Petition to Terminate Restrictions on Transfer to “High Population” Servers

[Oaken]

You can petition all you want, but on games like this, it's not a democracy.

This will be wasted breath, but:

No matter the game, every server has limits. Once those servers start hitting limits, companies start accommodating with extra servers or forcing players to start spreading out if it's namely in a couple of spots (this would be Aether's Gilgamesh and Balmung).

Again, these are relatively minor disruptions to gameplay and impact a handful of hardcore PVE players. These minor disruptions pale in comparison to the very real threat of fragmenting the FFXIV community across many small servers and turning the game into a quasi-single player experience, which will cause subscribers to lose interest.

SE could support high population servers or implement actions similar to those discussed in the OP to mitigate population problems.

[technole]

Nice graph and allegations about login queues. It's a shame I can't really reduce to graph format what running through various zones on a high population server like Balmung or Gilgamesh (or other high population servers -- i.e. - large, healthy, active open world communities) looks like compared to most other servers (i.e. - ghost towns, terrible economy, minimal interaction between players, etc.). The bell curve on that graph would be a marvel to behold.

Healthy eh? If you want to brag so much, you can even see Balmung has among the lowest Creator Savage clear rate of all NA for being the largest server. Must be all that RP activity. Minimal interaction? More like minimal raiding action.

Gilgamesh has something riding in that area because most NA HC raiders flocked there, I was one of them raided on both Primal and Aether data centers. With the advent of XPF this has changed things a bit. It's just better long-term that Aether gets more evened out.

[Velthice]

Keep it locked and throw away the key

[Driavna]

Again, these are relatively minor disruptions to gameplay and impact a handful of hardcore PVE players. These minor disruptions pale in comparison to the very real threat of fragmenting the FFXIV community across many small servers and turning the game into a quasi-single player experience, which will cause subscribers to lose interest.

SE could support high population servers or implement actions similar to those discussed in the OP to mitigate population problems.

No they don't, game is not designed that way. FFXIV is not EVE and never will be.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Actually, interaction on large servers would be less than small servers. I tend to ignore most people and chat that goes on because it is annoying

[Oaken]

This thread is both depressing and infuriating.

You are on an OVERPOPULATED server. There are no dead servers, but there are low pop ones partially because people are sheep and keep flocking to your overpopulated, literally locked every second outside of for-5-minutes-after-maintenance server. SE is FINALLY attempting to do something to fix that. If you want to play with your friends, then take advantage of the free transfer, so you don't have to tell them to stay up until 4am or blow money to get into your server?

I wouldn't call a server where there actually appears to be people playing the game at various times of day "OVERPOPULATED," especially compared to servers that are actual dead ghost towns [i.e. - run around Limnsa and enjoy spotting 5-6 people, tops]. Forcing players to pick between friends and dividing players is poor policy that will ultimately result in subscription loss.

[AxlStream]

I can't imagine why you'd think having an increased fee for subscription and transfers be a good idea. Why would the guy on Balmung would pay more than my Faerie subscription? Maintenance isn't more expensive, most of it is highly likely to be automated anyways. They're already adding incentives according to their announcement. We just don't have any details as to how much and what exactly it means. Your only good suggestion is #5 which would need to be backed up with free transfers to make sure a hardcore raider on Balmung could bail to a more like-minded server and vice-versa.

Overall, I'm happy with the restrictions for the time being. Also they did mention it was temporary. New expansions coming out are usually huge spikes of pops across the board for all MMOs. When the novelty of Stormblood gets lost on the returnees, things will stabilize and people will be able to transfer freely again.

[savageink]

Come to Mal, we have pie.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I wouldn't call a server where there actually appears to be people playing the game at various times of day "OVERPOPULATED," especially compared to servers that are actual dead ghost towns [i.e. - run around Limnsa and enjoy spotting 5-6 people, tops]. Forcing players to pick between friends and dividing players is poor policy that will ultimately result in subscription loss.

Well, if everyone and their sister wasnt on 2 servers, they would all be medium population servers.

[AlphaFox]

Well maybe they will eventually offer free transfers out of the over crowded servers, but if they are indeed locking even to transfer in I can only assume its because that server is hitting a critical limit. Personally can't stand over-crowded servers in any game I play or in games like Maplestory (years ago when I played), always pick the least populated channel in that server.