Servers are fracturing communities

[xxvaynxx]

Balmung is so big that when the Make it Rain event started, ul'dah was so packed that everybody crashed.....yeah I think balmung needs to stay closed for awhile.

[savageink]

Balmung is so big that when the Make it Rain event started, ul'dah was so packed that everybody crashed.....yeah I think balmung needs to stay closed for awhile.

a new haircut crashes the system... lol!

[CoolCat]

I worry servers will crash or have login issues when Stormblood launch. But then I stop worrying because it won't be as bad as Balmung server will overheat and catch on fire.

[KasumiCascade]

You have the Sice hair on Balmung. You've visited Ul'dah and the Gold Saucer during this event and you dont see the issue with Balmung's population? I gotta call troll on this one.

[KisaiTenshi]

I worry servers will crash or have login issues when Stormblood launch. But then I stop worrying because it won't be as bad as Balmung server will overheat and catch on fire.

At V3.0 launch at most there was a 220 person queue for Excalibur and it took about 10 minutes to clear.

Keep in mind that "the server" isn't generally one machine, but multiple, and that's why people get stuck being unable to enter or leave some zones during overload, because there's not enough player capacity in one zone that everyone is in, particularly in "starting zones" for quests.

[Nixxe]

I'm not really sure what you want SE to do about it. If you look at WoW, Blizzard has made a lot of changes that largely negate the ability of servers to potentially split up friends, but it also came at the expense of other organically forming communities, such as realm communities. Now everything is cross-realm, including current content, and overpopulation is handled by creating additional copies of the area. While it allows Blizzard to funnel tons of people into the same virtual realm, it's also rather disjointed and destructive in its own right. Having played WoW for over 10 years (albeit, somewhat off and on), CRZ was honestly one of the worst changes they ever made, from the perspective of being detrimental to my fun and gameplay experience.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm not really sure what you want SE to do about it. If you look at WoW, Blizzard has made a lot of changes that largely negate the ability of servers to potentially split up friends, but it also came at the expense of other organically forming communities, such as realm communities. Now everything is cross-realm, including current content, and overpopulation is handled by creating additional copies of the area. While it allows Blizzard to funnel tons of people into the same virtual realm, it's also rather disjointed and destructive in its own right. Having played WoW for over 10 years (albeit, somewhat off and on), CRZ was honestly one of the worst changes they ever made, from the perspective of being detrimental to my fun and gameplay experience.

I have not played WoW, but I have played Wizardy (which largely just had a "hub world"), PSO2 (which only had a hub world), and Vindictus (aka Mabinogi Heroes), and I'll tell you straight up that the "channel changing" mechanic used to split up a world into multiple worlds is extremely disruptive, and yes prevents organic community forming because you may never ever see someone again once you do an instance.

The more ideal system requires a dynamic open world to begin with (eg see minecraft) and when player capacity increases in an area, you cleave off that section of the game and run it on another machine. Players crossing that boundary don't even see it. This can be as small as "a house" or shop, or as large as a an entire city in the game world context. But you never just run empty instances for people to get lost in. The worst side effect of doing it this way is that you lose your draw distance, so a lot of content just "pops in" and you get a lot more lag on low quality connections.

That said, that is also the antithesis of a storyline driven game, you can't generate more story at random any better than you can generate landscapes and buildings. A lot of these kinds of things game logic uses the "series of prefabricated rooms glued together" mechanic like the Palace of the Dead does.

So FFXIV is not the right game to do this. We don't need the overworld to be little more than a hub world for dungeons and yet more glued-to-the-ground generic nameless NPC's. Is it that hard to give all the NPC's a name? Instead of "Independent Mender" and "Scrip Exchange" maybe "Bob the Fixer" and "Joe's Scrip Exchange", if you at least give them a name they feel like they weren't just dropped there for lack of any planning.

[Ayer2015]

Mega servers are the clear answer. The question is, is SE willing to invest in the change.

[jameseoakes]

Mega servers are the clear answer. The question is, is SE willing to invest in the change.

Answer to what?

[Joe777]

Don't forget there are people that actually like playing on low population servers. I know I do Besides, got a feel for how a crowded server is when Make It Rain happened and like 1,000 players gathered early in Ul'dah. Yeah, I'm happy with a low pop server.