironically, attempting to lump the entire RP community into a single locked server is dividing it far more than giving a couple medium servers an 'RP' tag ever could. There are RPers scattered around all the servers because Balmung is locked and so overcrowded, that even a paid transfer there is a bad idea if you want to experience things like housing. You can't even get an apartment on Balmung. Balmung apartments sell (through paid releasing) for more than small houses on medium population servers.

Over here on Faerie, I see scattered RP and meet plenty of people that have RPed in the past and would like to again if there were a thriving community for it here outside of Balmung. For me, I engage in light RP here and there, making it a low priority thing. In WoW, I was much more into it on Earthen Ring, one of the official RP servers. That server had a large thriving RP community up through Burning Crusade at least. I'd like to get involved more here, but I'm not willing to pay transfer to Balmung AND deal with its overpopulated condition. It's perfectly possible to have multiple thriving RP servers in an MMO without stuffing them in into one giant overpopulated server. WoW did it after all.

To be fair though, the FFXIV RP community created the problem it has with Balmung. SE isn't helping, but they also didn't force everyone into Balmung. I've seen massive drama wars on FFXIV RP forums where players wanted to spur RP communities on servers other than Balmung due to the overcrowding. The result being lynch mobs and forum moderators dropping a hammer with basically 'we'll only allow promoting RP on Balmung to avoid splintering the community'... ignoring that of course, Balmung's state itself is already doing that by turning away newer players like me.

That's all a done deal though. I've made good friends on Faerie and even if Balmung's problems were fixed magically, I wouldn't transfer there. I've got roots now. That's true for most players. We aren't going to leave our friends behind. Even free transfers will have limited effectiveness, but maybe that could work a little. Tagging one or two medium servers with 'RP' could prompt some newer blood to attempt to build RP communities there, eventually luring away some of Balmung's RP crowd that want to escape the crowding and break the stranglehold Balmung seems to have... hopefully alleviating some of its overcrowding problems in the future. Just imagine those fun Balmung ques at 4.0 launch!

Well said, the RP community can be so resistant to change its stifling. The idea of just tagging servers with the RP tag would be enough to start smaller RP communities on those servers and help bring more of those people together and breathe some life into lower population servers that probably have a lot of freed up housing as well.

[Rokke]

You can't even get an apartment on Balmung. Balmung apartments sell (through paid releasing) for more than small houses on medium population servers.

Small houses cost less than a mil on mid pop servers? :O

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Small houses cost less than a mil on mid pop servers? :O

They are talking about buying them from other players.

[Rokke]

They are talking about buying them from other players.

I think theres an FC currently trying to buy up LB ward 2 apartments so that ward might be more pricey, but otherwise the most common price in PF looks like 850k-ish for Gob/LB.

Admittedly I don't think I've seen Mist apts go up as often, so those are probably be more expensive :x

[Rinari]

Admittedly I don't think I've seen Mist apts go up as often, so those are probably be more expensive :x

Meanwhile, I have a mist apartment that cost me the default 500k without having to engage in a risky trade and I can feasibly hope to acquire a small house in another month or so of play (having already played only ~7 weeks)... unless I decide to save up for a medium. When I joined, housing was one of the things I researched. Granted, I did it with little notion of the relative value of gil and I looked at reddit's housing market board since PF isn't exactly an option before making a character. I didn't even know people used PF for trading then. It sounds like apartments in Balmung are cheaper than what reddit was marketing them for ~7 weeks ago. That's not sooo terrible then, but I'm at least happy I was able to get some My First Housing Space without any risk. Also I love mist's beaches!

My big point is from a new player looking in, Balmung looks like a rough option with its crowding and locked character creation. So even some of us that might want to RP aren't going there and that splits the RP community by effectively limiting the new blood.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

They are talking about buying them from other players.

I think theres an FC currently trying to buy up LB ward 2 apartments so that ward might be more pricey, but otherwise the most common price in PF looks like 850k-ish for Gob/LB.

Admittedly I don't think I've seen Mist apts go up as often, so those are probably be more expensive :x

I specifically recall the devs mentioning they had set it up to be able to increase the amount of apartments available...

So...
Why hasn't that happened yet...
:/

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Over here on Faerie, I see scattered RP and meet plenty of people that have RPed in the past and would like to again if there were a thriving community for it here outside of Balmung. For me, I engage in light RP here and there, making it a low priority thing. In WoW, I was much more into it on Earthen Ring, one of the official RP servers. That server had a large thriving RP community up through Burning Crusade at least. I'd like to get involved more here, but I'm not willing to pay transfer to Balmung AND deal with its overpopulated condition. It's perfectly possible to have multiple thriving RP servers in an MMO without stuffing them in into one giant overpopulated server. WoW did it after all.

WoW also boasts a population several times that of FFXIV. Smaller communities cannot afford to splinter off as easily, hence why most MMOs have only one or two servers dedicated the "unofficial RP server." Pocket groups may form amongst friends, but for most people, they want to be apart of a bigger crowd. As for spurring, I have seen precisely the opposite at play. Probably most well known XIV roleplay site even attempts to promote RP on different servers whenever someone decides to try it. Rarely has any lasted because there just isn't enough people. FFXIV, in my opinion, would need far more players interested in roleplay to join come Stormblood to be able to pull off another RP server. Otherwise you're more likely to see people inevitably transfer over when everyone else hypes up Balmung. Granted, I do expect Balmung to be locked completely when Stormblood launches, even to transfer. It won't last, but we may actually have an opportunity to see if another RP community could thrive.

You mean server population limits are bypassed by transfers? They don't impost a limit at all?

Nope. If you pay for a transfer, you can pick any server regardless of it being labeled "closed" on the character creation menu. They allow this loophole so friends can theoretically play together if one happens to already have roots on a specific server. That is also why they almost never lock servers completely.

[Rinari]

Smaller communities cannot afford to splinter off as easily, hence why most MMOs have only one or two servers dedicated the "unofficial RP server."

The RP community here is already splintered due to the nature of Balmung being locked and overcrowded to the detriment of other game mechanics. Sure, almost everyone that makes RP an absolute top priority will eventually pony up for a transfer to Balmung, but that is a subset of players interested in RP. The RP community in FFXIV is losing a constant stream of new players by focusing on a locked mega server. Those players are going to start on other servers, put down roots, and likely never go to Balmung. I don't think there is a good solution at this point, since Balmung has established itself and the sentiment of 'don't promote RP on other servers, it will splinter our community!' runs deep here (as you've demonstrated again!). Tagging a medium population server as an RP server might eventually give a chance to form a new RP community outside of Balmung, but it won't be quick and I'm sure the Balmung community will fuss about it. If nothing is done, Balmung will stay locked, and the grand RP community there will be missing out on a steady stream of new players interested in RP. Of course, they probably won't care, since the community is big enough I guess. *shrug* Maybe someday the servers will merge and we'll just have data centers with zone instances, making these server population issues go away.